Chapter 17

How William, his brother-in-law, committed treason against Guy at Roche-Guyon; of Guy's death and the prompt revenge taken against William

On a sharp promontory above the bank of the great river Seine there stands a frightening and looming castle called la Roche-Guyon[1], carved out of a high rock so as to make its outside invisible. The skilled hand of hand of its builder had created, by breaking the rock in the slope of the mountain, living quarters of good size entered through a small and mean hole. One would take it for a seer’s grotto in which the oracles of Apollo are produced or the cave of which Lucan spoke: ‘For although the prophet of Thessaly did violence to the fates, it is not known whether, when she looked on the shadows of the Styx, she had called them up, or had descended to find them.’[2] Perhaps it is the route to the underworld.

The owner of this wicked fortress, despised equally by gods and men, was Guy[3], a young man imbued with goodness, breaking the evil tradition of his ancestors, who had decided to lead an honourable life, free from their wretched hunger for rapacity. But overcome by the evil inherent in that ill-fated place, he was most wickedly betrayed by his sinful father-in-law and beheaded, thus losing through his untimely death both the place and his life. His brother-in-law[4] William, a Norman by birth, was a traitor without equal. He passed for Guy’s closest and most intimate friend, but he ‘travailed with wickedness and hath conceived mischief. [5] At dawn[6] one Sunday, he found the opportunity for his crime. He came early to the church in a crevice of the rock next to Guy’s home, with the more devout worshippers. But he was unlike them in wearing mail beneath his cloak and being accompanied by a handful of traitors. While the others were praying he pretended to do so for a little as he calculated how to get to Guy. Then he flung himself at the entrance through which Guy was hastily coming into the church, drew his sword, and with his appalling companions gave himself up to the frenzy of his hatred; Guy was careless and would have smiled at him had he not seen the sword; William struck him, slew him and left him to perish.[7]

At the sight, his noble wife was bemused, tore her cheeks and hair like a woman distracted, rushed to her husband, careless of the danger, and threw herself on his body crying: ‘Vile murderers, slay me in my misery, for I deserve death more than he did.’ Lying on her husband’s body stopping the blows and wounds aimed at him by the swordsmen, she asked, ‘O dearest husband, how did you injure these men? Were you not, as brothers-in-law, the closest of friends? What is this madness? You are consumed by fury!’ When they dragged her off by her hair, her whole body was hacked, wounded and bloody. They murdered her husband in the most appalling way and then, finding her children, they killed them by dashing their heads against the stones with wickedness worthy of Herod. 

While they revelled in frenzy here, there and everywhere, the prostrate woman raised her wretched head, saw her husband’s beheaded corpse, and seized by love, despite her weakness she dragged her blood-soaked self across the floor like a serpent to her dead body and, as best she could, kissed him as if he were alive, then broke into a mournful chant, making her grief the best possible sacrificial offering for the dead. ‘O dearest husband, what have you left me? Surely your loving behaviour towards me did not deserve this? Surely this is not the proper complement to your rejection of your father’s, grandfather’s and great grandfather’s evil ways? Is this what you get for not plundering your neighbours and the poor, even though there was want at home?’ And no-one could separate her half-dead body from her husband’s corpse, both soaked in the same blood.

But at least, after he had exposed them to public view as if they were pigs, the wicked William, sated in human blood like a wild animal, allowed his rage to subside. He appreciated the rock’s strength, and somewhat later began to consider how he could most forcefully plunder roundabout, how he could at will strike fear into the hearts of the French and Normans. Then he put his mad head out of the window and called the inhabitants of the land, and ignorant of any good, he promised them evil if any adhered to him. Not one single man came over to him.

But in the morning the news of such a great crime spread not only in the neighbourhood but also to remote places. The men of the Vexin, vigorous and skilled in arms, were much disturbed by it and, each according to his strength collected together an army of knights and foot-soldiers. Fearing lest Henry, the most powerful king of the English, should assist the traitors, they hastened to the rock, posted large numbers of knights and foot-soldiers around the slope to stop anyone from going in or out, and to prevent help coming, they blocked the route to Normandy with the bulk of the army. Then they sent to King Louis news of the plot and a request for orders.

