of his victory, but there were no grounds on which he could
demand from Henry any great concession. One thing he
did insist upon, and that was for him probably the most im-
portant advantage which he gained. Henry must acknow-
ledge himself entirely at his mercy, as a contumacious vassal,
and accept any sentence imposed on him. In the great
task which Philip Augustus had before him, already so suc-
cessfully begun, of building up in France a strong monarchy
and of forcing many powerful and independent vassals into
obedience to the crown, nothing could be more useful than
this precedent, so dramatic and impressive, of the unconditional
submission of the most powerful of all the vassals, himself a
crowned king. All rights over the disputed county of Auvergne
were abandoned. Richard was acknowledged heir and was
to receive the homage of all barons. Those who had given
in their allegiance to Richard should remain with him till
the crusade, which was to be begun the next spring, and
20,000 marks were to be paid the king of France for his ex-
penses on the captured castles, which were to be returned to
Henry.

These were the principal conditions, and to all these Henry
agreed as he must. That he intended to give up all effort and
rest satisfied with this result is not likely, and words he is said
to have used indicate the contrary, but his disease and his
broken spirits had brought him nearer the end than he knew.
One more blow, for him the severest of all, remained for him
to suffer. He found at the head of the list of those who had
abandoned his allegiance the name of John. Then his will
forsook him and his heart broke. He turned his face to the
wall and cried : " Let everything go as it will ; I care no more
for myself or for the world." On July 6 he died at Chinon,
murmuring almost to the last, ** Shame on a conquered king,"
and abandoned by all his family except his eldest son Geof-
frey, the son, it was said, of a woman, low in character as in
birth.




CHAPTER XVII

RICHARD I AND THE CRUSADE

CHAP. The death of Henry II may be taken to mark the close of
^^^^ an epoch in English history, the epoch which had begun
with the Norman Conquest. We may call it, for want of
a better name, the feudal age, — the age during which the
prevailing organization, ideals, and practices had been Nor-
man-feudal. It was an age in which Normandy and the
continental interests of king and barons, and the continental
spirit and methods, had imposed themselves upon the island
realm. It was a time in which the great force in the state
. and the chief factor in its history had been the king. The
interests of the barons had been on the whole identical with
his. The rights which feudal law and custom gave him had
been practically unquestioned, save by an always reluctant
Church, and baronial opposition had taken the form of a
resistance to his general power rather than of a denial of
special rights. Now a change had silently begun which was
soon to show itself openly and to lead to great results. This
change involved only slowly and indirectly the general power
of the king, but it takes its beginning from two sources : the
rising importance of England in the total dominions of the
king, and the disposition to question certain of his rights.
Normandy was losing its power over the English baron, or if
this is too strong a statement for anything that was yet true,
he was beginning to identify himself more closely with Eng-
land and to feel less interest in sacrifices and burdens which
inured only to the benefit of the king and a policy foreign to
the country. To the disposition to question the king's ac-
tions and demands Henry had himself contributed not a little
by the frequency and greatness of those demands, and by the
small regard to the privileges of his vassals shown in the de-

358



1 1 89 AN AGE OF PREPARATION- 359

velopment of his judicial reforms and in his financial measures ; chap.
these last indeed under Henry II violated the baronial rights ^^^^
less directly but, as they were carried on by his sons, they
attacked them in a still more decisive way. When once this
disposition had begun, the very strength of the Norman mon-
archy was an element of weakness, for it gave to individual
complaints a unity and a degree of importance and interest
for the country which they might not otherwise have had. In
this development the reign of Richard, though differing but
little in outward appearance from his father's, was a time of
rapid preparation, leading directly to the struggles of his
brother's reign and to the first great forward step, the act
which marks the full beginning of the new era.

