King Richard proved his military skill in
the Holy Land, but decided against trying
to re-take Jerusalem, so in many ways his
crusade was still a work in progress when
he decided to return home in 1192.
After subduing malcontents in his northern
French provinces in the late summer of 1190,
Richard was setting his affairs in order,
for the crusade, in his duchy of Aquitaine,
south-west France, in early autumn by besieging
William de Chisi's castle, capturing it, and
hanging its owner for plundering pilgrims
on their way to the Shrine of St James of
Compostella, in Spain.
In England, the officers the king had placed
in charge of the government quarrelled with
William de Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, for whom
Richard had obtained from Pope Clement the
legateship. Being a papal legate gave to the
holder of the office in his locality virtually
all the powers of a pope.
Bishop William was also chancellor and justiciary
of England - the top man in the government
- and had marched with an army on York to
set to rights the wrongs perpetrated in the
pogrom of the Jews, at the time of the king's
coronation, which I reported in the last Episode.
He sacked the sheriff of York and the commander
of the castle, and took a hundred hostages,
pending the appearance of the evil-doers at
the king's court. Backing the Jews was hardly
a popular policy, especially as many aristocratic
borrowers of Jewish money probably saw their
destruction as a means of escaping their debts.
But Legate William was also discomfitted because
when he arrived at York he was not met with
what he considered to be the proper respect
from the Canons of the minster and churches
there. He laid an interdict on them immediately
until they threw themselves at his feet. He
also arrested Hugh, Bishop of Durham, who
had been appointed by the king as Justiciary
North of the River Trent to the Scottish border.
He was imprisoned at Southwell, Nottinghamshire,
until he surrendered to the Bishop William
Windsor Castle and others that Richard had
placed in the Legate's hands. This was an
inauspicious start to the crusade and a sign
of things to come when Prince John, the new
Count of Mortain, would seek to subvert the
government.
Back in France, waiting for Richard at Marseille
were his ships and the great siege engines
that had been commissioned for war, and he
set sail for the Holy Land. It is beyond the
scope I have set for this history, but is
it not fascinating that money could be transported
safely to Marseille, then not part of France,
but of Aragon?
At most of his stops on their way, money was
waiting for the English, raised by loans from
such as the Templars and other money-lenders
in Italy - Jewish and Christian. Eight thousand
men were mustered at Marseille, siege engines
constructed and delivered there, and food
for the voyage found there and at all ports
of call. Harbingers must have gone ahead.
Some merchants - indeed, some kings and princes
- tried to defraud the king, who was not an
easy touch, having men hanged and port cities
devastated down the leg of Italy to Sicily.
The Count of Flanders met Richard's fleet
at Naples and sailed with him, to the chagrin
of the king of France. Richard's betrothed,
Berengaria, daughter of King Sancho IV of
Navarre, was waiting with Queen Eleanor, Richard's
mother, at Brindisi, Apulia, on the Adriatic
- today still a ferry point for Athens, Rhodes,
Cyprus, and the Levant.
What a feat for Richard and his brother kings
and princes to arrange such a complex project
without telephones, emails, and bank-to-bank
electronic transfers.
While the king was still at Messina, Sicily,
Prince John in England joined those in the
government opposed to the haughty conduct
of business by the Legate, William, bishop
of Ely. The king immediately sent Walter,
archbishop of Rouen, William Marshal, earl
of Pembroke, and others back to England with
instructions that the Legate was to include
these men in all his judgments.
Discretion being the better part of valour,
Archbishop Walter, Lord Pembroke, and the
others did not produce the king's letters
when they arrived at London. That ailment
in the body politic would fester so long as
the bishop of Ely remained chancellor.
At the same time, Richard had his first taste,
as king of England, of King Philip of France's
duplicity. He might have known better as he
was weened away from his father Henry II with
the false promises of the French king two
or three years earlier.
By the time Richard reached Catania, Sicily,
King Tancred of Sicily hastened to him with
a document from the king of France, asserting
that Richard had broken the peace the two
monarchs had recently made and was attacking
Philip's vassals in France. Philip invited
Tancred to attack Richard in Sicily to destroy
the English army and that he, the king of
France, would support him.
The Lionheart denied the French charge vehemently
and when Tancred's emissaries raised the allegation
and Richard's denial in the French ruler's
presence, he went silent, 'having a bad conscience
on the matter', according to the chronicler.
In fact, it appears that Philip was concerned
to torpedo the marriage between the king of
England and Berengaria, the daughter of Sancho,
king of Navarre.
The kingdom of Navarre abutted Richard's duchy
of Aquitaine, a marriage alliance that the
king of France was keen to break. It had originally
been proposed that Richard would marry Philip's
sister Alice, which Richard instantly reneged
on when he apparently discovered that she
had been intimate with his father.
To conclude a new peace, Philip dropped the
marriage proposal with some embarrassment,
one imagines.
But another opportunity soon presented itself.
As the two kings were besieging Acre, Philip,
count of Flanders (now in modern Belgium,
but then in the kingdom of France), died,
and King Philip sent letters to Paris to have
his officers seize all of the count's treasure
and property. Count Philip was an ally of
Richard's.
Along with adjudicating who should be the
next count of Champagne, Philip could now
add having to decide who should be the next
count of Flanders, and he duly set sail for
France.
Richard followed about two months later and,
as we know, made the mistake of trying to
pass through Duke Leopold of Austria's lands
incognito. He was arrested and sent on to
the Emperor Otto who managed the ransom business
as well as any capo di tutti capi in the America
mafia.
In my reading, I have come to the conclusion
that Richard was a doughty knight at heart,
but knew little of dissimulation, could not
see round a corner before he got to it, and
had difficulty in reading other people.
It seems not really to have occurred to him
that Duke Leopold would give him a very hard
time if he found him in his territory, after
the humiliation at Acre, but he tried to cross
Austria anyway. When he agreed peace with
Philip II of France, he meant it. Philip did
not mean it which enabled the French king
to run rings diplomatically and politically
round him. And he made many such pacts with
the French king, only always to be disappointed.
He could also stand somewhat on his dignity
as when he failed to dismiss his appointee
as Chancellor, Bishop William Longchamp, who
was clearly upsetting everyone with his hauteur
in England. Most of all, from the kingdom
of England's angle, he was constantly forgiving
his brother Prince John and should have nominated
as his successor Arthur of Brittany, even
though he was only twelve.
There were plenty of men in Richard's entourage
who would have protected the young prince,
not least another doughty knight, William
Marshal, who carried through a similar conjuring
trick in 1216-17 for the nine-year-old Henry
III, son and heir of King John. Henry would
reign for 56 years and father Edward I, the
first English king since Ealdfrith of Northumbria,
in the later seventh century, to attempt the
conquest of Scotland.
Despite Richard’s generosity to his brother,
Prince John turned against him and started
to stir up trouble in England for his own
ends. John was not alone and found many supporters.
