Note 311 — Chapter III · KING HENRY’S HEIR 1183-1189

Cf. R. Diceto, ii. 58, Rigord, 92, 93, Gerv. Cant., i. 435, and Gesta, ii. 50. The biographer of William the Marshal gives (ll. 8089-175) a somewhat different account of the conference; he says nothing of any request made there by Richard to his father, but represents Philip as urging Henry to increase Richard’s actual possessions by giving him Anjou, Touraine, and Maine, and asserts that before the conference Philip had won Richard over to him by promising “qu’il li dorreit en demeine” those three counties, and Richard had privately done him homage for them. If we accept this story, we must regard the whole conduct not only of Philip but also of Richard at Bonmoulins as a piece of utterly shameless acting, performed with the deliberate purpose on Richard’s part of breaking finally with his father; for no sane person could expect any other answer than a refusal to such a request as this. The whole story of the relations between Henry, Richard, and Philip is, however, only touched upon in a very meagre and perfunctory way by the Marshal’s biographer, whose subject it did not directly concern, and who has almost certainly made one positive mistake with regard to the Bonmoulins conference, in giving it a date which is five months too late; I think therefore that the version of Rigord, Ralph de Diceto, and Gervase of Canterbury is to be in every way preferred to his.