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dwellordream · 3 years

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“...Henry unwisely assumed that advance arrangements would forestall quarrels among his sons over their inheritances, unable to grasp that once he gave the boys titles they would expect the power that was associated with them. No doubt he expected his sons to share with him the task of governing his far-flung domains once he grew old, and to continue working together after his death, but the boys were unwilling to wait. Henry II’s tinkering with his succession plans fostered in his sons deeper feelings of insecurity and competition with their siblings than were common in princely families, and Eleanor, like other aristocratic mothers, sympathized with her sons’ frustration.

Once it became apparent that Henry expected his wife’s duchy to retain some lasting tie to the Plantagenet line, with Richard owing homage to him and eventually to his brother Young Henry, Eleanor became suspicious of her husband’s succession scheme. Henry’s expectation did not accord with her ambition for Richard or for her duchy of Aquitaine. Perhaps Henry’s desire to provide equitably for all four sons was motivated by genuine affection, but it proved to be the root cause of his troubles. Once he became preoccupied with securing lands for his youngest boy John “Lackland,” his changing plans at the expense of his three other sons were bound to rouse them to anger.

The Plantagenet king ignored the biblical injunction, “Let your life run its full course, and then, at the hour of death, distribute your estate” (Ecclesiastes, 33: 21–23). Primogeniture, the custom that the eldest son inherits all his father’s lands, was gaining ground in twelfth-century aristocratic families as the preferred inheritance pattern, but it was not yet fixed as law by the late 1160s when Henry and Eleanor were pondering the succession to their possessions, and inheritance customs still varied from region to region. Yet great families desired to preserve their estates as single units and to ensure their safe passage from one generation to the next, while at the same time searching for some means of providing for their younger children.

These contradictory feelings explain Henry’s periodic proposals for changing the succession. His own desire to leave all his sons a landed legacy was one that few great aristocrats could fulfill, for they rarely had sufficient holdings to provide for several sons. Frequently younger sons in aristocratic families with multiple male children were left landless, unless arrangements were made for them either to marry a girl who was heir to estates or to find them a rich ecclesiastical living. Henry could not bring himself to follow the early Capetians’ practice of leaving their younger sons landless; nor could he follow a long tradition among the counts of Anjou of preserving the integrity of their lands by leaving younger sons only insignificant landholdings.

Eleanor’s own experience as a young girl matched Capetian and Angevin practice. She had seen her uncle, her father’s younger brother Raymond, forced to leave the Poitevin court and wander far away to seek his fortune first at the English royal court and later in the Holy Land. For the vast territories assembled by Henry Plantagenet, strict primogeniture as practiced by lesser lords appeared unworkable, for it would have placed his eldest son in the impossible position of governing far-flung territories with diverse populations while leaving his younger sons landless and disaffected. Although Henry II never called his conglomeration of lands an “empire,” he had hopes for its survival as a lasting political entity.

Henry expected common family interest to preserve some cohesion for his lands after his demise, despite their partition. His plan unrealistically assumed that his younger sons would accept Young Henry’s priority with natural family affection, strengthened by ties of homage. The king was to be sorely disappointed, for his arrangements demanded strong fraternal affection, younger brothers’ satisfaction with limited lands, and a willingness to co-operate with their senior brother, all of which were lacking. Shortly before 1170, both Henry and Eleanor became preoccupied with the issue of succession to their territories. Henry faced the problem of the unity of his dual inheritance—his paternal Plantagenet lands in the Loire valley and his maternal legacy, the Anglo-Norman realm.

Eleanor’s concern was not the integrity of her husband’s possessions, but her own duchy of Aquitaine’s preservation as a distinct political unit. She did not share her husband’s vision of unity for his possessions, especially as the couple drifted apart. She saw her own ancestral line as more ancient and more prestigious than his lineage, and her chief concern was ensuring Richard’s position as the continuator of her lineage. She anticipated that Aquitaine would go its own way after Henry’s death, her ancestral line continuing through Richard’s offspring and ruling unfettered by links to the Plantagenet dynasty. Eleanor had no wish to see her duchy swallowed up and digested in her husband’s empire, reduced to the status of simply another Angevin province.

A complication for the succession to both Henry’s Continental lands and Eleanor’s duchy was their status as part of the kingdom of France under Louis VII’s lordship, and the couple were not to be left alone to dispose of their possessions. Henry as the crowned and anointed king of England was Louis’s equal, but within his French domains, the Capetian monarch was his lord. Louis did not desire to see his powerful rival’s empire outlive him, and hoped that it would soon break down into its constituent parts even before Henry’s death. He quickly grasped that his lordship over Normandy, Anjou, and Aquitaine afforded him a means of promoting this process, once Henry’s sons had done homage to him for their assigned portions of their parents’ holdings.

