RICHARD CŒUR DE LION.
Character of the reign--Richard’s first visit to England--His
character--The Crusade--Fall of Longchamp--Richard’s second visit--His
struggle with Philip--His death.
The historical interest of the reign of Richard I. is of two sorts:
there is abundance of personal adventure and incident, and there is
a certain quantity of legal and constitutional material which it is
easier to interweave into a general disquisition on such subjects
than to invest with a unity and plot of its own. But there is no
great national change, no very pronounced development, no crisis of
stirring interest or great permanent import. The strong system of
government introduced by Henry II. was gaining still greater strength
and consistency; the royal power, which it was the first object of
that system to consolidate, was growing stronger and stronger, and the
nation in general, whilst it was passing through that phase in which a
strong government is a necessary guide and discipline, was benefiting
by the policy which must sooner or later educate it to remedy the
abuses and perhaps to overthrow the strong government itself. But as
yet the royal power was wielded by men who used it like statesmen,
and the strength of the nation was not tempted to assert itself by a
premature struggle. One great personal struggle there was during the
reign, and a somewhat interesting one in point of detail, but it is one
which typified and prefigured rather than formed a link in the chain of
causes that brought about the struggle of Runnymede.
The great subjects of romantic interest are Richard’s crusade,
captivity and death. England had little to do with these, except as
being the source for the supply of treasure; she scarcely saw Richard;
to her the king was little more than a political expression which
furnished arguments to a series of powerful administrators, William
Longchamp, Walter of Coutances, Hubert Walter and Geoffrey Fitz Peter.
But as connecting English with Continental history the personal career
of Richard has its own interest and value, and, even in a rapid survey
like the present, it demands, if not the first place, certainly one
which is second to no other.
[Sidenote:
Richard’s
succession.
]
[Sidenote:
Eleanor
regent.
]
Richard, as we have seen, was not acknowledged by his father as his
heir, nor had he received the homage of the barons as presumptive
successor, until he had wrung the concession from the dying Henry on
the field of Colombieres. The fact that, without a word of opposition,
he was received as Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, and King of the
English, immediately on the news of his father’s death, proves that the
doctrine of hereditary succession was, in practice if not in theory,
already admitted as the lawful one, and that Henry’s reforms had left
the countries subject to his immediate sway in such order that no one
even ventured to take advantage of the interregnum to disturb the
peace. It also proves that Richard had strong friends. Among these the
first was his mother, who, rejoicing in her deliverance by Henry’s
death from her long captivity, placed herself at the head of the
English government, and, empowered by Richard, ruled as regent until
his arrival. One reason for this probably was that Ranulf Glanvill, the
justiciar, had been a confidential friend of Henry, and may have been
suspected of promoting the design of placing John upon the throne. For
more than a month Eleanor reigned, Richard spending the time in making
terms with Philip, who had become his enemy as soon as he succeeded
to his father’s place, and in receiving the formal investiture of the
several dignities which he claimed on the Continent.
[Sidenote:
Coronation
of Richard.
]
[Sidenote:
Persecution
of the Jews.
]
In the middle of August he came to England, and John with him. After a
magnificent progress of little more than a fortnight, he was crowned
with exceeding great pomp at Westminster, on the 3rd of September. This
is the first coronation the state ceremonies of which have been exactly
recorded, and it has remained a precedent for all subsequent occasions;
the religious services of course are much older. It was unfortunately
disgraced by a riot promoted by Richard’s foreign attendants against
the Jews, who, notwithstanding the king’s exertions, were severely
handled, robbed and murdered, the example being followed, as soon as
his personal protection was removed, at York, Stamford and St. Edmund’s.
[Sidenote:
Character of
Richard.
]
Richard at the time of his coronation was thirty-two years old; a
man of tall stature, like his father and elder brother, ruddy and
brown-haired, and giving already some indications of corpulence, which
he tried to keep down by constant exercise. In dress he was very
splendid and ostentatious, therein unlike his father. The dissimilarity
in character was greater. Richard was foolishly extravagant, as lavish
of money as Henry was sparing, and as unscrupulous in his ways of
exacting it as his father was cautious and considerate. At this period
of his life he had no pronounced political views; he had taken the
Cross, and was that very rare phenomenon, an ardent Crusader, but he
had not yet conceived a political scheme as King of England or as enemy
of the King of France. He had not thought of taking into his hands the
strings of that foreign policy for which Henry had sacrificed so much.
He despised his friend Philip far more than his knowledge of him or
the results of their intercourse justified him in doing; he trusted
in himself far more than any man should do who has any sense of the
rights or duties of kingship. He was a thorough warrior; personally
brave, fearless in danger, politic and cautious in planning, and rapid
in executing, exhibiting in battle the very faculties which deserted
him in council--circumspection, self-control, readiness. He cared more
for the glory of victory than either for the fame or the substance of
it; it was his very joy to excel in arms, rather than to win renown
or profit; yet for both renown and profit he had an insatiable thirst
also. He was eloquent, generous and impulsive. In religion he was
perhaps more sincere than his family generally were; he heard mass
daily, and on three occasions did penance in a very remarkable way,
simply on the impulse of his own distressed conscience. He did not
show the carelessness in divine things that marked the house of Anjou,
still less the brutal profanity of John. But notwithstanding this he
was a vicious man, a bad husband and a bad son; vicious, although his
vices did not, like those of his father and brother, complicate his
public policy. All one can say about this is that, when he professed
penitence, he seems to have been sincerely penitent. His best trait is
the forgivingness of his character, and that is especially shown in his
treatment of John.
