Review: 'The Greatest Knight: William Marshal' (BBC 2), presented by Dr Thomas Asbridge

This blog is contributed by Dr Simon John, Departmental Lecturer in Early Medieval History, University of Oxford

Dr Thomas Asbridge

Following hot on the heels of the first instalment of Robert Bartlett’s BBC series on the Plantagenets comes another BBC production, ‘The Greatest Knight: William Marshal’, a documentary presented by Thomas Asbridge. Marshall, Asbridge tells us at the outset, is a ‘forgotten hero of our history’. While this assertion is sure to have induced puzzlement among students of the Middle Ages, it may be interpreted as a sign that Asbridge’s efforts are targeted at a general audience.

 

Much of what was covered in last night’s documentary is well-trodden ground, in some cases quite literally so, given that several of the locations visited by Asbridge, including the tomb of Henry II at Fontevraud, the hall of the ducal palace in Poitiers, and the castle of Le Mans, all featured in the first episode of Bartlett’s Plantagenets series. The chronological scope of Asbridge’s documentary – from the middle of the twelfth century during the reign of King Stephen down to the Magna Carta crisis – is also the same as Bartlett’s first episode. More striking, however, is the proximity between Asbridge’s documentary and Saul David’s 2008 Timewatch special on William Marshal. The 2014 and 2008 productions share a title (‘The Greatest Knight’). Like David, Asbridge took a New York cab to the Morgan Library in order to consult the manuscript containing the History of William Marshall. Asbridge spoke to the same curator (one William Voelkle) featured in the Timewatch episode, and even highlighted a passage in the History to which David had drawn attention (that wherein the young Marshall is described as lazy and greedy). In terms of presenting style, Asbridge is more of a Bartlett than a David. Whereas David’s documentary featured ‘talking head’ interjections from prominent scholars including David Crouch and David Carpenter, Asbridge, like Bartlett, generally eschews that approach. The difference between the presenting styles of Asbridge and David are manifest in other ways. David sought to try and see the world through Marshal’s eyes by donning armour and taking part in a joust. Asbridge in contrast, limited himself to a careful twirl of one of the Wallace Collection’s oldest swords. To do so, he had to don blue surgical gloves, and contend with a curator hawkishly watching over him.

Given the familiarity of the subject matter of this documentary, then, did Asbridge succeed in putting his own stamp on proceedings? In one important respect, he did. He accomplished this by placing the History of William Marshall (‘a priceless window into the Medieval world’) at the very heart of his enquiry. When introducing the History near the outset, Asbridge pointed out that historians must interpret this text as a literary construction written to project a carefully tailored image of its subject. He acknowledges that the historical Marshall and the characterisation of him in the History are not necessarily one and the same. (The extent to which the latter can be disaggregated from the former is a matter that often vexes modern scholars). In conversation with the Morgan Library’s curator, Asbridge even adduces some of the salient details regarding the circumstances of the History’s provenance and reception. This is an approach which exhibits a high level of trust in the audience’s critical ability. It is not typical of a primetime documentary intended for airing on the BBC, and is all the more admirable for it.

 

The hour unfolded with Asbridge tracing the course of Marshal’s life, pointing out certain moments wherein he appears to have acted out of a desire to conform to the contemporary martial ethos which governed knightly behaviour – or, as Asbridge called it, chivalry. While academics might take issue over what ‘chivalry’ consisted of in the age of William Marhsall, and the extent to which it actually did have a bearing on the thoughtworld of the warriors of that period, it would have overcomplicated matters to have done so in this context. Asbridge’s interest focussed chiefly on Marshal’s role in the high politics of his age. The choice to open and close the documentary at Westminster was deliberate; for Asbridge, the ‘greatest revelation of William Marshal’s life’ were the attempts by men of his ilk to limit royal power, which played a part, his argument went, in the development of the system of governance under which we in Britain presently live. There is perhaps no audience better qualified than those who read this blog to discuss how that claim squares with Marshal’s vigorous attempts to shore up royal authority over the rebellious barons of England during the first years of Henry III’s minority after John’s death in 1216.

Review: The Plantagenets (Episode 1. The Devil's Brood)

Professor Robert Bartlett

This post is contributed by Dr Kathryn Dutton, Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at the University of Manchester

An enduring dynasty of fifteen English kings descended from a malevolent demon countess of Anjou: this was the opening, complete with menacing crows and interior shots of Gothic churches, to Prof. Robert Bartlett’s first episode of The Plantagenets, dedicated to the ‘Devil’s Brood’ of Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine and their sons. Bartlett took us swiftly from the marriage of the Empress Matilda to Count Geoffrey of Anjou – the first ‘Plantagenet’ – in 1128, to Magna Carta and the death of King John in 1216. Along the way, Bartlett set out what made the early Plantagenets distinctive: on one hand, the rapid construction in the 1150s of an ‘Empire’ stretching from northern England to southern France, the resuscitation of English fortunes after the ‘Anarchy’ of King Stephen’s reign, and the legal reforms of Henry II, which laid the foundations for the Common Law; on the other, he told a dramatic story of discord and conflict between fathers and sons, husbands and wives, evoked the sorry image of a humiliated and hair-shirted Henry II being flogged by the English clergy after the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket, and outlined the reigns of first an absent king, Richard Lionheart, and then a failed king, John. The hour closed with Bartlett walking away from the camera, down an exposed dirt track in the marshy wilds of the Wash, where King John famously lost men, horses and treasure just days before his death.

Bartlett’s style (and that of his production team) is familiar from his previous BBC series Inside the Medieval Mind and The Normans, and the substance of what he presented will be equally of no surprise to historians. Yet the subject matter is inherently engaging, and what made the programme particularly attractive was its varied and well-chosen locations, which included not only obvious though spectacular suspects (Canterbury Cathedral, Fontevraud) but also sites which lent the story further drama and unexpected humanity (the shrine to Saint Radegonde carved into the rock beneath Chinon, for example, with its fresco of members of the dynasty). The choice of many of these locations reflected Bartlett’s success in characterising the Plantagenets as, in essence, foreigners. Yet while the story was well told and the production lavish, something rankled. Bartlett stuck fast to a narrative which, while scholarly, was tangibly traditional. Women like the Empress Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine were ‘enraged princesses’ and schemers; although shorthand and character portraits are necessary in an overview like this, Bartlett’s account does not compare favourably with other recent BBC programmes which touch upon these themes, such as Helen Castor’s She-Wolves (the first episode of which looked at Matilda and Eleanor) or Michael Wood’s King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxons, both of which dug deeper into the motivations of both women and men, the latter through the use of an outstanding group of talking heads, including Jinty Nelson and Ryan Lavelle.

Such shortcomings make sense: in this episode, nearly a century of history was condensed into a single hour. Yet while this is a standard account of the early Plantagenets – one which will be familiar to any undergraduate student who has studied the dynasty – Bartlett and the BBC (no doubt prompted by the discovery of the body of Richard III, the ‘last Plantagenet’, in a Leicester car park in 2013) should be applauded for bringing the history of such a dynamic group of rulers to the attention of a public battered by the much better-known history of the Plantagenets’ successors, the Tudors. Enthusiasts have much to look forward to in the next programme, and can be assured that while the account given might at time lack the cutting edge of the newest research developments, it will be accurate, perceptive and engaging.