The French king saw an advantage in fomenting strife between the boys and their father, especially the rancor of his son-in-law Young Henry, by pressing for a premature partition of Henry’s lands. Although Louis cultivated the image of a peacemaker, he was willing to stir up discontent among Henry and Eleanor’s sons as a means of embarrassing and weakening his powerful rival at little cost. The question of the Plantagenet succession first arose at conferences between the French and English monarchs in the late 1160s, resulting in a plan adopted at a council in early January 1169 at Montmirail, Maine. Louis VII first proposed that Henry Senior renew his homage for the duchy of Normandy, originally offered on his 1151 visit to the French court with his father, and that his eldest son should do homage for Anjou and Maine.

The French monarch’s aim was that Young Henry, holding those territories directly of him, should owe nothing to his father or to his brothers, “save what they may deserve, or what natural affection dictates.” Louis also proposed that Richard should hold the duchy of Aquitaine directly of him as lord, and to bind the Poitevin heir further, he pledged to betroth to him his daughter, Alix, younger sister of Young Henry’s bride Margaret. Louis’s proposal shows his grasp of the value of his lordship over Henry’s sons as a weapon for eating away at the English king’s power. The two kings reached agreement on a plan at their 1169 meeting at the castle of Montmirail.

Henry anticipated that his promise of a future partition would allay the French king’s fears by holding out the prospect of a dispersal of Angevin power on his death. According to a contemporary account, the English king came to Louis VII “as a suppliant,” acknowledging that because of his earlier homage and fealty to Louis, he owed “all the aid and service due from a duke of Normandy to the king of France.” Their agreement specified that the eldest son, Young Henry, was to have all lands that Henry Senior had inherited from his parents: Count Geoffrey’s principalities in the Loire region, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine, together with the Empress Matilda’s AngloNorman heritage.

Young Henry was to do homage to Louis, acknowledging his lordship over his assigned lands that lay within the French kingdom, as Richard was to do for Aquitaine. Eleanor was absent from the Montmirail conference, doubtless aware that an encounter with her former husband would have been awkward for all parties, but she was doubtless well pleased with the result. For two of her sons—the second-born Richard and Geoffrey, her third—the settlement provided them with lands lying beyond the core Anglo-Norman and Angevin territories.

Richard was promised his mother’s duchy of Aquitaine in accord with Eleanor and Henry’s previous agreement; also his betrothal to King Louis VII’s daughter Alix was to go forward. The princess was to be handed over to the English king’s custody at once, just as had been her elder sister Margaret at an even younger age. Placing young Alix in Eleanor’s care at Poitiers would have been an embarrassment to Louis; indeed, he had insisted in the terms for Margaret’s betrothal that she was not to be brought up in Eleanor’s household. Instead, Henry decided to place the girl in his own household, a regrettable decision.

With young Richard’s formal designation as heir to Aquitaine, Eleanor could be confident of his succession to her ancestral lands, whatever the fate of Henry’s other domains. After the queen’s return to Aquitaine in 1168, she concentrated her ambition on Richard, cementing his position with installation ceremonies as count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine. The third son, Geoffrey, had already been positioned to succeed to Brittany, a county that was traditionally under the lordship of the Norman dukes. After Henry enforced his lordship through conquest of Brittany, he betrothed the count’s daughter and heir to Geoffrey in 1166, holding great courts where the Breton barons acknowledged Geoffrey as their future count.

The Montmirail settlement effectively left two of Henry II’s sons landless: his youngest child, John, and the teenaged Young Henry. John was too young to be given consideration, and Henry refused to give his eldest son lands or responsibilities befitting his status as heir to the Anglo-Norman kings and the Angevin counts. Young Henry was condemned to remain a “youth,” without territories of his own to govern or to yield him an income, and his frustration mounted after his coronation in 1170. Henry Senior had no intention of giving the Young King governing responsibilities to match his status as a crowned and anointed monarch, as the boy’s new seal as English monarch illustrates.

Young Henry’s seal did not designate him “King by grace of God,” as had all English royal seals since the Norman kings had added it to the royal style; nor did it display his image bearing a sword, as was traditional. Since Henry Senior is known to have supervised the making of his son’s seal, the sword’s absence seems deliberate, a sign that the Young King was “an heir in waiting,” inferior to his father, who was still king “by grace of God.” Young Henry knew that he could have none of the substance of royalty until his father’s incapacity or death handed him power. Eleanor likely shared her eldest son’s disappointment, assuming that he would be assigned lands of his own and some measure of authority over either England or Normandy, diluting her husband’s authority.

The Young King’s situation grew more vexing when he turned eighteen in 1173 and still had neither lands nor authority, not even estates in the Angevin heartland traditionally handed over to the Plantagenet heir. Young Henry felt his landlessness even more keenly because he had been married to Margaret, daughter of Louis VII of France, since the age of five. Marriage traditionally marked a young noble’s transition to full adulthood and settling down with his bride in his own household on some portion of his family’s patrimony.

Young Henry’s powerlessness aroused jealousy of his brother Richard, already installed in his Poitevin inheritance and sharing with his mother political responsibilities far different from his illusory authority as his father’s associate ruler. The contrast that Young Henry noted between his lack of power as a crowned and anointed king and Richard’s position in his mother’s county added to the humiliation he suffered at his father’s hands.”

