The Succession of Henry II

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And with me to talk about the She Wolves is the author of a book called She Wolves. It's my dear friend and erstwhile colleague, Helen Castor. Helen, welcome to the rest of this history. Thank you for having me. Before we go to the Middle Ages, should we just look at the century that follows the medieval period, the sixteenth century? Because there are a lot of queens in the sixteenth century. And what perspective do all those que ens kind of shed on the time that we're going to be talking about today in the series? It's interesting, isn't it? Because it goes in two directions. In one sense , we tend to assume, I think, that because there are all these queens in the 16th century. So should we just list them? So um Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Mary Tudor. There's also there's this extraordinary moment in the fifteen fifties where there seem to be women everywhere. A monstrous regiment. A monstrous regiment of women, although Knox doesn't quite mean that. We'll we'll come to that. Mary of Hungary has been ruling the Netherlands for her. For her brother, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V . Mary Queen of Scots is the Queen of Scotland living in Paris, while her mother, Mary of Guise, is Regent in Scotland for her. Then we have Mary Tudor in England. They're all Mary's, they're all Catholic, and in Geneva, John Knox, a fulminating Calvinist Scot with a big beard, is extremely cross about all this. So he writes the first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women, saying the monstrous regiment is not it's not like a kind of military parade of marching. It's easy to see, isn't it? This dreadful battalion of Mary's No. Regiment means regimen rule and monstrous means unnatural, abominable. So what he's talking about is the monstrous rule of women which he thinks shouldn't be allowed. His timing is terrible. He publishes this in the summer of 1558. A few months later, Protestant Elizabeth becomes Queen in England. She's not impressed and he's left him, does she? She he's left saying, I didn't mean you but she never forgives him quite rightly. But we tend to assume that if this argument is going on in the sixteenth century that women are beginning to rule but there's a big pushback. That this must be progress because we tend to think of the Middle Ages as sort of benighted. Things were obviously worse then. Less woke in the Middle Ages, but it's not necessarily true. The point being that in the middle of the sixteenth century it's really the accident of the hereditary system that's thrown all these women into the Henry VIII's famous inability to father aside That's right. But also his great skill at killing anyone else on the family tree who might have a better claim than the Tudors. So he's killed lots of potential male heirs and only been left with these two daughters. But the hereditary principle could have thrown up women at any point in the centuries before, and in fact it had done back in the twelfth century Yes. She is the granddaughter of the conqueror? And what we need to understand about this moment in English history is that really all bets are off about what the system of succession is going to be. There hasn't actually been yet, by the time we get to Henry I and Matilda, there hasn't yet been a straightforward succession since the Conqueror. The Conqueror himself was illegitimate, his parents hadn't been married. He does get married and has sons, but he's succeeded by William Rufus, who's his second son, even though his oldest son, Robert Kurt Hose, as he's known Robert short legs, Robert fat legs, as depending how rude you want to get, he's the eldest son, but he's not the one who ends up inheriting and there has to be. Well he he inherits England, doesn't he? And Robert inherits Normandy. In theory. So this is a complication. In theory. You're absolutely right. We're dealing not only with a new system in England, but a new political entity, the Anglo-Norman realm, which is two different parts. It's the Duchy of Normandy and the Kingdom of England. William tri es to split them up. He's already promised Normandy to his oldest son, who he's gone off since doing that. But he really wants Rufus to inherit, and Rufus fights Robert and gets the whole lot. But in the New Forests, August 1100, an arrow goes astray, William Rufus gets speared in the heart. Robert, the older brother is still alive, but Henry the younger brother is the one who's there, seizes his moment. He jumps on his horse, looking at the prone body of his brother shot by an arrow in the New Forest, and rushes to Westminster to get himself crowned and rushes to Winchester to take control of the royal treasury. So he's k ing by a coup, really, rather than by I'm the eldest I should inherit. Can I can I ask? And there's a kind of sac dare I say sacral dimension to that. That once you've been anointed, I mean you can't really wash off the balm. That's