The Demon's Brood (7 page)

Besides wrecking Henry's plans, the Young King's death unsettled his brothers even further. Geoffrey and John each hoped for the Crown despite their father announcing that Richard had taken the Young King's place as heir and would be responsible for Normandy, Anjou and England – Geoffrey was to continue in Brittany, while John would take over in Aquitaine. However, Henry had not bothered to explain this to Richard, who fled to Poitou and gathered troops, refusing to leave. For the moment his father accepted the situation, but Richard did not trust him.

Another problem was Alice of France, Philip's sister, to whom Richard had been betrothed since 1169, and who lived at the English court. Henry was rumoured to have fathered a bastard on her, which was why he would not let the marriage take place. In any case, Richard, repelled by the girl's ugliness, wanted to marry Berengaria of Navarre. Trying to set all three sons against each other, Philip offered to cede the Norman border territory of the Vexin in perpetuity if Henry granted it to a son who married Alice.

The Old King hoped John at least would be satisfied by becoming King of Ireland. Now eighteen, John set off for his new kingdom in April 1185, Pope Urban III sending a crown of peacocks' feathers set in gold for his coronation. It never took place. When he landed, John upset the Irish chieftains, pulling their beards and jeering at them, after which he replaced veteran Anglo-Norman commanders by young cronies whose campaign swiftly ended in defeat. Taking refuge in the coastal towns, he spent his time drinking and whoring until Henry recalled him in September. In retrospect, it is possible that John's behaviour may have been deliberate, to avoid spending the rest of his life in Ireland.

In the month John sailed for Ireland, Henry ordered Richard to hand Aquitaine back to Eleanor, who had been released from captivity. Although this looked like a setback for Richard, it
guaranteed his succession to the duchy, as he and his mother were devoted to each other. Despairing of Aquitaine, next year his brother Geoffrey sought Philip's help in securing Anjou. A small, swarthy man, he is referred to by the chronicler Howden as that son of perdition (the name given to Judas by the Gospel) while Gerald of Wales calls him a smooth-tongued hypocrite, always stirring up trouble. But in Paris, plotting against his father and brethren, Geoffrey was kicked to death by a horse during a tournament. There is no record of Henry showing any grief.

As the oldest surviving son, Richard saw himself as heir to the entire Plantagenet empire. But, some time during 1187, he learned that Henry had written to King Philip, suggesting Alice should marry John, who would inherit Aquitaine and Anjou. Suspecting that his disinheritance was being planned, Richard allied with Philip, who invited him to Paris, where they slept in the same bed. War was averted in January 1188 by news that Saladin had captured the Holy City: Henry, Richard and Philip all swore to go on Crusade. However, the expedition was delayed by rebellion in Poitou and by war between Richard and Raymond of Toulouse – both secretly set in motion by King Philip.

In summer 1188 Philip intervened openly. In response, Henry assembled an army of Anglo-Norman knights and Flemish mercenaries. (Among them was the famous William Marshal, who had been head of the Young King's military household.) Instead of a battle there was a meeting between the two kings in August under an elm tree near Gisors, which the French king left on the pretext of sunstroke – in order to prolong hostilities without fighting. Henry and Richard continued the campaign until Henry ran out of money and disbanded his army. All this time Philip was playing upon Richard's paranoia.

At a meeting in November between the English and French
kings at Bonsmoulins in Normandy, when his father refused to acknowledge him as heir, Richard cried, ‘Now I know what I thought impossible!' Then he publicly did homage to Philip for Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Aquitaine. An attempt at reconciliation next Easter failed because Henry still refused to acknowledge Richard as heir. Meanwhile, Aquitaine supported Richard and Brittany was in revolt.

By now Henry was increasingly unwell. Early in June 1189, the two kings and Richard met at La Ferté-Bernard, joined by a papal legate who was anxious for the Crusade to start. Philip demanded that Henry let Alice marry Richard and guarantee his succession, while John must go on Crusade. Richard made the same demands. Henry proposed, instead, that John should marry Alice and take over Aquitaine, which was rejected out of hand. When the legate threatened to put France under an interdict if Philip did not make peace, Philip accused him of taking bribes and ended the conference.