The accession of such a prince might well be watched with interest; but
Richard was as yet scarcely known in England. He had been born, indeed,
either at Oxford or at Woodstock, and his nurse was a Wiltshire or
Oxfordshire woman; but when quite a child he had been taken abroad, and
had only visited England two or three times for a month or so since.
Hence, although he was a fair scholar and a poet, it may be questioned
whether he could speak a sentence in English. He had been educated,
in fact, to be Duke of Aquitaine, and it was only since his brother’s
death that he had been an object of interest on this side the Channel.
No doubt changes were looked for; and in one respect change came, for
very early he removed Glanvill from the office of Justiciar and made
him pay a very heavy fine before he released him from custody. But this
act was probably one of greed rather than of policy, for he wanted
money, and did not speculate on statecraft. Glanvill, too, was bound on
the Crusade, and was an old man whose days of governing were over.
[Sidenote:
Council of
Pipewell.
]
The same want of money led Richard, in a great council which he held
at Pipewell in the month of the coronation, to sell almost everything
that he could sell; sheriffdoms, justiceships, church lands, and
appointments of all kinds. To the King of Scots he sold the release
from the obligations which Henry had exacted in the peace of Falaise;
to the Bishop of Durham he sold the office of Justiciar, or a share in
it, and the county of Northumberland; to the Bishop of Winchester he
sold the sheriffdom of Hampshire, and castles and lands belonging of
old to his see. Many other prelates paid large sums to secure rights
and properties which were their own, but which were deemed safer for
the royal confirmation; and so great were the promises of money made to
him that, if they had been fulfilled, he would have been richer by far
than all the kings that were before him. He filled up the bishoprics
with officers of his father’s court. York he gave to his half-brother
Geoffrey the Chancellor; Salisbury to Hubert Walter, nephew of the
Justiciar Glanvill; London to Richard the son of old Bishop Nigel of
Ely the treasurer, and himself also treasurer and historian of the
Exchequer.
[Sidenote:
Provision
made for
John.
]
[Sidenote:
Promotion
of Longchamp.
]
He also made great provision for John. He had him married, as soon as
he could, to the heiress of Gloucester, to whom he had been so long
betrothed, although the archbishop protested that they were too near
akin. He gave him the counties of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset,
Derby, and Nottingham, with divers other castles and honors; but he
would not recognize him as his heir or leave him with a settled share
in the government. The real power he placed in the hands of a man whom
he had found for himself, William Longchamp, who had gone through
the usual training in the Chancery, and whom he now made Chancellor
and Bishop of Ely. To him also he committed the justiciarship, in
partnership with the Bishop of Durham, after the death of William de
Mandeville, whom he had meant to leave as lieutenant-general of the
kingdom; and before his final departure on the Crusade he made him sole
Justiciar, and obtained for him the office of legate from Clement III.
[Sidenote:
Richard
starts on the
Crusade,
1190.
]
In order to remove the two greatest obstacles to peace he bound his two
brothers John and Geoffrey to stay away for three years from England,
so as to leave a clear stage for Longchamp. He then prepared for
his departure. He left England in December. After arranging matters
in Normandy and Poictou, he proceeded to Vezelai, whence he started
with Philip soon after midsummer. It may be said that, in spite of
good intentions, he took away with him the men whom it would have
been wisest to leave behind, Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, Ranulf
Glanvill, and Hubert Walter, and left behind him the uneasy spirits
whom he might have made useful against the infidel, John, Geoffrey, and
Longchamp. And this the later history proves. At present we will follow
Richard.
[Sidenote:
The Third
Crusade.
]
The third Crusade, in which he was the foremost actor, is one of
the most interesting parts of the crusading history; the greatness
of the occasion, the greatness of the heroes, and the greatness of
the failure, mark it out especially. And yet it was not altogether
a failure, for it stayed the Western progress of Saladin, and Islam
never again had so great a captain. Jerusalem had been taken in the
autumn of 1187. The king had been taken prisoner in the summer. Before
or after the capture almost every stronghold had been surrendered
within the territory of Jerusalem. Saving the lordship of Tyre and
the principalities of Antioch and Tripoli, all the Frank possessions
had been lost, and only a few mountain fortresses kept up a hopeless
resistance. The counsels of the crusaders were divided; the military
orders hated and were hated by the Frank nobility; and these, with an
admixture of Western adventurers like Conrad of Montferrat, played fast
and loose with Saladin, betraying the interests of Christendom and
working up in their noble enemy a sum of mistrust and contempt which he
intended should accumulate till he could take full vengeance.
