Richard I

by Thomas Asbridge

  From 1187 onwards, Richard waged a two-year war of succession against his ageing father. It soon became clear that the Lionheart was not only maturing into an extremely effective military commander; he also was learning how to prevail in the treacherous game of medieval power politics. To outflank Henry II, Richard established his own devious alliance with the Capetians – now led by King Philip Augustus. Through long months of military campaigning, court intrigue and seemingly interminable rounds of double-dealing and inconclusive negotiation, the Lionheart gradually eroded Henry’s previously vice-like grip on power. By the summer of 1189, the Old King had been hounded into a corner; exhausted, and beset by illness, he finally confirmed Richard in his position as heir on 4 July. Just two days later, Henry II died at the castle of Chinon in Touraine.

  Around 10 July, the Lionheart came to the abbey church at Fontevraud, where the Old King’s body had been laid out in preparation for burial. It was said that Richard’s face remained impassive as he looked down upon Henry II’s corpse – the father he had fought and eventually betrayed, all in the dogged pursuit of power.6 It was perhaps in this moment that he felt the immense burden of kingship settling upon his shoulders, but in the eyes of his contemporaries Richard had first to undergo the transformative ritual of coronation before he could truly be regarded as a sovereign. With this in mind, he made for England.

  By this time, events in the wider world had lent a real sense of urgency to the Lionheart’s movements. In 1187 – just as Richard began to openly challenge the Old King’s authority – a conflict was raging in the distant Holy Land. That July, the Western Christian (or Latin) crusader kingdom of Jerusalem was invaded by a 40,000-strong Muslim army, led by the fearsome Kurdish warlord Saladin.fn1 The sultan inflicted a terrible defeat upon the Latins at the Battle of Hattin and went on to reconquer the sacred city of Jerusalem itself. In response to this calamity, the pope preached a new crusade and, in common with most of Europe’s ruling aristocracy, Richard enlisted. Debate about the preparations for this grand expedition had rumbled on in the background, even as the contest surrounding the Angevin succession intensified, but now that the Lionheart had achieved victory at home, he was keen to embark upon his crusade.

  Pausing only briefly to confer with King Philip of France and to receive his investiture as Duke of Normandy in Rouen, Richard arrived in England in mid August. On Sunday 3 September 1189, his coronation was celebrated in Westminster Abbey. A contemporary chronicler made a precise record of the ceremony. This extraordinarily detailed account of the elaborate rituals involved in the making of an English king provides the clearest picture of a coronation since the time of the Norman Conquest, and it reveals a fascinating fusion of ecclesiastical and secular elements.7

  Richard arrived at the entrance to what was then the abbey church of St Peter at Westminster, having processed in state along a woollen carpet from the door of the royal chamber in the neighbouring palace of Westminster. The party was led by a host of chanting clergymen – made up of a mixture of priors, abbots and bishops – bearing ‘holy water, the cross, tapers and censers’, with four noblemen in their midst carrying golden candlesticks. They were followed by a succession of barons, each holding parts of the royal regalia: the so-called cap of maintenance; a pair of giant golden spurs; the royal sceptre (topped by a cross) and the royal rod (topped by a dove), both wrought from gold. Richard’s younger brother John was next, flanked by two magnates – all of them carrying gold-inlaid swords from the royal treasury. Twelve earls and barons followed, bearing a huge chequered wooden board, upon which were laid the royal arms and robes of state, while ‘the great and massive crown, decorated on every side with precious stones’ was borne by the eminent baron William de Mandeville.fn2 Richard himself walked behind this regal panoply, the Bishops of Durham and Bath at his sides, a silken canopy held above their heads on four lofty spears. In the Lionheart’s wake came a vast crowd of earls, barons, knights, clergy and assorted members of the laity.