Richard could have felt no grief at the death of his father,
and he made no show of any. Geoffrey had gone for the
burial to the nunnery of Fontevrault, a favourite convent of
Henry's, and there Richard appeared as soon as he heard
the news, and knelt beside the body of his father, which was
said to have bled on his approach, as long as it would take to
say the Lord's prayer. Then we are told he turned at once
to business. The first act which he performed, according to
one of our authorities, on stepping outside the church was
characteristic of the beginning of his reign. One of the
most faithful of his father's later servants was William Mar-
shal, who had been earlier in the service of his son Henry.
He had remained with the king to the last, and in the hur-
ried retreat from Le Mans he had guarded the rear. On
Richard's coming up in pursuit he had turned upon him
with his lance and might have killed him as he was without
his coat of mail, but instead, on Richard's crying out to be
spared, he had only slain his horse, and so checked the pur-
suit, though he had spared him with words of contempt which
Richard must have remembered : " No, I will not slay you,"
he had said; "the devil may slay you." Now both he and
his friends were anxious as to the reception he would meet
with from the prince, but Richard was resolved to start from
the beginning as king and not as Count of Poitou. He called
William Marshal to him, referred to the incident, granted
him his full pardon, confirmed the gift to him which Henry
had recently made him of the hand of the heiress of the Earl



36o RICHARD I AND THE CRUSADE 1189

CHAP, of Pembroke and her rich inheritance, and commissioned him
^^^^ to go at once to England to take charge of the king's inter-
ests there until his own arrival. This incident was typical of
Richard's action in general. Henry's faithful servants
suffered nothing for their fidelity in opposing his son ; the
barons who had abandoned him before his death, to seek
their own selfish advantage because they believed the tide
was turning against him, were taught that Richard was able
to estimate their conduct at its real worth.

Henry on his death-bed had made no attempt to dispose of
the succession. On the retreat from Le Mans he had sent
strict orders to Normandy, to give up the castles there in the
event of his death to no one but John. But the knowledge
of John's treason would have changed that, even if it had
been possible to set aside the treaty of Colombieres. There
was no disposition anywhere to question Richard's right.
On July 20 at Rouen he was formally girt with the sword of
the duchy of Normandy, by the archbishop and received the
homage of the clergy and other barons. He at once con-
firmed to his brother John, who had joined him, the grants
made or promised him by their father : ;£4000 worth of land
in England, the county of Mortain in Normandy, and the
hand and inheritance of the heiress of the Earl of Gloucester.
To his other brother, Geoffrey, he gave the archbishopric of
York, carrying out a wish which Henry had expressed in his
last moments ; and Matilda, the daughter of Henry the Lion,
was given as his bride to another Geoffrey, the heir of the
county of Perche, a border land whose alliance would be
of importance in case of trouble with France. Two days
later he had an interview with King Philip at the old meeting-
place near Gisors. There Philip quickly made evident the fact
that in his eyes the king of England was a different person
from the rebellious Count of Poitou, and he met Richard
with his familiar demand that the Norman Vexin should
be given up. Without doubt the point of view had changed
as much to Richard, and he adopted his father's tactics and
promised to marry Adela. He also promised Philip 4000 marks
in addition to the 20,000 which Henry had agreed to pay.
With these promises Philip professed himself content. He
received Richard's homage for all the French fiefs, and the



1 1 89 THE PERSONALITY OF RICHARD 361

treaty lately made with Henry was confirmed, including the chap.
agreement to start on the crusade the next spring. ^^^^

In the meantime by the command of Richard his mother,
Eleanor, was set free from custody in England ; and assuming
a royal state she made a progress through the kingdom and
gave orders for the release of prisoners. About the middle
of August Richard himself landed in England with John.
No one had any grounds on which to expect a particularly
good reign from him, but he was everywhere joyfully re-
ceived, especially by his mother and the barons at Winchester.
A few days later the marriage of John to Isabel of Gloucester
was celebrated, in spite of a formal protest entered by Baldwin,
Archbishop of Canterbury, because the parties were related
within the prohibited degrees. The coronation took place on
Sunday, September 3, and was celebrated apparently with
much care to follow the old ritual correctly and with much
formal pomp and ceremony, so that it became a new prece-
dent for later occasions down to the present day.

