Geoffrey Plantagenet

“ No one knew better than Geoffrey Plantagenet that he was not the first count of Anjou who had been left to shift for himself in difficult circumstances at the age of fifteen; and he faced the danger with a promptitude and energy not unworthy of Fulk Nerra’s representative. One after another he besieged the rebel leaders in their strongholds; one after another was forced, tricked or frightened into submission. Once, while besieging Theobald of Blazon in the great fortress of Mirebeau, Geoffrey was blockaded in his turn by the count of Poitou, whom the traitors had called to their aid ”

“ Inveterate usage has attached the surname Plantagenet to the great house which occupied the English throne from 1154 to 1485, but the family did not assume the surname until the middle of the fifteenth century. It was originally—under the form Plante-geneste—a personal nickname of Geoffrey, count of Anjou, father of Henry II (cf. Wace, Roman de Rou, ed. Andresen, ii. 437; Historia Comitum Andegavensium in Chroniques d'Anjou, pp. 229, 334) , and it is traditionally derived from Geoffrey's habit of adorning his cap with a sprig of broom or planta genista. ”

“ He is also called “le bel” or “the handsome,” and received the surname of Plantagenet from the habit which he is said to have had of wearing in his cap a sprig of broom (genêt) . In 1127 he was made a knight, and on the 2nd of June 1129 married Matilda, daughter of Henry I. of England, and widow of the emperor Henry V. Some months afterwards he succeeded to his father, who gave up the countship when he definitively went to the kingdom of Jerusalem. The years of his government were spent in subduing the Angevin barons and in conquering Normandy (see Anjou) . ”

“ Conan IV secured the ducal crown by Norman-English aid, and gave his daughter Constance in marriage to Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of Henry II of England. Geoffrey was crowned Duke of Brittany in 1171, but after his death his son Arthur met with a dreadful fate at the hands of his uncle, John of England. Constance, his mother, the real heiress to the duchy, married again, her choice falling upon Guy de Thouars, and their daughter was wed to Pierre de Dreux, who became Duke, and who defeated John Lackland, the slayer of his wife’s half-brother, under the walls of Nantes in 1214. ”

“ Indeed the true date of Geoffrey's birth, and consequently of Henry's commerce with Rosamond, seems to be best ascertained from an ancient manuscript in the Cotton library: wherein it is thus registered of Geoffrey Plantagenet: "Natus est 5° Hen. II. [1159.] Factus est miles 25° Hen. II. [1179.] Elect. in Episcop. Lincoln. 28° Hen. II. [1182.] " Vid. Chron. de Kirkstall (Domitian XII.) Drake's Hist. of York, p. 422.
The ballad of Fair Rosamond appears to have been first published in "Strange Histories, or Songs and Sonnets, of Kinges, Princes, Dukes, Lords, Ladyes, Knights, and Gentlemen, &c. ”

“ This was curved to protect the body, which it nearly covered, and an interesting example of this is to be found in the monumental slab of champlevé enamel, part of the tomb of Geoffrey Plantagenet, Count of Anjou (Fig. 28) , the ancestor of our own Royal dynasty of Plantagenet, who died in the year 1150. This tomb was formerly in the cathedral of Le Mans, and is now in the museum there. I shall have occasion again to refer to it. The shield is blue; the lions are gold. ”

“ The citizens of every city shall assemble; and to them and to every country it shall be proclaimed that Duchess Constance of Brittany will maintain the ducal authority, and that during the minority of her son she will rule all the possessions of the deceased Duke Geoffrey Plantagenet, with the help of God and the nobles of Brittany. ”

“ So are the Norman reigns of Geoffrey Plantagenet and his son Henry. But their position in Normandy was quite different from Robert’s, while they claimed England in quite a different sense from the claims of Robert, and had—​the son at least had—​partisans there.
[670] N. C. vol. v. pp. 85, 95, 96.
[671] The character of this Count Geoffrey (son of the Rotrou who figures in the war of the Conqueror and his son, N. C. vol. iv. pp. 637, 639) as drawn by Orderic (675 D; see above, p. 183) is worth studying ”