Drawing on his royal power, Louis ordered that the plotters be punished by the most long-drawn out and shameful of deaths, and promised help if they needed it[8]. As the army surrounded William for days, growing larger each day, that wicked man began to be seized by fear. Having considered what he had done at the devil’s bidding, on the devil’s advice he summoned several of the noblest among the men of the Vexin and, in order to remain at peace on the rock, he offered them an alliance, swearing to serve the king of France most faithfully, and making many other promises. They rejected this and, intent on vengeance against the traitor whose courage was already failing, they pressed him so hard that he agreed to hand over to them the fortress he had seized, on condition that they swore to allow him some land and security in which to withdraw to it. After this arrangement had been sworn to, a few or more French were received in the castle.

The question of the land delayed their departure until the next day; then in the morning some others besides those who had sworn entered, then others followed them; and those outside set up a great roar, demanding that the traitors be taken out, or that those who sheltered them be condemned to the same fate as the traitors themselves. Those who had sworn struggled against both their rashness and fear and resisted. Those who had not sworn rushed against them and attacked them at sword-point piously murdering those impious traitors mutilating some, painfully disembowelling others and tortured them with every kind of cruelty, thinking themselves too kind. There can be no doubt that the hand of God exacted this swift vengeance. Men were thrown out of the windows dead or alive, bristling with numerous arrows like hedgehogs. They waved about in the air on the points of the lances, as if the very earth had rejected them. For the unparalleled deed of William they discovered a rare vengeance for he who in life had been heartless had his heart cut out of his dead body. When they had taken it from his entrails, all swollen with fraud and iniquity, they put it on a stake and set it up for many days in a fixed place to demonstrate the punishment for crime. 

His body and those of some of his companions, were placed on hurdles tied with cords and ropes, and sent sailing down the Seine so that, if nothing stopped them floating down to Rouen, the Normans should see the punishment incurred by his crime, and also so that those who had briefly fouled France with their stink should in death continue to foul Normandy, their native soil.

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[1] La Roche-Guyon was of some strategic importance as it lay on the frontier between the lands of England and France. It is on the north bank of the Seine a few miles upstream from its junction with the Epte, about forty-two miles north-west of Paris. Suger’s strong language immediately alerts the reader to the evil that is to follow.

[2] Lucan De bello civili, VI, 651-53

[3] In 1097, Guy, lord of La Roche-Guyon and Veteuil sold his castles to the English for gold. Suger suggests that this Guy could have been his son by using the term ‘adolescens’. He was descended from the counts of Meulan and was their vassal. This may account for his involvement in the Vexin wars in the late 1090s with Robert of Meulan supporting William Rufus: see ibid, Barlow, Frank, William Rufus, p. 379.

[4] Ibid, Molinier, Auguste, (ed.), Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger, p. 53 n^o 4 discussed the marital relationship between Guy and William suggesting that while it is possible that the murderer killed his own sister who was married to Guy, it is more likely that William was married to Guy’s sister. However, in the title of the chapter William is called the brother-in-law of Guy but here he is Guy’s father-in-law and then two lines later Suger uses the term ‘gener’ that can be translated as either ‘son-in-law’ or ‘brother-in-law’. The problem may be overcome if Guy’s unnamed father-in-law planned the murder while his son William, Guy’s brother-in-law carried it out. Even so, the precise nature of the story remains unclear and Suger’s lack of clarity suggests that he did not revise the chapter.

[5] Psalm VII, 14

[6] The question is whether this refers to twilight or dawn as the term can mean either. In his description of events after the murder, Suger does not make any allusion to the darkness of the night. There are a number of parallels between the events narrated in this chapter and the later murder of Charles the Good in chapter 30, which also occurred in a church, and its results.

[7] Ibid, Molinier, Auguste, (ed.), Vie de Louis le Gros par Suger, p. 53 n^o 1 argued that the drama at La Roche-Guyon took place in 1110 or 1111. Ibid, Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, Annales de son vie et de son règne, n° 72 suggests that events took place in May 1109. However, the murder took place a little time after the meeting at Les-Planches-de-Neaufles. Henry I had returned to England and did not return until 13^th June 1111.

[8] It is difficult to explain why Suger included this chapter in his narrative in the light of Louis’ failure to involve himself personally beyond this. Louis VI allowed the knights in the Vexin to deal with the murderers because he is occupied in another part of his lands, perhaps at the siege of Le Puiset or he may have been involved in preparations for an expedition to Barcelona. It is interesting to see Louis standing off, particularly in view of possible intervention by Henry.

