When William the Conqueror died in 1087, the realm was divided between his two
eldest sons, Robert Curthose, who received Normandy, and William Rufus, who became
king of England. To finance his participation in the First Crusade, Robert entrusted the
duchy to his brother in 1096 for a loan of 10,000 marks of silver. When Robert returned
in 1100, William II Rufus was dead and their younger brother, Henry I, had seized
England and was prepared to fight for Normandy. The subsequent fratricidal war divided
the Anglo-Norman aristocracy until Henry took Robert prisoner in 1106 at Tinchebrai.
England and Normandy were thus again united under Henry I, who kept his older brother
captive for twenty-eight years. The government of Normandy under Henry I became
more elaborate and more centralized, as royal justice extended its scope and as the first
Norman exchequer kept systematic account of royal revenues, but when Henry died in
1135 with no surviving male heir anarchy broke out. Both the kingdom and the duchy
were contested between Henry’s daughter, Matilda, and her first cousin Stephen of Blois.
Although Stephen won the throne, civil war continued for nineteen years. In 1141,
Matilda’s husband, Geoffroi d’Anjou, invaded Normandy and spent three years crush-ing
King Stephen’s party in the duchy before he was received in Rouen as duke of
Normandy. In 1150, Geoffroi passed the ducal title on to his seventeen-year-old son,
Henry Plantagenêt. When Geoffroi died in 1151, Henry inherited Anjou as well, and he
acquired Aquitaine and Poitou by marriage in 1152. The following year, King Stephen
acknowledged the young Plantagenêt as his heir in England. To King Henry II (r. 1154–
89), therefore, Normandy represented only one small part of his vast cross-Channel
collection of principalities.
Ever since the reign of William the Conqueror, the French kings had tried to
undermine the unity of the Anglo-Norman realm. Philip I had supported Robert Curthose
in rebellion against his father, and Louis VI had backed William Clito, Robert’s son,
against Henry I. The Angevin empire of Henry II represented an even greater threat to the
French monarchy, and Louis VII (r. 1137–80) and his son, Philip II Augustus (r. 1180–
1223), resolved to dismantle it. Henry II’s son Richard I the Lionhearted (r. 1189–99)
managed with difficulty to check the ambitions of the French king, building the famous
Château-Gaillard upstream from Rouen on the Seine and defeating the royal forces
decisively at Courcelles in 1198. But Richard’s younger brother, John Lackland,
succeeding him in 1199, was no match for the determined and resourceful Philip
Augustus, who soon found a legal pretext to invade
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