England under the Angevin Kings, Volume IINorgate, Kate
History
England under the Angevin Kings, Volume II
Norgate, Kate
Anjou, House of; England -- Civilization -- 1066-1485; Great Britain -- History -- Angevin period, 1154-1216
[662] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 46, 47. The other
Angevin rebels are Vivian and Peter of Montrévault: to whom may
be added John of Lignières and Geoffrey of La Haye in Touraine.
_Ibid._ p. 46.
[663] _Ib._ pp. 47, 63.
[664] “Robertum de Selit quâdam occasione captum rex Henricus
crudeliter ferro indutum, pane arcto atque aquâ breve cibavit
donec defecit.” Geoff. Vigeois, l. i. c. 66 (Labbe, _Nova
Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 318). “Robertus de Silliaco redeat in
mentem ... quem nec pacis osculum publice datum, nec fides
corporaliter regi Francorum præstita, fecit esse securum.” Ep.
dcx., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. vii. p. 178. Cf. Epp. dcvi.,
dcxliv., _ib._ pp. 165, 247. The other Cenomannian rebels are
Gwenis of Palluau and Geoffrey of Brulon; _Gesta Hen._ (as
above), p. 46.
Across the western border of Maine, in Geoffrey’s duchy, Ralf of
Fougères was once more at the head of a band of discontented Breton
nobles, chiefly, it seems, belonging to that old seed-plot of
disturbance, the county of Nantes.[665] The true centre and focus
of revolt, however, was as of old the duchy of Normandy. Almost all
the great names which have been conspicuous in the earlier risings of
the feudal baronage against the repressive policy of William and of
Henry I. re-appear among the partizans of the young king. The house of
Montfort on the Rille was represented by that Robert of Montfort[666]
whose challenge to Henry of Essex ten years before had deprived the
king of one of his most trusty servants. The other and more famous
house of Montfort--the house of Almeric and of Bertrada--was also,
now as ever, in opposition in the person of its head, Count Simon of
Evreux.[667] He, like his fellow-traitor the count of Eu,[668] to whom,
as after-events shewed, may be added the count of Aumale, represented
one of those junior branches of the Norman ducal house which always
resented most bitterly the determination of the dukes to concentrate
all political power in their own hands. The counts of Ponthieu[669]
and of Alençon[670] inherited the spirit as well as the territories of
Robert of Bellême. Count Robert of Meulan[671] was the son of Waleran
who in 1123 had rebelled against Henry I., and the head of the Norman
branch of the great house of Beaumont, which for more than half a
century had stood in the foremost rank of the baronage on both sides of
the sea. The chief of the English Beaumonts was his cousin and namesake
of Leicester, soon to prove himself an unworthy son of the faithful
justiciar who had died in 1168; while the countess of Leicester, a
woman of a spirit quite as determined and masculine as her husband’s,
was the heiress of the proud old Norman house of Grandmesnil[672]--a
granddaughter of that Ivo of Grandmesnil who had been banished by Henry
I. for trying to bring into England the Norman practice of private
warfare.
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