Royal Acts of Mutilation: The Case Against Henry I

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Abstract
The subject of mutilations is one I would cheerfully have left to others were it not for its bearing on the character of King Henry I. The sources for his reign disclose a number of instances in which alleged wrongdoers were punished by mutilation, and these punishments have earned Henry a somber reputation among modern historians. Christopher Brooke calls him a “savage, ruthless man”; Emma Mason deplores his “reign of calculated terror”; R.H.C. Davis speaks of his “reputation for brutality.” To Sir Richard Southern, “Henry's vengeance was terrible and barbaric … . He had a morbid dislike of ridicule and he punished with a Byzantine ferocity already outmoded in the humaner society of feudal France, not only treachery and rebellion but slights to his dignity and honour.”Perhaps the best known contemporary mutilation story comes from the 1125 account in theAnglo-Saxon Chronicle, where it is disclosed that Henry had the minters of England castrated and deprived of their right hands. We learn of Henry's morbid dislike of ridicule from an event of about the same time reported by the Norman monk, Orderic Vitalis. Henry had ordered the blinding of three captive rebels when Count Charles the Good of Flanders, who happened to be visiting, protested that it was unjust to mutilate prisoners captured in the service of their lords.

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