The cover image was created by the transcriber, and is placed in the public domain. Sidenotes showing the year have been moved to the start of paragraphs, and kept only when they change.
For some long paragraphs a range of dates is shown. Other sidenotes give the actual date of an event. These have been moved next to the description of the date, and are shown in parentheses, e. Others, which merely repeat a date, have been removed. Other sidenotes either give the actual date of an event, or show a change of year. All references to footnote numbers i. The errata list is in the note at the end of the book. Throughout this book the abbreviation ib.
Each has been linked to the citation to which it refers. The awful lesson of his life rests on the fact that the king who lost Normandy, became the vassal of the Pope, and perished in a struggle of despair against English freedom was no weak and indolent voluptuary but the ablest and most ruthless of the Angevins. Estoire de la Guerre Sainte , vv. The fifth son, the eighth and last child, of Henry II. The eldest living son, Henry, was nearly thirteen; Richard was ten, and Geoffrey nine.
The boy Henry had, when an infant, been acknowledged by the barons of England as heir to the crown, [3] and in had done homage to Louis of France for the duchy of Normandy. In the summer of the king had secured Britanny for Geoffrey by betrothing him to its heiress. The reason, however, is obvious. Anjou was the cradle of his race, the very heart and centre of his dominion, the one portion of it which he had inherited from his forefathers in unbroken male descent, by a right which had been always undisputed and indisputable.
The destiny of Anjou was therefore as yet unspecified, not because Henry was reserving it for a possible younger son, but because its devolution to his eldest son, as head of the Angevin house after him, was in his mind a matter of course. Two years later the scheme of partition was fully developed, and now Anjou was explicitly included in it. At Epiphany Louis of France granted to the younger Henry the investiture of Anjou and Maine, on the understanding that the boy was to hold these fiefs, as well as Normandy, in his own person, directly of the French crown.
