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Updated: June 6, 2025
Henry's arguments at Rome Orderic tells us that threats, prayers, and money were combined were effective, and the marriage was ordered dissolved. Excommunication and interdict were necessary to enforce this decision; but at last, in the spring of 1125, Fulk was obliged to yield, and William Clito began his wanderings once more, followed everywhere by the "long arm" of his uncle.
The natural policy of opposition was the support of William Clito. At a great council of his kingdom, meeting at the same time with Henry's court in which Matilda's heirship was recognized, the French king bespoke the sympathy and support of his barons for "William of Normandy."
It is probable that at no previous date would this ceremony have been acceptable, either to Louis or to Henry. On Louis's part it was not merely a recognition of Henry's right to the duchy of Normandy, but it was also a formal abandonment of William Clito, and an acceptance of William, Henry's son, as the heir of his father.
Clito in the Christian Perfection was so expeditious with his prayers that he used to boast that he could both dress and do his devotions in a quarter of an hour. What was the longest time you ever took to dress or undress and say your prayers? Then, again, there is another Anglican young gentleman in the same High Church book who always fasts on Good Friday and the Thirtieth of January.
The marriage of William Clito with Sibyl, with all that it might carry with it, was too threatening a danger to be allowed to stand, if in any way it could be avoided. The convenient plea of relationship, convenient to be remembered or forgotten according to the circumstances, was urged upon the pope.
The only thing that, in this immense catastrophe, has preserved its likeness to its former state, is this mountain, the mountain where Neptune shut up his well-beloved Clito, the daughter of Evenor and Leucippe, the mother of Atlas, and the ancestress of Antinea, the sovereign under whose dominion you are about to enter forever."
It was not far from the sea, a plain situated in the midst of the isle, the most beautiful, and, they say, the most fertile of plains. About fifty stades from that plain, in the middle of the isle, was a mountain. There dwelt one of those men who, in the very beginning, was born of the Earth, Evenor, with his wife, Leucippe. They had only one daughter, Clito.
Another time, talking with Clito the sculptor, he said to him, "I wonder not that you make so great a difference between the statue of a man who is running a race and that of one who stands his ground to wait for his antagonist with whom he is to wrestle, or to box, or to play a prize at all sorts of defence; but what ravishes the beholders is, that your statues seem to be alive.
Possibly Henry feared a movement in Normandy itself in favour of young William Clito, or learned of some expression of a wish not infrequent among the Norman barons in times a little later, that he might succeed to his father's place. At any rate, at this time, Henry ordered Robert of Beauchamp to seize the boy in the castle of Elias of Saint-Saens, to whom he had committed him five years before.
Many other victims of his ambition might have been conjured up by his remorse such as the citizen of Rouen, spared by Robert, whom Henry threw from the top of a high tower, whither he had treacherously invited him; the Norman barons, with whom he had broken his faith; his gallant, generous brother, so cruelly betrayed and imprisoned; his persecuted nephew, William Clito; the unhappy troubadour, Lucas de Barre, whom he had blinded, for writing a satire on him, and who dashed out his brains in despair on the prison wall; and almost the worst of all the poor children of his illegitimate daughter Juliana, left to the ferocious revenge of Raoul de Harenc, by whom their eyes were put out and their noses cut off.
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