Poor old Arthur of Brittany! They say that you can choose
your friends, but you cannot choose your family, and for this royal prince,
born into a brood of constantly fighting and cantankerous Plantagenets, this
was a very apt saying. There have been
many mystery people of history and in medieval times even a royal prince could
disappear without trace. Probably the most famous princes to mysteriously
vanish off the face of the Earth were the Princes in the Tower, supposedly
murdered by their much vilified uncle, King Richard III. But Richard III was
not the only Plantagenet monarch who was thought to have murdered a
nephew. King John enjoys a very bad
reputation in English history; he tried to steal his brother’s crown while he
was away fighting in the Third Crusade, when he became king riled up his barons
so that they rebelled against him leading to the signing of Magna Carta and at
the end of his long and not very illustrious career he has thought to have lost
the crown jewels while he was crossing the Wash in bad weather. But what is not
so well known, is that he is also thought to have been responsible for the
death of his nephew, Arthur of Brittany.
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| Arthur of Brittany & Philip II of France |
King Henry II, his queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their
sons were famous for their quarrelling and for fighting among themselves for
territory and prestige. This was a time
when primogeniture was not yet firmly established and the King could name his
heir, which tended to set brother against brother and cause long-festering
family feuds. Arthur was the only son of
Geoffrey, Duke of Brittany and his wife Constance. The couple already had an elder daughter
Eleanor, known as the Fair Maid of Brittany, but Arthur was a posthumous child,
born in Nantes in 1187 after his father was killed during a tournament in 1186.
Although a claimant to the throne of England, Arthur was French through and
through, and never once visited the British Isles during his short life and
could not speak English. The
Plantagenets wanted this royal infant to be named Henry after his grandfather,
King Henry II of England, but his mother Constance chose the name Arthur, in
honour of the mythical king who was so revered by her Breton subjects. Arthur
was to be much influenced by his mother and it was probably from her that he
gained his leanings towards France and the French crown
When the old King Henry II died in 1189, he was succeeded by
his son Richard I, known as the ‘Lionheart’. Richard I decided that it was a
good idea to patch up his ongoing feud with his younger brother John, in order
to try and maintain peace in his realms.
In those days the Angevin Empire encompassed huge swathes of France as
well as the kingdom of England, and Richard I was really not much interested in
his English fiefdom, preferring to spend his time rampaging around France. However, early on in his reign he decided to
take up the Cross and join the Third Crusade. At this time Richard the
Lionheart was unmarried and childless, so named the infant Arthur as his heir,
just in case he came a cropper at the hands of the Saracens. As part of the deal, he also arranged the
betrothal of Arthur to a daughter of Tancred of Sicily, although this alliance
was broken when the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI conquered Sicily in 1194. He
also made his brother Prince John swear an oath that he would not set foot in
England while he was away. Was this a red
rag to a bull or what? With his nose
well and truly put out by Richard’s naming of Arthur as his heir, John duly
proceeded to land in England and tried to get the English crown onto his own
head. Over in Brittany, Constance was
also taking advantage of Richard I’s absence, and to try and wrest more
autonomy for Brittany had Arthur hailed Duke of Brittany in 1194 at the tender
age of 7. Unfortunately for Prince John, after a series of adventures, his
brother Richard returned in 1194 and very firmly reclaimed his crown.
Once again in 1196, Richard I named Arthur as his heir, and
to cement this relationship he summoned both Arthur and his mother to where he
was currently residing in Normandy.
However, unfortunately Constance was abducted on the road by her
estranged husband, one Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester. This English aristocrat had been married off
to Constance at the age of 17, as King Richard did not trust where her
loyalties lay and wanted to ensure her continued obedience by wedding her to
one of his more trusted barons. However, the marriage had not been a success
and the couple were living separate lives. The abduction infuriated Richard I,
who then led his army to Brittany to secure possession of Arthur, but the young
Duke was whisked away in secret by his tutor to the French court where he was
brought up alongside Prince Louis of France. In 1199 Constance managed to
escape from her unwanted spouse and their marriage was dissolved on the grounds
of desertion.
Richard the Lionheart died on April 6, 1199 during the siege
of the castle of Chaluz-Chabrol. He had
been walking around the castle perimeter without his chainmail when he took a
hit in his left shoulder from a crossbow.
He first tried to pull the missile out himself, and then had it removed
by a bungling surgeon. Richard developed
gangrene in his wound, which proved fatal, and before he died he named his
younger brother John as his heir.
Richard feared that as Arthur of Brittany was only 12 years old at this time
that he was too young to be a decisive leader and, moreover, was far too much
under the influence of the French Court. John was actually staying with
Constance and Arthur in Brittany, when the news of his brother’s death and his
elevation to the throne of England was brought to him. He immediately made haste to secure the royal
treasury that was housed in the castle at Chinon, while the intrepid Constance
raised an army and took the town of Angers.
John’s claim to the English throne was supported by his indomitable
mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine and William Marshall, a powerful English
Baron. However, the French nobility were resentful of
the new King John, and favoured Arthur’s claim to the throne, especially as
Arthur had declared himself as a vassal of the King of France, Philip II. The
French King recognised Arthur of Brittany’s rights to the territories of Anjou,
Maine and Poitou and headed up an army, which he took to Anjou and Maine to
reinforce Arthur’s claim. From April 18
of that year, Arthur styled himself Duke of Brittany, Count of Anjou and Earl
of Richmond. Unfortunately, the young Prince’s staunchest supporter, his mother
Constance, died in 1201, leaving him bereft of support. Constance had remarried after her early union
had been dissolved, to one Guy de Thouars, bearing him twin daughters, and she may
well have died while giving birth again.