[Sidenote:
Siege of
Acre.
]
[Sidenote:
Crusade of
Frederick.
]
When King Guy, released from captivity, opened, in August, 1189, the
siege of Acre, he was probably conscious that no more futile design
was ever attempted. Yet it showed an amount of spirit unsuspected by
the Western princes, and drew at once to his side all the adventurous
soldiers of the Cross. If he could maintain the siege long enough,
there were hopes of ultimate success against Saladin, of the recovery
of the Cross and the Sepulchre, for the emperor and the kings of the
West were all on the road to Palestine. Month after month passed on.
The Danes and the Flemings arrived early, but the great hosts lagged
strangely behind. The great hero Frederick of Hohenstaufen started
first; he was to go by land. Like a great king, such as he was, he
first set his realms in order; early in 1188, at what was called
the Court of God, at Mentz, he called his hosts together; then from
Ratisbon, on St. George’s day, 1189, he set off, like St. George
himself, on a pilgrimage against the dragons and enchanters that lay in
wait for him in the barbarous lands of the Danube and in Asia Minor.
The dragons were plague and famine, the enchanters were Byzantine
treachery and Seljukian artifice. Through both the true and perfect
knight passed with neither fear nor reproach. In a little river among
the mountains of Cilicia he met the strongest enemy, and only his
bones reached the land of his pilgrimage. His people looked for him
as the Britons for Arthur. They would not believe him dead. Still
legend places him, asleep but yet alive, in a cave among the Thuringian
mountains, to awake and come again in the great hour of German need.
His diminished and perishing army brought famine and pestilence to the
besieging host at Acre. His son Frederick of Swabia, who commanded
them, died with them; and the German Crusaders who were left--few
indeed after the struggle--returned to Germany before the close of the
Crusade under Duke Leopold of Austria.
Next perhaps, after the Emperor, the Crusade depended on the King of
Sicily--he died four months after his father-in-law, Henry II.
[Sidenote:
Double
siege at
Acre.
]
For two years the siege of Acre dragged on its miserable length. It
was a siege within a siege: the Christian host held the Saracen army
within the walls; they themselves fortified an entrenched camp; outside
the trench was a countless Saracen host besieging the besiegers. The
command of the sea was disputed, but both parties found their supplies
in that way, and both suffered together.
[Sidenote:
Journey of
Richard.
]
This had been going on for nearly a year before Richard and Philip left
Vezelai. From Vezelai to Lyons the kings marched together; then Philip
set out for Genoa, Richard for Marseilles. Richard coasted along the
Italian shore, whiling away the time until his fleet arrived. The ships
had gone, of course, by the Bay of Biscay and Straits of Gibraltar,
where they had been drawn into the constant crusade going on between
the Moors and the Portuguese, and lost time also by sailing up to
Marseilles, where they expected to meet the king. Notwithstanding the
delay they arrived at Messina several days before Richard. Philip,
whose fleet, such as it was, had assembled at Marseilles, reached the
place to rendezvous ten days before him.
[Sidenote:
The English
at Acre.
]
Immediately on Richard’s arrival, on September 23, Philip took ship,
but immediately put back. Richard made no attempt to go farther than
Messina until the spring. It was an unfortunate delay, but it was
absolutely necessary. The besiegers of Acre were perishing with plague
and famine; provisions were not abundant even in the fleet. To have
added the English and French armies to the perishing host would have
been suicidal. Some of the English barons, however, perished. Ranulf
Glanvill went on to Acre, and died in the autumn of 1190; Archbishop
Baldwin and Hubert Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, took the military
as well as the spiritual command of the English contingent; but the
archbishop died in November, and Hubert found his chief employment in
ministering to the starving soldiers. Queen Sibylla and her children
were dead also; and Conrad of Montferrat, separating her sister, now
the heiress of the Frank kingdom, from her youthful husband, prevailed
on the patriarch to marry her to himself, and so to oust King Guy,
and still more divide the divided camp. The two factions were arrayed
against one another as bitterly as the general exhaustion permitted,
when at last Philip and Richard came.
[Sidenote:
The kings
at Messina.
]
[Sidenote:
Richard and
Tancred.
]
[Sidenote:
Richard
sails from
Messina.
]
[Sidenote:
Acre taken,
1191.
]
The winter months of 1190 and the spring of 1191 had been spent by
them in very uneasy lodgings at Messina. Richard and Philip were,
from the very first, jealous of one another. Richard was betrothed to
Philip’s sister, and Philip suspected him of wishing to break off the
engagement. Richard’s sister Johanna, the widow of William the Good,
was still in Sicily. Richard wanted to get her and her fortune into his
hands and out of the hands of Tancred, who, with a doubtful claim, had
set himself up as King of Sicily against Henry of Hohenstaufen, who
had married the late king’s aunt. Now, the Hohenstaufen and the French
had always been allies; Richard, through his sister’s marriage with
Henry the Lion, was closely connected with the Welfs, who had suffered
forfeiture and banishment from the policy of Frederick Barbarossa.
