(1157-1199)
[Illustration: Richard Coeur de Lion.]
Richard I., King of England, surnamed Coeur de Lion, was the third son
of Henry II. and his queen, Eleanor, and was born at Oxford, in the
king's manor house there, afterward the monastery of the White Friars,
in September, 1157. By the treaty of Montmirail, concluded on January 6,
1169, between Henry and Louis VII. of France, it was stipulated that the
duchy of Aquitaine should be made over to Richard, who should do homage
and fealty for it to Louis, and should espouse Adelais, or Alice, that
king's youngest daughter; and in 1170 King Henry, being taken ill at
Domfront, in Maine, made a will, by which he confirmed this arrangement.
In 1173 Richard, with his younger brother, Geoffrey, and their mother,
joined their eldest brother, Henry, in his first rebellion against their
father. On the submission of the rebels, in September, 1174, Richard
received two castles in Poitou, with half the revenue of that earldom,
and, along with Geoffrey, did homage and swore fealty to their father.
Nevertheless Richard continued from this time to hold the government of
the whole of Aquitaine, and to be usually styled, as before, Duke of
Aquitaine, or Duke of Poitou (which were considered as the same title),
although it appears that King Henry now looked upon the arrangements
made at the treaty of Montmirail as annulled, and that dukedom to have
actually reverted to himself. In 1183 Richard refused, when commanded by
his father, to do homage for Aquitaine to his elder brother, Henry; on
which his brothers Henry and Geoffrey invaded the duchy, and a new war
ensued between them and their father, who was assisted by Richard,
which, however, was terminated by the death of the eldest of the three
brothers in June of that same year, when Richard became his father's
heir-apparent. But at an interview between King Henry and Philip
Augustus, now King of France, in November, 1188, Richard, apparently
impelled by a suspicion that his father intended to leave his crown to
his younger brother, John, and also professing to resent his father's
conduct in withholding from him his affianced bride, the French king's
sister, suddenly declared himself the liegeman of Philip for all his
father's dominions in France; whence arose a new war, in which Philip
and Richard speedily compelled King Henry to yield to all their demands,
and a treaty to that effect was about to be signed when King Henry died,
on July 6, 1189. Richard was present at the burial of his father in the
choir of the convent of Fontevrault.
Notwithstanding his apprehensions, real or affected, of his brother
John, Richard made no particular haste to come over to England, but,
contenting himself with ordering his mother, Queen Eleanor, to be
liberated from confinement, and to be invested with the regency of that
kingdom, he first proceeded to Rouen, where he was formally acknowledged
as Duke of Normandy on July 20th, and it was August 13th before he
arrived at Portsmouth (or, as others say, at Southampton). His
coronation, from which the commencement of his reign is dated, took
place in Westminster Abbey on September 3d. It was on occasion of that
ceremony that a furious riot broke out among the Jews in London, which
was in the course of the next six months renewed in most of the great
towns throughout the kingdom. At York, in March, 1190, a body of 500
Jews, with their wives and children, having taken refuge in the castle,
found no other way of saving themselves from their assailants than by
first cutting the throats of the women and children and then stabbing
one another.
A short time before his father's death Richard, and his then friend,
Philip Augustus, had, as it was expressed, taken the cross, that is to
say, had publicly vowed to proceed to the Holy Land, to assist in
recovering from the infidels the city and kingdom of Jerusalem, which
had recently (1187) fallen into the hands of the great Saladin. The
mighty expedition, in which all the principal nations of Western
Christendom now joined, for the accomplishment of this object is known
by the name of the Third Crusade. Leaving the government of his kingdom
during his absence in the hands of William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely and
chancellor, and Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham and justiciary, Richard
took his departure from England on December 11th of this same year,
1189, and proceeding to Normandy, united his forces with those of
Philip Augustus in the plain of Vezelay on July 1, 1190. The two friends
proceeded together at the head of an army of more than 100,000 men as
far as Lyons, where they separated on the 31st; Philip taking the road
to Genoa, Richard that to Marseilles, where he was to meet his fleet.
The fleet, however, not arriving so soon as was expected, Richard in his
impatience hired thirty small vessels for the conveyance of himself and
his suite, and, sailing for Naples, arrived there on August 28th. On
September 8th he proceeded by sea to Salerno, where he remained till the
23d, and then sailed for Messina, which port his fleet had reached about
a week before, with the army, which it had taken on board at Marseilles.
The French king had also arrived at Messina a few days before his
brother of England.
The two kings remained together at Messina till the end of March, 1191.
