Angevin Empire

Angevin empire, the territories, extending in the latter part of the 12th century from Scotland to the Pyrenees, that were ruled by the English king Henry II and his immediate successors, Richard I and John; they were called the Angevin kings because Henry’s father was count of Anjou. Henry acquired most of his continental possessions before becoming king of England. By inheritance through his mother (King Henry I’s daughter, Matilda), he became duke of Normandy in 1150; he succeeded his father as count of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine in 1151; and in 1152, by marrying Eleanor of Aquitaine, he acquired that duchy, together with Gascony, Poitou, and Auvergne. Brittany, first conquered by Henry I in 1113, was finally brought into the Angevin “empire” when Henry II’s son Geoffrey, who had married the heiress of Duke Conan IV, succeeded as duke of Brittany in 1171. Although all these lands were fiefs, held of the king of France, their concentration in one man’s hands was a serious threat to the French monarchy, which had direct control of a much smaller area of land. As king of England from 1154, Henry had direct rule over all England and southern Wales, and suzerainty over the principality of Gwynedd in northern Wales. In 1171 he annexed Ireland and obtained direct control of the eastern part of the island and nominal control of the remainder. Finally, from 1174 to 1189, William I the Lion, king of Scotland, captured in a skirmish in 1174, was obliged to accept Henry as his overlord.

Henry’s plans to divide his “empire” among his sons led to many quarrels and wars, which the French king eagerly fostered. Only Richard and John survived their father’s death (1189), and although John was confirmed as lord of Ireland, which he had held since 1177, he was subject to Richard, who otherwise held all his father’s possessions. Early in John’s reign (1199–1216) the French king Philip II Augustus wrested from him Normandy, Anjou, Maine, and Touraine. By the Treaty of Paris (1259) the English retained only the duchy of Guyenne (a much-reduced vestige of Aquitaine, with Gascony). Its confiscation in 1337, together with an English claim to the French throne, led to the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War, by the end of which England retained in France only Calais, which was finally lost in 1558.