- Ralph V Turner, “A Queen’s Discontent and her Sons’ Thwarted Ambitions, 1173–1174.” in Eleanor of Aquitaine: Queen of France, Queen of England

#henry ii of england #eleanor of aquitaine: queen of france queen of england #eleanor of aquitaine #history #high middle ages #medieval #succession #henry the young king #richard i of england

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ljones41 · 5 years

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Turk's Head Pie

Below is a small article about an old dish from the medieval era called Turk's Head. Following the article is a recipe:

TURK'S HEAD PIE I believe many would be surprised to learn that Turk's Head Pie is a basic meat dish made from leftover game meat. The origin of the dish's name is pleasant and a lot more complicated. Turk's Head Pie originated probably during the Crusades. European armies that fought during those wars - probably Norman - fed its soldiers by baking leftover game in pastry shells or crusts. These armies named the dish after their enemy - the Muslim soldiers that were known as "Turks". Judging by the simple recipe, the Europeans did not mean to be complimentary. The oldest version of the Turk's Head pastry recipe can be found in an Anglonorman (Norman or French) manuscript from the 14th century. There is an even older recipe called "Teste de Turk" from an older Anglonorman manuscript dated 1290. However, this recipe is not a pasty. Instead, it calls for a pig's stomach stuffed with pork, chicken, saffron, eggs, bread and almonds before it is boiled. The original recipe, which can be found in "Two Anglo-Norman culinary collections edited from British Library manuscripts Additional 32085 and Royal 12.C.xii": Speculum 61 (1986): Turk's Head A sheet of dough, well filled(?): much in it, rabbits and birds, peeled dates steeped in honey, a lot of new cheese in it, cloves, cubebs, and sugar on top. Then a very generous layer of ground pistachio nuts, colour of the layer red, yellow and green. The head shall be black, dressed with hairs in the manner of a woman on a black dish, the face of a man on it. Here is a more updated version of the recipe: Turk's Head Pie Ingredients 300 gram (2/3 pound) minced meat (pork or veal) (optional) 4 hindquarters of a wild rabbit (or one rabbit) 4 quails, or 2 partridges or pheasants 2 Tbsp. sugar 1/4 tsp. ground cloves 1 tsp. ground cubeb (or black pepper with a little piment) 200 gram (1 1/4 cup) dates 200 gram (3/4 cup) young, fresh cheese (sheep, goat, cow) 200 gram (1 1/2 cup) pistachio's without shells 60 gram (2 Tbsp. or 1 fl.oz) honey lard, suet or butter salt dough for pasties 1 egg (optional) Preparation in Advance Fry the minced meat in lard, suet or butter. Sprinkle rabbit and fowl with peper and salt. Heat lard, suet or butter in a large skillet, brown the meat quickly, then cover and simmer until it is done (about forty minutes). You can also roast the meat in the oven, baste regularly with the fat (suet, lard, butter). When it is done, let the meat cooluntil you can easily debone it. Cut into large chunks. Steep the stoned dates five to ten minutes in honey that is heated with two tablespoons of water. Drain the dates, but keep the honeywater. Cut the dates in quarters. Crumbe the cheese, or chop it. Put everything in a bowl - minced meat, rabbit and fowl, spices, chees, dates, sugar and honeywater, mix well. The crust - make a pasty dough, or use some ready-made if you really think you must. But making your own is more fun, and you get a special dough. Preparation Heat the oven to 200 degrees (400 degrees Fahrenheit). Take a springform or a pie dish that is large enough to contain the stuffing (that depends on how large your rabbit and fowl were, whether or not you added minced meat, or how much leftovers you had). Grease the form with butter and roll out your dough. Place the dough in the piedish. If you use a springform, it is best to assemble the pasty: first cut out the bottom out of a rolled sheet of dough and place that in the springform. Then cut a long strip of dough, a little broader than the springform is high, and cover the sides. Be sure to seal the side to the bottom sheet of dough by gently pressing the edges togehter. If you want to be sure, roll a thin strip of dough between your palms and press that against the edges. Let the dough that hangs over the top of the form be, you'll use that to seal the cover. Scoop the stuffing into the dough, cover with pistachio nuts. Close the pasty or pie with another sheet of dough. Press the edges of the cover and the sides together and cut out a small hole or two to let the steam escape. You can incorporate these holes into your decoration (eyes, mouth). Now the name of the pasty becomes clear - use leftover dough to decorate the cover with a 'Turk's head' or something else. Colouring and gilding is done after baking, but you can baste the dough with eggwhite (for a light glaze) or egg yolk (for a darker glaze). Put the pasty or pie in the middle of the oven, bake for about forty minutes. Let cool five minutes after taking it from the oven befor demoulding. To finish the decoration apply food colouring paste with a small brush, and gold leaf or silver leaf. To Serve A pasty like this one can be served hot as well as cooled to room temperature. Cut the cover loose and lift it, and scoop out the stuffing. When eating the medieval way, you use your fingers to pick what you want, and eat it above your bread trencher.

#turk's head pie #food history #crusades

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