He was also naturally the ally of Tancred, who looked upon him as
the head of Norman chivalry. Yet to secure his sister he found it
necessary to force Tancred to terms. Whilst Tancred negotiated the
people of Messina rose against the strangers; the strangers quarrelled
among themselves; Philip planned treachery against Richard, and tried
to draw Tancred into a conspiracy; Tancred informed Richard of the
treachery. Matters were within a hair’s breadth of a battle between
the crusading kings. Philip’s strength, however, was not equal to his
spite, and the air gradually cleared. Tancred gave up the queen and her
fortune, and arranged a marriage for one of his daughters with Arthur
of Brittany, who was recognized as Richard’s heir. Soon after Queen
Eleanor arrived at Naples with the lady Berengaria of Navarre in her
company; whereupon, by the advice of Count Philip of Flanders, Philip
released Richard from the promise to marry his sister; and at last,
at the end of March, 1191, the French Crusaders sailed away to Acre.
Richard followed in a few days; but a storm carrying part of his fleet
to Cyprus, he found himself obliged to fight with Isaac Comnenus, the
Emperor, and then to conquer and reform the island, where also he was
married. After he reached Acre, where he arrived on June 8, he as well
as Philip fell ill, and only after a delay of some weeks was able to
take part in the siege. The town held out a little longer; but early
in July surrendered, and gave the Christians once more a footing in
the Holy Land. Immediately after the capture Philip started homewards,
leaving his vow of pilgrimage unfulfilled. Richard remained to complete
the conquest.
[Sidenote:
Richard’s
campaigns
in Palestine.
]
The sufferings and the cruelties of this part of the history are not
pleasant to dwell upon. It is a sad tale to tell how Saladin slew
his prisoners, how the Duke of Burgundy and Richard slew theirs; how
Conrad and Guy quarrelled, the French supporting Conrad and Richard
supporting Guy; how the people perished, and brave and noble knights
took menial service to earn bread. A more brilliant yet scarcely less
sad story is the great march of Richard by the way of the sea from
Acre to Joppa, and his progress, after a stay of seven weeks at Joppa,
on the way to Jerusalem as far as Ramleh. Every step was dogged by
Saladin, every straggler cut off, every place of encampment won by
fighting. Christmas found the king within a few miles of Jerusalem; but
he never came within reach of it. Had he known the internal condition
of the city he might have taken it. Jerusalem was in a panic, Saladin
for once paralyzed by alarm; but Richard had no good intelligence. The
Franks insisted that Ascalon should be secured before the Holy City was
occupied. The favorable moment passed away.
[Sidenote:
Ascalon
rebuilt.
]
[Sidenote:
Exploits of
Richard.
]
Richard with a heavy heart turned his back on Jerusalem and went to
rebuild Ascalon. Before that was done the French began to draw back.
The struggle between Guy and Conrad broke out again. Saladin, by Easter
1192, was in full force and in good spirits again. Richard performed
during these months some of the most daring exploits of his whole
life: capturing the fortresses of the south country of Judah, and
with a small force and incredibly rapid movements intercepting the
great caravan of the Saracens on the borders of the desert. Such acts
increased his fame but scarcely helped the Crusade.
[Sidenote:
March on
Jerusalem.
]
[Sidenote:
Retreat and
truce.
]
In June it became absolutely necessary to determine on further steps.
Now the French insisted on attacking Jerusalem. Richard had learned
caution, and the council of the Crusade recommended an expedition to
Egypt to secure the south as Acre barred the north. At last Richard
yielded to the pressure of the French, and in spite of the want of
water and the absurdity of sitting down before the Holy City with an
enormous army in the middle of summer, he led them again to Beit-nuba,
four hours’ journey from Jerusalem. Then the French changed their minds
again; and thence, on July 4, began the retreat preparatory to the
return. Richard had been too long away from France, whither Philip had
returned, and from England, where John was waiting for his chances;
he began to negotiate for a truce, and in September, after a dashing
exploit at Joppa, in which he rescued the town from almost certain
capture, he arranged a peace for three years three months and three
days.
[Sidenote:
Richard’s
journey
homewards.
]
Early in October he left Palestine, the Bishop of Salisbury remaining
to lead home the remnant of the host, as soon as they had performed
the pilgrimage which they were to make under the protection of
Saladin. Richard, impatient of delay, and not deeming himself worthy
to look on the city which he had not strength and grace to win back
for Christendom, left his fleet and committed himself to the ordinary
means of transport. After bargaining with pirates and smugglers for a
passage, and losing time by unnecessary hurry, he was shipwrecked on
the coast of the Adriatic near Aquileia; travelled in disguise through
Friuli and part of Salzburg, and was caught by Duke Leopold of Austria,
his bitter personal enemy, at Vienna in December. In March 1193 he was
handed over to the Emperor Henry VI., who was in correspondence with
Philip of France, as Philip was with John. For more than a year Richard
was in captivity. We may take the opportunity of turning back and
seeing how England had fared during his absence.