it, and that's what makes a king at this point. It is as you say, it's it's a quasi -sacrament. Kingship takes effect in that holy moment. We tend to say crowned, but you're quite right to point at the moment when the holy oil touches the head, the breast. That is when a king becomes a king. And Henry is incredibly able and he uh marries into the old Anglo-Saxon royal dynasty, so he has gained himself legitimacy in that way. He has legitimacy in all sorts of ways. He also he's also very keen to point out that he was born in the purple. That is, he was born after William the Conqueror became King of England. He's married Matilda of Scotland, the daughter of St. Margaret of Scotland who's descended from the Anglo-Saxon House. You've got a saint as your mother-in-law. I mean that's pretty good, isn't it? It is. So he's a very able king and he does what kings are meant to do, which is to father children and in particular a son. So just talk us tell us about his children. Henry is an interesting character. He has many, many, many children. He has at least twenty illegitimate children, although one of his fans among the chroniclers says with a completely straight face that this was not a question of lust this was a question of um I can't remember quite what it was a question of but clearly it wasn't something very holy and kingly But he only has two legitimate children. He has a son, William, and a daughter, Matilda, and he's got big plans for both of them. So William is called William Atheling, and Atheling is the old English word for someone who is wort hy to succeed to the throne. And it's it's a it's a purely masculine signifier. There is not, and you can see why when you look at the great seal of the new Norman kings of England, because the two central roles of kingship are depicted there. On one side, you have a king sitting on a throne with the symbols of kingship, an orb, sometimes a sword, sometimes a sceptre. This is a king as lawgiver, as judge, and on the other side you have a king in armour on a horse with a sword in his hand, king as warrior. Those are the two central functions and neither of them is something that a woman can do. So let's come to so so we've got um the Atheling, William. Let's come to Matilda, the daughter. So what role does Henry see her fulfilling? A huge dynastic role because he secures for her the grandest possible husband in Europe. At the age of eight, she is sent off to Germany to marry the So she becomes Empress? She does. She is not actually eventually crowned by the Pope, but she is crowned in St. Peter's in Rome by a bishop. She's married to the emperor. She has been crowned in St. Peter's. I mean, this is an extraordinary destiny. If you imagine being an eight-year-old girl sent off across Europe to a country where you don't speak the language, you're marrying a man sixteen years older than you. It's a big ask. It's a huge ask. And she makes a tremendous success of it. She is known in Germany thereafter as the good Matilda. By the age of sixteen, she has the confidence of her husband to such an extent that he leaves her behind in Italy as his regent when he is called back to Germany. She is extraordinarily able and she takes on this job to which she's been sent when she's a child with such a So what that suggests is that um although queens aren't expected to fight or to deliver judgment, they do definitely have a role to play. They do. They can represent the men to whom they are related, to whom they are supposed to be a supplemental figure. And I mean supplemental in two ways. That is, they must ac knowledge male authority, but they can supplement it. They can represent it when it is unquestionable that they have the right to do so. So Matilda as the Emperor's wife can represent him when he's not there, but they must do so in a way that um accords with what it is to be a good woman. So I've said we're in St. Bartholomew the Great. This is the place where the Virgin Mary made her only recorded appearance in London. And I'm wondering, does the model of the Virgin in medieval Europe, the Virgin, you know, you can pray to the Virgin to intercede with her son, Christ. Is there an element of that that influences the role of the Queen that she can intercede for people with her husband, the king? Certainly. She uh must be a peacemaker, an intercess or. She can represent his authority and impose his authority, but she must never challenge it. Because as St. Pauls tell us in the first letter to the Corinthians, Christ is the head of man, man is the head of woman, and God is the head of Christ. So there is an order of creation here in which women must acknowledge male authority and as the Virgin does can intercede, can make peace, but challenge must not step outside that virtuous role. A good woman wouldn't step outside that role, and therefore a woman who does step outside that role cannot be good. Yeah. So Henry I, he's in England, he's looking very proudly at his two children, he's got William Atheling, you know, he's