Book Review: The White Ship by Charles Spencer

The White Ship, by Charles Spencer (William Collins 2011) tells the story of a shipwreck outside Barfleur Harbour in 1120. The significance of this event lay in the identity of the ship’s passengers. These included William Atheling, the heir to Henry 1 of England, as well as a large number of young men who were either titled or the heirs to titles in both England and Normandy.

This is a history book then, but narrated as a story as much as a historical enquiry, which makes it very readable. All the more so since the story concerns a relatively small number of people; the top layers of society in the feudal states of England, Normandy and the various states that made up the territory we today call France. Troublesome uncles, supportive aunts, fractious siblings and family black sheep vie for attention on its pages so that at times it reads like one of those doorstop family sagas. Grudges are nurtured and revenges taken as families vie for supremacy.

All this drama is however underpinned by a bedrock of thoroughly researched history, which frequently references contemporary chroniclers. These include William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, Walter Map, Orderic Vitalis and Robert Wace. This list of names raises the question of the target audience for the book.

Those medieval historians are familiar names to professional historians and to well-read amateurs. For a lot of people though, 1066 and the battle of Hastings is as much as they know. The satirical history 1066 and all that gives 1066 as one of only two memorable dates in English history, the other being 55 BC when Julius visited Britain. Of the century leading up to Hastings only Canute’s vain attempt to hold back the sea stands out as being part of the folk memory, whilst in the century following William Rufus coming to an unfortunate end in the New Forest also stands on its own.

 

The sheer level of historical detail covered by Spencer could be considered too overwhelming to the casual reader, were it not for the fact that he spins such an entertaining tale. To do so he creates a very clear structure for the narrative. The sinking of the White Ship, which Spencer argues deserves more recognition as a key event in our history, comes in the middle of his story. First, he takes us on a whistle stop tour of the history of Normandy, from its founding in 911 by Rolf the Ganger, which provides context for the Norman invasion of England. Spencer helps the reader understand that the Conquerors heirs very much still saw themselves as rulers of the Duchy of Normandy with continental aspirations as well as insular ones.

 After a detailed explanation of the sinking of the Blanche Nef (White Ship) we are guided through its messy consequences, chiefly the Civil war between Henry I daughter Matilda and his nephew Stephen, until we reach a resolution of sorts with the beginning of the reign of Henry II.

 This passage through two and a half centuries of history can sometimes be bewildering. When I talked of a relatively small group of people at the top of society, this still runs to a cast of up to a hundred characters. Spencer keeps on track by not losing sight of the strategic big picture. At the same time, the small details often surprise and entertain.

My favourite example of this concerns the aftermath of the battle of Tinchebrai in 1106. Henry had been made king of England after the death of William Rufus, his brother. The oldest sibling of William the Conquerors children, Robert, had been made Duke of Normandy by William, but still harboured ambitions of ruling England. In 1106 Henry had crossed the channel to confront Robert, meeting him in battle at Tinchebrai. The strategic build-up and outcome of the battle are well described. But Spencer also gives us this little nugget; among the captured knights was a certain Edgar the Atheling. Edgar belonged to the West Saxon ruling family. After Harold Godwinson’s death at Hastings, the Witan, the council leading English nobles, had declared Edgar, then a teenager, as king. But a week later, when William arrived in London, Edgar, lacking an army to back him up, stepped aside and went into exile. Forty years later, there he was at at Tinchebrai, surrendering to Henry, whose wife was Edgar’s niece.

 This tantalising glimpse of a single thread is typical of the book, hinting at a story that would bear investigation. There are so many individuals whose stories deserve a book of their own who have walk-on parts in the central story of the family of William of Normandy. Robert De Belleme, for example, is the quintessential Norman bad guy, the Sherriff of Nottingham on steroids, who would make a perfect blockbuster villain. Violent, scheming, a born survivor, he leaps off the page. He would also be right at home in the Westeros of George Martin’s Fire and Ice series, which both as books and as  TV series, have become part of the pop culture of the last decade. When they first became popular initial comparisons were made with the Wars of the Roses to describe the set-up of Noble Houses vying to control the throne. In truth though, the two centuries following the Norman Conquest make a much better template for the society and the way of warfare of the Game of Thrones universe.

It is no co-incidence that the first book in Martin’s series  opens with a jousting tournament. Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, set in the first decade of the thirteenth century, does exactly the same, for the same reason, to introduce the cast of characters. The White Ship will undoubtedly appeal to Game of Thrones aficionados. There is another literary connection we can make. Ellis Peters Chronicles of Brother Cadfael, the herbalist monk of Shrewsbury Abbey who has a sideline solving murders, is set during the Civil war described in the final third of the White Ship. This book would be instructive for Cadfael fans, who through these books are familiar with Stephen’s siege of Shrewsbury (One Corpse too many) and defeat and capture at Lincoln (Dead Mans' Ransom). Cadfael himself is an ex-crusader who fought in the army of Robert of Normandy in the Holy Land. He understands the chivalric demands of fealty to a chosen Lord and does his best to be even-handed in his treatment of protagonists on both sides. His confidant though is Hugh Beringer, who is very much King Stephens man and opposed to the Empress Matilda. We inevitably get a more sympathetic portrait of the King than of Matilda.

 

Spencer goes a long way to redressing this. In particular, he is at pains to argue that the many criticisms of Matilda, voiced at length in the Cadfael novels, are of traits that would be considered virtues in a male protagonist. That is another strength of Spencer in this book. He is describing a world which was very much male, given the warrior ethos of the ruling classes. However, even in that world some women managed to carve out a space for themselves. In addition to Matilda there is Stephen’s Queen, Mathilde of Boulogne, who keeps his cause alive even when he is captured at Lincoln and imprisoned in Bristol. There is also, right at the beginning of the story, Emma of Normandy, daughter of the Duke, who is married to Ethelred, king of England, and then, after the death of Ethelred and his heir Edmund Ironside, to Canute, the Danish conqueror. Both of her sons by Canute become king of England. Emma is a fascinating character who influences English History for two generations. Royal women may have been deployed as pawns in the strategic chess game, but the strong-minded ones, like Emma and Matilda, often wrote their own rules.

 As a keen amateur historian I was aware of many of the events in this book, but it made me realise there was much more to learn. For instance, I had always thought that Robert, as Duke William’s eldest son, had inherited Normandy through seniority and was content with that. The White Ship made me realise it wasn’t as simple. The strife with his brothers may have influenced Henry to be happy with having a single male heir, which turned out not be good for England after the death of William Atheling. The competition between Robert, William Rufus and Henry also foreshadowed that between the children of Matilda’s son Henry, who eventually ruled as Henry II of England. Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland would be another set of battling brothers, but that is another story………..