“ Having no son to succeed him, after all his pains (‘The Prince will never yoke us to the plough, now!’ said the English people) , he took a second wife—Adelais or Alice, a duke’s daughter, and the Pope’s niece. Having no more children, however, he proposed to the Barons to swear that they would recognise as his successor, his daughter Matilda, whom, as she was now a widow, he married to the eldest son of the Count of Anjou, Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet, from a custom he had of wearing a sprig of flowering broom (called Genêt in French) in his cap for a feather. ”

“ Geoffrey transmitted no surname, and Henry II, his son, the founder of the 'Plantagenet' dynasty, took from his mother the name Henry Fitz Empress, by which he was commonly known when his titles were not used. His descendants remained without a common family name for three centuries, long after surnames had become universal outside the blood royal. ”

“ It was under these circumstances that the Plantagenets became leaders in society, and added their valuable real estate in France to the English dominions. In 1154, Henry Plantagenet was thus the most powerful monarch in Europe, and by wedding his son Geoffrey to the daughter of the Duke of Brittany, soon scooped in that valuable property also.
He broke up the custom of issuing pickpocket and felony licenses to his nobles, seized the royal stone-piles and other nests for common sneak thieves, and resolved to give the people a chance to pay taxes and die natural deaths. ”

“ The young men stood in silence for a moment, then Geoffrey spoke—
"The King has laid a heavy trust upon us," he said, "and therein has conferred on us great honour, for we shall now be doing service to our own dear country as well as to his. Let us ask a greater King than Philip, even our Heavenly Father, to bless our enterprise."
With one impulse the young men knelt, and for a few minutes held silent converse with God. Ere they left the tent William spoke.
"In this matter, my brothers, we need a leader whom we swear to obey in all things. I propose that Geoffrey be our captain." ”

“ It is to him what no other voice ever has been, or ever can be again. It is Mona's voice!
Again she calls to him from within.
"Is it you?" she says. "Come in here, Geoffrey. I want you."
How sweet it is to be wanted by those we love! Geoffrey, lowering his gun, stoops and enters the lowly cabin (which, to say the truth, is rather uninviting than otherwise) with more alacrity than he would show if asked to enter the queen's palace. Yet what is a palace but the abode of a sovereign? and for the time being, at least, Rodney's sovereign is in possession of this humble dwelling. ”

“ When a youth of sixteen or seventeen, Geoffrey served as a page or squire to Elizabeth, duchess of Ulster, first wife of Lionel, duke of Clarence, and daughter-in-law of the king. He bore arms when about nineteen years of age, and went to France in 1359, in the army commanded by Edward III. ... This epoch formed a sort of 'Indian summer' to the age of chivalry, and its spirit found expression in great deeds of war as well as in the festivals and manners of the court. The ideal which men strove to realize did not quite correspond to the spirit of the former age. ”

“ See the Norman writers, Orderic and William of Poitiers.
Geoffrey had been an independent ruler in a small sphere for nearly ten years before his father’s death. In 1030 or 1031 he became master of the little county of Vendôme by purchase from his half-sister Adela, the only child of Fulk’s ill-starred first marriage, and the heiress of her maternal grandfather Count Burchard. After doing homage to King Henry for the fief, Geoffrey’s first act was to found in the capital of his new dominions an abbey dedicated to the Holy Trinity. ”

“ In July 1181 his marriage with Constance was celebrated, and practically the whole of his subsequent life was spent in warfare with his brother Richard. In 1183 he made peace with his father, who had come to Richard’s assistance; but a fresh struggle soon broke out for the possession of Anjou, and Geoffrey was in Paris treating for aid with Philip Augustus, when he died on the 19th of August 1186. ”

“ Anything simple, darling,"—seeing she looks a little distressed at the idea: "you sing that sort of thing best."
"I hardly think our dance is ended yet, Mrs. Rodney," says the Australian, defiantly, coming leisurely forward, his eyes bent somewhat insolently upon Geoffrey.
"You will come, Mona, to oblige the duchess," says Geoffrey, in exactly as even a tone as if the other had never spoken. Not that he cares in the very least about the duchess; but he is determined to conquer here, and is also desirous that all the world should appreciate and admire the woman he loves. ”