  Once inside the abbey church, Richard was led to the altar and the ritual of coronation began in earnest. As the Lionheart knelt, copies of the holy gospels and an assortment of sacred relics were placed before him, and he then swore an oath to ‘honour the Church and rule with justice, forsaking unjust laws’. The most critical moment of the whole ceremony came when Richard was stripped to his undershirt and breeches, his chest bared and his feet shod with gold-embroidered sandals. Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury – the senior churchman in England – then stepped forward to pour holy oil upon Richard’s head, chest and arms, each site representing respectively the qualities of knowledge, valour and glory. This act of anointing, which could only ever be performed once in a monarch’s life, was the coronation’s central drama – the moment at which Richard was deemed to have been remade as a divinely ordained king: God’s chosen representative on Earth.

  Once anointed, a consecrated linen cloth and the cap of maintenance were placed on the Lionheart’s head; he was clothed in his royal raiment, girded with the sword of rule; the golden spurs were affixed to his feet. Richard then picked up the vast crown from the altar, handed it to Archbishop Baldwin, who placed it on the Lionheart’s head (though it was apparently so heavy that it had to be held in place by two earls). Carrying the royal sceptre in his right hand and the rod of rule in his left, Richard was finally led back to his throne by two bishops. Mass was then celebrated, during which the new sovereign made the customary offering of ‘a single mark of the purest gold’ to the Church. With the coronation completed at last, King Richard I walked in state from the abbey church, ready to embark on his new life as monarch of England. He was just five days short of his thirty-second birthday.

  2

  The Absent King

  One startling fact looms over Richard I’s career: though among the most renowned of all England’s monarchs, the Lionheart spent barely six months on English soil. With such a small proportion of his decade-long reign seemingly dedicated to the care of the realm, it is perhaps little wonder that some sought to criticize Richard’s conduct. From the eighteenth century onwards, historians have often painted him as a negligent king – branding him variously as a ‘selfish ruler’, a figure who ‘used England as a bank on which to draw and overdraw in order to finance his ambitious exploits abroad’ and, perhaps most damningly of all, as ‘one of the worst rulers England has ever had’.1

  Over time, this scholarly condemnation began to percolate into contemporary culture, colouring some aspects of popular perception. Richard came to be seen as a figure who absented himself from his kingdom in pursuit of glory. 1066 and All That – the satirical overview of English history penned in the 1930s – mocked his nickname Coeur de Lion, declaring that ‘whenever he returned to England he always set out again immediately for the Mediterranean and was therefore known as Richard Gare de Lyon’.2

  In the abiding caricature that gradually took hold, Richard emerged as a ruler who had cared little for his realm but was content to pillage its resources for his own purposes, leaving England weakened and prone to collapse. Exposed to the predations of Richard’s conniving younger brother John and the resurgent Capetian French, it was argued, the kingdom was set on an irrevocable path towards the catastrophes of civil war and foreign invasion witnessed in the early thirteenth century. Moreover, Richard the negligent king could also be presented as a foreigner because, arguably, the Lionheart himself was not in any real sense English. Though born in Oxford on 8 September 1157, Richard spent the majority of his formative years on the continent and, in terms of upbringing, culture, language and identity, might just as well be regarded as French. What is to be made of this vision of Richard I? Must the king who was once celebrated as a titan of English history and an emblem of national identity be discarded and replaced by a self-serving foreigner who cared little for England?

  French may have been Richard’s first language – indeed, he may not have spoken more than a few words of English – but this was true of all of Eng
land’s kings and most of its nobles from the Norman Conquest till at least the thirteenth century. Since 1066, the kingdom had been ruled as part of a broader realm, with an important continental component. As the son and eventual heir of King Henry II and Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine – the founders of the Angevin dynasty – Richard inherited an even more impressive array of territories, stretching from the Scottish borders in the north to the foothills of the Pyrenees in the south. England was, in almost every respect, the prize jewel of this grand empire: bringing its rulers coveted royal status; catapulting them beyond the world of ordinary men, even of counts or dukes, to become God’s anointed representatives on Earth. In relative terms, England was also a law-abiding and wealthy realm, in which the crown’s will was heeded and taxes efficiently collected. It would certainly not be true to say that Richard cared little for England or his royal title. In fact, they were essential components of his rank and eminence – prizes for which he had fought and intrigued with bitter determination towards the end of Henry II’s life. Richard also seems to have coveted the sense of majesty associated with his office: he was the first King of England to date royal documents with his regnal, rather than calendar, year; and also the first to employ the majestic plural – the so-called ‘royal we’.