great, he's gonna be a great king. Uh he's got Matilda who's often the empire doing her thing, you know, behaving like a a queen should. All looks splendid. And then there's a disaster, isn't it? And it it involves um uh we've been doing the Lusitania, we've done the Titanic, this is another ship that sinks, and this is called the White Ship. We're in November 112 0. Henry and his son William Athling are crossing from Normandy or are about to cross from Normandy to England. This is a crossing that they do regularly. You have to do it if you're ruling both Normandy and England. And compared to Matilda, who's been crossing the Alps to get from Germany to Italy, one modern historian says that crossing the Channel really was a matter of complete convenience compared to crossing the Alps in the Middle Ages. But something's gone wrong with the plan on this particular dark night in November, and it's the fact that William Atling , all his friends and everyone on board the ship he's travelling in is roaring drunk. Yeah it's just it's got a massive stag dude. It is. He lads on tour. Exactly crash into a rock or whatever. And they decide they're going to race the king's ship and they don't see the rock in Barfler Harbour. The ship goes down with all hands, except we're told, a butcher from Rouen, who has got on board to try and get the aristocrats to pay the debts they owe him, and because he's wearing sheep So this is terrible news for Henry because Awful news. Who's going to succeed him? All he's got left of his legitimate children . He has all these illegitimate children, but by now we're in we're a couple of decades into the twelfth century and the church is beginning to get quite fierce. Exactly. things have moved on. Things have moved on. Two things have moved on, particularly. The church is beginning to get quite fierce about the sacrament of marriage and cracking down on the idea of legitimate birth. But the other is that Henry I is a classic poacher turned gamekeeper. Don't do as I did, do as I say, and what he says is that his bloodline, his legitimate bloodline must succe How does he try and finesse things so that his daughter can succeed him? It's a multi-pronged plan. The first is he gets married again immediately. He's a widower by this stage, but he marries a very young woman called Adelisa of Louvain and takes her with him everywhere. So his plan A is he's going to have more sons. Doesn't actually happen, but that's his plan A. Plan B is his daughter uh Matilda is going to be his safety net and particularly after 1125 because five years of this second marriage, no baby sons have appeared yet. But Matilda's husband, the Holy Roman Emperor, dies. He dies very young, and he and Matilda have not had any children. So she can now come back. She can now come back. She is summoned back immediately. And Henry has two plans for her. The first is that all of his nobles must immediately swear allegiance to Matilda as his heir. Which and this is the interesting thing, Henry VIII could have taken note of this, they immediately line up to do. Nobody says, nobody puts on a big beard and says, like John Knox, it is an atrocious idea that wouldn't you know an abomination against nature. There's no kind of rule that says that uh a woman can't succeed. There are no rules at all. His oldest son is still alive. The Conqueror was bastard born. Rules are not really there at all, let alone set in stone in this world. So Henry is creating rules around him. He gets all his nobles to line up and swear allegiance to Matilda, and the only argument that breaks out is about who should have the honour of swearing first. There's an argument between his uh illegitimate son, Robert, Earl of Gloucester, and his favourite nephew, Stephen, Count of Mortain, about who's going to have the honour of kneeling to swear allegiance to Matilda. So so far so good. Henry's still hoping to have more sons His nobles have sworn allegiance to Matilda, and his plan C , or perhaps could become a plan B, is that he's going to marry Matilda off again, and perhaps she can have sons so, that he could be succeeded by a grandson. And is there someone suitable to marry, perhaps from the It turns out there is. door neighbour, historic adversary and rival, but there is a young heir to the county of Anjou called Geoffrey. So poor old Matilda, having been married off at eight to a twenty four year old, she's now twenty six, being And the something to do with a sprig of Yes, the badge of the house of Anjou, the planta genista if you're looking for the beginnings of the plantagenates we might be getting it here. So there's a little clue there as to where it's might be So Matilda is married to to to to this guy. Very unhappily. Um but they have you know they, clearly have children. They do the job in the end. I mean Matilda kicks up a fuss. She gets married to him, but within a year she's back with her dad saying, Dad, do I really have to do this? But she has a little baby boy and she calls him Henry. She does. So