King Henry I De Falaise

   Cause of his death was Food Poisoning.

  General Notes:

Henry I, the most resilient of the Norman kings (his reign lasted thirty-five years), was nicknamed "Beauclerc" (fine scholar) for his above average education. During his reign, the differences between English and Norman society began to slowly evaporate. Reforms in the royal treasury system became the foundation upon which later kings built. The stability Henry afforded the throne was offset by problems in succession: his only surviving son, William, was lost in the wreck of the White Ship in November 1120.
The first years of Henry's reign were concerned with subduing Normandy. William the Conqueror divided his kingdoms between Henry's older brothers, leaving England to William Rufus and Normandy to Robert. Henry inherited no land but received £5000 in silver. He played each brother off of the other during their quarrels; both distrusted Henry and subsequently signed a mutual accession treaty barring Henry from the crown. Henry's hope arose when Robert departed for the Holy Land on the First Crusade; should William die, Henry was the obvious heir. Henry was in the woods hunting on the morning of August 2, 1100 when William Rufus was killed by an arrow. His quick movement in securing the crown on August 5 led many to believe he was responsible for his brother's death. In his coronation charter, Henry denounced William's oppressive policies and promising good government in an effort to appease his barons. Robert returned to Normandy a few weeks later but escaped final defeat until the Battle of Tinchebrai in 1106; Robert was captured and lived the remaining twenty-eight years of his life as Henry's prisoner.
Henry was drawn into controversy with a rapidly expanding Church. Lay investiture, the king's selling of clergy appointments, was heavily opposed by Gregorian reformers in the Church but was a cornerstone of Norman government. Henry recalled Anselm of Bec to the archbishopric of Canterbury to gain baronial support, but the stubborn Anselm refused to do homage to Henry for his lands. The situation remained unresolved until Pope Paschal II threatened Henry with excommunication in 1105. He reached a compromise with the papacy: Henry rescinded the king's divine authority in conferring sacred offices but appointees continued to do homage for their fiefs. In practice, it changed little - the king maintained the deciding voice in appointing ecclesiastical offices - but it a marked a point where kingship became purely secular and subservient in the eyes of the Church.
By 1106, both the quarrels with the church and the conquest of Normandy were settled and Henry concentrated on expanding royal power. He mixed generosity with violence in motivating allegiance to the crown and appointing loyal and gifted men to administrative positions. By raising men out of obscurity for such appointments, Henry began to rely less on landed barons as ministers and created a loyal bureaucracy. He was deeply involved in continental affairs and therefore spent almost half of his time in Normandy, prompting him to create the position of justiciar - the most trusted of all the king's officials, the justiciar literally ruled in the king's stead. Roger of Salisbury, the first justiciar, was instrumental in organizing an efficient department for collection of royal revenues, the Exchequer. The Exchequer held sessions twice a year for sheriffs and other revenue-collecting officials; these officials appeared before the justiciar, the chancellor, and several clerks and rendered an account of their finances. The Exchequer was an ingenious device for balancing amounts owed versus amounts paid. Henry gained notoriety for sending out court officials to judge local financial disputes (weakening the feudal courts controlled by local lords) and curb errant sheriffs (weakening the power bestowed upon the sheriffs by his father).
The final years of his reign were consumed in war with France and difficulties ensuring the succession. The French King Louis VI began consolidating his kingdom and attacked Normandy unsuccessfully on three separate occasions. The succession became a concern upon the death of his son William in 1120: Henry's marriage to Adelaide was fruitless, leaving his daughter Matilda as the only surviving legitimate heir. She was recalled to Henry's court in 1125 after the death of her husband, Emperor Henry V of Germany. Henry forced his barons to swear an oath of allegiance to Matilda in 1127 after he arranged her marriage to the sixteen-year-old Geoffrey of Anjou to cement an Angevin alliance on the continent. The marriage, unpopular with the Norman barons, produced a male heir in 1133, which prompted yet another reluctant oath of loyalty from the aggravated barons. In the summer of 1135, Geoffrey demanded custody of certain key Norman castles as a show of good will from Henry; Henry refused and the pair entered into war. Henry's life ended in this sorry state of affairs - war with his son-in-law and rebellion on the horizon - in December 1135.
The Wreck of the White Ship On the 25th November 1120 a disaster struck in the English Channel which had a dramatic effect, not only on the families of those involved, but on the very fabric of English Government.
