How It All Started - Legacy of a Drowned Prince

Port of Barfleur, Duchy of Normandy

25 November 1120

On this brisk autumn day, Henry I, King of England, boarded a ship to return home. He was accompanied by his court and household that included his only legitimate son and heir, William Adelin, several of his illegitimate children, and the younger cream of the Anglo-Norman nobility, many of whom were relations by blood or marriage, so that another vessel, The White Ship, was needed to carry everyone comfortably. While the ships were loaded and readied, William Adelin hosted a send-off party that grew increasingly lively and intoxicated with at least some of the ship’s crew apparently joining in the revelry as well. Continuing even after King Henry’s ship had set sail, William then offered The White Ship’s Master a generous reward if he would overtake the King’s ship and beat it to England. Setting sail in darkness in waters notorious for treacherous reefs, loaded with inebriated passengers and manned by an impaired crew—all told, some 300 people—The White Ship traveled scarcely a mile before running aground on a large outcrop of rock. Hulled, the ship began to sink. The desperate passengers and sailors

panicked in the darkness and cold water—most of them couldn’t swim, the nobles, especially the ladies, would be wearing voluminous garments that would weigh them down, and once in the water, a high blood/alcohol level would speed up the effects of hypothermia. William, as the Most Important Person Aboard, was quickly bundled into a small rowboat, but when he heard his half-sister Margaret calling out to him to save her, he commanded it go back, only to be swamped by people in the water trying to clamber aboard, so that the craft foundered and he and everyone else were drowned. The ship’s Master, who might have survived, is said to have let himself drown when he heard William had perished rather than face the King’s wrath. When the news did reach England, Henry’s terrified courtiers resorted to sending a tearful young child to reveal the awful news to the King.

Along with being devastated with grief for his son, Henry now also had a potential succession crisis on his hands and knew well what that could entail—when his father William I the Conqueror had died, he’d declared his second son William Rufus should inherit England, leaving the eldest, Robert Curthose, to make do with the lesser Duchy of Normandy. Robert gathered followers to oust his brother, was defeated, went on Crusade, returned, and—finding William dead and Henry now King—set out to unseat him in turn, eventually being defeated and captured at Tinchebrai in 1106. Though he’d been imprisoned in Devizes Castle since then, he was still very much alive and his only son and heir William Clito, supported by the King of France and the Count of Flanders, was now an adult and stirring up trouble. And although Henry didn’t lack for children, having sired well over twenty in his life, all but William Adelin and his sister Maud (Matilda) were illegitimate. While Henry’s own father had managed to cling to his inheritance as Duke of Normandy and eventually become King of England in spite of also being illegitimate, Anglo-Norman society’s attitudes about one’s birth had grown more exacting in the ensuing half century. Nor could Maud, married ten years before to Heinrich V, King of Germany, now Holy Roman Emperor, provide any solution to Henry’s dilemma—not only was she far away, women ruling as monarchs in their own right was virtually unheard of.

No question Henry needed an undoubted, legitimate heir as soon as possible. He was only 52, still hale and fit, a widower since his Queen had died some two years earlier. In little over a month after The White Ship disaster, he was married to Adeliza de Louvain, daughter of his ally Count Godfrey. But in spite of Henry’s attested fertility, no child was forthcoming (for which Adeliza can’t be blamed since she went on to have seven children with her second husband William d’Aubigny). Nearly five years passed, with no child and William Clito continuing to be a thorn in Henry’s side. Then came the unexpected news that Emperor Heinrich had died, leaving Maud a childless widow of 23 whose only options were to retire to a convent or marry one of the German nobles making offers. By the end of the year, Maud had settled her affairs in Germany and returned to England to be declared Henry’s legitimate heir in lieu of a new son while her father gave active consideration to finding her a new husband.