little baby Henry Plantagen. And we may be hearing more of him today and in our next episode. We may. We may indeed. So that's the state of play when Henry the First dies. It is. He dies. What happens then? He dies very suddenly. Because he he's a He has a surfeit, doesn't he? He has a surfeit of lampreys. Because this is an occupational hazard of being a medieval king, is that you you have surfeits and die.. You do I mean you'd have to pay me to have even one lamprey, I think, let alone a surfeit of them, but the horrible eel-like fish. But anyway, yes, he he suddenly takes ill and dies in December 113 5 . He is in his sixties, but he's a bull of a man, so this is a shock. He's been bestriding the Anglo Norman realm for Matilda , to whom the nobles of England and Normandy have sworn allegiance more than once by this stage, is I mean I think often the chroniclers and modern historians don't take so seriously the reality of female experience. We're so used to thinking about warfare, the dangers of warfare, and so on. But the problem for Matilda in December 1135 is she's had little baby Henry in eleven thirty-three. She then had little baby Jeffrey in eleven thirty-four and nearly died having him, I mean really seriously nearly died . In the autumn of eleven thirty-five, she's pregnant again. She's in the very early stages of pregnancy, and another occupational hazard for medieval women, her husband and her father have fallen out. So she's in Anjou with her husband in the fairly stages ready to be anointed. She is not in the right place at the right time. And she's going to struggle to get there because she And I suppose to apply the masculine perspective, a woman never looks from the male point of view, less suited to playing the masculine role of a king than when she's pregnant. That's exactly it. And married, of course, to the Count of Anjou , who the Anglo Norman baronage are used to thinking of as an enemy. So all in all So it's all tricky. So I suppose in in a situation like that where the the pregnant queen um is not in England, there are opportunities for someone to do a Henry the First and rush off and go to England and get yourself anointed and become the king in situ , and is that what happens? One man among the Anglo Norman barons has been paying very close attention to the lessons of history, which I know is what we all think everyone ought to be doing all the time. The rest of the barons are accompanying Henry's body very slowly back from Normandy to England. And they're having meetings about who could become king, because obviously we don't really want the pregnant woman. And they come up with this idea that Henry the First nephew Theobald of Blois, one of their number, might be a good idea. I mean you ca I mean all due respect to um to Theo, our Ursa producer, but you can't have someone called Theo as King of England. You can't, can you? I mean but that is a rule, I think. But Theobald has a younger brother called Stephen, who's married to the heiress to Boulogne, which is very handy for getting to England. He has paid attention to what his uncle did when he became king. He jumps on his horse, gets to the coast, gets on a ship, jumps back on a horse, gets himself to Winchester, takes control of the royal treasury, and then has himself crowned and anointed before anyone else knows what's happening. So the sacred oil has seeped into his skin and he is now impregnated. He is impregnated as kind of sacramental oil. With kingship. And so at this point you have two different kinds of royal legitimacy standing in opposition to one another. Because you have the hereditary principle vested in Matilda. She's been named his heir by the previous king, and all the barons have sworn allegiance to her. I suppose some of them have a kind of personal loyalty to Henry and therefore to his daughter. Absolutely they do. Even though she's this weaker vessel, she's the wrong sex. But yes, Henry has designated her his heir and she does have sons, so the bloodline will continue through Matilda. But on the other hand you have Stephen, who isn't even the oldest son in his own family So I suppose one one solution might be that sh that she stays in Normandy and becomes the kind of the Duchess of Normandy or whatever and Stephen stays in England. But that's not really possible, is it? Because all the the the the barons and so like, they have they have lands in both Normandy and England and so they do need someone They do. They need uh a king, uh a duke in Normandy, but they need someone who can provide them with order, with justice, leadership in war . We also have to remember this is a time when um frontiers between states are exactly that. They're frontiers. If you are not defending your frontiers, someone else is going to pour over them with their So the idea that you could just leave your lands in Normandy for someone else to look after is not to be a good thing. How do they resolve this problem? Initially it looks as though Stephen has won. That kind of decisive