Philip II of France’s championing of Arthur of Brittany was
due to the fact that he was always keen to exploit any family rifts among the
Plantagenets for his own ends in order to extend the territory and influence of
the French crown. However, this stirring
led to King John invading France in 1202, which forced Philip to recognise John
as his late brother’s legitimate heir to the English throne at the Treaty of Le
Goulet. The French King abandoned his support of the young Prince Arthur and
forced him to acknowledge his uncle as his new overlord. Arthur was mortified by this turn of events
and fled to the sanctuary of his uncle’s Court where he was warmly welcomed, but
soon became wary of King John’s real objectives, and swiftly returned to
Angers. King John’s marriage to Isabella
d’Angoulême once again stirred up the resentment of the French nobility against
him, as this lady had previously been betrothed to a French baron called Hugh
de Lusignan. Hugh de Lusignan rounded up
his supporters and rebelled against King John, appealing to the French King for
aid. Philip II firmly requested that King
John appear at his Court to explain his actions, and when John was a no show, Philip
declared all of the English monarch’s land in France forfeit, and awarded Normandy
and Anjou to young Arthur of Brittany.
Despite his youth, Arthur was shaping up to be just as
warlike and belligerent as the rest of his Plantagenet forbears, and besieged
his own grandmother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, where she was holed up in Mirebeau
Castle. Queen Eleanor managed to get a message to John, who managed, in a huge
feat of endurance and determination, to march his army the eighty miles between
Le Mans and Mirebeau in just two days.
Arthur was captured by john’s forces and imprisoned in the fortress at
Falaise in Normandy, under the watchful eye of Hugh de Burgh. His sister Eleanor was also captured and sent
to England to be imprisoned in Corfe Castle.
The following year Arthur was transferred to Rouen and put in the charge
of William de Braose, and in April 1203 he mysteriously disappeared, never to
be seen again.
Now to our modern minds it may seem utterly incomprehensible
that a royal prince, the ruler of large territories in northern France, could
just vanish without trace, but you have to remember that we are talking about a
time where there was no mass media, no CCTV cameras and no photographs. Very few of the ordinary people in Rouen
would ever have seen Arthur of Brittany in the flesh, so would not recognise
him without his royal regalia and retinue.
This was also a period where there was little portraiture, so many would
not have even seen a likeness of the prince. Inevitably stories about Arthur’s
disappearance soon started to circulate, and unfortunately to King John, most
of them put him firmly in the frame.
Hugh de Burgh supposedly made a claim that he knew the details of Arthur’s
demise, and that the young prince had been blinded and castrated by John’s
henchmen, and had died of shock.
Another account offered in the Margam Annals, penned by an
unknown Welsh monk, stated that one night King John got very drunk. Arthur, being at the time a stroppy
adolescent, rubbed his uncle up the wrong way by being rude and defiant, which
caused John to kill him. To get rid of
his body, John weighted it down with stones and dumped it in the River Seine.
The body then became caught in the hooks of local fisherman, who hauled it onto
the shore. They recognised the corpse as
being that of Arthur of Brittany, and fearing reprisals from King John if he
got to know about their discovery, took the body for secret burial at the
priory of Notre Dame de Pres at Bec. Arthur’s jailer at the time of his
disappearance, William de Braose, suddenly rose very high in John’s favour,
being showered with lands and titles in the Welsh Marches, which led people to
think that he had been complicit in Arthur’s demise.
It was unfortunate for William de Braose that many years
later, after arguing and being in conflict with King John, William’s wife Maude
de Braose openly accused John of being responsible for the murder of his nephew.
As at the time of these accusations William de Braose also owed King John a
large sum of money, the English monarch demanded that they hand over their son
William as a hostage to enforce their continued loyalty and ensure that they
kept their mouths shut. Maude had
apparently made audible comments in the presence of the King’s officers that
‘she would not deliver her children to a king who had murdered his own nephew’.
This naturally outraged the hot-tempered King John, so he seized their lands in
the Welsh Marches, which caused them to flee to Ireland, where Maude and her
eldest son were eventually captured trying to escape to Scotland. They were
sent back to England and imprisoned in Windsor Castle, and then sent on to
Corfe Castle, where they are believed to have been starved to death. William de Braose managed to escape to France,
where he is thought to have written an account of the true fate of young Arthur
of Brittany, but no traces of it remains.
William Shakespeare incorporates the tragedy of Arthur of
Brittany into his play King John, where the young prince is portrayed as an inexperienced
youth, who has no responsibility for the fate that befalls him. Shakespeare kills off Arthur by having him
jump from the walls of the castle where he was imprisoned, while fleeing from
the tyranny of his wicked uncle. But
then, wicked uncles slaying their blameless nephews was a favourite historical
theme used by Shakespeare in his plays. I feel that it is unlikely that King
John himself would have dirtied his hands by personally killing his nephew, but
it is more than likely that it was he who ordered the boy’s death. If Arthur had remained alive, he would have
been a continual thorn in John’s side, and as the boy got older he could have
made a strong alliance through marriage and built up a dynasty that would have
been a constant threat to John’s power and prestige in northern France. Arthur’s sister Eleanor of Brittany fared no
better in life, as King John and then his successor and son Henry III kept her
captive in England until her death at the age of 57. The French barons were inclined to believe in
John’s guilt, and used it as another reason to unite against him, eventually
taking Richard the Lionheart’s mighty Chateau Gaillard and pushing John and his
army back across the Channel to England. The dukedom of Brittany, which should
have gone to Eleanor, was passed on to Arthur’s half-sister Alix de Thouars,
who was married Peter de Dreux, creating a new Breton dynasty of rulers.
Image Wikimedia Commons Public Domain
