Deceember 8th and the Angevins

December 8th mattered to the Angevins. On this date in 1154, Henry and Eleanor landed in England to claim the crown and begin the Plantagenet dynasty. Henry insisted upon sailing in a savage gale, a very bad habit of his that could not have endeared him to his sailors, courtiers, or his wife. Eleanor must have been especially frustrated when he did this in 1174, for their young children, Joanna and John, sailed with the fleet, and Eleanor, about to begin her long English confinement, had no say in the matter. Henry passed on this insanity gene to son Richard, who attempted to sail from Portsmouth to Barfleur in a storm in May, 1194, so desperate was he to get to Normandy and challenge the French king. The winds were so strong that he was forced to return to Portsmouth, and there he waited for favorable weather, doubtless because Eleanor played the mother card and refused to let him try it again.
Also on December 8th, 1174, the captive Scots King William the Lion was compelled to sign the treaty of Falaise, which was highly favorable to the English. William had no leverage for he was languishing at the time as a captive in one of Henry’s castles. It is always easier to strike a deal with a prisoner, after all.
And Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots and bad decisions, was born on this date in 1542.
Lastly, for those of us who grew up in the age of the Beatles, on December 8, 1980, John Lennon was murdered in New York City by a deranged fan; he was only forty at the time, so the world lost so many years of music.