sudden rush of charters, and he sailed from Marseilles in the summer.^115
As he left, though, he formally acknowledged that he owed a relief of
2,000l.tournoisto his suzerain, Theobald V.^116 In other words, more
than two years after taking possession of his lands in Champagne, Hugh
still had not paid the requisite sum to do so. In short, he needed the
rewards of service to Charles of Anjou.
It is not difficult to imagine what Hugh would have wanted in southern
Italy. He would have requested those old family heirlooms, the princi-
pality of Taranto and the county of Lecce. This would have placed
Charles in something of a quandary, though, and not just because the
title of ‘prince of Taranto’ harked back to his rival, Manfred of
Hohenstaufen, who had borne that position before he had seized the
throne. Indeed, if we look back in Sicilian history, wefind that the
principality of Taranto was usually accorded to a scion of the ruling
dynasty, quite often to a younger son.^117 Whilst Charles plainly regarded
Hugh as a kinsman (‘consanguineous’), the relationship was not close
enough for this kind of role.^118 Moreover, Charles would not have
wanted to revive even the faintest whiff of Brienne claims to the crown
itself by conceding such a title. So, whilst Charles balked, understand-
ably, at granting Hugh the principality of Taranto, he did give him the
county of Lecce and a handful of other lordships, mainly located in the
Terra d’Otranto.^119
Over the course of the next few decades, Hugh worked patiently to
extend this into a powerbase stretching all the way along the heel of the
Italian boot. In fact, it seems that Charles had promised him more land
than he could actually acquire, and so, in recompense, the king paid him
600 ounces of gold.^120 Yet it is worth stressing that, despite such benefi-
cence, Hugh was not always easy for royal power to control.^121 Not least,
he was ready to play fast and loose with the bonds of legality when he
thought he could get away with it. The clearest example of this is a series
(^115) Ibid., nos. 190–2, and perhaps also no. 189. For the notion that Hugh went to Tunis to
take part in Louis IX’s crusade, see Polejowski,‘The Counts of Brienne and the
Military Orders in the Thirteenth Century’, 293.
(^116) ‘Catalogue’, no. 193.
(^117) The best short summary of Manfred’s career, in English, can be found in D. Matthew,
The Norman Kingdom of Sicily(Cambridge, 1992), 363–80.
(^118) For the use of the term by the Angevin chancellery, see, for example,RCA, xv, reg. 77,
no. 132; xvi, reg. 78, no. 303; and xviii, reg. 80, no. 527.
(^119) Seeibid., vi, reg. 21, nos. 238, 439, and vii, reg. 28, nos. 314–15. For an overview of
this region’s history, see M. A. Visceglia,Territorio, feudo e potere locale: Terra d’Otranto
120 tra medioevo ed età moderna(Naples, 1988).
121 See de Sassenay,Brienne, 141.
For various examples of this, see Dunbabin,The French in the Kingdom of Sicily, 144
n. 58.
The Briennes of Lecce and Athens 127