Philip and Richard now invaded Maine, catching Henry by surprise at Le Mans on 11 June. Its people fired the suburbs, but the French rode through the flames into the city and Henry fled, pursued by his own son. His escort included William Marshal, who deliberately charged at Richard. ‘For God's sake, don't kill me, Marshal,' he begged. ‘I'm not wearing armour.' ‘No, I will not kill you,' replied William as he ran his lance into Richard's horse. ‘I shall leave that to the devil.'
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‘O God, today you humiliated me by stealing the city I loved most on earth, where I was born and bred!' cried the Old King. With his bastard son Geoffrey and a few followers, he fled into the forest, reaching Chinon before he collapsed. Then Philip captured Tours, another key stronghold. Feverish with blood poisoning from a wounded heel, Henry met the French king at Villandry, where he was further shaken by a bolt of lightning that just missed him. Held up in his saddle, he agreed to make his barons swear allegiance to Richard, pay a cash indemnity and go on Crusade with Philip. Exchanging a kiss of peace with
Richard, Henry whispered in his ear, ‘God grant I don't die before I have my revenge on you!'
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Returning to Chinon, Henry learned of the desertion of John, whom he had contemplated making his heir. He moaned, ‘Shame on a conquered king!', calling down God's curse on his sons. He died on 6 July. Before his burial in the abbey church at Fontevrault Richard came to see the corpse. A torrent of blood flowed from its nostrils, enraged even in death.

Henry II's most enduring monument is not the battered effigy at Fontevrault, but in England, where no ruler has ever left a deeper, more lasting mark.

In accepting pre-Conquest legal customs, the Normans had unknowingly committed themselves to becoming Englishmen, and Henry made certain they would do so by creating the Common Law.

Queen of kingdoms while King Richard lives . . . your position is secure under so great a helmsman . . .

Geoffrey of Vinsauf
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The sudden collapse of the Crusader states in 1187 caused the same sort of horror among Christians that Jews might feel today were they to hear that the Israeli armed forces had been wiped out and Jerusalem lost, with the remnant of Israel's population huddled in one or two beleaguered seaports. Every major Western ruler took an oath to go on the Third Crusade and rescue the Holy Land. Among them was England's new king.

In 1860 a statue of Richard I was erected outside the Palace of Westminster, although some Victorians did not think he deserved one. ‘His subjects, fortunately for themselves, saw very little of him,' wrote Stubbs. ‘His ambition was that of a mere warrior: he would fight for anything whatever, but he would sell everything that was worth fighting for.' As late as 1974,
The Oxford
History of England
argued that his only use for his kingdom was to finance ambitions overseas, a generally accepted view until his convincing rehabilitation in 1991 by John Gillingham. While he may have been essentially a Frenchman and ‘No Englishman' (Stubbs's phrase), he valued his kingdom. Nor did his English subjects feel any resentment, idolizing him as the leader who saved Christian Palestine.

One of Richard's first acts was to pardon William Marshal who only recently had nearly killed him. He also gave William the hand of the greatest heiress of the day, Isabel de Clare, so the landless knight from the Kennet Valley became Earl of Pembroke and Lord of Leinster. ‘The Marshal', as everyone called him, was the most celebrated knight of the age, a hero of the tournament and the battlefield, who rose through sheer ability and ended his career by uniting England behind the Plantagenet dynasty.

After Richard's investment as Duke of Normandy, he was crowned King of England at Westminster on 3 September 1189. The coronation was marred by the crowd outside, who attacked and killed a deputation from the Jewish community when it tried to present the new king with gifts. The incident turned into a pogrom that spread from London to as far north as York, and many Jews were murdered or even burned alive. Richard tried to save them, from greed rather than compassion – he wanted to fleece the entire community to help pay for his Crusade.

