Another car park, another King

Digging up or looking for English medieval Kings appears to be all the rage amongst archaeologists these days - not that I am objecting to such research being undertaken.

Following upon the recovery of King Richard III at Leicester and a tentative identification of either King Alfred or King Edward tbe Elder at Hyde Abbey in Winchester - well, of one possible bone - and now attention has turned to looking for King Henry I on the site of Reading Abbey.

In the abbey he held pride of place as founder and the abbey received quite a few other royal burials down to the later fourteenth century, when King Richard II ordered the Abbot to restore King Henry's tomb in return for a charter of confirmation of privileges.

No effort appears to have been made to rescue his remains at the dissolution of the Abbey in 1539, and the site became lost of the fragmentation of the monastic site.

The Daily Telegraph has a report about the early stages of the investigation which can be read at

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/13/another-car-park-another-king-henry-is-remains-found-beneath-tar/

The twentieth century memorial on the site of Reading Abbey

Image:hylbom.com

Plan to explore the past of Reading Abbey

Stephanie A. Mann has an interesting piece on her excellent blog Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation about the possibilities of further excavations at the site of Reading Abbey, and in particular the search for the remains of the founder King Henry I. She also writes about the fate of the last Abbot Bl.Hign Cook of faringdon who was martyred in 1539.

Her post can be seen at Reading Abbey: The Lost Tomb and the Last Abbot

Hollister's biography of King Henry I

Over the weekend I finally finished reading C.W.Hollister's Henry I , which is published by Yale UP in their series on English Monarchs, and which I been reading for over two years in fits and starts - it is a substantial volume.

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The original text of the volume was completed in 1990, but that year the print-out, back-up computer copies, notes, library and home of the author were destroyed in a forest fire in California. By the summer of 1997 he had re-written the bulk of the book, together with drafts of the remaining chapters when he suffered a fatal heart attack and the completion of the volume was left to a former research student, Amanda Clark Frost, who has done a splendid job in editing it all together plus filling in the missing chapters - notably on the King's support for the abbey of Cluny and its place in the religious culture of the era.

This is a very readable biography which presents a convincing, humane portrait of an able king who has not always been so clearly understood as he was by Hollister. For him King Henry is an able pragmatist, and reading the book one appreciates both the King's skill in the art of governanace and Hollister's skill in the art of history.

This is a big and comprehensive study which opnes up to the reader the challenges and possibilities facing a ruler in the early twelfth century, and it treats its material in a clear-sighted way - you appreciate the realities of the issues King Henry faced and the means by which he dealt with them.

A book very well worth reading, and well worth going back to pursue particular fields of study and interest. Written by an expert it is not just a book for other experts - anyone with an intererst in the period can gain from looking at it.

King Henry I

Today marks the anniversary of the death of King Henry I in 1135.

I recently read C.Warren Hollister's Henry I, which is the Yale series on English Monarchs. The story behind the publication of the book is in itself remarkable - the text, notes and library which susrtaine dit were lost in a Californian forest fire and the author had to begin all over again, only to have a fatal heart attack before he finished the book - on his death bed in 1997 he handed the project over to a former student, Amanda Clark Frost, who brought it to completion. The book is however remarkable in its own right as a wonderful insight into the life of the King and into the nature and working of early twelfth century government. It really is very well worth reading, and full of insights and a profound understanding of the King and his age.

Part of its attraction is the gentle academic humour Prof Hollister deploys. Here, for example, is his comment after writing of how the King, famous for his vast numbers of illegitimate children, was seen by comtemporaries and modern historians as making good use of his progeny in building up the networks of power and patronage ..."[b]ut even so, it is difficult to believe that such calculations dominated Henry's mind during the moments he was conceiving these offspring. If so, then Henry was an even more devious schemer than some moderndistorians have accused him of being."

One thing which, very surprisingly, appears to be missing in the book is William of Malmesbury's description of King Henry's appearance and character:

He was of middle stature, greater than the small, but exceeded by the very tall; his hair was black, but scanty near the forehead; his eyes were mildly bright, his chest brawny, his body well fleshed. He was facetious in proper season, nor did multiplicity of business cause him to be less pleasant when he mixed in society. Not prone to personal combat, he verified the saying of Scipio Africanus, 'My mother bore me a commander not a soldier;' wherefore he was inferior in wisdom to no king of modern time; and I may also say, he clearly surpassed all his predecessors in England and preferred contending by counsel, rather than by the sword. If he could he conquered without bloodshed; if it was unavoidable, with as little as possible.