# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Geoffrey (1158-1186)

​GEOFFREY (1158–1186), count of Brittany, fourth son of Henry II, by his queen, Eleanor, was born on 23 Sept. 1158, and was probably called Geoffrey after his uncle, the Count of Nantes, then lately dead, his father, perhaps from his birth, hoping to provide for him by the acquisition of Brittany. As Henry had set up and supported Count Conan the Little, he had good reason to expect that he would not oppose his designs, but he had to reckon with the ill-will of Louis VII and the dislike of the Breton lords to Norman domination. During the war of 1166–7 which Henry undertook on Conan's behalf he proposed that Geoffrey should marry the count's daughter and heiress, Constance, who was then five, and should be recognised as the heir to Brittany. Conan agreed, and gave up Brittany to Henry, reserving for himself only the county of Guingamp and the honour of Richemont. In January 1169 Henry and Louis agreed at Montmirail that Geoffrey should do homage for Brittany to his eldest brother Henry, as duke of Normandy, and Henry did homage for it to Louis (Robert of Torigni, ii. 12). Accordingly Geoffrey was sent over from England in May, was acknowledged on his arrival at Rennes by Stephen, the bishop, and other prelates, and received the homage of the Breton lords in the church of St. Peter. He joined his father at Nantes, and after Christmas accompanied him to different parts of Brittany, receiving homage from the lords who had failed to attend at Rennes (Gesta Henrici, i. 3). While Henry lay sick at Domfront in August 1170, he divided his dominions among his sons by will, and left Brittany to Geoffrey, with Constance as his wife. Conan died on 20 Feb. 1171, and Henry at once took measures to secure Brittany, and adjudged Guingamp and Richemont to Geoffrey. The following Christmas Geoffrey attended the court of his brother Henry at Bures. He and his brother Richard were living with their mother in England in 1173, and were sent by her to the French court to join the young prince Henry in a revolt against their father (ib. p. 40). The brothers took oath at a council at Paris that they would not make any peace with their father except by the advice of Louis and the French barons. Several Breton lords joined in the revolt. Geoffrey marched with his brothers in the French army to invade Normandy. At the conference held at Gisors on 25 Sept. Henry offered to give up to him all the hereditary estates of Constance as soon as he married her with the pope's consent. As, however, Louis was not willing that a reconciliation should as yet take place between Henry and his sons, the offer was not accepted. On 30 Sept. of the following year Henry made peace with his sons at a meeting held at Mont-Louis, near Amboise; he promised Geoffrey half the revenues of Brittany in money until his ​marriage with Constance, and accepted his homage. Geoffrey did his homage at Le Mans early in 1175, and before Easter was sent by his father into Brittany to destroy the fortifications which had been raised during the rebellion, Roland de Dinan being sent with him to act as his father's representative. By Roland's advice he acted obediently towards his father, and cultivated the goodwill of the Breton lords. He forfeited the possessions of Eudo of Porhoët, one of the most powerful of the rebel party (Rob. Torigni, ii. 53). In company with Richard he came over to England at Easter 1176, landed at Southampton, and spent the feast at Winchester with his father, who received his sons with great joy (Gesta Henrici, i. 115). After the festival was over, he received his father's permission to cross to Normandy (Hoveden, ii. 93); he returned to England and spent Christmas with the king at Nottingham. He seems to have stayed in England until the following August; he accompanied his father from Portsmouth to Normandy on the 17th, and was at once sent against the rebel lord Guyomar de Léon, whom he compelled to submit (Rob. Torigni, ii. 67). He spent Christmas with his father at Angers. On 6 Aug. 1178 Henry knighted him at Woodstock (R. Diceto, i. 426). He at once sailed to Normandy, and engaged in feats of arms on the border between Normandy and France and elsewhere, for he was anxious to share in the military renown of his brothers (Gesta Henrici, i. 207). He returned to England at Christmas, which he spent with the king at Winchester. After Easter 1179 he distinguished himself in another war against Guyomar, whom he utterly subdued, leaving him only two lordships until the following Christmas, when the defeated rebel promised that he would take his departure for the Holy Land, and giving his son only a small share of his father's estates (Rob. Torigni, ii. 81).