Chapter 16

Of the interview between King Louis and Henry, king of the English at Neaufles

At that time[1] Henry, king of the English, happened to arrive in Normandy. He was a very courageous man, excellent in peace and war, whose great reputation had spread almost throughout the world. That marvellous if rustic prophet, the visionary and reporter of England’s eternal destinies, Merlin, loudly vaunted Henry’s excellence with elegance and truth.[2] In the course of his praise, he suddenly burst forth, as prophets do[3]: ‘There shall come forth a lion of justice, at whose roar French towers and island dragons shall tremble. In his days, gold will be extracted from the lily and the nettle and silver shall trickle from the hooves of those who bellow. The acknowledged one shall be clothed with various cloaks and the outer habit shall signify his inner character. The feet of dogs shall be shortened, the wild animals shall have peace and humanity will suffer in torment. The means of exchange will be split; half will be round[4]. The rapacity of the kite shall perish and the teeth of wolves grow blunt. Lion cubs shall be transformed into fish of the sea and an eagle will build her nest on Snowdon’.[5]

All the sayings of this great and ancient prophet apply so exactly to the king's courage both of his person and of his administration of the realm, that not one word seems out of place. What is said at the end about the lion cubs clearly relates to his son and daughter, who were shipwrecked[6] and devoured by the fish of the sea. Their physical transformation proves the truth of the prophecy.

So King Henry, succeeding by good fortune his brother William, organised the kingdom of England, on the advice of skilled and trustworthy men, in accordance with the law of ancient kings and in order to attract popularity he confirmed by oath the ancient customs of the realm.[7] Then he sailed into harbour in the duchy of Normandy and, relying on the help of the French king[8] he settled the land, revised the laws, imposed peace by force and threatened to tear out the eyes of thieves or to hang them. These and like threats, rapidly put into effect, made a deep impression, for ‘anyone can be rich in promises’[9] but ‘the land fell silent in his presence’.[10] The Normans, fierce descendants of the Danes and devoid of desire for peace, reluctantly kept the peace, so proving the correctness of the rustic prophet’s words: ‘The rapacity of the kite shall perish and the teeth of wolves grow blunt.’ Neither nobles nor common people dared presumptuously to pillage or steal. As for what Merlin said, ‘At the roar of the lion of justice the French towers and the island dragons shall tremble.’ This was fulfilled because Henry ordered almost all the towers and fortified places of Normandy, which is a part of France, to be pulled down, or he put his own men into them and paid for them himself or, if they were already ruined, he subjected them to his will. ‘The island dragons trembled’ since none of the English barons even dared to murmur during the whole of his reign. 

‘In his days gold shall be extracted from the lily’, that is, from the religious in good odour; ‘and from the nettle’, from stinging secular people. He extracted it so that all should serve him because he profited them all. For it is safer that one man should take something from all men when he defends all of them, than that all should perish because one man has nothing. ‘Silver shall trickle from the hooves of those who bellow’ because security in the countryside means full granaries, and full granaries mean plenty of silver in full coffers.

On this occasion, he managed to wrest the castle of Gisors from Pagan of Gisors[11] as much by flattery as by threats. This very well-fortified castle is advantageously situated on the frontier between France and Normandy, on a river rich in fish called the Epte. By an old agreement and a geometrical measurement made with measuring ropes[12], it marked out the lands of the French from those of the Danes. The castle offered the Normans an easy point of access for their raids on France, but kept the French out.[13] Had he had the chance of acquiring it, the king of France, no less than the king of England, would have tried to obtain it through the law of the land, because of its site and the protection it afforded. So Henry’s annexation of this castle fomented a sudden hatred between the two kings. The king of France asked Henry either to give up the castle or to destroy it but his request failed. And so, accusing him of having broken the treaty, he fixed a day and place for negotiations on the matter.[14]

Meanwhile, as usually happens in such affairs, the hatreds of the kings were fanned by the malicious words of their rivals, rather than damped down while it was still possible. In order to present themselves at the talks looking confident and intimidating, they increased their military muscle. Louis collected together the greater number of the French barons: Count Robert of Flanders with about four thousand men, the Palatine Count Theobald, the count of Nevers[15], the duke of Burgundy[16] and a great many others, along with many archbishops and bishops. Then he marched through the land of the count of Meulan[17], ravaging and burning it because the count supported the king of England. By such benefits he paved the way favourably for the future talks.

