Just one book on . . . Henry I

Having read the biographies of nearly a dozen monarchs for this project, I find myself at an unexpected milestone. With Henry I, I find myself wishing for the first time that there were more studies of his life and achievements than there are available to read. This isn’t a knock on the three biographies I read about his life, all of which are fine works of scholarship. Rather, it’s that from them I gained an appreciation of the importance of Henry’s reign for English history, particularly in terms of the development of the English state. That a range of differing opinions exist within these books as to the nature of these achievements only underscores how much is left to be said about Henry’s time on the throne and his legacy. Clearly there is much room for new scholarship about his kingship.

The three biographies about Henry offer a surprisingly diverse range of entry points about his life, and given Henry’s significance and the limited number of studies about it all are worth reading. Yet while I found Edmund King’s short book on Henry a valuable study, it is one that is best read by readers who have a prior knowledge of Anglo-Norman history. As such it works better as a compliment to other works on the period than as an entry point to Henry’s life in its own right.

Far better suited in that respect is C. Warren Hollister’s biography of Henry for the Yale English Monarchs series. Thorough and insightful, it provides extensive coverage of Henry’s reign and makes an excellent case for its significance to English history. Its value is only marginally limited by the fact that Hollister died before he could complete work on his manuscript, as the editing would have helped to sharpen the case Hollister makes in it of the transformative nature of Henry’s governing reforms. Such revising also could have made it an incontestable starting point for anyone wanting to read a book about Henry, rather than just a strong contender for the title.

One of the remarkable aspects of Judith Green’s biography is that she challenged Hollister’s interpretation of Henry so closely on the heels of the release of his book in 2001. Yet this is just one of the many things that distinguishes her excellent study, which not only offers a different perspective on Henry’s reputation as a reformer, but which provides a coverage of Henry’s rule over Normandy that is lacking in King’s and Hollister’s more Anglo-centric studies. It’s because of this that, while all three studies deserve reading, Green’s is the one that people should seek out as the best single biography of this important monarch.

Review of “Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy” by Judith A. Green

In my review of C. Warren Hollister’s biography of Henry I noted that during his career he was regarded as the foremost expert on the life and reign of the king. A close second to that title, and the successor to it upon his death is Judith Green. An emerita professor of medieval history at the University of Edinburgh, she made a name for herself with a groundbreaking study on the personnel and operations of his government, which she then followed up with other works on the Norman era. As she notes in her introduction, she was already in progress on her own biography of Henry when Hollister’s was published posthumously in 2001. While such an event may have discouraged others, she continued her work on it and saw it through to its publication five years later.

At first glance there may seem little difference between the two books. Green adopts an approach to presenting Henry’s life that appears standard for biographers of English kings, as she opens with a chapter on the sources for it before spending the bulk of her text covering her subject’s life chronologically. In each of these she emphasizes a key theme during the years she covers, spotlighting an aspect of Henry’s life that focuses her analysis on a major issue or concern. She then follows her chronological presentation with three chapters that provide a more extended examination of three key areas of his reign – Henry as ruler, his relations with the Church, and the composition and culture of his court – before providing a succinct conclusion summing up her argument.

It’s when the reader gets into the text that the key differences emerge. Green makes clear from the start that she offers a perspective of Henry’s reign that is different from Hollister’s in some important respects. As her subtitle suggests she gives more attention to Henry’s rule over Normandy than either Hollister or Edmund King do in their biographies. This likely influenced to her interpretation of how he exercised power as king, which she argues was more traditional in its approach. Unlike Hollister, who emphasized Henry’s innovative use of government in ruling England, Green sees him using a more conventional employment of force to intimidate his barons into obedience. She underscores this by noting the collapse of his arrangements for his daughter Mathilda to succeed him, which is a powerful argument for the personal rather than institutional nature of Henry’s power.

Arguments such as this point to the value of Green’s book as a counterpoint to Hollister’s work. Yet it more than stands on its own as a biography of Henry thanks to the crispness of her analysis and her ability to incorporate within her assessment of his reign a sense of Henry as a person. I finished the book with a clear sense of who Green’s Henry was not just as a monarch but as a man, which is further testament to her skills as both a historian and as an author. Thanks to them, hers is a biography that it as least the equal of Hollister’s, and arguably surpasses it in its ability to provide a comprehensive and cohesive interpretation of Henry as a ruler.

Review of “Henry I” by C. Warren Hollister

One of the distinguishing features of the Yale English Monarchs series has been the editors’ commitment to getting the most renowned experts on the respective kings and queens of England to write biographies about them. The result has been works of high scholarly distinction which reflect some of the latest thinking about not just their subjects but the times in which they lived. The books themselves may not necessarily be the “best” biographies available about that particular monarch, but they all reflect the highest possible standard of scholarship and set a formidable bar for students going forward.

This is why that when the editors commissioned their volume on Henry I they turned to Charles Warren Hollister. Regarded today as one of the great pioneers of Anglo-Norman studies in general and on Henry’s reign in particular, he was a natural choice to write a biography about the king, one that would have been a capstone to his decades of work. Hollister’s labors, though, suffered a tragic setback in 1990 when both his draft manuscript and his extensive research notes were destroyed by wildfires in his home town of Santa Barbara. As dispiriting as this must have been for him, he restarted his work and had written eight of his projected eleven chapters prior to his death in 1997.

These chapters form the bulk of Hollister’s biography. In them he addresses the sources for Henry’s life, his early years and his claiming of the throne, and his military campaigns and foreign policies as king. The remaining three chapters were completed by Amanda Clark Frost, one of his former doctoral students, which she did using his notes and other writings on the subject. These provide an analysis of Henry’s administration and his relations with the Church before describing his final years and his legacy for his realm. It’s a contribution that is acknowledged in the book but not on the cover, which unfairly slights Clark’s considerable role in writing it.

