Who Was the Real Henry III?

Born in 1155, Henry was the eldest surviving son of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. On 14 June 1170, when he was 37 and his son 15, Henry II had his son crowned as Henry III. This experiment with co-kings proved a short-lived failure. The young Henry was afforded less authority than his father, which, combined with his lack of lands and income, led him to rebel repeatedly. After Henry II’s death, English kings returned to designating, but not crowning, an heir.

The idea of associate kingship is simple: the monarch crowns their designated heir during their lifetime to ensure the succession after death and prevent a power vacuum. Associate kingship was a feature of rule in several European kingdoms and was the norm in France, with the Capetian dynasty (987-1328) crowning associate kings until Philip II Augustus in 1180. These junior kings acted like apprentices, learning how to rule ‘on the job’, by jointly presiding over royal councils, pronouncing on legal disputes, and leading military expeditions. The system proved remarkably successful in ensuring a smooth succession in a turbulent kingdom.

Associate kingship, however, was not practised in England; instead, the king would designate an heir (often, but not always, the eldest son), who would be crowned after the monarch’s death. This could cause instability: Henry I’s succession was disputed in 1100, as was that of his daughter Matilda in 1135. Indeed, it was these 15 years of ‘anarchy’ and civil war, caused when Stephen was crowned instead of Matilda, that likely encouraged Henry II to import the practice of co-kings.

The ultimate symbol of royal power was the Great Seal. It was the visual embodiment of royal authority and attached to all government documents to give them legitimacy. Great Seals in England followed a standard format. On one side the king would be enthroned in majesty holding a sword in one hand and an orb in the other; on the other side the king would be on horseback, usually depicted as a knight. We would expect to see the young Henry’s seal take the same shape; however, his seal is quite different. He is depicted on a throne holding an orb in one hand and a sceptre – instead of a sword – in the other. Roger of Howden records that it was Henry II who had the seal made and would therefore have been involved in choosing the sceptre. A sword on a seal often represented military authority, and so with the sceptre Henry was signifying that his son’s authority was subordinate to his own. Furthermore, young Henry’s seal is one-sided. The reason for this difference is unclear. It could represent the French influence on the practice of associate kingship. Capetian royal seals were normally single-sided with the king enthroned holding orb and sceptre. The English needed a way to distinguish between the seals of the old and young Henrys; as they did not have their own system, they adopted the French style which also enabled a clear distinction between father and son.

With few estates of his own, not enough money to pay for his lavish lifestyle, and feeling that his father did not give him enough authority as a co-king, the young Henry chose to rebel in 1173 and 1183. The Great Rebellion of 1173-74 saw the Angevin empire engulfed by conflict, as the Young King – as he came to be called by his contemporaries – united Henry’s many enemies. The rebellion in 1183 was a more local affair, with the Young King joining rebels in Aquitaine trying to overthrow his brother Richard’s (and thereby Henry II’s) rule. Each rebellion however was a failure: in 1174 Henry II was triumphant on all fronts, while the Young King’s final rebellion collapsed with his death from dysentery on 11 June 1183.

In its immediate aftermath, the death of this extravagant and popular Angevin was greatly lamented. Gervase of Tilbury, for example, wrote that: ‘When Henry died, heaven was hungry, so all the world went begging’. Yet within a few years of his death, chroniclers were recording quite different views of the young Henry. Gerald of Wales called him ‘the refuge of the wretched and of evil doers’ and wrote that he was ‘addicted to martial games’, whereas his brother Richard, who would go on to be known as ‘Lionheart’, was concerned with ‘serious pursuits’. While such criticisms were written during the reign of Richard I (who did not have the best of relationships with his brother) the chroniclers had been contemporaries of the Young King, and we should not simply discard the comments as a way for the chroniclers to ingratiate themselves with the new regime. Henry’s regular betrayal of his own family and the looting of religious sites to pay for his rebellions were ghastly acts in the eyes of contemporaries and this certainly affected the way he was remembered.

On 28 October 1216 King John’s son was crowned as King Henry III. Why had the Young King lost the title of Henry III that he had held in life? Partly it was due to his lack of royal symbols. His seal did not conform to that of other English kings and showed him as being less than a full king. He did not build any churches or castles, or mint coins that could stamp his name into the minds of his subjects. Nor did he have the children who could continue his line. Most importantly, Henry pre-deceased his father. Even the French, who successfully incorporated co-ruling into their political system, were unsure what to do when the co-king died first, with some surviving manuscripts giving them regnal numbers, and others not. With Henry being the only co-king of England, and the experiment being a total failure, the English found it best to overlook Henry and let him fade into obscurity.

James Barnaby is the author of Religious Conflict at Canterbury Cathedral in the Late Twelfth Century (Boydell and Brewer, 2024).