Richard was then just coming to the end of his thirty-second
year. In physical appearance he was not like either the
Norman or the Angevin type, but was taller and of a more
delicate and refined cast, and his portrait shows a rather
handsome face. In character and ambitions also he was not
a descendant of his father's line. The humdrum business of
ruling the state, of developing its law and institutions, of keeping
order and doing justice, or even of following a consistent and
long-continued policy of increasing his power or enlarging
his territories, was little to his taste. He was determined, as
his father had been, to be a strong king and to put down
utterly every rebellion, but his determination to be obeyed was
rather a resolution of the moment than a means to any fore-
seen and planned conclusion. He has been called by one
who knew the time most thoroughly " the creation and im-
personation of his age," and nothing better can be said.
The first age of a self-conscious chivalry, delighting intensely
in the physical life, in the sense of strength and power, that
belonged to baron and knight, and in the stirring scenes of
castle and tournament and distant adventure, the age of the
troubadour, of an idealized warfare and an idealized love, the
age which had expressed one side of itself in his brother



362 RICHARD I AND THE CRUSADE 11 89

CHAP. Henry, expressed a more manly side in Richard. He was
^^^^ first of all a warrior ; not a general but a fighter. The wild
enthusiasm of the hand-to-hand conflict, the matching of skill
against skill and of strength against strength, was an in-
tense pleasure to him, and his superiority in the tactics
of the battle-field, in the planning and management of a
fight, or even of a series of attacks or defences, a march
or a retreat, placed him easily in the front rank of com-
manders in an age when the larger strategy of the highest
order of generalship had little place. Of England he had
no knowledge. He was born there, and he had paid it two
brief visits before his coronation, but he knew nothing of the
language or the people. He had spent all his life in his
southern dominions, and the south had made him what he
was. His interest in England was chiefly as a source of
supplies, and to him the crusade was, by the necessities of
his nature, of greater importance than the real business of a
king. For England itself the period was one during which
there was no king, though it was by the authority of an absent
king that a series of great ministers carried forward the de-
velopment of the machinery and law which had begun to be
put into organized form in Henry's reign, and carried forward
also the training of the classes who had a share in public
affairs for the approaching crisis of their history. From this
point of view the exceedingly burdensome demands of
Richard upon his English subjects are the most important
feature of his time.

At the beginning of his reign Richard had, like his father,
a great work to do, great at least from his point of view ; but
the difference between the two tasks shows how thoroughly
Henry had performed his. Richard's problem was to get as
much money as possible for the expenses of the crusade, and
to arrange things, if possible, in such a shape that the exist-
ing peace and quiet would be undisturbed during his absence.
About the business of raising money he set immediately and
thoroughly. The medieval king had many things to sell
which are denied the modern sovereign : offices, favour, and
pardons, the rights of the crown, and even in some cases the
rights of the purchaser himself. This was Richard's chief
resource. " The king exposed for sale," as a chronicler of



1 1 89 METHODS OF RAISING MONEY 363

the time said,^ " everything that he had " ; or as another said,^ chap.
" whoever wished, bought of the king his own and others' ^^^^
rights " : not merely was the willing purchaser welcome,
but the unwilling was compelled to buy wherever possible.
Ranulf Glanvill, the great judge, Henry's justiciar and "the
eye of the king," was compelled to resign and to purchase
his liberty with the great sum, it is asserted, of ;£i 5,000.
In most of the counties the former sheriffs were removed
and fined, and the offices thus vacated were sold to the highest
bidder. The Bishop of Durham, Hugh de Puiset, bought
the earldom of Northumberland and the justiciarship of
England ; the Bishop of Winchester and the Abbot of St.
Edmund's bought manors which belonged of right to their
churches ; the Bishop of Coventry bought a priory and the
sheriffdoms of three counties ; even the king's own devoted
follower, William of Longchamp, paid ;£3000 to be chancellor
of the kingdom. Sales like these were not unusual in the prac-
tice of kings, nor would they have occasioned much remark at
the time, if the matter had not been carried to such extremes, and
the rights and interests of the kingdom so openly disregarded.
The most flagrant case of this sort was that relating to the
liege homage of the king of Scotland, which Henry had ex-
acted by formal treaty from William the Lion and his barons.
In December, 11 89, King William was escorted to Richard at
Canterbury by Geoffrey, Archbishop of York and the barons
of Yorkshire, and there did homage for his English lands, but
was, on a payment of 10,000 marks, released from whatever
obligations he had assumed in addition to those of former
Scottish kings. Nothing could show more clearly than this
how different were the interests of Richard from his father's,
or how little he troubled himself about the future of his
kingdom.