When each side had collected a huge army, they came to the place commonly called Les-Planches-de-Neaufles, by the ill-omened castle where the ancient tradition of the inhabitants holds that negotiations there never or hardly ever succeed. Then the armies settled down on either bank of a river[18] that prevented passage. But after reflection, a chosen group of the noblest and wisest French crossed it by a shaky bridge so aged that it seemed likely to pitch them suddenly into the river and approached the English king.

Then the skilled orator among them who had been charged with the negotiations, without greeting the king, spoke in the name of his companions: ‘When through the generous bounty of the king of France you received the duchy of Normandy as your own fief[19], held by his generous right hand, among and before other conditions, you promised on oath in relation to Gisors and Bray[20] that, by whatever means one or other of you obtained these places, neither should keep them. Rather within forty days of their acquisition the possessor should, in compliance with the treaty totally destroy these castles to their foundations. Because you have not done this, the king orders that you should do so forthwith; or, if you refuse, make due legal amends. For it is shameful for a king to break the law, since both king and law derive their authority from the same source.[21] If your men have either forgotten the promise or pretended to forget because they did not want to declare it, we are ready to prove its truth by the clear testimony of two or three barons, according to the law of duel.’

After this speech they returned to the French king; but they did not arrive in his presence before some Normans who had followed them entered, shamelessly denying anything that could compromise their stand and asking that the case should be heard in due judicial order. Their one aim was to hold up the negotiations by some kind of delay, so as to prevent the truth from being revealed to so many great men of the realm. So even nobler men were sent back with the first envoys, who boldly offered to reveal the truth through that peerless champion Robert of Jerusalem, count of Flanders, to refute all verbal exaggeration by the law of duel, and demonstrate by force of arms on which side justice lay.[22]

The Normans neither accepted nor refused the proposition plainly. Then the magnanimous king Louis, as great of heart as of body, swiftly sent messengers to Henry requiring him to choose between destroying the castle and fighting in person against the king of France on account of his breach of faith. ‘Come’, he said, ‘let the pain of this encounter be his to whom also the glory of truth and victory belongs.’ As to the place for the duel, he decided most suitably; ‘Their host should retire from the bank of the river to allow us to cross, so that the safer place may give each greater security; or, if he would prefer, let each take the noblest men of the other army as hostages to guarantee the single combat, provided that I am permitted to cross after my army has retired. Otherwise it is not possible to go across the river.’ But some people cried out in a ridiculous jest that the king ought to fight on the shaky bridge which would instantly break; and King Louis, as light-hearted as he was bold, wanted this. 

But the English king said, ‘The matter is too unimportant for me to lose a famous and most useful castle on details like this.’ And parrying this and other suggestions, he said ‘When I see my lord the king where I can defend myself, I shall not avoid him’; for he did not want to fight in a hostile place.

Angered by this preposterous reply, the French ‘as if the luck of place gives rise to wars’[23] rushed to arms, as did the Normans. And while each army hurried towards the river, only the impossibility of crossing prevented the great disaster of an immense massacre. Therefore they spent the day in negotiations and that night the Normans went back to Gisors, our army to Chaumont[24]. But ‘as soon as the first rays of dawn chased the stars from the sky’[25] the French, remembering the previous day’s injuries, their martial ardour at morning high pitch, set off on their fastest horses and near Gisors rushed into battle, deploying wonderful fierceness and marvellous courage. They pushed the tired Normans through the gate, and strove to demonstrate the great superiority of those long used to war over those softened by long peace.[26]

These and similar incidents were the beginnings of a war that lasted for almost two years[27], and which harmed the king of England more because, at great expense he surrounded all the frontiers of Normandy as far as the duchy extended with great garrisons for the defence of the land.[28] The king of France relied on ancient fortifications and natural defences and the valiant assistance, given freely, of the Flemish and the men of Ponthieu, the Vexin and other frontier regions. Thus he ceaselessly attacked Normandy, pillaging and burning it. When William, the English king’s son, performed homage[29] to King Louis, by a particular act of grace Louis added that castle to his fief and restored him to his former favour on that occasion.  But before this happened, this particular conflict led to much loss of life, which was punished with reprisals.

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[1] Henry’s visit to Normandy may have been connected with the accession of Louis the previous year. Ibid, Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, Annales de son vie et de son règne, n° 72 dated Henry’s arrival in Normandy as February or early March 1109.