seizing the moment and the fact that he he's not only been anointed as a king, but he looks like he can do the job. He is a man, he can lead in war, he can offer justice. This is what the chroniclers tell us at this point. He takes the throne because he can bring peace, he can bring justice. He fits the job . And so for the first year or so it looks as though there's a sort of virtuous circle operating in his favour. Poor old Matilda is off in a castle in the south of Normandy, having given birth to her third son and such bad timing. But her husband is trying to push into Normandy to try and stake her claim there. But it looks as though England is lost . Even Robert Earl of Gloucester, Matilda's illegitimate half brother, who's held out for a while, trying to resist the idea that Stephen is this irresistible force, he gives in at Easter eleven thirty six and it looks as though Stephen's got it all, but it's not long before it starts going wrong. So is this a reflection of the fact that we haven't really talked about Matilda's character up up till now? Is she a very kind of obdurate woman, a determined woman Matilda is not going to let her inheritance go. She won't let it go for her own sake. She is the daughter of Henry the Fourth. But she is the mother of sons. She's had to marry her hair and his little red face. She's had to marry this plantagenate youngster that she didn't want to have anything to do with, but she's done it in order to get these sons, and she is not going to let their inheritance go. It's quite hard to get a sense of the detail of Matilda's character with all these women. The chroniclers don't really give us thumbnail sketches in the same way. She is very, very tough. Even though I mean it's really interesting. If you read the chronicles, they're almost trying not to mention her. There are two chronicles at this point, the Gesta Stefani, which is the deeds of Stephen, so we know who the hero is there, he tries not to mention her. He says the Countess of Anjou or the or the Earl of Gloucester's sister. He doesn't really want to let her on. Exactly. Whereas William of Malmsbury, who's much more sympathetic . His hero is Robert of Gloucester, her half-brother. So we get glimpses of Matilda round the edges, but every glimpse we get shows us how tough she is. Right, so you can judge her by her actions. And her actions essentially are to aim not just to secure Normandy, but to claim the throne of England. By eleven thirty-nine, so we are four years into Stephen's reign now. It is clear that Stephen is struggling to get any kind of foothold in Normandy. Matilda and Geoffrey are doing well there. And that's going to be a structural problem for him, because if he can only claim half the Anglo Norman realm , he's going to struggle to get all the barons to follow him. But Matilda in eleven thirty nine does the key thing. She gets herself to England because that's where she's going to stay. So how does she get a foothold there? It's a brave move. So we can say she's brave as well as. We can say she's very brave. She and Robert of Gloucester, her half brother, take ship for England and they land. They don't hit a rock. They don't hit a rock. First first victory. She's done better than her brother already. She lands at Arundel in Sussex. And this is very canny because they've only got a small bodyguard with them. But Arundel Castle is held by Matilda's widowed stepmother, Adelisa of Louvain, who's the same age as her, this young woman that her father had married after her brother died. Adelisa's remarried, but Matilda and Adelisa do know each other of old. They seem to have a lot of respect for each other, and Adelisa lets Matilda into the castle. Robert of Gloucester spirits himself away to his stronghold in Brist ol. But Stephen has now got a problem. Matilda's in the country. She's in a castle with the ex-Qeen, the Queen Dowager . Is he going to besiege them? Is he going to try to capture them ? What's that going to look like? Here's a moment where being a woman can actually help you. If she was a man, then all bets are off, it's war. But she's a woman. Is Stephen really going to be ? So there's a kind of hint of chivalry. Chivalry. Absolutely. Stephen is not going to do his image as king any good if he is seen to be treating two royal women without due deference, without due respect. A little bit like in the series we did on nineteen seventies Britain, Harold Wilson wondering how he was going to deal with Margaret Thatcher at Prime Minister's question time. Do you know that's very vague That's not a bad analogy . And one of the criticisms that is levelled at Stephen is that he's too nice. He struggles to land the killer blow. He's good at decisive action but he's good at that kind of decisive action. But when it comes to the iron fist To capturing and killing women. Capturing and killing women, even capturing and killing some of his male opponents, the killer blow Okay. Sometimes the lesson of history. Don't be weak if you're a medieval