  None the less, Richard’s Angevin inheritance brought with it other important lands, titles and responsibilities across the English Channel. From 1189 onwards, he held dominion over a large portion of the territory that constitutes modern-day France, including regions such as Normandy, Anjou, Maine and Aquitaine, controlling far more territory than the French king himself. This fundamental reality meant that the Lionheart reigned throughout his period of office, not simply as a king of England, but rather as ruler of a far larger and more complex realm – one that has sometimes been described as the Angevin empire. Given the limitations of technology, communication and transport in the twelfth century, it was essential for Richard to operate, like his forebears, as an itinerant monarch, moving through his various and extensive domains almost constantly, in order to manifest his will and counter the centrifugal forces that otherwise threatened to rip his empire apart.

  On these grounds, it would be wrong simply to judge Richard on the amount of time he physically spent in England. He often was forced to direct his attention across the Channel and to rule his English lands from a distance through intermediaries. This helps, in particular, to explain the Lionheart’s actions in the second half of his reign, after 1194, when much of his energy was devoted to fighting a protracted territorial war on the continent against his increasingly aggressive Capetian rival, King Philip of France. During the earlier part of his reign, however, Richard’s prolonged absence was prompted by events on the wider international stage: the crushing defeat of Latin forces in the Holy Land in 1187; the Muslim reconquest of Jerusalem that followed; and the clarion call to arms then broadcast throughout the West for what has come to be known as the Third Crusade.

  From 1187 onwards, through to his coronation and beyond, Richard I’s career was intimately intertwined with these events and this holy war. Once anointed as King of England in early September 1189, almost all of the Lionheart’s initiative, energy and purpose were devoted to the planning, preparation and prosecution of the Third Crusade. But why did this newly crowned monarch – who had fought with his every fibre for the right to rule over the Angevin realm, and was already embroiled in a rancorous rivalry with the neighbouring Capetians – devote himself to such a distant conflict and a campaign that would be waged on the other side of the known world, some two thousand miles away, in Palestine?

  The Near East might have been remote in geographical terms, but to medieval Christians living in Western Europe it was also a region imbued with a profound, sacred significance, being the land in which Christ himself had lived and died. The reversals of fortune endured there in 1187, at the hands of Sultan Saladin, were regarded as unprecedented cataclysms – disasters that shocked and appalled the Latin West. Close to a century earlier, the armies of the First Crusade marched from Europe to reclaim the Holy Land from Islam and enjoyed remarkable success. Jerusalem was conquered in 1099 and a series of Latin (or Frankish) settlements in the Levant – the crusader states – established.fn1 These victories were presented as nothing less than miraculous. Behind the crusaders’ achievements, it was argued, could be seen the hand of God himself. Through the early twelfth century, a deeply rooted and, it would seem, authentic sense took hold: the work of conquering and defending the Holy Land enjoyed a divine mandate; and fighting in this struggle would actually help to cleanse a Christian’s soul of the taint of sin, easing his path into Heaven. Given that the contemporary vision of Christianity projected by the Latin Church emphasized the perils of transgression, the imminence of Judgement and the torments of Hell, it perhaps was not surprising that, for many, crusading possessed a potent appeal.

  So it was that, when the pope issued a new call to crusade in the autumn of 1187, exhorting Christians to avenge the ‘crimes’ committed by the supposedly demonic Saladin, many responded with ardent enthusiasm. Contemporaries reported that in November that same year Richard the Lionheart became the first nobleman north of the Alps to enlist.3 This in itself was a remarkable decision, as up to this moment Richard had appeared to be entirely consumed by the intricacies of regional power politics – striving to ensure his succession to the English crown and the wider Angevin realm. But the allure of the crusade soon became clear, as an almost feverish surge of enthusiasm took hold in the West. An array of European nobles followed the Lionheart’s lead and, within a few months, even his father, King Henry II, and Philip Augustus of France had enrolled, along with the great elder statesman of the day, the German emperor, Frederick Barbarossa. None the less, Richard’s decision to take the cross, and then actually follow through by departing for a protracted campaign in Palestine at the very start of his reign, had far-reaching consequences for the kingdom of England. So, should his actions be regarded as ill-advised, even neglectful, or did he have no choice but to wage this holy war?

