In _The Tablet_ of June 18 is a leading article on the proposed erection of
Baron Marochetti's statue of Richard Coeur de Lion. Theology and history
are mixed: of course I shall carefully exclude the former. I have tried to
trace the statements to their sources; and where I have failed, perhaps
some of your readers may be able to help me.
"When the physicians told him that they could do nothing more for him,
and when his confessor had done his duty faithfully and with all
honesty, the stern old soldier commanded his attendants to take him off
the bed, and lay him naked on the bare floor. When this was done, he
then bade them take a discipline and scourge him with all their might.
This was the last command of their royal master; and in this he was
obeyed with more zeal than he found displayed when at the head of his
troops in Palestine."
I find no record that "the stern old soldier," who was then forty-two years
of age, and whom the writer oddly calls Richard II., had any reason to
complain of want of zeal in his troops. They fought well, and flogged
well--if they flogged at all. Richard died of gangrene in the shoulder; and
I have the authority of an eminent physician for saying, that gangrene, so
near the vital parts, would produce such mental and bodily prostration,
that it is highly improbable that the patient, unless in delirium, should
give such an order, and impossible that he should live through its
execution.
Hume and Lingard do not allude to the "discipline;" and the silence of the
latter is important. Henry says:
"Having expressed great penitence for his vices, and having undergone a
very severe discipline from the hands of the clergy, who attended him
in his last moments," &c.--Vol. iii. p. 161. ed. 1777.
He cites Brompton, and there I find the penance given much stronger than in
_The Tablet_:
"Praecepitque pedes sibi ligari, et in altum suspendi nudumque corpus
flagellis caedi et lacerari, donec ipse praeciperat ut silerent. Cumque
diu caederetur, ex praecepto, ad modicum siluerunt. Et spiritu iterum
reassumpto, hoc idem secundo ac tertio in abundantia sanguinis
compleverunt. Tamdiu in se revertens, afferri viaticum sibi jussit et
se velut proditorem et hostem, contra dominum suum ligatis pedibus fune
trahi."
This is taken from Brompton's Chronicle in _Decem Scriptores Historiae
Anglicanae_, 1652, p. 1279., edited by Selden. As Brompton lived in the
reign of Edward III., he is not a high authority upon any matter in that of
Richard I. I cannot find any other. Hoveden and Knyghton are silent. Is the
fact stated elsewhere? Hoveden states, and the modern historians follow
him, that after the king's death, Marchader seized the archer, flayed him
alive, and then hanged him. My medical authority says, that no man could be
flayed _alive_: and that the most skilful operator could not remove the
skin of one arm from the elbow to the wrist, before the patient would die
from the shock to his system.
Mr. Riley, in a note on the passage in Hoveden, cites from the _Winchester
Chronicle_ a possible account of Gurdum being tortured to death. The
historian of _The Tablet_, in the same article, says:
"We are far from attributing absolute perfection to the son of Henry
II., one of that awful race popularly believed to be descended from the
devil. When Henry, as a boy, practising Whiggery by revolting against
his father, was presented to St. Bernard at the Court of the King of
France, the saint looked at him with a sort of terror, and said, 'From
the Devil you came, and to the Devil you will go.'"
The fact that Henry II. rebelled against his father is not given in any
history which I have {73} read; and the popular belief in the remarkable
descent of Henry, and consequently of our present royal family, is quite
new to me, and to all of whom I have inquired. Still, finding that the
writer had an authority for the "discipline," he may have one for the
Devil. If so, I should like to know it; for I contemplate something after
the example of Lucian's _Quomodo Historia sit conscribenda_.