king. Exactly. Um so essentially the consequence of this is that civil war breaks out, and this is what comes to be called the anarchy: the time when Christ and his saints slept , and it rages and rages. Um, and this was always my favourite period when I was a child in studying med ieval history, because it's where the terrible tortures come in because the um the barons would steal wayfar ers and they would put knotted ropes round their heads and slowly tightened them until they handed over their money, or they would put cages with rats on the stomach, and the rats would gnaw through the stomach until again until they revealed where their money was. And so this for me as a child was the single most interesting thing about uh the anarchy. You were doing horrible histories before horrible histories existed. Absolutely, but I I'm suspecting that you were going to have a slightly different perspective on this and that there are actually more interesting things to say about the anarchy than the rats on the stomach. On a level, on a par on a par with the rats. And actually it's a really good point because it shows us why you need a king. Of course. Because of people going around putting rats on people's stomachs. Exactly. And that's what the barons will do if left to their own devices. And they will do it not just because they are aiming for power by any means necessary, but they're also trying to defend themselves. This is always the problem. If you're a medieval baron, yes you can go around putting rats on people's stomachs, but if a bigger baron comes along, what's he going to do it to you? So this is why anarchy is terrifying. So that's bad. And the other famous thing that happens in the anarchy is um people rushing around in snow wearing um night dresses. So what's going on with that? We will get to that 'cause that's one again one of Matilda's very bravest moments , even her enemies grudgingly admit that she's brave at that point. But i this is to do with the key really the the pivotal part of the anarchy, because it is nineteen years of of slugging at each other. Chaotic civil war. But the pivotal point is eleven forty, eleven forty one. So it it comes pretty quickly after Matilda has arrived in England. Robert of Gloucester by now is her champion, he's her general. She can't fight in a battle. But Robert of Gloucester is going to lose the city. In the kind of you know Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury style in the U.S. But even Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury, the Armada, isn't here yet. I mean yes, she can do the figurehead bit, but you don't want her on the battlefield. She can't fight, but also she might get captured. And so again, being female does have its advantages in some ways because what happens winter of 1140, 1141 is that there is a siege at Lincoln. King Stephen is besieging Lincoln Castle. He's surprised by the army of Robert of Gloucester. A battle ensues in February 1141 and he is captured. Now, up till this point, the fact that he's been anointed that uh impregnated with kingship has been the ace in his hand. But once he's a prisoner, suddenly the balance has shifted. So suddenly God is not with Stephen anymore. This is Matilda's moment . She is going to step forward and become queen. And so she advances to Westminster to prepare for her coronation, the point at which her queenship will take effect. And so that happens and what is what is the impact of that on her legitimacy? It doesn't happen. That's the big problem. The big biggest pivotal moment in the whole story is that once she has reached Westminster in 1141, suddenly, and you'll be amazed to hear this, both medieval chronic chroniclers and modern historians say, ah yes, but a previously undetected character flaw starts letting her down. It turns out, in fact, one of the chroniclers says, puts it very well, the Gesta Stefani says, she at once put on an extremely arrogant demeanour instead of the modest gait and bearing proper to the gentle sex, and began to walk and speak and do all things more stiffly and more haughtily than she had been won't. So she's behaving like a king. She is behaving like a king. What else is she supposed to do? She's supposed to take command. Her father was the lion of justice, inflexible in his authority. But the man who thinks he's putting her on the throne, which is Stephen's younger brother Henry, Bishop of Winchester, thinks he's going to be the power behind the throne. He thinks Matilda should be doing exactly what he tells her to. She's not having any of that. She is not having any of that. So why did she not get anointed? Because at the point where she is waiting for her coronation, Henry, Bishop of Winchester, the one who's got her to that point, he thinks, and the Londoners both decide we're not happy with this. The Londoners pour out of the city, drive Matilda away from Westminster, she has to flee again. Her moment passes. Her moment passes, and not only that, but then at Winchester another battle