[Sidenote:
England during
the crusade.
]
[Sidenote:
Hugh de
Puiset.
]
[Sidenote:
William
Longchamp.
]
[Sidenote:
Quarrel of the
justices.
]
When he started on the Crusade, early in December 1189, he left the
regency in the hands of Bishop Hugh of Durham and Bishop William of
Ely, the Chancellor, with a committee of associate justices. John and
Geoffrey had sworn to stay away for three years. As soon as he was out
of the country, as early as January, 1190, the justices quarrelled.
They were, indeed, very ill-mated. Hugh de Puiset, the Bishop of
Durham, was a great lord of the house of Champagne, nephew to King
Stephen, and cousin to the king: a rich man, an old man, the father
of a fine family, one son being chancellor to the King of France; a
great captain, a great hunter, a most splendid builder; not a very
clerical character, but altogether a grand figure for nearly fifty
years of English history. William of Longchamp, although perhaps,
notwithstanding the stigma of low birth cast upon him by his rivals,
a man of good family, was an upstart by the side of Bishop Hugh. He
was a man of very unpopular manners; very ambitious for himself and
his relations, very arrogant, priding himself on his Norman blood, but
laughed at as a _parvenu_ by the Norman nobles; disliking and showing
contempt in the coarsest way for the English, whose language he would
not speak and declared that he did not understand; very jealous of a
sharer in power, and unscrupulous in his use of it. With all this,
however, he was, it is certain, faithful to Richard; his designs were
all directed to the securing and increasing of his master’s power,
and his bitterest enemies were his master’s enemies. Richard knew
this, and never discarded his minister, although his unpopularity once
endangered the throne, and was always so great that he thought it best
to keep him out of the country. He continued to be chancellor as long
as he lived. William, as the king’s confidant, chancellor, justiciar,
and prospective legate, was far more than a match for Bishop Hugh. They
quarrelled at the Exchequer as soon as Richard left for France. The
chancellor crossed over and laid his complaint before the king; then
Hugh followed, and obtained a favorable answer; but when he presented
the royal letters to Longchamp he was arrested and kept in honorable
confinement until the king’s pleasure should be further known. Richard
was probably aware of this summary treatment of the bishop, but he had
extracted from his coffers as much of his treasure as he was likely
for the present to get, and he practically rewarded the chancellor by
showing him increased confidence. In June Longchamp became legate of
the pope and sole justiciar.
[Sidenote:
Longchamp
supreme.
]
After Hugh de Puiset’s defeat Longchamp had several months of practical
sovereignty; supreme in Church and State, he travelled about in royal
pomp, making double exactions, as chancellor and legate, from the
religious houses. He fortified the Tower of London. He punished the
rioters at York who had attacked the Jews and driven them to destroy
themselves. He put his own brothers into high and lucrative posts,
married his nephews and nieces to great wards of the crown, taught
the noble pages of his household to serve on the knee, and, partly
by misconduct, partly by mismanagement and contumelious behaviour in
general, did his best to make himself intolerable.
[Sidenote:
Position of
John.
]
By this time John was released from the oath to stay three years on
the Continent and had come to England, where he was keeping royal
state in his castles of Marlborough and Lancaster. John’s position,
if not his ability, made him a more formidable antagonist than Bishop
Hugh de Puiset, and John’s enmity was no doubt first incurred by
the support which Longchamp gave to the idea that Arthur should be
Richard’s heir. Whether Richard really intended Arthur to succeed, or
merely allowed him to be set up as a check upon John, cannot perhaps
be certainly decided; but he was so set up, and Longchamp’s policy
was, for a time, devoted to the securing of his claim. For a time John
remained quiet, angry at not having his proper share of power, but
restrained by the presence, and probably by the advice, of Eleanor,
his mother, who certainly never intended that Arthur should exclude
him from the throne. Eleanor, however, early in 1191, went to Messina
with Berengaria of Navarre, and probably with the express purpose of
laying before her son the imprudent behaviour of his chancellor. John
was thus released from her influence, and in a very short time found an
opportunity of asserting himself as the protector of the nation against
the tyranny of Longchamp.
[Sidenote:
Longchamp
demands
the royal
castles.
]
The Chancellor, in pursuance of a deliberate plan for maintaining the
royal power, was engaged in taking into his own hands the many castles
which since the death of Henry II. had got into untrustworthy keeping.
The importance of this measure, sufficiently clear from the history
of the two last reigns, justified some severity. Yet action so speedy
and direct could scarcely have been expected by men who had only a
year and a half before paid down large sums of money to Richard for
the possessions of which they were now deprived. John knew this; he
knew that he had himself been kept out of the castles belonging to the
lordships which were showered upon him, and determined to avail himself
of the first chance to set matters right and to obtain recognition of
his brother’s heir. So whilst Longchamp was busy in the West of England
John took measures for securing the castles of Tickhill and Nottingham,
the two strongest fortresses to which he thought he had a claim. The
chance soon came.