Already before this incident, which preceded Richard's
departure by only a few days, many of his arrangements
for the care of the kingdom in his absence had been made.
At a great council held at Pipewell abbey near Geddington
on September 15, vacant bishoprics were filled with men
whose names were to be conspicuous in the period now
beginning. Richard's chancellor, William Longchamp, was

1 Benedict of Peterborough, ii. 90. ^ Roger of Howden, iii. 18.



364 RICHARD J AND THE CRUSADE 1189

CHAP, made Bishop of Ely; Richard Fitz Nigel, of the family of
^^^^ Roger of Salisbury, son of Nigel, Bishop of Ely, and like his
ancestors long employed in the exchequer and to be con-
tinued in that service, was made Bishop of London ;
Hubert Walter, a connexion of Ranulf Glanvill, and trained
by him for more important office than was now intrusted
to him, became Bishop of Salisbury ; and Geoffrey's appoint-
ment to York was confirmed. The responsibility of the
justiciarship was at the same time divided between Bishop
Hugh of Durham and the Earl of Essex, who, however, shortly
died, and in his place was appointed William Longchamp.
With them were associated as assistant justices five others,
of whom two were William Marshal, now possessing the
earldom of Pembroke, and Geoffrey Fitz Peter himself after-
wards justiciar. At Canterbury, in December, further dis-
positions were made. Richard had great confidence in his
mother, and with good reason. Although she was now nearly
seventy years of age, she was still vigorous in mind and body,
and she was always faithful to the interests of her sons, and
wise and skilful in the assistance which she gave them.
Richard seems to have left her with some ultimate authority
in the state, and he richly provided for her wants. He
assigned her the provision which his father had already
made for her, and added also that which Henry I had made
for his queen and Stephen for his, so that, as was remarked
at the time, she had the endowment of three queens. John
was not recognized as heir nor assigned any authority. Per-
haps Richard hoped to escape in this way the troubles of his
father, but, perhaps remembering also how much a scanty
income had had to do with his brother Henry's discontent,
he gave him almost the endowment of a king. Besides the
grants already made to him in Normandy, and rich additions
since his coming to England, he now conferred on him all
the royal revenues of the four south-western counties of Corn-
wall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset. He already held the
counties of Derby and Nottingham. Richard plainly intended
that political rights should not go with these grants, but he
shows very little knowledge of John's character or apprecia-
tion of the temptation which he put in his way in the posses-
sion of a great principality lacking only the finishing touches.



1 1 89 WILLIAM LONGCHAMP 365

John's position was not the only source from which speedy chap.
trouble was threatened when Richard crossed to Normandy ^^^^
on December 11. He had prepared another, equally certain,
in the arrangement which had been made for the justiciarship.
It was absurd to expect Hugh of Puiset and William Long-
champ to work in the same yoke. In spirit and birth Hugh
was an aristocrat of the highest type. Of not remote royal
descent, a relative of the kings both of England and France,
he was a proud, worldly-minded, intensely ambitious prelate
of the feudal sort and of great power, almost a reigning
prince in the north. Longchamp was of the class of men
who rise in the service of kings. Not of peasant birth,
though but little above it, he owed everything to his zealous
devotion to the interests of Richard, and, as is usually the
case with such men, he had an immense confidence in him-
self ; he was determined to be master, and he was as proud
of his position and abilities as was the Bishop of Durham of
his blood. Besides this he was naturally of an overbearing
disposition and very contemptuous of those whom he regarded
as inferior to himself in any particular. Hugh in turn felt,
no doubt, a great contempt for him, but Longchamp had no
hesitation in measuring himself with the bishop. Soon after
the departure of the king he turned Hugh out of the exche-
quer and took his county of Northumberland away from him.
Other high-handed proceedings followed, and many appeals
against his chancellor were carried to Richard in France.
To rearrange matters a great council was summoned to meet
in Normandy about the end of winter. The result was that
Richard sustained his minister as Longchamp had doubtless
felt sure would be the case. The Humber was made a dividing
line between the two justiciars, while the pope was asked to
make Longchamp legate in England during the absence of
the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was going on the crusade.
Perhaps Richard now began to suspect that he had been
preparing trouble for England instead of peace, for at the
same time he exacted an oath from his brothers, Geoffrey,
whose troubles with his church of York had already begun,
and John, not to return to England for three years ; but John
was soon after released from his oath at the request of his
mother.