happens or another um uh skirmish happens where Robert of Gloucester is taken prisoner. At that point Robert for Stephen, Stephen's back in play, the whole thing starts. Couldn't she just find any old bishop? And you know, I mean any cathedral would do. Just get or abbey and just get anointed. You'd think, wouldn't you? But the difficulty is any old bishop will that do really? I mean it's better than nothing. Yeah I I'd if you and I had been there, Tom, she might have had some better better advice. But part of the problem is even getting to a cathedral because the white cloak and the nighty in the snow is Oxford in the winter of 1142, she's under siege in Oxford and she manages to slip out through the snow, across the frozen river, seven miles in the snow, wearing a white cloak for camouflage. She is brave physically as well as in every other way , but she just can't Stephen won't land the killer blow and she can't . Okay, so nineteen years of anarchy to cut to the chase. How does this anarchy end and what does it mean for Stephen, for Matilda and for well, no longer little baby Henry Plantagenet. I mean he's kind of grown up by now. What we're looking at is Matilda's judgment here . Yes she was indomit able, but no she wasn't inflexibly arrogant because by the late 1140s she sees there's no way through for her. She is not going to be able to unite the Anglo Norman barons around female leadership, but she has handily provided someone who might represent the future, and that is her son Henry. Although he's young still, he is proving himself to be a very formidable ruler by this point in Normandy, isn't he? He is. He b he's recognized his father has managed more or less to conquer Normandy in the name of his wife and his son in 1150. At which point Henry is what are we talking 1617? He is recognized as Duke of Normandy. He then comes to England, and by this stage, it's clear that even the people who still support Stephen as king are beginning to talk about Henry as the lawful heir. And so there is scope there for a deal? The deal is Stephen will continue to rule , but when Stephen dies, Henry, Matilda's son, will inherit the grandson of Henry I will become Henry II. And that is the deal that's done in eleven fifty three Eleanor of Aquitaine, and we'll be talking about her. But before we before we end, Stephen dies. Henry succeeds him to become Henry II of England. Um what happens to Matilda? Matilda stays in Normandy. In a sense, she's in retirement. In a sense, she's taken up a very much approved role now of spending a lot of her time at an abbey, of which she's a particular patron, but she is the elder stateswoman of her son's regime. He looks to her for advice. She's kind of matriarchal figure. She's a matriarchal figure. She he doesn't always take her advice when she warns against making Thomas Becket Archbishop of Canterbury, he doesn't listen to her. But she is this fount of wisdom. But in such a way, in such an ac ceptably fem ale way , that if you go to Rouen Cathedral, where her remains ended up in the end, there is an epitaph to her carved into the wall. And what this epitaph says Okay, so she is uh defin ed by her male relations. And just before we end, can I ask, does she serve as a kind of object lesson to future generations? Is her attempt to make herself a kind of regnant queen um recollected uh or is that not influential on how people come to think about the um possibility of a female monarch? It certainly is remembered , but it faces in two directions, her example. Because in one sense, it is clear that a woman can transmit the right to inherit the crown of England. Her son has become king.'s S thehe daughter of a king and she's the mother of a king. So claims through women operate in England and all future kings are descended from her. But her attempt to claim the throne for herself resulted in nineteen years when Christ and his saints slept. So the example it gives of female rule is a deeply alarming and worrying one. Okay. So thank you, Helen. And we will be back next time, as I said, with Eleanor of Aquitaine, the wife of Henry the Second, Matilda's son, and she will be our second she -wolf. So I hope you enjoyed um this first episode of our new super soar away mini-series. And if you would like to see the rest and you're not a member of the Restisory H cistlub, you can go to the rest ishhistory.com, sign up there for this, and a host of sensational other benefits . This episode is brought to you by the Times and by the Sunday Times. Now if there is one thing that history, and indeed Bob Dylan teaches us, it is that the times they are always a changing. And Dominic, I guess we're living in changing times now, what with America attacking Iran and oil crises . So do you think that the lessons of that for Keir Starmer are rosy ? So looking at the career of Edward Heath, for instance, who was Prime Minister in the previous oil crisis. He and Keir Starmer I think are quite similar. There's a slight sense of foundering which they have