In the following November Geoffrey attended the coronation of Philip II, which took place before the death of Louis, and did homage to him for Brittany (Canon. Laudun., Recueil des Historiens, xiii. 683), and in 1181, in conjunction with his brothers Henry and Richard, upheld the new king against the lords who were in rebellion against him, humbling the Count of Sancerre, and giving Philip help against the Duke of Burgundy, the Countess of Champagne, and the Count of Flanders (Diceto, ii. 9). Towards the end of July he married Constance (Rob. Torigni, ii. 104 n.) He spent the festival of St. John 1182 with his father at Grandmont, and feasted with the monks there, and then went with Henry to help Richard, who was besieging the rebels in Périgueux (Geoffrey of Vigeois, Recueil, xviii. 212). He was at Caen with his father and brothers during the Christmas of 1182, and went with them to Le Mans, when Henry, in order to put a stop to the practices which his eldest son had been carrying on against his younger son Richard in Aquitaine, commanded both Richard and Geoffrey to do homage to their eldest brother. Geoffrey obeyed; Richard refused, and a fresh quarrel broke out between him and the younger Henry. The old king ordered Geoffrey and his eldest brother to make war upon Richard, and Geoffrey raised an army of Brabantine mercenaries, invaded Poitou, and wasted it with fire and sword. Henry saw that unless he interfered Richard would be crushed, and ordered his sons to come to a conference. Geoffrey paid no regard to this, went on with the war, and in February 1183 occupied the castle of Limoges, where he was joined by the younger Henry. On 1 March Henry II, who was reconciled to Richard, began the siege of the castle. During its progress he was twice shot at by the partisans of his sons, and in their presence (Gesta Henrici, i. 296). While the younger Henry drew off his father's attention by false promises, Geoffrey and his Brabantines wasted the country, robbing churches, burning towns and villages, and sparing neither age nor sex nor condition. He sent to his father in a time of truce, requesting him to order two of his lords, Jerome of Montreuil and Oliver FitzErnis, to come to him, as though he wished to offer terms through them. When they came, his men, in his presence and with his approval, wounded Jerome with the sword, and threw Oliver over the bridge into the river. Again, he pretended that he wished to confer with his father about bringing the war to an end, and by this means got admission into the town of Limoges, where he plundered the shrine of St. Martial, carried off gold and silver plate from other churches, and used his spoil to pay his mercenaries (ib. p. 299). The death of his eldest brother Henry on 11 June put Geoffrey in a different position. It was perhaps at this time (Robert of Torigni puts it under 1182) that the war was carried into his own possessions, and that Henry's troops seized the castle of Rennes. Geoffrey besieged them, and destroyed the abbey of St. George and part of the town, and also destroyed the town and castle of Bécherel, belonging to Roland of Dinan. He made peace with his father at Angers. Henry declared his castles forfeited, and enforced a reconciliation with his brother Richard. In 1184, probably after Henry had returned to England in June (Norgate, ii. 233), ​Geoffrey joined his youngest brother John in making war on Richard, who retaliated by invading Brittany. Henry called his sons to England in November, and caused them to make peace with each other. He then sent Geoffrey to Normandy. Geoffrey held a parliament at Rennes in 1185, and promulgated a series of six articles called the ‘Assize of Count Geoffrey,’ to restrain the partition of baronies and knight's fees, to prevent the marriage of heiresses without permission, and generally to preserve the rights of the lord (Morice, Histoire de Bretagne, i. 303). Before the spring was over, Geoffrey was worsted by Richard, who had renewed the war against him, and Henry was forced to go over to Normandy and bring Richard to order. Geoffrey was, however, wrathful with his father; he had set his heart on obtaining Anjou after the death of the young Henry, and his father would not give him the county, for he made Richard, now his eldest son, duke of Normandy and count of Anjou in the stead of Henry. Geoffrey's attempt to gain Anjou was no doubt at the bottom of Richard's quarrel with him, though it was nominally about boundaries. Philip of France urged Geoffrey's claim, and Geoffrey, when he found that his father would not be moved, went to Paris in 1186 and, it is said, engaged in a plot against him. Philip received him with joy, for Geoffrey is said to have proposed to transfer his homage for Brittany from his father and Richard and become the man of the king of France, receiving from him the office of grand seneschal. While he was in Paris he died on 19 Aug. at the age of twenty-eight, being killed, according to some accounts, in a tournament (Gesta Henrici, i. 350; Hoveden, ii. 309), according to others dying of disease (Gervase, i. 336; Rigord, Recueil, xvii. 20), of a fever (Giraldus Cambrensis, De Instructione Principis, p. 34), or of a sudden complaint in the bowels which seized him on account of his threats against his father (Gesta Henrici u. s.). Philip lamented much for him, embalmed his body, and buried it in the church of Notre-Dame. Geoffrey was good-looking and fairly tall, a good soldier, and an eloquent speaker, but he was false and plausible, universally distrusted and known as a mischief-maker and a contriver of evil (De Instructione Principis, p. 35; Topographia Hibernica, p. 199; Gesta Henrici, i. 295, passim). He left a daughter named Eleanor (two daughters according to Ralph de Diceto, i. 41), and his wife Constance with child. She bore on 29–30 April in the following year a son, Arthur [q. v.], the victim of his uncle King John's ambition.
W. H.