During their stay Richard compelled Tancred, who had usurped the crown
of Sicily, to relinquish the dower of his sister Joan, the widow of
William, the late sovereign, and to pay him besides forty thousand
ounces of gold. In return he betrothed his nephew, Arthur, the son of
his next brother, Geoffrey, to Tancred's infant daughter, and formed a
league offensive and defensive with the Sicilian king--a connection
which afterward cost him dear, for it was the source of the enmity of
the Emperor Henry VI., who had married Constantia, the aunt of William,
and claimed the throne of Sicily in right of his wife. After the dispute
with Tancred had been settled, the latent rivalry of Richard and Philip
broke out in a quarrel about the Princess Adelais, whom her brother
Philip insisted that Richard should espouse, in conformity with their
betrothment, now that his father no longer lived to oppose their union.
But if Richard had ever cared anything for the French princess, that
attachment had now been obliterated by another, which he had some years
before formed for Berengaria, the beautiful daughter of Sancho VI.
(styled the Wise), King of Navarre; in fact he had by this time sent his
mother Eleanor to her father's court to solicit that lady in marriage,
and, his proposals having been accepted, the two were now actually on
their way to join him. In these circumstances Philip found himself
obliged to recede from his demand; and the matter was arranged by an
agreement that Richard should pay a sum of ten thousand marks, in five
yearly instalments, and restore Adelais, who had previously been
conducted into England, and the places of strength that had been given
along with her as her marriage portion, when he should have returned
from Palestine.
Richard, having sent his mother home to England, sailed from Messina on
April 7th, at the head of a fleet of about two hundred ships, of which
fifty-three were large vessels of the sort styled galleys; his sister,
the queen dowager of Sicily, and the Princess Berengaria accompanying
him. The King of France had set sail about a week before. Several
months, however, elapsed before Richard reached the Holy Land, having
been detained by an attack which he made upon the island of Cyprus;
Isaac, the king, or emperor, of which had ill used the crews of some of
the English ships that had been driven upon his coasts in a storm.
Richard took Limasol, the capital, by assault; and that blow was soon
followed by the complete submission of Isaac and the surrender of the
whole island. Isaac was put into confinement, and remained a captive
till his death in 1195. Meanwhile the island of Cyprus was made over by
Richard, in 1192, to Guy of Lusignan, upon his resignation of the now
merely titular royalty of Jerusalem to his rival Henry of Champagne and
Guy's posterity reigned in that island till the year 1458.
Having married Berengaria at Limasol, Richard set sail from Cyprus, on
June 4th (1191), with a fleet now described as consisting of thirteen
large ships called busses, fifty galleys, and a hundred transports; and
on the 10th he reached the camp of the crusaders assembled before the
fortress of Acre, the siege of which had already occupied them not much
less than two years, and had cost the lives, it is said of nearly two
hundred thousand of the assailants. But the presence of the English
king, although he was suffering from severe illness, and had to be
carried to the trenches on a litter, immediately inspired so much new
vigor into the operations of the Christian army that, on July 12th, the
place surrendered, and Saladin, who had been harassing the besiegers
from the neighboring mountains, withdrew, in conformity with the terms
of capitulation. This great event, however, was immediately followed by
an open rupture between Richard and King Philip, whose rivalry had
already exhibited itself in a variety of ways, and more particularly in
the support given by Richard to the claim of Guy of Lusignan, and by
Philip to that of Conrad of Montferrat to the vacant crown of Jerusalem.
Philip, in fact, took his departure from Palestine on the last day of
July, leaving only ten thousand men, under the command of the Duke of
Burgundy.
[Illustration: Richard at the Battle of Arsur.]
Richard performed prodigies of valor in the Holy Land, but, although a
signal defeat of Saladin on September 7th at Arsur was followed by the
capture of Jaffa and some other places of less importance, Jerusalem,
which was the main object of the crusade, so far from being taken was
not even attacked. Jaffa, however, after it had again fallen into the
hands of Saladin, was recovered by the impetuous valor of the English
king. At last, on October 9, 1192, Richard set sail from Acre in a
single vessel, his fleet, having on board his wife, his sister, and the
daughter of the captive King of Cyprus, having put to sea a few days
before. The three ladies got safe to Sicily; but the first land the king
made was the island of Corfu, which he took about a month to reach. He
left Corfu about the middle of November with three coasting-vessels
which he hired there; but after being a few days at sea he was compelled
by a storm to land on the coast of Istria, at a spot between the towns
of Aquileia and Venice. After narrowly escaping first from falling at
Goritz into the hands of Maynard, a nephew of Conrad of Montferrat (to
whose murder in Palestine Richard, upon very insufficient evidence, was
suspected to be an accessory), and then at Friesach from Maynard's
brother, Frederick of Batesow, he was taken on December 21st, at Erperg,
near Vienna, by Leopold, Duke of Austria (a brother-in-law of Isaac of
Cyprus), and was by him consigned to close confinement in the castle of
Tyernsteign, under the care of his vassal, Baron Haldmar. In the course
of a few days, however, by an arrangement between Leopold and the
Emperor Henry VI., the captive king was transferred to the custody of
the latter, who shut him up in a castle in the Tyrol, where he was bound
with chains, and guarded by a band of men who surrounded him day and
night with drawn swords. In this state he remained about three months.
