by Douglas Boyd
Hoping to speed up his liberation, Richard was allowed to write to all and sundry, his captors having no objection if it would help to raise the ransom. Nor did they prevent the armour Richard had worn in the Holy Land from being taken by Stephen of Turnham to London for exhibition as an eloquent reproach to his subjects who had not yet paid their share.30 No letter was sent to Berengaria, but Eleanor was greeted as ‘dear mother’ and also formally as ‘by the Grace of God, queen of the English’. He even wrote to the Old Man of the Mountains in faraway Syria, requesting him as chief of the sect of the Assassins to confirm that it was not the king of England who had commanded the killing of Conrad of Montferrat.31 Predictably, a mysterious reply was received, which Richard waved before the emperor, claiming complete exoneration on that charge. Whether or not the reply was genuine, other news did arrive from the Middle East. Saladin had died on 2 March 1193 at his home in Damascus aged only 55, his health broken by recurrent malaria. The efforts of the most famous doctor of the time, Musa ibn Maymun, also known as Maimonides, had failed to save his life.
In England, the ransom trickled in, slowed by the corruption of the unsupervised collectors working outside the normal Exchequer system, many of whom were afterwards accused of lining their own pockets. As and when each bullion train arrived in London, the gold and silver and precious objects were locked away in St Paul’s Cathedral under heavy guard, in sacks sealed with Eleanor’s own seal and that of Archbishop Hubert Walter. The first levies having proven insufficient, she ordered a second, and then a third, lambasting the tardy and the niggardly. Nor was it any easier to milk the impoverished continental possessions. Her sometime secretary Peter of Blois wrote to his friend the bishop of Mayence (modern Mainz) that:
… the ransom would not be drawn from the royal Exchequer, but from … the pitiful substance of the poor, the tears of widows, the pittance of monks and nuns, the dowries of maidens, the substance of scholars, the spoils of the Church.32
An even more unpopular task was the selection of hostages to serve as surety until the entire ransom had been paid. Longchamp returned from Hagenau not as chancellor and justiciar, but as bishop of Ely and therefore a loyal servant of the Crown, whose duty was to agree with Eleanor the selection of the noble hostages. To her agile mind, this became a threat that could be used to scare families which had not declared their true wealth, for the less the amount raised, the greater the number of hostages who would have to be sent to Germany. While drawing up the list of hostages with Longchamp at St Albans – the citizens of London refused him access to the city – she excluded her own grandson William of Winchester, son of Matilda and Henry the Lion, for the same reason that many other noble families baulked at sending their sons. Since the pederast bishop of Ely was not a fit person to have the care of boys, they sent their daughters instead.
During all this time Queen Eleanor also had to keep her eye on Prince John, who was forbidden to leave England and had all his incoming mail from Paris intercepted. She was also haranguing the pope at a distance for what she considered his less than enthusiastic support. Her secretary Peter of Blois, now archdeacon of Bath, was famous for witty puns and epigrams. In accusing Celestine III of keeping the sword of St Peter in its sheath and failing, despite three requests, to send papal intermediaries to Germany in support of a wronged crusader, he punned that the papal legates had been potius ligati quam legati – they had been leashed rather than loosed upon the emperor.
Complaining that, if her son had been rich, prelates would have come running to be rewarded by his generosity, Eleanor signed herself not Alianor regina gratia dei – queen by the Grace of God – but regina angliorum ira dei – queen of the English by God’s anger. As duchess of Aquitaine, she was also not above including a thinly veiled hint that the Cathar heresy so widespread in the south of France would be allowed to flourish in the duchy unchecked if the papacy did not do something to earn her gratitude.33
What more could the pope do? He had excommunicated Duke Leopold for laying hands on a crusader and threatened Philip Augustus with excommunication under the Peace of God for taking advantage of Richard’s captivity. He had even waved the threat of interdict over England, should the ransom not be forthcoming. With vast Church possessions in Germany at risk of seizure by Henry Hohenstaufen, who also had large forces stationed on the Italian Peninsula, Celestine could not force the emperor to do anything.
In midsummer of 1193, Richard was moved yet again, to Worms on the Rhine, where his charm earned him the liberty to have his falconer and favourite birds sent out from England, with a consignment of clothes and utensils for his personal use. At a five-day plenary court, the emperor weighed all the possibilities in the light of Philip’s representations before confirming that the royal prisoner would be released against the sureties when two-thirds of the ransom had arrived safely in Germany. The bad news was that the amount had now been increased by 50 per cent – the extra 50,000 marks being in lieu of Richard’s military help in the campaign against his ally Tancred. The number of hostages to be supplied was also increased accordingly.
Henry Hohenstaufen seems to have been in two minds about Richard’s claim that he had persuaded the German bishops to end their long dispute with their emperor, but the change of episcopal policy was due to Celestine’s urgings. However, Richard was responsible for a reconciliation between the houses of Hohenstaufen and Saxony. As a result, Henry the Lion mediated between Richard and the emperor in some way unclear to the chroniclers, and was offered Hohenstaufen’s cousin Constance as bride for his son Otto, who was a nephew of the royal captive, to cement the new rapprochement. The lady in question had already been offered to Philip Augustus who, after years of widowhood, had arranged to marry Princess Ingeborg, the sister of King Knut of Denmark, while allying himself with the Danes against England.
It was probably at Worms, during another five-day plenary session of the imperial court, that Richard composed a sirventès addressed to his half-sister Marie de Champagne, expressing his impatience with the pace at which his subjects were getting the money together:
Ja nuls hom pres non dira sa razon
adrechament, si com hom dolens non
mas per confort deu hom faire canson.