[2] The prophecies attributed to the poet and seer Merlin were known through the fourth book of Historia Britannum of Geoffrey of Monmouth recently written while Suger was writing his life of Louis VI. Orderic Vitalis 4: 490 reproduces the passage which he applied to Henry I but Geoffrey of Monmouth is generally regarded as its author. The original version was written not long before Henry’s death in 1135.

[3] Geoffrey of Monmouth, Historia Regum Britanniae, vii, 3 

[4] Suger is here alluding to the half-penny that had recently become an important coin in circulation.

[5] It is highly probable that Suger’s ‘montem Aravium’ is Snowdon. In Welsh it is called ‘Mynydd Eryri’ of the mountain of the eagles. The correct Latin form would be ‘mons Ararium’.

[6] The wreck of the White Ship on 25^th November 1120 robbed Henry of his only legitimate heir William Adelin married to Matilda of Anjou, Richard and Mathilda, countess of Mortagne

[7] This is a reference to Henry I’s coronation oath: the text can be found in Douglas, D.C. and Greenaway, G.W., (eds.), English Historical Documents, vol. ii, 2^nd ed., London 1981, pp. 432-434. For the administrative reforms introduced in England by Henry I, see Green, Judith, The Government of England under Henry I, (Cambridge University Press), 1986.

[8] With the agreement of Prince Louis, but not of King Philip who recognised unlike his son that this would cause future problems. The conquest of Normandy was the result of the battle of Tinchebrai fought between Henry and his brother Robert Curthose on 28^th September 1106.

[9] Ovid, De Arte Amandi, I, 444

[10] Maccabees I, chapter i, 3

[11] At the age of around fifty, in 1123, Pagan with the agreement of King Louis made a futile attempt to retake his castle. Henry I stripped him of all his goods and Pagan took holy orders at the abbey of Saint-Martin de Pontoise.

[12] This is an allusion to the ropes that usually served to mark the boundaries between pieces of land. The river Epte had formed the border between the French and Norman Vexin since the tenth century. It flows into the Seine midway between Paris and Rouen. Gisors is located on the Norman side in a small bulge in of the river towards the east, about forty miles north-west of Paris.

[13] The dates of this war between Henry I and Louis VI are unclear. Suger argues that it lasted two years from 1109 to 1111 and ended when Louis gave the castle of Gisors to William Adelin. Henry of Huntingdon says the war began soon after Philip’s death in 1108 when Henry I tried to embarrass the new king by making him surrender part of the French Vexin: Henry of Huntingdon The History of the English People 1000-1154, edited by Diana Greenway, (Oxford University Press), 2002, p. 53. Only Suger mentions the conference at Neaufles-Saint-Martin which he dated to 1109. Ibid, La Chronique de Saint-Pierre-le-Vif de Sens, pp. 148-149 supports the view that the war between England and France was especially over the castle at Gisors and Henry’s failure to do homage for Normandy. In fact, the conference did result in a truce and for the next two years Henry I and Louis VI contented themselves with attending to their own affairs: in 1110-1111 Henry feared rebellion in England and banished a number of his English and Norman vassals and made an unsuccessful effort to arrest William Clito; and Louis was concerned with dealing with rebellious vassals of his own. War only resumed in 1111 and ended with the peace of Gisors in 1113.

[14] For relations between Henry and Louis, see Hollister, C. Warren ‘War and Diplomacy in the Anglo-Norman World: The Reign of Henry I’, in Brown, R. Allen, (ed.), Anglo-Norman Studies VI: Proceedings of the Battle Conference, 1983, Suffolk, 1983, pp. 72-78, reprinted in Hollister, C. Warren, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World, London, 1986, pp. 273-290.

[15] William II, count of Nevers and Auxerre from 1100 to 1148.

[16] Hugh II, duke of Burgundy ‘the Peaceful’ was born in c.1085 and died in 1143. He succeeded his father Eudes I ‘the Red’ in March 1102. He married Matilda or Maud of Turenne or Mayenne.