The portrait of Henry that emerges in this book is of a shrewd king who governed his realm authoritatively and innovatively. While acknowledging that Henry’s rule was still very much in the nature of a personal monarchy, the two authors give him considerable credit for building the foundations of the medieval bureaucratic state that would provide such effective governance in the centuries that followed. Yet they qualify this praise with the glaring failure of his reign: that of not providing for a stable transfer of power after his death. It’s a judgment that I expect will loom larger once I delve into the civil war that followed his reign.

This is just one of the many appreciations I gained from a work that was full of interesting insights about its subject. Yet the book also bore signs of its troubled development. There is a disappointing amount of repetition throughout the book, which suggests some of the challenges Frost must have faced in turning Hollister’s draft chapters into a publishable work. Given the circumstances, I can understand why it would be easier to leave as much of the original manuscript untouched as possible, and with everything else that was needed to complete Hollister’s labor it was probably the smartest and safest choice. This is why I was grateful for Frost’s efforts. Thanks to her and everybody else who pitched in to fill the for Hollister we have today a work that embodies much of the learning and wit for which its original author was known. Yet I still finished it with a twinge of regret that Hollister never had the opportunity to complete his work himself. Additional editing and polishing would have made for a truly spectacular book on Henry that would have been the definitive work on his life and reign. That we never saw the book is our loss, but the one we do have does a great job of filling that hole as much as seems possible.

Review of “Henry I: The Father of His People” by Edmund King

One of the qualities of the “Penguin Monarchs” series that I have come to appreciate is the caliber of the authors the editors employed to produce their short works. The names read like a catalog of some of the leading historians in their fields: John Gillingham, Anne Curry, John Guy, Mark Kishlansky, and David Cannadine, who are just some of the renowned names adorning the volumes that have been produced. Seeing their names attached to brief biographies aimed at a general audience can at times seem like overkill, but with them comes the depth of study that can bring real insight to even a cursory overview.

Among those for whom this is true is Edmund King. As a longtime historian of the medieval era, King has written several well-regarded books about Anglo-Norman England, including a biography of Stephen for the Yale English Monarchs series. His erudition is fully on display in his short biography of Henry I, which begins with a brief consideration of Henry’s historical reputation and his conscious role in shaping it. King also stakes out within it his own approach to his subject, which involves assessing Henry on the monarch’s own self-professed values.

King then follows this up with five chapters covering Henry’s life. While arranged in a chronological manner, he adopts for each of them an interpretive theme that is based on Henry’s priorities. As a result, the reader gets chapters that focus on such issues as loyalty, his family, and his governing style as king. It’s an interesting way of looking at Henry, but at times it’s an approach that seems affected. Fortunately, King doesn’t press it too far, as he allows himself the flexibility in each chapter to cover aspects of Henry’s life that don’t necessarily fit with a rigidly thematic approach.

In covering Henry, however, King makes an assumption of his reader’s familiarity with the Anglo-Norman background that works to the detriment of the book’s goal. It’s a flaw that is ironically the result of one of the greatest merits of the Penguin series, which is the expertise the authors bring to their subjects. While this is reflected in King’s perceptive and assured judgments of Henry, it also results in a book that reads more as an extended essay meant for an audience of students rather than the introduction to Henry’s life and times aimed towards the general reader.

In this respect King’s book can be a little frustrating. For all of his knowledgeable assessments of Henry, his book falls short in terms of its goal. This doesn’t make for a bad biography – indeed, King’s may prove to be the best one available – but in terms of making the life of such a popularly underappreciated monarch more accessible King falls short of the goal.

On to Henry I!

13th c. miniature of Henry I, from the illuminated Chronicle of Matthew Paris

There are few better examples of the gap between fame and importance among English monarchs than Henry I. The youngest son of William the Conqueror, he was the odd son out when William’s kingdom was divided after his death. When Henry’s brother William was struck down by the fatal arrow, however, Henry seized his chance, rushing off to claim the throne before his brother Robert had a chance. Henry’s boldness resulted a reign that lasted over a third of a century, and was one which is widely credited today with forging the effective royal administration that characterized English government throughout the Middle Ages.

Yet despite the substantial records available for Henry’s reign, accounts of his life are surprisingly few, with only three modern biographies available. Fortunately, this seems another case where the lack of quantity is offset by the quality of the authors. The first of these that I’m going to read is Edmund King’s 2018 biography Henry I: The Father of His People. A longtime medieval historian who has published an extensive number of books about medieval England, King seems a natural choice for a contribution to the Penguin Monarchs set, and I’m looking forward to the sort of brief overview provided by the series before delving into the larger volumes.

After King’s book I plan on reading C. Warren Hollister’s 2001 biography of Henry for the Yale English Monarchs series. Hollister was regarded as a landmark scholar on Henry I’s reign, and his biography was meant to serve as a capstone to his distinguished career. Hollister did before he could finish the book, however, which was completed by Amanda Clark Frost, one of his former students. This look to be the most substantial of the three books, and as a volume in the Yale series I expect it will be a good one, though as a work completed and published posthumously I’m curious to discover how coherent and complete an analysis of its subject that it provides.

The final biography that I’ll read is Judith Green’s 2006 book Henry I: King of England and Duke of Normandy. Like Hollister, Green is a historian who has written important works on Henry prior to turning her pen to a biography of the king. Like Emma Mason’s book on William Rufus it looks as though it sits halfway between the volumes produced for the Penguin and Yale series, so it could provide an interesting mix of concision and depth.