Meanwhile, intelligence of his having fallen into the hands of the
emperor had reached England, and excited the strongest sensation among
all ranks of the people. It is sufficient to mention that during his
absence a struggle for supremacy had for some time been carried on with
varying success between the king's brother, John, and Longchamp, the
chancellor, who had acquired the entire regency, and had also been
appointed papal legate for England and Scotland; and that this had
resulted, in October, 1191, in the deposition of Longchamp, by a council
of the nobility held in St Paul's Churchyard, London; after which he
left the country, and although he soon ventured to return, ultimately
deemed it most prudent to retire to Normandy. The supreme authority was
thus left for a time in the hands of John, who, as soon as he learned
the news of his brother's captivity, openly repaired to Paris, and did
homage to the French king for the English dominions on the Continent.
[Illustration: Richard Coeur de Lion.]
On returning to England, John raised an army to support his pretensions,
while his confederate, Philip, took up arms in his behalf in France,
and, entering Normandy, overran a great part of that duchy, although
Rouen, the capital, was preserved principally by the exertions of the
Earl of Essex, lately one of Richard's companions in the Holy Land. In
England, also, John met with a general opposition to his usurpation of
the regal authority, which soon compelled him to conclude an armistice
with a council of regency that had been appointed by the prelates and
barons. This was the position of affairs when Longchamp, having
discovered Richard's place of confinement, after much solicitation
prevailed upon the emperor to allow the royal prisoner to be brought
before the diet at Hagenau, where, accordingly, he made his appearance
on April 13, 1193, and defended himself with so much eloquence against
the several charges made against him in regard to Tancred and the
kingdom of Sicily, to his conquest of Cyprus, and to the murder of
Conrad of Montferrat, that Henry found himself compelled by the general
sentiment of the diet to order his chains to be immediately struck off,
and to agree to enter upon negotiations for his ransom. Longchamp was
immediately despatched to England with a letter to the council of
regency, and the result was, that, notwithstanding the insidious efforts
both of John and his friend, Philip of France, to prevent the
conclusion of the treaty, Richard was at last liberated, on February 4,
1194, after seventy thousand marks had been actually paid to the
emperor, and hostages given for the payment of thirty thousand more. The
English king had also engaged to release both Isaac of Cyprus and his
daughter, and he had besides, at the persuasion, it is said, of his
mother, Eleanor, the more effectually to conciliate Henry, formally
resigned his crown into the hand of the emperor, who immediately
restored it to him to be held as a fief of the empire, and burdened with
a yearly feudal payment to his superior lord of five thousand pounds.
This strange transaction rests on the authority of the contemporary
annalist Hoveden. Richard, descending the Rhine as far as Cologne,
proceeded thence across the country to Antwerp, and, embarking there on
board his own fleet, landed at Sandwich on March 13th.
Most of John's strongholds had been wrested from his hands before his
brother's return, and now the rest immediately surrendered and he
himself fled the country, and with his principal adviser, Hugh, Bishop
of Coventry, having been charged with high treason, and not appearing to
plead after forty days, was outlawed and divested of all his
possessions.
Meanwhile it was thought necessary that Richard should be crowned again,
and that ceremony was accordingly performed at Winchester by Hubert,
Archbishop of Canterbury, on April 17th. Then, leaving Hubert guardian
of England and grand justiciary, on May 2d, following, having, with his
characteristic activity employed almost every moment since his arrival
in raising an army and procuring funds for its maintenance by all sorts
of exactions and the most unscrupulous use of every means in his power,
he again set sail from Portsmouth, his whole soul bent on chastising the
King of France. Owing to adverse winds he was a fortnight in reaching
Barfleur, in Normandy, where, as soon as he landed, he was met by his
brother John, who professed contrition and implored his pardon, which,
on the intercession of his mother, Eleanor, was granted. Richard now
marched against Philip, and several engagements took place between them,
in most of which the English king was successful. But the war, though it
lasted for some years, was distinguished by few remarkable events. A
truce for one year was agreed to on July 23d, and although hostilities
were resumed some time before the expiration of that term, a peace was
again concluded in the end of the following year, which lasted till the
beginning of 1197.
