Henry The Young King - Death and Burial

Death and Burial

Henry the Young King died in the summer of 1183, during the course of a campaign in the Limousin against his father and his brother Richard. He had just completed a pillage of local monasteries to raise money to pay his mercenaries. He contracted dysentery at the beginning of June. Weakening fast, he was taken to Martel, near Limoges. It was clear to his household that he was dying on 7 June when he was confessed and received the last rites. As a token of his penitence for his war against his father he prostrated himself naked on the floor before a crucifix. He made a testament and since he had taken a crusader's vow, he gave his cloak to his friend William Marshal with the plea that he should take the cloak (presumably with the crusader's cross stitched to it) to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. On his deathbed, he reportedly asked to be reconciled to his father, but King Henry, fearing a trick, refused to see him. He died on 11 June, clasping a ring his father had sent instead as a sign of his forgiveness. After his death, his father is said to have exclaimed: "He cost me much, but I wish he had lived to cost me more."

After his death there was an attempt by his mother and a faction of his friends to promote his sainthood. Thomas of Earley, archdeacon of Wells, published a sermon not long afterwards which detailed miraculous events attending the cortège which took his body north to Normandy. Henry had left orders that his entrails and other body parts should be buried at the abbey of Charroux, but the rest of his body should rest in Rouen Cathedral. However, during the funeral procession, a member of Henry's household was seized by his mercenary captains for debts the late king had owed them. The knights accompanying his corpse were so penniless they had to be fed by charity at the monastery of Vigeois. There were large and emotional gatherings wherever his body rested. At Le Mans, the local bishop halted the procession and ordered the body buried in his cathedral, perhaps to help defuse the civil unrest Henry's death had caused. The dean of Rouen recovered the body from the chapter of Le Mans a month later by law suit so the Young Henry could be buried in Normandy as he had desired in his testament.

His remains are in Rouen Cathedral, where his tomb is on the opposite side of the altar from the tomb of his younger brother Richard, with whom he was perpetually quarrelling. The tomb of the archbishop of Rouen, who had married him and Margaret, lies nearby in the ambulatory. His brothers Richard I and John both later became king.