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Royal Acts of Mutilation: The Case Against Henry I*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2014

C. Warren Hollister
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Extract

The subject of mutilations is one I would cheerfully have left to others were it not for its bearing on the character of King Henry I. The sources for his reign disclose a number of instances in which alleged wrongdoers were punished by mutilation, and these punishments have earned Henry a somber reputation among modern historians. Christopher Brooke calls him a “savage, ruthless man”; Emma Mason deplores his “reign of calculated terror”; R.H.C. Davis speaks of his “reputation for brutality.” To Sir Richard Southern, “Henry's vengeance was terrible and barbaric … . He had a morbid dislike of ridicule and he punished with a Byzantine ferocity already outmoded in the humaner society of feudal France, not only treachery and rebellion but slights to his dignity and honour.”

Perhaps the best known contemporary mutilation story comes from the 1125 account in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is disclosed that Henry had the minters of England castrated and deprived of their right hands. We learn of Henry's morbid dislike of ridicule from an event of about the same time reported by the Norman monk, Orderic Vitalis. Henry had ordered the blinding of three captive rebels when Count Charles the Good of Flanders, who happened to be visiting, protested that it was unjust to mutilate prisoners captured in the service of their lords.

Type
Research Article
Information
Albion , Volume 10 , Issue 4 , Winter 1978 , pp. 330 - 340
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1978

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Fulbright Commission, the American Philosophical Society, and the Warden and Fellows of Merton College, Oxford, for their help in supporting the research on which this paper is based.

References

1 Brooke, Christopher, London, 800-1216: The Shaping of a City (Berkeley, 1915), p. 317Google Scholar; Mason, Emma, “William Rufus: Myth and Reality,” Journal of Medieval History, 3 (March 1977): 15CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davis, R. H. C., King Stephen (Berkeley, 1967), pp. 5–6Google Scholar; and Southern, Richard W., Medieval Humanism and Other Studies (Oxford, 1970), pp. 218 and 231Google Scholar.

2 Vitalis, Orderic, Historia Ecclesiastica. ed. Le Prévost, A., 5 vols. (Paris, 1852), 4:460–61Google Scholar.

3 These words are taken from a charter of King Athelstan: Early Yorkshire Charters, ed. Farrer, William and Clay, C.T., 12 vols. (Edinburgh, 1914–1965), 1:no. 1Google Scholar.

4 William of Malmesbury, Vita Wulfstani, ed. Darlington, R. R. (London, 1928), p. 40Google Scholar.

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6 Anselm of Canterbury, Opera Omnia, ed. Schmitt, F. S., 6 vols. (Edinburgh, 1946–1961), 5:Ep. 413Google Scholar.

7 Suger, , Louis VI, pp. 172–74Google Scholar.

8 Cf. Genesis 49:9–12Google Scholar; Jeremiah 25:30Google Scholar; Proverbs 2:22Google Scholar; 2 Thessalonians 1:8Google Scholar; and Revelations 20:14Google Scholar.

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12 de Glanvill, Ranulf, De Legibus Consuetudinibus Regni Anglie, ed. Hall, G. D. G. (London, 1965), pp. 176–77Google Scholar. The same point was made by the East Roman Emperor Leo III (Lopez, R.S., “Byzantine Law in the Seventh Century and its Reception by the Germans and the Arabs,” Byzantion, 16[1942–1943]:456.)Google Scholar See also “The Ten Articles of William I,” in The Laws of the Kings of England from Edmund to Henry I, ed. Robertson, A. J. (Cambridge, 1925), p. 242Google Scholar. The laws of the Saxon and Norman kings are published in Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, ed. Liebermann, Felix, 3 vols. (Halle, 1898–1916), Vol. 1Google Scholar; more convenient editions, with facing English translations, are The Laws of the Earliest English Kings, ed. Attenborough, F. L. (Cambridge, 1922)Google Scholar, and Robertson, The Laws of the Kings of England.

13 See Lear, F.D., Treason in Roman and Germanic Law (Austin, Texas, 1965.)Google Scholar

14 Laws of Alfred, Introduction, cap. 49, in Liebermann, , Die Gesetze, 1:15–89Google Scholar.

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16 Lear, Treason, p. 189; Glanvill, , De Legibus, pp. 176–177Google Scholar; and Pollock, Frederick and Maitland, F. W., The History of English Law, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 1968), 2:505Google Scholar.

17 2 Athelstan 14, 1, in Attenborough, p. 134; 3 Aethelred 8, in Robertson, p. 68; Galbert of Bruges, The Murder of Charles the Good, Count of Flanders, trans, and ed. Ross, James B. (New York, 1967), p. 17, n. 73Google Scholar; Lopez, , “Byzantine Law,” pp. 448–56Google Scholar. In states in which the prince enjoyed a monopoly on coining, counterfeiting could be regarded as a crime of lèse majesté (ibid., p. 449.)

18 Leges Henrici Primi, ed. Downer, L. J. (Oxford, 1972), pp. 108 (10, 1), 116 (13, 1, 3.)Google Scholar Cf. ibid., pp. 114(11, 16a), 164 (49, 7), and 232 (75, 1.)

19 Consuetudines et Iusticie of 1091: 1-2, 8, 13; Haskins, Charles H., Norman Institutions (Cambridge, Mass., 1918), pp. 28–29 and 280CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Valin, Lucien, Le Duc de Normandie et sa cour (Paris, 1910), pp. 187 and 247Google Scholar; and Coutumiers de Normandie, ed. Tardif, E.-J. (Rouen, 1881), p. 64Google Scholar.