  A range of factors suggests that Richard’s commitment to the crusade was all but inevitable. Research has shown that individuals with relatives who had crusaded in the past were far more likely to do so themselves, and there can be little doubt that enthusiasm and recruitment for these holy wars were closely linked to networks of kinship and patronage.4 Richard’s own ‘crusading pedigree’ was clear. His mother, Queen Eleanor, had travelled to the Levant with the Second Crusade in the late 1140s, while his father, Henry II, and elder brother, Henry the Young King, had both taken the cross (though their vows were never fulfilled). The Lionheart’s familial and seigneurial ties to the kingdom of Jerusalem’s ruling elite were also significant. He was the great-grandson of Fulk of Anjou, King of Jerusalem (1131–42), the cousin of the current queen, Sibylla, and former feudal overlord to her husband, the Poitevin King Guy. With this kind of background, it would have been virtually impossible for Richard to ignore events in the Holy Land.

  In recent decades, modern scholarship has also tended to emphasize the importance of religious fervour in crusader motivation. For most aspiring crusaders, spiritual devotion seems to have been far more potent as a stimulus than any desire for material gain or territorial acquisition. In the Lionheart’s case, however, it is hard to gauge the extent to which his actions were driven by Christian piety. The surviving sources afford only fleeting glimpses of Richard as a man of faith. Like any ‘good’ medieval Christian nobleman, he made charitable donations to religious institutions and was a particular devotee of the ninth-century martyr Saint Edmund, an East Anglian king believed to have died resisting Viking invaders. But the Lionheart’s track record in this regard suggests a depth of religiosity that might be characterized as conventional – he was no aspiring saint and far from being monkish in his habits or appetites.

  None the less, one striking episode suggests that, in common with many of his contemporaries, Richard did harbou
r a gnawing fear of damnation. While actually en route to the Near East in the autumn of 1190, he stopped off in Sicily and there, in the chapel of an Angevin supporter named Reginald de Moac, made an animated display of contrition. Richard is said to have stripped naked, thrown himself at the feet of the assembled clergy and offered up an impassioned confession of his many sins. Around the same time, he visited a renowned southern Italian mystic and prophet, Joachim of Fiore, who confidently predicted the Lionheart’s success in the coming holy war, cast Saladin as a precursor of the Anti-Christ and presented the crusade as part of a cycle of events leading towards the End of Days.5 All of this suggests that, by late 1190 at least, Richard’s thinking may have been coloured by notions of predestination and apocalypticism.

  The majority of crusaders seem to have been particularly inspired by the notion that their campaign was akin to a form of pilgrimage – a sacred journey that would culminate in a visit to the most hallowed city on Earth, Jerusalem. However, the Third Crusade ended in stalemate in September 1192, with Saladin still in possession of the Holy City. Even so, the sultan rather graciously granted the crusaders access to Jerusalem if they came as unarmed pilgrims, and many availed themselves of this rare opportunity to venerate key shrines, such as the Holy Sepulchre. King Richard did not. He remained encamped on the coast of Palestine, preparing for his return journey to the West. Some have taken this as a sign that the Lionheart was not moved by a genuine sense of pious devotion, but this is too blunt a verdict. Richard had been struggling since mid August that year with a severe illness that left him fevered and bedridden, so it may well be that he was actually physically incapable of making the journey inland. It is also likely that, for a king who had failed in his quest to reconquer the Holy City, the prospect of travelling to Jerusalem, bereft of arms, in the guise of a supplicant, was simply too humiliating to entertain.