[Sidenote:
Gerard
Camvill.
]
[Sidenote:
War and
truces.
]
[Sidenote:
Mission of
Walter of
Coutances.
]
Gerard Camvill, the warden of Lincoln Castle and sheriff of the shire,
refused to surrender his fortress at the command of Longchamp, and
appealed to John as his liege lord. John took up arms and seized
Nottingham and Tickhill. The Chancellor went northward to meet him,
but no battle was fought; and a truce was made at Winchester towards
the end of April, 1191. This lasted but a short time. Soon after
the pacification, about midsummer, war broke out again; again the
castles were surrendered to John, and a battle was imminent. But now
a new actor appeared. Richard, hearing from his mother of the angry
state of the kingdom, sent from Messina the Archbishop of Rouen,
Walter of Coutances, an old officer of the English court who had been
Vice-Chancellor to Henry II., with instructions of which we have
no very certain account, but which probably contained two or three
alternative courses, one of which was the superseding of Longchamp.
Just at the same time Clement III. died, and it was very uncertain
whether Celestine III., who succeeded him, would renew the legatine
commission. The Archbishop of Rouen arrived in time to prevent
bloodshed; but he did not produce his summary instructions. A second
truce was made at Winchester in July, and the castles both of the king
and of John were placed in safe hands.
[Sidenote:
Return of
Archbishop
Geoffrey.
]
[Sidenote:
Longchamp
removed
from the
Justiciarship.
]
Two months had scarcely passed when a third struggle occurred.
Archbishop Geoffrey of York, released, as he said, like John, from
his three years’ exile, returned from his consecration at Tours, and
landed at Dover in September. The Chancellor fearful of his influence
and afraid of his coalescing with John, tried to prevent his landing.
The new archbishop was sacrilegiously handled by the legate’s servants,
drawn from sanctuary and imprisoned. John took up at once his brother’s
cause, and the bishops and barons, indignant that a son of the great
King Henry should be so treated, compelled the Chancellor to disavow
the act and release the prisoner. Geoffrey, set free, went at once
to London. John and the Archbishop of Rouen collected the barons,
and Longchamp shut himself up at Windsor. The barons cried out for
his deposition, the bishops for his excommunication. Scarcely any of
the many friends whom he had purchased stood by him. It was at last
agreed that he should meet the whole body of the baronage at the bridge
over the Loddon near Reading, early in October. The barons met there.
Longchamp’s courage failed him; instead of keeping his appointment he
started at full speed to London. When he arrived there he found that
his friends were a minority among the citizens, and took refuge in
the Tower. No sooner was he there than John and the barons came at
full speed after him. The next day they held a solemn assembly. The
Archbishop of Rouen at last exhibited his commission and was received
as Justiciar. John was recognized as his brother’s representative.
Longchamp was compelled to surrender his castles and go into exile.
This would seem to have been a case of revolutionary action, rather
than of the constitutional dismissal of a minister; still it is
important in its relation to the theory of the responsibility of
ministers, and as containing in germ the idea that an unworthy minister
is amenable to punishment and deposition at the hands of the nation,
and is not responsible to his master only.
[Sidenote:
Intrigues of
Philip and
John, 1192.
]
Before Christmas King Philip had returned from the Crusade and was
laying snares for Richard, who was still bearing the burden of
Christendom in Palestine. The first net was spread for John. John was
very much disgusted that the Archbishop of Rouen had secured all the
benefits of the late victory over the Chancellor and indignant at being
kept in order by his mother. He was ready enough to betray Richard’s
interests; he intrigued first with Longchamp, who wanted to return to
his see; he accepted bribes in money from both. The whole year 1192
affords nothing but a record of his machinations, which were for the
present futile. But when the news of the capture of Richard at Vienna
arrived he immediately entered into negotiations with Philip, _bona
fide_ on both sides, to secure the crown to himself and to prevent his
brother’s return. These manœuvres resulted in open war as soon as the
release of Richard was determined on.
[Sidenote:
Negotiations
for
Richard’s
release.
]
We must now return to the fortunes of the captive king, the news
of whose imprisonment took all Europe by surprise and shocked all
Christendom. It reached England in February, 1193; and the first thing
the Justiciar did was to send two abbots to Germany to seek him. They
met him at Ochsenfurth, in Bavaria, on his way to Worms, where he was
to meet the Emperor on Palm Sunday. Their first negotiations were
friendly enough, notwithstanding the alliance which Richard had made
with Tancred, and his connection with the Welfic family. An enormous
ransom was demanded, but Richard was to have no inconsiderable gift in
compensation, that little Provençal kingdom which Frederick had been
able to reclaim, but over which Henry possessed scarcely more than
nominal sway. Richard was to be made King of Arles. In the meantime he
was to resign the crown of England to Henry VI. as lord of the world,
and to receive it back again as a tributary fief of the empire; and
this our historian says, was done, although the Emperor before his
death released him from the obligation.
[Sidenote: Delays.]