All this time Hubert, assisted by Longchamp, who had been restored to
his office of chancellor, is said to have presided over the government
at home with great ability. Hubert had been educated under the famous
Glanvil, and he seems, in the spirit of his master, to have exerted
himself in re-establishing and maintaining the authority of the law, by
which alone, even if he did no more, he must have materially contributed
to the revival of industry. The large sums, however, which he was
obliged to raise by taxation to meet the expenses of the war, in the
exhausted state to which the country had been reduced provoked much
popular dissatisfaction; and the third year of the king's absence in
particular was distinguished by the remarkable commotion excited by
William Fitz-Osbert, styled Longbeard, a citizen of London, who is
admitted to have possessed both eloquence and learning, and whose whole
character and proceedings might not improbably, if he had had his own
historian, have assumed a very different complexion from what has been
given to him. Longbeard, who acquired the names of the Advocate and King
of the Poor, is affirmed to have had above fifty thousand of the lower
orders associated with him by oaths which bound them to follow
whithersoever he led. When an attempt was made to apprehend him by two
of the wealthier citizens, he drew his knife and stabbed one of them,
named Geoffrey, to the heart, and then took refuge in the church of St
Mary-le-Bow in Cheapside, the tower of which he and his followers
fortified, and held for three days, when they were at last (April 7,
1196), dislodged by fire being set to the building. Fitz-Osbert was
first dragged at a horse's tail to the Tower, and then to the Elms in
West Smithfield, where he was hanged, with nine of his followers. The
people, however, long continued to regard him as a martyr.
The war between Richard and Philip broke out again in 1197, and in the
course of this campaign Richard had the gratification of capturing the
Bishop of Beauvais, a personage whom he had reason to regard as a main
instigator of the severities and indignities which he had sustained at
the hands of the emperor. The bishop was taken armed cap-à-pie and
fighting, and when Pope Celestine recommended him to the clemency of
Richard as his son, the English king sent his holiness the bishop's coat
of mail, with the following verse of Scripture attached to it: "This
have we found; know now whether it be thy son's coat, or no." This same
year, too, finished the career of the Emperor Henry, who, in his last
moments, is said to have expressed the extremest remorse for the manner
in which he had treated the great champion of the Cross. Richard's other
enemy, Leopold, Duke of Austria, had been killed by a fall from his
horse two years before.
A truce, as usual, at the end of the year, again suspended hostilities
for a space. The war was renewed on its termination, and in this
campaign (of the year 1198) Richard gained one of his greatest victories
near Gisors, when Philip in his flight fell into the river Epte, and was
nearly drowned. After this, by the intercession of the Pope's legate, a
truce was concluded between the two kings for five years, and they never
met again in fight; although they probably would, notwithstanding the
truce, if both had lived. But on March 26th in the following year, 1199,
as Richard was engaged in reducing the castle of Chaluz, the stronghold
of one of his Aquitanian vassals, Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, who it
seems had refused to surrender a treasure found on his estate, to which
the king laid claim in right of his feudal superiority, Coeur de Lion
was struck in the left shoulder by an arrow, aimed from the rampart of
the castle by a youth named Bertrand de Gurdun. The wound would not have
been dangerous but for the mismanagement of the surgeon in his attempts
to extract the arrow-head, which had broken off in the flesh. As it was,
Richard lived only till Tuesday, April 16th. The shot was a fatal one in
every way; in the fury into which the wound of the king threw the
besieging army the castle was taken by storm, and all the persons found
in it were immediately hanged, as some authorities say, by the king's
orders, with the exception only of Gurdun. He was brought into the
presence of his dying victim, when Richard, under the impulse of
generosity or compunction, gave him his liberty, with a hundred
shillings to take him home; but after the king's death he was flayed
alive, and then hanged, by order of Marchadee, the leader of the
Brabantine mercenaries serving in Richard's army.
The character of Richard is, of course, not to be judged without
reference to the general manners of the age in which he lived. It is
probable enough that there was hardly an excess, either of violence or
licentiousness, into which his impetuous temperament did not
occasionally precipitate him; but he seems to have had nothing base or
malignant in his composition; and that he was as capable of acts of
extraordinary generosity and disinterestedness as of excesses of brutal
fury or profligacy. Of the courage and strength of will proper to his
race, he had his full share, with more than his share of their strength
of thew and sinew; and his intellectual powers, both natural and
acquired, were also of a high order. He was renowned in his own day not
only as beyond all dispute the stoutest and most gallant of living
heroes, but as likewise occupying a place in the foremost rank of those
who excelled in wit, in eloquence, and in song.