It was a triumphant day for Fulk; but more triumphant still was the day when he and Geoffrey brought the new countess home to Angers. A large part of the barons and prelates who filled S. Julian’s minster on the wedding-day were Normans who in their inmost souls viewed with mingled rage and shame what they held to be the degradation of the Norman ducal house; a large part of the crowd who with their lips cheered the bridal procession as it passed through the streets of Le Mans were all the while cursing in their hearts the Angevin foe of Normandy.[618] But in Fulk’s own capital the rejoicings were universal and unalloyed. Many a brilliant match had been made by the house of Anjou, from that wedding with the heiress of Amboise which had been the beginning of its founder’s fortunes, down to Fulk’s own marriage, only seventeen years ago, with Aremburg of Maine; but never before had Black Angers welcomed such a bride as King Henry’s daughter. A writer of the next generation has left us a picture of Angers as it was in his days—days when the son of Geoffrey and Matilda was king of England and count of Anjou. In its main features that picture is almost as true a likeness now as it can have been seven hundred years ago, and by its help we can easily recall the scene of the bride’s homecoming. We can see the eager citizens swarming along the narrow, crooked streets that furrow the steep hill-side;—the clergy in their richest vestments assembling from every church in what is still, as it was then, emphatically a city of churches, and mustering probably on the very summit of the hill, in the open space before the cathedral—not the cathedral whose white twin spires now soar above all things around, the centre and the crown of Angers, but its Romanesque predecessor, crowned doubtless by a companion rather than a rival to the neighbouring dark tower of S. Aubin’s abbey, which now contrasts so vividly with the light pinnacles of S. Maurice. Thence, at a given signal, the procession streamed down with lighted tapers and waving banners to the northern gate of the city, and with psalms and hymns of rejoicing, half drowned in the shouting of the people and the clang of the bells overhead, led the new countess to her dwelling in the hall of Fulk the Black. It was Fulk who had made the first rude plans for the edifice of statesmanship which had now all but reached its last and loftiest stage. The unconscious praise of the Black Count was in every shout which beneath his palace-windows hailed in the person of his worthiest namesake and descendant the triumph of the house of Anjou.

There was no mother to welcome Geoffrey and his bride; Aremburg had not lived to see the marriage of her son;[619] and now the shadow of another coming separation fell over the mutual congratulations of Fulk and of his people. Another royal father besides Henry was seeking an Angevin bridegroom for his daughter and an Angevin successor to his throne. It was now just thirty years since the acclamations of the crusading host had chosen Godfrey of Bouillon king of Jerusalem. The crown, which he in his humility declined to wear, passed after his death to his brother Baldwin of Edessa, and then to another Baldwin, of the noble family of Réthel in Champagne. After a busy reign of ten years, Baldwin II., having no son, grew anxious to find a suitable husband for his eldest daughter and destined heiress, Melisenda. In the spring of 1128, with the unanimous approval of his subjects, he offered her hand, together with his crown, to Count Fulk of Anjou.[620] He could not have chosen a fitter man. Fulk was in the prime of life,[621] young enough to bring to his task all the vigour and energy needful to withstand the ever-encroaching Infidels, yet old enough to have learned political caution and experience; and if the one qualification was needed for defence against external foes, the other was no less so for steering a safe course amid the endless jealousies of the Frank princes in Palestine. Moreover, Fulk was known in the East by something more than reputation. Free of all connexion with the internal disputes of the realm, he was yet no utter stranger who would come thither as a mere foreign interloper. He had dwelt there for a whole year as a guest and a friend, and the memory of his visit had been kept alive in the minds of the people of the land, as well as in his own, by a yearly contribution which, amid all his cares and necessities at home, he had never failed to send to the Knights of the Temple for the defence of the Holy City.[622] Baldwin had thus every inducement to make the offer; and Fulk had equally good reasons for accepting it. His was clearly no case of mere vulgar longing after a crown. There may have been a natural feeling that it would be well to put Geoffrey’s father on a titular level with Matilda’s; if the prophecy said to have been made to Fulk the Good was already in circulation, there may have been also a feeling that it was rapidly approaching its fulfilment. But every recorded act of Fulk V. shews that he was too practical in temper to be dazzled by the mere glitter of a crown, without heeding the solid advantages to be gained with it or to be given up for its sake. He must have known that the sacred border-land of Christendom and Islam was a much harder post to defend than the marchland of France and Aquitaine had ever been; he must have known that the consort of the queen of Jerusalem would find little rest upon her throne. But this second Count Fulk the Palmer cared for rest as little as the first. It was work that he longed for: and work at home was at an end for him. The mission of the counts of Anjou, simply as such, was accomplished; when the heir of the Marchland wedded the Lady-elect of Normandy and England, he entered upon an entirely new phase of political existence. Fulk had in fact, by marrying his son to the Empress, cut short his own career, and left himself no choice but to submit to complete effacement or seek a new sphere of action elsewhere. Had Baldwin’s proposal come a year earlier, it might have caused a struggle between inclination and duty; coming as it did just after Henry’s, it extricated all parties from their last difficulty.

Fulk could not, however, accept the proposal without the consent of his overlord King Louis and that of his own subjects.[623] Both were granted; his people had prospered under him, but they, too, doubtless saw that alike for him and for them it was time to part. On that same Whit-Sunday when young Geoffrey was knighted at Rouen by King Henry, his father, prostrate before the high altar in the cathedral church of Tours, took the cross at the hands of Archbishop Hildebert.[624] From the wedding festivities at Le Mans he came home to make his preparations for departure. It may be that once more in the old hall overlooking the Mayenne the barons of Anjou and Touraine gathered round the last Count Fulk, to be solemnly released from their allegiance to him, and to perform their homage to his successor. A more secluded spot was chosen for the last family meeting. A few miles south-east of Saumur, in the midst of dark woods and fruitful apple-orchards, a pious and noble crusader, Robert of Arbrissel, had founded in the early years of Fulk’s reign the abbey of Fontevraud, whose church has counted ever since among the architectural marvels of western Europe. An English visitor now-a-days feels as if some prophetic instinct must have guided its architect and given to his work that peculiar awe-striking character which so exactly fits it for the burial-place of the two Angevin kings of England whose sculptured effigies still remain in its south transept. The first of their race who wore a crown, however, came thither not for his last sleep, but only for a few hours of rest ere he started on his eastward journey. The monastery was a double one—half for men and half for women; in the latter Fulk’s eldest daughter, the widow of William the Ætheling, had lately taken the veil. The cloisters of Fontevraud offered a quiet refuge where father and children could all meet undisturbed to exchange their last farewells.[625] Before Whitsuntide came round again Fulk and Anjou had parted for ever.[626]

It is not for us to follow him on his lifelong crusade.[627] The Angevin spirit of restless activity and sleepless vigilance, of hard-working thoroughness and indomitable perseverance, never, perhaps, shewed to better advantage than in this second half of the eventful life of Fulk of Jerusalem; but we have to trace its workings only as they influenced the history of our own land. Our place is not with the devoted personal followers who went with Fulk across land and sea, but with those who stayed to share the fortunes of his successor in Anjou. Our concern is with the father of the Angevin kings, not of Jerusalem, but of England.

Note A.
THE HOUSES OF ANJOU AND GÂTINAIS.