“ I begin to think, indeed, that Lilian Chetwoode is rather out of it, and that Mona is the first favorite at present. She has evidently taken the duchess by storm."
"Why not say the duke too?" says his mother, with a cold glance, to whom praise of Mona is anything but "cakes and ale." "Her flirtation with him is very apparent. It is disgraceful. Every one is noticing and talking about it. Geoffrey alone seems determined to see nothing! Like all under-bred people, she cannot know satisfaction unless perched upon the topmost rung of the ladder." ”

“ In her jewelled left hand she holds a sprig of honeysuckle, or it may have been the intention of the artist to represent the broom flower, the French genet (Planta Genesta) , the badge and origin of the name Plantagenet. This portrait represents Margaret Plantagenet, Countess of Salisbury, the daughter of the murdered Duke of Clarence, brother of Edward IV.; her mother was a daughter of the great Earl of Warwick, the King-maker. ”

“ Geoffrey, whose over-lord the young king had been, sought to rule Britanny as a dependent of Philip, and his plots in Paris with the French king were only ended by his death in 1185. Philip, on his part, demanded, at the death of the young king, the restoration of Margaret's dowry, the Vexin and Gisors; when Geoffrey died he claimed to be formally recognized as suzerain of Britanny, and guardian of his infant; he demanded that Richard should do homage directly to him as sovereign lord of Aquitaine, and determined to assert his rights over the lands so long debated of Berri and Auvergne. ”

“ When Plantagenet was but ten years old his mother died, and her last request to the father of her boy, founded on a deep knowledge of the world, was, that her son might be educated far from the court, nor be drawn from the occupations and happier scenes of private life, to become a hanger-on of princes and nobles. There was a man, a gentleman and a knight, who had been a partizan of the White Rose, and who had fought and bled for it in various battles between the duke of York and Henry the Sixth. ”

“ In the following November Geoffrey attended the coronation of Philip II, which took place before the death of Louis, and did homage to him for Brittany (Canon. Laudun., Recueil des Historiens, xiii. 683) , and in 1181, in conjunction with his brothers Henry and Richard, upheld the new king against the lords who were in rebellion against him, humbling the Count of Sancerre, and giving Philip help against the Duke of Burgundy, the Countess of Champagne, and the Count of Flanders (Diceto, ii. 9) . ”

“ William had also received a grant of land from the king for his support in 1228 (ib. No. 1640) . Geoffrey appears to have been vigorous and able, a successful commander, and on the whole a just and skilful ruler. Like most of the great men of Ireland at the time, he did not scruple to act treacherously. To the king, however, he seems to have been a faithful servant. The accusation of treason brought against him and his son William is extremely improbable, and their ruin must be considered as a result, of the indignation excited by the fate of the earl-marshal. ”

“ And a short season after this, the king and the duke travelled lovingly together to Oxenford, where the earls and barons, by the king's commandment, did swear fealty to the duke, saving the king's honour, so long as he lived; and the Plantagenet did pledge himself to behave to Stephen of Blois as a duteous and affectionate son, and to grant to him, all the days of his life, the name and seat of the kingly pre-eminence. ”

“ In 1066 the hot northern blood in his veins drove him to give up his estates to his niece Dionysia (who married a son of Lisoy of Amboise) and join the host of adventurers who followed Duke William over sea. But after fifteen years of prosperity in England, his heart was still true to the race whom his father had served so loyally; and it was Geoffrey’s well-earned influence with the Conqueror which brought about, in 1082, the marriage between the son of his former lord and the daughter of his present one (Gesta Amb. Domin., Marchegay, Comtes, pp. 173, 174, 184) . On the marriage see also Ord. ”

“ How late in life you have developed a trusting disposition!"
"One might do worse than put faith in Mona," says, Geoffrey, quickly. "She is worthy of all trust. And she is quite charming,—quite. And the very prettiest girl I ever saw. You know you adore beauty, mother,"—insinuatingly,—"and she is sure to create a furor when presented."
"Presented!" repeats Lady Rodney, in a dreadful tone. "And would you present a low Irish girl to your sovereign? And just now, too, when the whole horrid nation is in such disrepute." ”