366 RICHARD I AND THE CRUSADE 1190

CHAP. Richard was impatient to be gone on the crusade, and he
■^^^^ might now beheve that England could be safely left to itself;
but many other things delayed the expedition, and the setting
out was finally postponed, by agreement with Philip, to
June 24. The third crusade is the most generally interesting
of all the series, because of the place which it has taken in
literature ; because of the greatness of its leaders and their ex-
ploits ; of the knightly character of Saladin himself; of the
pathetic fate of the old Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who
lost his life and sacrificed most of his army in an attempt to
force his way overland through Asia Minor ; and of its real
failure after so great an expenditure of Ufe and effort and so
many minor successes — the most brilliant of all the crusades,
the one great crusade of the age of chivalry : but it concerns
the history of England even less than does the continental
policy of her kings. It belongs rather to the personal history
of Richard, and as such it serves to explain his character and
to show why England was left to herself during his reign.

Richard and Philip met at Vezelai at the end of June, 1 190,
to begin the crusade. There they made a new treaty of alli-
ance and agreed to the equal division of all the advantages to
be gained in the expedition, and from thence Richard marched
down the Rhone to Marseilles, where he took ship on August 7,
and, by leisurely stages along the coast of Italy, went on to
Messina which he reached on September 23. Much there was
to occupy Richard's attention in Sicily. Philip had already
reached Messina before him, and many questions arose
between them, the most important of which was that of Rich-
ard's marriage. Towards the end of the winter Queen Eleanor
came to Sicily, bringing with her Berengaria, the daughter of
the king of Navarre, whom Richard had earlier known and
admired, and whom he had now decided to marry. Naturally
Philip objected, since Richard had definitely promised to
marry his sister Adela ; but now he flatly refused to marry
one of whose relations with his father evil stories were told.
By the intervention of the Count of Flanders a new treaty
was made, and Richard was released from his engagement,
paying 10,000 marks to the king of France. Quarrels with
the inhabitants of Messina, due partly to the lawlessness of
the crusaders and partly to Richard's overbearing disposition,



iigi THE THIRD CRUSADE 367

led to almost open hostilities, and indirectly to jealousy on chap.
the part of the French. Domestic politics in the kingdom of ^^^^
Sicily were a further source of trouble. Richard's brother-
in-law, King William, had died a year before the arrival of the
crusaders, and the throne was in dispute between Henry VI,
the new king of Germany, who had married Constance,
William's aunt and heiress, and Tancred, an illegitimate
descendant of the Norman house. Tancred was in posses-
sion, and to Richard, no doubt, the support of Sicily at the
time seemed more important than the abstract question of right
or the distant effect of his poHcy on the crusade. Accordingly
a treaty was made, Tancred was recognized as king, and a
large sum of money was paid to Richard ; but to Henry VI
the treaty was a new cause of hostility against the king of
England, added to his relationship with the house of Guelf.
The winter in Sicily, which to the modern mind seems an un-
necessary waste of time, had added thus to the difficulties of
the crusade new causes of ill-feeling between the French and
EngUsh, and given a new reason for suspicion to the Germans.
It was only on April 10, 1191, that Richard at last set sail
on the real crusade. He sent on a little before him his
intended bride, Berengaria, with his sister Joanna, the
widowed queen of Sicily. The voyage proved a long and
stormy one, and it was not until May 6 that the fleet came
together, with some losses, in the harbour of Limasol in
Cyprus. The ruler of Cyprus, Isaac, of the house of Com-
nenus, who called himself emperor, showed so inhospitable a