15 April 2025

 

Seminar: Re-framing Royal Feelings: Henry II of England and the Death of the Young King

Lili Scott Lintott, University of St Andrews

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Overview 

At the end of May 1183, Henry the Young King, Henry II’s eldest surviving son and heir, contracted dysentery in the midst of a rebellion against his father. It quickly became clear that his illness was serious and, aged twenty-eight, the Young King died. According to Roger of Howden, the king’s first reaction to the news was disbelief. Then, once he was certain of his son’s death, he ‘collapsed in a faint’ three times, and ‘with a great howling and a horrible weeping he let out mournful laments, and he overstepped the acceptable measure of grieving more than one could believe.’ 

 

Roger of Howden was not the only contemporary who described Henry II’s grief after the death of his son. In fact, many chroniclers did: William of Newburgh, Geoffrey of Vigeois, Gerald of Wales, and the anonymous author of the History of William Marshal are among those who recorded the king’s feelings, for contemporaries, for posterity, and to trace the unfurling of God’s plan. Yet others commented on their own feelings of deep grief, or the mass outpouring of mourning that followed. How do we explain the attention paid to Henry’s grief? Why were Henry’s feelings, and the display of these feelings, so central to so many accounts of what happened? What can these numerous accounts of his feelings tell us about kingship in Angevin England? 

 

In this paper, I will analyse accounts of the grief Henry II felt in 1183. I will argue that lack of attention has led us to misunderstand medieval grief and its relationship to power. By re-examining these chronicles, I will uncover the political, cultural and social importance of kingly feeling in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. Grief will be revealed to be essential to Angevin government and aristocratic society. 

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Chair

Emily Ward

 

Presenter bio

Lili Scott Lintott completed her BA and MPhil in History at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. She then spent two years working as a Content Developer for a leading museum design consultancy before pursuing an AHRC-funded PhD in Medieval History at the University of St Andrews and the University of Glasgow. During her PhD, she took up a Visiting Fellowship at Harvard and won the Marjorie Chibnall Essay Prize for her work on the expression of grief among the aristocracy in early thirteenth-century Britain. Her article appeared in the most recent edition of Anglo-Norman Studies. Lili is primarily interested in the intersection of emotion, gender, and power in Britain during the High Middle Ages. Core themes of her work include premodern masculinity and its relationship to power; the potential of chronicles and literary texts as sources for intellectual history; and the role of emotion in medieval kingship.

 

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