The Norman dynasty had not long established itself on the English throne and King Henry I was eager that his line should continue to wear the crown for many generations to come. Despite having numerous bastard offspring, he had but two surviving legitimate children and his hopes for his family were firmly secured by the birth of his only son, William the Aethling: called by the Saxon princely title to stress that his parents had united both Saxon and Norman Royal Houses. William was a warrior prince who, even at the age of seventeen, fought alongside his father to reassert their rights in their Norman lands on the Continent. After the successful campaign of 1119 which culminated in King Louis VI of France's defeat and humiliation at the Battle of Brémule, King Henry and his entourage were finally preparing to return to England. Henry was offered a fine vessel, the White Ship, in which to set sail for England, but the King had already made his travelling arrangements and suggested that it would be an excellent choice for his son, William.
As the rising star of the Royal Court, Prince William attracted the cream of society to surround him. He was to be accompanied by some three hundred fellow passengers: 140 knights and 18 noblewomen; his half-brother, Richard; his half-sister, Matilda the Countess of Perche; his cousins, Stephen and Matilda of Blois; the nephew of the German Emperor Henry V; the young Earl of Chester and most of the heirs to the great estates of England and Normandy. There was a mood of celebration in the air and the Prince had wine brought aboard ship by the barrel-load to help the party go with a swing. Both passengers and crew soon became highly intoxicated: shouting abuse at one another and ejecting a group of clerics who had arrived to bless the voyage. Some passengers, including Stephen of Blois, who was ill with diarrhoea, appear to have sensed further trouble and decided to take a later craft.
The onboard revelries had delayed the White Ship's departure and it only finally set out to sea, after night had already fallen. The Prince found that most of the King's forces had already left him far behind yet, as with all young rabble-rousers, he wished to be first back home. He therefore ordered the ship's master to have his oarsmen row full-pelt and overtake the rest of the fleet. Being as drunk as the rest of them, the master complied and the ship soon began to race through the waves. An excellent vessel though the White Ship was, sea-faring was not as safe as it is today. Many a boat was lost on the most routine of trips and people did not travel over the water unless they really had to. With a drunken crew in charge moreover, it seems that fate had marked out the White Ship for special treatment. It hit a rock in the gloom of the night and the port-side timbers cracked wide-open to reveal a gaping whole.
Prince William's quick-thinking bodyguard immediately rushed him on deck and bundled him into a small dinghy. They were away to safety even before the crew had begun to make their abortive attempts to hook the vessel off the rocks. However, back aboard ship, the Prince could hear his half-sister calling to him, begging him not to leave her to the ravages of the merciless sea. He ordered his little boat to turn round, but the situation was hopeless. As William grew nearer once more, the White Ship began to descend beneath the waves. More and more people were in the water now and they fought desperately for the safety of the Royal dinghy. The turmoil and the weight were too much. The Prince's little boat was capsized and sank without trace.
It is said that the only person to survive the wreck to tell the tale was a Rouen butcher, called Berold, who had only been on board to collect debts owed him by the noble revellers. Finely dressed bodies, such as the Earl of Chester's, were washed up along the Norman shoreline for months after.
After King Henry heard of the disaster, it is said that he never smiled again. Desperate to secure his family's succession, he had the English barons swear an oath to uphold the rights of his only remaining legitimate child: his daughter Matilda who they were to recognise as their Queen after Henry's death. But the time had not yet come for a woman to be accepted on the English throne. When King Henry died, his nephew, Stephen of Blois siezed the crown and four years later, the status quo degenerated into a patchy Civil War.

  Research Notes:

Wikipeadia link:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_I_of_England

  Noted events in his life were:

• Marriage: to Edith, Princess of Scotland, 11 November 1100, Westminster, Middlesex.

• Marriage: to Adelaide Princess of Brabant, 24 January 1120, Windsor, Berkshire.

Henry married Lady Sybil Corbet, daughter of Sir Robert Fitz Corbet and Unknown, in They Never Married. (Lady Sybil Corbet was born in 1099 in Alcester, Warwickshire, christened in Selby, North Yorkshire and died in 1157.)

Henry next married Matilda Of Scotland, daughter of King Malcom III Canmore and Saint Margaret Unknown, on 11 November 1100 in Westminster, Middlesex. (Matilda Of Scotland was born in October 1079 in Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, died on 1 May 1118 in Westminster, Middlesex and was buried in May 1118 in Westminster Abbey, Middlesex.)

Henry next married Edith De Greystoke, daughter of Forne Fitz Sigulf and Unknown, in They Never Married. (Edith De Greystoke was born in 1080 in Greystoke, Cumberland and died in May 1172 in Hook Norton, Oxfordshire.)