But as soon as Philip and John learned that the transaction was
assuming such an amicable shape, they attempted to prevent the Emperor
from fulfilling the agreement, and the position of parties within the
empire gave them fair hopes of attaining their end. For, in consequence
of the murder of the Bishop of Liege, in which the Emperor was somehow
implicated, Henry was at open strife with the great barons and lords
of the Low Countries. They hampered his action in his wide-reaching
schemes of policy; against them he felt the need of having Philip’s
aid, and he listened to the overtures of Richard’s enemies.
[Sidenote:
Rebellion of
John.
]
[Sidenote:
Richard’s
ransom.
]
John, having so far succeeded in retarding operations, secured his
castles, and added even Windsor to their number; he gave out that
Richard would never return; and although he professed to collect money
for the ransom, collected all that he could in his own treasury.
Eleanor, however, and the justices, were too strong for him.
Hubert Walter too had returned from Palestine; he, in company with
the Chancellor, had visited Richard in his prison, and had by his
recommendation been chosen archbishop of Canterbury. He undertook to
raise the ransom, and to manage John. The whole nation behaved nobly.
Enormous contributions were raised; the knights paid a scutage in aid
to ransom their lord; the Cistercians surrendered their wool; the whole
people paid a fourth of their movable goods, clergy as well as lay.
Whether all the money that was raised reached the Emperor’s coffers may
fairly be doubted, but the nation paid it, and at last by February 1194
the ransom was ready.
[Sidenote:
Release;
1194.
]
But before Richard was set free it was found necessary to buy the help
of the lords of the Low Countries, and compel Henry to fulfil his
promise by threats that they would renounce their allegiance. He had
defied the Pope, and indeed died excommunicate, but he could not stand
against this pressure. Richard was released, and landed in England on
the 13th of March.
[Sidenote: Return.]
England the returning hero found at war. Archbishop Hubert, who had
succeeded to the justiciarship at Christmas, had been obliged to look
John’s treason in the face. As archbishop he excommunicated him;
as justice he condemned him to forfeiture; as lieutenant-general
of the king he led an army against him. One by one John’s castles
had been taken, and at the time of Richard’s landing only Tickhill
and Nottingham held out. Tickhill surrendered on hearing the news,
Nottingham at the arrival of the king. John’s party at once broke up,
and Richard had but to show himself to be supreme.
[Sidenote:
Richard’s
second visit
to England.
]
This is Richard’s second and last appearance on English soil as king.
He staid only from March 13 to May 12, 1194, but he did a great deal
of business. As soon as Nottingham had surrendered he called a great
council there, and for three days acted as chief judge, financier and
politician; taxing his friends, condemning his enemies, and concocting
new plans for the security and quiet administration of the realm. By
selling sheriffdoms, exacting fines and enacting taxes, he raised money
to begin hostilities with Philip at once. He punished the enemies of
Longchamp and the friends of John, especially his chief minister,
Hugh of Nunant, Bishop of Coventry, who had as bishop and as sheriff
offended the laws secular and ecclesiastical. But he showed himself
by no means implacable; and, before he left, he had reconciled not
only Archbishop Geoffrey and the Chancellor, but almost all the other
jealous and divided parties. In accordance with the recommendation of
his council, before he left England, he wore his crown in solemn state
at Winchester; and, having done fairly well all that he had undertaken,
showing that his pride, dignity and energy had undergone no diminution
by his captivity, he sailed to Barfleur on the 12th of May, and England
saw his face no more, heavily as from time to time she felt the
pressure of his hand.
[Sidenote:
Government of
Hubert Walter.
]
From this time all Richard’s personal history is unconnected with
England. From 1194 to 1198 the kingdom was governed by Hubert Walter,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, like Longchamp, was both legate and
justiciar; Longchamp retained the title and emoluments of chancellor,
but did not come to England. The history of these years is simply a
record of judicial and financial measures taken on the lines and
inspired by the motives of Henry the Second’s policy. Hubert had been
his secretary, and, being the nephew of Ranulf Glanvill, he had been
fitted by education to be a sound lawyer and financier, as well as a
good bishop and a successful general. He was a strong minister; and
although as a good Englishman he made the pressure of his master’s hand
lie as lightly as he could upon the people, as a good servant he tried
to get out of the people as much treasure as he could for his master.
In the raising of the money and in the administration of justice he
tried and did much to train the people to habits of self-government.
He taught them how to assess their taxes by jury, to elect the grand
jury for the assizes of the judges, to choose representative knights to
transact legal and judicial work;--such representative knights as at a
later time made convenient precedents for parliamentary representation.
The whole working of elective and representative institutions gained
greatly under his management--he educated the people against the better
time to come. But he collected vast sums--eleven hundred thousand
pounds, it was said, in four years--beyond the ordinary revenue. He
allowed no evasions. The king watched him closely; threatened reforms
which would increase the exactions of the treasury, and directed the
formation of a new national survey, or at least tried to force one on
the country. The people of London, worked on by the demagogue William
Fitz Osbert, insisted on a new mode of assessment in which the taxes
would be collected in proportion to the means of the payers, and not
by a simple poll tax. This project might be just, but was promoted
by revolutionary means; Hubert summarily cowed the rioters into
submission. He went to the very extreme of what was right to serve
Richard, and at last he gave in to the number of influences which
combined to weary him of a position of power too great to be undertaken
by any single person.