[17] Robert I, count of Meulan, son of Robert ‘the Beard’ castellan of Beaumont-le-Roger, had inherited the county of Meulan from his maternal uncle Hugh III in 1092. He died on 5^th June 1118. He was a veteran of the Norman Conquest of England and had fought at Hastings in 1066. He had twin sons. Robert succeeded to his English properties and the earldom of Leicester. Waleran inherited Meulan and the Norman and French estates: see Crouch, D., The Beaumont Twins, (Cambridge University Press), 1986, 2008. Henry of Huntingdon in his Historia Anglorum v 7-8 said of Robert of Meulan that ‘At his will French and English kings would at one time be peacefully allied and at another violently embattled’, in ibid, Henry of Huntingdon The History of the English People 1000-1154, p. 118.

[18] The River Epte runs a kilometre south of Les-Planches-de-Neaufles.

[19] Louis clearly regarded Normandy as a fief but homage was not done for it until 1120.

[20] Bray-et-Lu is seventeen kilometres downstream from Les-Planches-de-Neaufles and on the left bank of the River Epte.

[21] This is an important statement respecting the theory of imperial power which represented human government as an emanation from the divine. It reinforces what Suger wrote about Louis’ coronation in chapter 14: ‘After a mass of thanksgiving, the archbishop took off his sword of secular chivalry and replaced it with the church’s sword for the punishment of evil-doers, crowned him most willingly with the royal diadem, and with great devotion bestowed on him the sceptre and rod as a sign that he must defend the church and the poor…’

[22] On trial by battle see Bartlett, Robert, Trial by Fire and Water: The Medieval judicial ordeal, (Oxford University Press), 1986, pp. 103-126.

[23] Lucan, De bello civili, IV, 661-2.

[24] Chaumont-en-Vexin is about five miles east of Gisors.

[25] Suger is here imitating Vergil Aenied, v, 42.

[26] The most notable part of Louis’ offensive was the siege of Meulan. He successfully took the castle and laid waste to the surrounding area. Ibid, Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, Annales de son vie et de son règne, n° 103 placed these events at the end of 1110 or beginning of 1111.

[27] Suger is misleading here. Following the interview with Louis, Henry spent the next two years in England: see Hollister, C. Warren, ‘Normandy, France and the Anglo-Norman Regnum’, Speculum, vol. 11, (1976) pp. 202-242, reprinted in ibid, Monarchy, Magnates and Institutions in the Anglo-Norman World, pp. 17-57. A truce was concluded in May 1113 but peace was not finally made until 1120.

[28] Suger is certainly exaggerating here. Henry had done well in the war and had won over Anjou by betrothing his son William Adelin to the daughter of the Angevin count. The peace terms of 1113 were also highly favourable and Louis is not reported to have raised the vexed question of Henry’s homage. Indeed, Louis conceded to Henry the right to receive homage from the count of Anjou (for Maine) and the count of Brittany. However, Henry’s position in Normandy was far from secure. William Clito had a persuasive legal claim to the duchy and remained free. As a viable pretender to Normandy and England, Clito was an obvious focus for French, Flemish, Angevin and domestic opposition to Henry I. The 1113 truce avoided any mention of the feudal bond between Louis and Henry and did not commit Louis to future support of Henry’s rule or William Adelin’s succession. Louis was therefore free to give his support to Clito whenever he chose. Re-establishing the feudal relationship with France therefore became a means for Henry to limit the actions of Clito for Louis would be morally bound to support him against all opposition or at the very least not give active support to Clito. It took four years of war for Henry to achieve this objective.

[29] This too is rather misleading. The events in this chapter began in 1109 and Suger describes the war that developed immediately out of the incident at Planches-de-Neaufles as having lasted for nearly two years whereas in fact it occurred between 1111 and 1113. He then locates William’s homage immediately after. However, in 1115, Henry I invested his son William with the duchy of Normandy and it seems likely that Louis VI only ceded Gisors to the young prince in return for an act of homage and a money payment between 30^th May and 29^th September 1120: Achille Luchaire, Louis VI le Gros, Annales de son vie et de son règne, Paris, 1890, n° 298. William’s homage is mentioned by William of Malmesbury but not by Orderic Vitalis and constituted a major breakthrough for Louis VI as William I, William II and Henry I had all apparently not rendered homage for the duchy. Henry I consciously did not use the ducal title at all and simply ruled as ‘rex Anglorum’, a practice followed with one exception by his own chancery. Even in 1120, Henry managed to win the full benefit of Louis’ lordship while escaping the responsibility and embarrassment of personal vassalage and homage done by the heir to the English throne. This was a precedent that was followed by king Stephen’s son Eustace to Louis VI in 1137 and to Louis VII in 1140.