Even so, he did not forget the oaths sworn at his coronation; his remark ‘I would sell London if I could find a buyer' was only a witticism.
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If he sold offices and lordships to finance his Crusade, he made the Welsh princes swear not to attack in his absence and guarded the North by selling Roxburgh and Berwick back to the Scots. Marrying his brother John to Isabel of Gloucester, heiress to the great earldom of Gloucester, giving him other English estates and creating him Count of Mortain in Normandy, was less of a risk than leaving him dissatisfied.

In July 1190 Richard joined his fellow crusader Philip II at Vézelay, with 4,000 men-at-arms and as many foot soldiers.
A hundred ships took the soldiers from Marseilles to Messina where they waited for King Richard before sailing on to Sicily. No English monarch had brought so large an expedition on such a long journey. To preserve discipline Richard issued a list of penalties – anyone who killed a man was to be thrown overboard tied to his victim's corpse, anyone who drew blood in a quarrel was to lose his hand, and thieves were to be tarred and feathered.

He himself went overland with a single knight – and was nearly lynched in Calabria for stealing a peasant's falcon. On arrival, he found that his sister Queen Joanna, William II of Sicily's widow, had been imprisoned by King Tancred. A usurper, Tancred lived in fear of Emperor Henry VI, who had married the heiress to the throne, Constance of Hauteville. After the English king sacked and occupied Messina as a punishment for Tancred refusing to admit him, Tancred, desperate to avoid making another dangerous enemy, hastily freed Joanna, signing a treaty by which he agreed to pay her compensation. In return, Richard promised that one of Tancred's daughters should marry his nephew Arthur of Brittany, whom he had adopted as his heir.

During the winter at Messina, Richard told King Philip he could not marry Alice of France because of her reputation. Instead, he would wed Berengaria of Navarre, whom Queen Eleanor was bringing to Sicily. The insult did not improve relations between the two men.

Handsome and well built if a bit plump, with reddish-blond hair, Richard, despite having been born at Oxford in 1157 (presumably just outside, in Beaumont Palace), had become a man from south of the Loire, whose languages were Poitevin, Provençal and Latin. He knew no English and complained of his kingdom's cold and rain.

‘Well aware of what a filthy life he had been leading and
regretting it, he summoned all the archbishops and prelates to Reginald de Moyac's chapel in Messina where, throwing himself naked at their feet, he openly confessed to God his filthiness', Roger of Howden tells us.
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In token of repentance, the king held three scourges. What was Richard's sin? Some historians, but only since John Harvey in 1948 and without any evidence, have suggested he was homosexual, citing his failure to produce an heir. Yet Berengaria may have been barren, as Richard fathered at least one bastard and had raped captive ladies in Aquitaine.
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The overall picture from chronicles is of a man with enormous self-confidence and dynamism. (His only physical handicap was malaria, caught before he went to the Holy Land – during bouts he shook all over.) In Palestine and France he proved to be a magnificent soldier, who inspired loyalty in his men and terrified his enemies. His one fault was rashness, behaving as though he bore a charmed life.

Contemptuous of most prelates, Richard respected Hugh of Lincoln, remarking ‘If other bishops were like him, no one would dare to argue with them.'
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Occasionally cruel, he could also show breathtaking magnanimity. The name ‘
coeur de lion
' was bestowed in his lifetime, Gerald of Wales writing of ‘our lion, our more than lion', even before he became king, which gave rise to the tale of Richard reaching down a lion's throat and pulling out its heart. Only an unusually impressive personality could inspire such a legend.

En route for the Holy Land in April 1191 Richard's fleet ran into a storm and many ships were wrecked off Cyprus. Survivors were imprisoned by its ruler, ‘Emperor' Isaac (a dissident Byzantine), who invited Queen Joanna and Berengaria to land when they anchored off Limassol. They wisely declined so he refused to let their boat take on fresh food or water. As soon as Richard arrived, he stormed Limassol, then conquered the
whole island within days and imprisoned Isaac, adding a vast booty to his war chest.