In 1163 he was convicted as a traitor, having been defeated in trial by battle,[3] and took the habit of a monk, spending his last years at Reading Abbey.
His influence at the royal court was greatest during the reign of Stephen, but it continued into the early years of Henry II's.
Henry's body was carried senseless from the site of the duel by monks of the nearby Reading Abbey, but he survived and took the Benedictine cowl.
[citation needed] Henry of Essex is thought to have died at Reading Abbey in the same year that Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered, 1170.
[10] [11] It is unknown which wife was the mother of Henry's daughter, Agnes, who married Aubrey de Vere, first Earl of Oxford, but Cecily seems most likely.