The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life Of William Marshal, The Power Behind Five English Thrones, by Thomas Asbridge, read by Derek Perkins

This book begins with a bit of mystery, the story of a French historian whose decades-long work on the Norman French poem on the life of William Marshal came in the late 19th century within an atmosphere of imperial competition for historical artifacts and the realization that one of the most important people of the Middle Ages had been largely forgotten because of his lack of an enduring dynasty and his obscure origins as the second son of a minor Anglo-Norman baron known, if at all, for his predatory ways during the Anarchy [1]. To be sure, William Marshal is no longer an obscure knight, given that several histories have been written of him as the knight who saved England, to give an example of one of the other books in this series. He was also one of the most sympathetic characters in the recent Ridley Scott adaptation of Robin Hood [2], which is a telling reference, given that his role as a major courtier during the reign of Richard the Lionheart who had maintained a cautious neutrality with regards to Prince John (later King John) was entirely neglected by the previous films on Robin Hood. William Marshal as a historical person, in other words, is on the rise, just as William Marshal himself had a meteoric rise over the course of a long and mostly dignified career from a landless knight in the service of one of his mother’s kinfolk in Normandy to his service up to shortly before his death as the Regent for King Henry III of England after having saved England from a French invasion to support a baronial revolt thanks to his stunning victory at the Battle of Lincoln in 1217. This is a book that captures not only the dimensions of Marshal’s career and its ups and downs, but also seeks to place his life and service in the context of higher politics, which adds a great deal of interest to an almost impossibly complex and productive life that, were it made into a novel, would have likely been viewed too improbable.

The content and organization of the history itself, aside from its introductory discussion of the long-forgotten narrative biography of William Marshal and its contents and a closing section that discusses the fall of the dynasty of William Marshal as a result of an inability to cope with the troubles of the later part of King Henry III’s reign or sire legitimate heirs, is done in a very detailed and chronological fashion. The contents are staggering—and it is unclear how the history of this man could have ever been forgotten, for it is almost too complicated to be true. Born towards the latter part of the anarchy between King Stephen and Empress Matilda, young William at the age of five was left as a hostage for his father’s loyalty, and threatened numerous times with death when his father proved disloyal. This traumatic experience of parental betrayal was compounded by family traditions that left the holdings of the family’s baronial estate in the hands of his older brother, and left him to leave England as a teenager to be a squire for one of his mother’s relatives when he was thirteen or so. After being a squire for a few years, he was knighted on the eve of a French and Flemish invasion of eastern Normandy, where he served bravely and with distinction, but at the loss of his war horse. After some disgrace, he had some early success in the tournament circuit before joining the retinue of one of mother’s other relatives, who was then killed in an ambush in Aquitaine, where William was seriously wounded, captured, and nearly died of infection. Eventually ransomed, William served Eleanor of Aquitaine and then, through her agency, Henry the Young King, long frustrated at his inability to hold real power. During this time William became a celebrated champion of the tournament circle, a celebrity knight, feted by high nobles, and also participated in a couple of revolts against King Henry II. When Henry the Young King died, William then went on crusade where he ran across the assassin of his old patron and managed to leave the Holy Land shortly before the disaster of Hattin, where he then loyally served King Henry II as he was hunted to his death in a disastrous revolt by King Richard II. After having narrowly avoided killing Richard II while defending the old king, he then became a successful courtier for Richard II and one of the co-justiciars for England during Richard’s absence on the Third Crusade and then in imprisonment. After falling from favor shortly after marrying a wealthy Anglo-Irish heiress, Isabel of Clare (where he became the Earl of Pembroke, a minor character in Shakespeare’s obscure play King John) through an equivocation in loyalty to hold on to his Norman estates taken over by Philip of France, he then pursued claims on her behalf in Wales and Leinster, engaging in pretty daring brinksmanship with the king’s justiciar of Ireland before coming back to help King John defend his realm in the dark last days of his reign, where he helped negotiate and draft various versions of the Magna Carta. At the death of King John, he served as the Regent for John’s young son, defending the realm of England in some of the darkest days of the Plantagenet dynasty, before resigning office and joining the Templars shortly before his death as an elderly man in his 70’s who had fought in battle only a couple of years before death. Sadly, although he and his wife were fruitful in having ten children, none of his sons had a legitimate male heir, and thus the family line failed within a quarter century after his death, even though through one of his daughters William Marshal is one of the ancestors of the last few centuries of English monarchs.

Although the author takes a critical tone at some points to the chronicle of William Marshal’s life, the criticism is muted by the obvious appreciation of the author for the work itself and for the subject of the work. Over and over again, Asbridge notes that William Marshal was known for his loyalty and had a well-earned although not perfect reputation for his adherence to chivalry as it was understood by knights of the middle to late 12th century, not as we understand it today. Marshal’s loyalty to his sovereigns despite their repeated troubles—Henry the young King’s defeats in revolts against his father, his father’s defeat as an elderly king in the rebellion of his son supported by France’s ambitious king, Richard’s experiences crusading, in prison, and then recovering his empire, John’s total incompetence as a ruler, and Henry III’s vulnerabilities as a boy in a broken realm riven by internal strife and external invasion—is given particular praise, and William is noted as having lived without even the hint of sexual scandal regarding mistresses or cavorting with base women or worse choices of partner. William is shown as being canny, even to the point of being somewhat ruthlessly ambitious and driven, and despite some limitations in his literacy, he shows himself as being capable as a knight in the rule-bound realm of tournament fighting, as a military leader, as a shrewd judge of character willing and able to support loyal retainers, as a husband to a courageous and high-born woman of much higher status of birth than his own, who was less than half his age when they married, and as a courtier capable of surviving the intrigues of a succession of intensely and bitterly divided courts. William is not considered to be the greatest knight becaue of perfection, but rather because he was skilled in a wide variety of areas, and managed to rise so far above the status of his birth, to the point where if Horatio Alger [3] had written tales of upwardly mobile young men of the baronial class during the 12th and 13th centuries, William Marshal would have been a worthy choice of a hero. How many landless youths in such a status-conscious society as his own rise to the point of being the guardian of the young king of England and defender of the realm while having earned every step of the rise through loyal service as well as conspicuous talent? Truly William was a great knight indeed, and this book is a worthy examination of his life and times. The reading by Derek Perkins is very classy well, with just the right tone to add to the class of the subject of the book himself.

[1] The setting of the Brother Caedfel novels:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/tag/cadfael/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/book-review-a-rare-benedictine-the-advent-of-brother-cadfael/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2015/04/08/book-review-cordially-yours-brother-cadfael/

[2] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/08/14/robin-hood/

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/the-legend-of-villebois/

[3] See, for example:

https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/07/21/horatio-alger-tales/