The Angevin court in the late twelfth-century was not an auspicious place to compose a speculum principis. The experiences – and thwarted plans for moral reform – of a number of well-known authors bear out this contention. Seeking to exhort his prince to a truly just reign, c. 1159, John of Salisbury addressed his ambitious speculum principis – Policraticus – to Henry II’s chancellor, Thomas Becket. John’s advice was based upon the conviction that the king who founded his reign on justice would bring peace to the regnum. Yet John spent much of the subsequent decade decrying the injustice and abuses of Henry II in his persecution of Becket.

John, however, was far from the only moralist to struggle with the practical realization of plans for the moral reform of the Angevin court. Peter of Blois similarly attempted to improve the morals of Angevin courtiers and their king, his efforts exemplified in the 1180s dialogue that exhorted Henry II to tame the royal temper and behave in a more Christian manner. The position of any would-be reformer at court was an uncomfortable one, and Peter struggled with the same problem as John: assailed by the ambition and avarice of other royal servants, it was almost impossible for these men to improve the court without becoming mired in its vices.

Lamenting the immorality of the royal court – a location exemplifying the corruptions of the earthly city – was, of course, not an Angevin innovation but a long-standing feature of Christian thought. Even so, complaints about courtly immortality are particularly strident and vociferous amongst the authors of late twelfth-century England. The good man at the court of Henry II, Walter Map complained, was a lone voice in a wilderness of licentiousness. A similar disdain for courtly depravity is articulated in Gerald of Wales’ De principis instructione (a work begun in the 1190s). The first book of De principis is a standard recapitulation of the moral virtues desirable in a ruler – clemency, patience, and temperance – but the second and third books contain a historical demonstration of how the Angevin rulers of England were entirely lacking in any of these virtues.