20 Les Etablissements de Saint Louis, ed. Viollet, P., 4 vols. (Paris, 1881–1886), 2:53Google Scholar.

21 De Legibus, pp. 171-77. See also Warren, W. L., Henry II (Berkeley, 1973), p. 355Google Scholar on the Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton.

22 Pollock, and Maitland, , History of English Law, 2:500–01Google Scholar.

23 Haller, William, The Rise of Puritanism (New York, 1938), pp. 249–54Google Scholar. On the use of torture by tribunals in early-modern Europe, see Simpson, A. W. B., Torture and the Law of Proof (Chicago, 1978)Google Scholar.

24 Associated Press report in The Los Angeles Times, July 14, 1977, Part 1, p. 13Google Scholar. On mutilation in China, see Hulsewé, A. F. P., Remnants of Han Law, 9 vols. (Leiden, 1955), 1:122–28Google Scholar.

25 Chodorow, Stanley, Christian Political Theory and Church Politics in the Mid-Twelfth Century: The Ecclesiology of Gratian's Decretum (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 235–36 and 238Google Scholar.

26 Suger, , Louis VI, p. 176Google Scholar.

27 Ibid., p. 178; and Romans 13:4Google Scholar. See also Spiegel, Gabrielle M., The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis: A Survey (Brookline, Mass., 1978), p. 45Google Scholar: Suger's Life of Louis VI “presents the Capetian monarch as the realization of the highest ideals and goals of medieval kingship, as an example to present and future rulers ….”

28 Suger, , Louis VI, pp. 118–20Google Scholar.

29 Eadmer, , Historia Novorum, ed. Rule, Martin, Rolls Series (London, 1884), pp. 192–93Google Scholar. Eadmer's words on this episode are echoed in Florence of Worcester, , Chronicon ex Chronicis, ed. Thorpe, Benjamin, 2 vols. (London, 1848–1849), 2:57Google Scholar.

30 William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, ed. Marx, Jean (Rouen, 1914), p. 296Google Scholar.

31 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 1125.

32 Ibid., A.D. 1137.

33 Guibert, , Histoire de sa Vie, ed. Bourgin, Geroges (Paris, 1907), pp. 178–79Google Scholar. Cf. Suger, , Louis VI, pp. 30 and 172–74Google Scholar.

34 Vitalis, Orderic, Ecclesiastical History, ed. Chibnall, Marjorie, 4 vols. (Oxford, 1969–1975), 4:298Google Scholar; cf. 4:158-60, and William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. Stubbs, William, Rolls Series, 2 vols. (London, 1887–1889), pp. 475–76Google Scholar.

35 Vitalis, Orderic, Ecclesiastical History, ed. Chibnall, , 4:298Google Scholar.

36 Robert and Thomas have both found defenders in our own century: see du Motey, Le Vicomte, Robert II de Bellême et son temps (Paris, 1923)Google Scholar; and Chaurand, Jacques, Thomas de Marle, Sire de Coucy (Marle, 1963.)Google Scholar

37 Suger, , Louis VI, pp. 246–48Google Scholar.

38 Douglas, David C., William the Conqueror (London, 1964), p. 60Google Scholar; William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, p. 126; and Warren, , Henry II, p. 164Google Scholar.

39 Richard, Alfred, Histoire des dues et des comtes de Poitou, 778-1204, 2 vols. (Paris, 1903), 2:67Google Scholar.

40 Luchaire, Achille, Social France at the Time of Philip Augustus, tr. Krehbiel, E. B. (New York, 1967), p. 12Google Scholar.

41 Galbert of Bruges, Histoire du meurtre de Charles le Bon, ed. Pirenne, Henri (Paris, 1891), pp. 92, 125–26, 128–29, and passimGoogle Scholar.

42 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, A.D. 1124.

43 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, ed. Arnold, Thomas, Rolls Series (London, 1879), pp. 255–56Google Scholar. After Henry I's death, William of Mortain is reported to have become a monk of Bermondsey Abbey, London, on which occasion nothing is said about his being blind; but this information comes from a brief notice in the Bermondsey Annals, a very late source (Annales Monastici, ed. Luard, H. R., Rolls Series, 5 vols. [London, 1864–1869], 3:436)Google Scholar. The Bermondsey Annals likewise report that William was freed c. 1118 (p. 432), but even if this is correct, he was back in the Tower of London in 1129-30 (Pipe Roll 31 Henry I, ed. Hunter, Joseph, rev. ed. [London, 1929], p. 143Google Scholar).

44 William the Conqueror blinded many of the men who rebelled against him in 1075. See Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 206.

45 Such, I suggest, is the purport of such passages as Vitalis, Orderic, Historia Ecclesiastica, 4:167 and 337Google Scholar; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, 2:487–88Google Scholar; and Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum, p. 311. For the usual response to an enemy's mutilation of hostages and prisoners, see Powicke, F. M., The Loss of Normandy, 2nd. ed. (Manchester, 1961), pp. 243–44Google Scholar.

46 Herman of Tournai, Liber de restauratione monasterii S. Martini Tornacensis, ed. Waitz, G., in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores, 14:285Google Scholar. See Murder of Charles the Good, ed. Ross, , pp. 17, 20 and 45Google Scholar for Charles' views on crime and punishment. On his attitude toward treason and slander, see Galbert, , Histoire de meurtre du Charles le Bon, p. 14Google Scholar.

47 On this tradition, see Powicke, , Loss of Normandy, p. 245Google Scholar.

48 Vitalis, Orderic, Historia Ecclesiastica, 4:461Google Scholar.