[Sidenote:
Money refused
by the Great
Council, 1198.
]
[Sidenote:
Resignation of
the Justiciar.
]
[Sidenote:
Geoffrey
Fitz Peter.
]
This occasion is a memorable one. In the spring of 1198 Richard, as
usual, wanted money, and had exhausted all the usual means of procuring
it. He accordingly directed Hubert to propose to the assembled barons
and bishops that they should maintain for him, during his war, a force
of three hundred knights, to be paid a sum of three shillings a day.
To the archbishop’s amazement, for the first time for five-and-thirty
years, for the second time in English history, the demand was disputed.
Again the opposition was led by a bishop, as then by St. Thomas,
this time by St. Hugh. That great Hugh of Lincoln, the Burgundian
Carthusian who had won the heart of Henry II. and had treated him as
an equal, now acted on behalf of the nation to which he had joined
himself. Herbert, the Bishop of Salisbury, the son of Henry’s old
servant, Richard of Ilchester, followed the example. The estates of
their churches were not bound, they said, to afford the king military
service except within the four seas; they would not furnish it for
foreign warfare. The opposition prevailed; the bishops had struck a
chord which awoke the baronage. This body now, to a far greater extent
than before, consisted of men who had little interest in Normandy, were
far more English in sympathy, and perhaps also in blood, than they had
been under Henry II. The occasion is marked by another consequence.
The great minister resigned--not perhaps merely on this account--he
had long been weary of his office; the new Pope, Innocent III., was
telling him that it was unworthy of an archbishop to act as a secular
judge and taskmaster. The monks of his cathedral were harassing him
about the sacrilege involved in the execution of William Fitz Osbert,
whom he had ordered to be taken from sanctuary and hanged; and the
Roman lawyers were threatening excommunication if he did not pull
down the grand new college which he had built in honor of St. Thomas
at Lambeth. He had had as much as he wanted of power, and as much as
he could bear of blame. He, therefore, in July, 1198, made way for a
new justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, Earl of Essex, who had no such
scruples of conscience and no such ecclesiastical embarrassments, but
who began his administration with a severe forest assize, and by his
general sternness taught the nation how good a friend, with all his
short-comings, Archbishop Hubert had been. Geoffrey Fitz Peter retained
his office for life, dying, as will be seen, at a critical period in
the next reign.
[Sidenote:
Richard’s
last years.
]
[Sidenote:
Otho of
Saxony,
emperor.
]
During this time Richard was engaged in foiling the projects of
Philip, and drawing together the strings of a great Continental
alliance against him. Alternate interviews, battles, treaties, or
projects of treaties, truces and truce-breakings, form the history of
years, interesting only to those who care to follow the military and
geographical side of the history. Philip gains strength on the whole;
it would not be true to say that Richard loses strength, and he would
probably, if he had lived, have completely overwhelmed his enemy.
But still they were more on an equality than they had been, Philip
gaining experience which was far more valuable to him than any mere
access of force. In 1198 Richard made a great step, by securing the
crown of Germany for his nephew, the son of Henry, the Lion of Saxony,
who had been brought up at the English court, and was, of course,
in the closest alliance with his benefactor. With Otho’s aid he drew
in all the Flemish nobles and the Low Country Germans, who hated the
Hohenstaufen, and so hated their ally the King of France not only as a
bad neighbor but as an ally of the Emperor. This confederation might
ultimately have been successful if Richard had lived to guide it. He
had at last by patient and forgiving kindness drawn John from Philip’s
side; he had got the King of Scots also safe under his influence.
[Sidenote:
Death of
Richard,
1199.
]
In the spring of 1199 he was, as usual, in appearance negotiating a
peace, probably in reality meditating a brisker war, when he heard that
the Viscount of Limoges had found a great buried treasure: a golden
emperor and all his court sitting at a golden table. The very name of
the gold aroused Richard: he demanded his share--the lion’s share.
The viscount gave, but not all. So the king besieged his castles;
and before one of them, Chalus-Chabrol, he received a wound in the
shoulder, which the awkwardness of the surgeons made mortal to him.
He lived long enough to set his house in order. He left his jewels
to Otho; John he declared his heir, and directed the barons to swear
allegiance to him; he sent for his mother to receive his last words;
he ordered the man who had wounded him to be set free, and declared
his forgiveness of all his enemies. Then in an agony of penitence he
made a very solemn and very sad confession. It was said that he had
not confessed for seven years, because he would not profess to be
reconciled to Philip; and he had much besides that to ask pardon for.
After receiving the last sacraments he closed his laborious life on the
7th of April, and was buried with his father, by St. Hugh of Lincoln,
in the abbey church of Fontevraud; a very strong man, who knew at
least his own need of mercy.