Pro n’ay d’amis, mas paure son li don.
Ancta lur es, si per ma resenzon
soi sai dos yvers pres.
[No prisoner can put his case for long / without self-pity making it sound wrong / but still for comfort he can pen a song. / My many friends offer little, I hear. / Shame on them all if they leave me here / unransomed for a second long year.]
On 20 December the emperor wrote to the magnates of England:
Henry, by the grace of God, emperor of the Romans, and ever august, to his dearly beloved friends, the archbishops, earls, barons, knights, and all the faithful subjects of Richard, illustrious king of England, his favour and every blessing. We have thought proper to intimate to all and every one of you that we have appointed a certain day for the liberation of our dearly beloved friend, your lord Richard, the illustrious king of the English, being the second day of the week next ensuing after the expiration of three weeks from the day of the nativity of Our Lord, at Speier or else at Worms, and we have appointed seven days after that as the day of his coronation as king of Provence, which we have promised him; and this you are to consider certain and undoubted. For it is our purpose and our will to exalt and most highly honour your aforesaid lord, as being our special friend. Given at Thealluse on the vigil of St Thomas the Apostle.34
Provence, although lying within modern France, was then German territory under Hohenstaufen, with the Catalan Count Alfonso II as its titular ruler. The province had not had a king since the year 933, so presumably the title to be conferred on Richard was a courtesy only. The important thing in Hohenstaufen’s letter was that it translated as setting 17 January 1194 as the date for Richard’s release.
NOTES
1. Hyland, The Medieval Warhorse, p. 148.
/> 2. Runciman says five years.
3. R. Ellenblum, Crusader Castles and Modern Histories (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, p. 180.
4. Runciman, A History of the Crusades, Vol 4, p. 73.
5. Richard, A., Histoire, Vol 2, p. 280.
6. Ralph of Diceto, Opera Historica, Vol 2, p. 106.
7. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 194.
8. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 221.
9. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 185.
10. Ralph of Coggeshall, Chronicon Anglicanum, ed. J. Stevenson, Rolls Series No 66 (London: Longmans, 1875), p. 54.
11. Ibid, pp. 54–5.
12. Ibid, p, 56.
13. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 195.
14. Ibid, pp. 196, 198; William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, Vol 1, p. 388.
15. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 204.
16. Stubbs, Gervase of Canterbury, Vol 1, pp. 514–15.
17. Benedict of Peterborough, Gesta Henrici, Vol 2, p. 236.
18. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 207.
19. Stubbs, Gervase of Canterbury, Vol 1, pp. 514–15.
20. William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, Vol 1, pp. 286–7.
21. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 198.
22. Ibid, p. 199.
23. Bartlett, England under the Norman and Angevin Kings, p. 485.
24. William of Newburgh, Historia Rerum Anglicarum, Vol 1, p. 388.
25. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 2, pp. 214–15.
26. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 210.
27. Stubbs, Gervase of Canterbury, Vol 2, p. 110.
28. M. Powicke, The Loss of Normandy (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999), p. 93.
29. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine, p. 307.
30. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 2, p. 288.
31. Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 2, p. 127.
32. Peter of Blois, Epistolae in Patrologia Latina Vol 207, ed. J.-P. Migne (Paris: Garnier, 1890), Vol 207, Col 341.
33. Richard, A., Histoire, Vol 2, p. 283.
34. Kelly, Eleanor of Aquitaine, pp. 314–15, quoting Roger of Howden, Chronica, Vol 3, p. 227.
19
Richard and Robin Hood? Maybe
On 6 January 1194 there arrived in Cologne a considerable host of Richard’s religious and lay vassals, some of them designated as hostages to remain in Germany until the ransom was paid in full, plus the armed guards for the chests of treasure, those nobles who were to attend Richard at the coronation and the usual household of chaplains, clerks, stewards, grooms, squires and cooks. Archbishop Walter of Rouen and Eleanor accompanied the vast treasure to Germany in order to record in person the delivery of the treasure and ensure that the first selected hostages were handed over in return. Ever one to dress up for a special occasion, Richard had also charged them to bring along his royal regalia with a suitable retinue to impress the emperor’s court.
Before leaving England, Eleanor appointed Archbishop Hubert Walter chief justiciar on Richard’s instructions, which made him effectively the regent in her absence or, should anything happen to her, until the king should return. On 17 January at Speier she was informed that her son’s release was to be delayed because an alternative offer had been received from Philip Augustus at a meeting with the emperor in Vaucouleurs, where he had bid 50,000 marks, plus 30,000 marks from Prince John, if Richard were kept prisoner until Michaelmas – by which time they hoped to have taken control of the continental Plantagenet possessions. Alternatively, they offered monthly instalments of £1,000 so long as Richard was held captive in Germany. On learning of this treason, the Great Council of England deprived John of all his English possessions, in addition to which he and his chief partisans were excommunicated. Under Hubert Walter’s guidance, the council also denounced Longchamp to the pope in a letter heavy with all their seals, which was to be shown first to Richard in Germany so that he would know what they thought of his ex-chancellor.
At Mainz on 2 February 1194, Eleanor’s joy at seeing her son for the first time in three and a half years was tempered by an unpleasant surprise: Philip had raised the French offer to 100,000 marks, with another 50,000 from John, if Richard were handed over to them or held in Germany for another year. This was equivalent to the whole ransom from England.1
Seeking a counter-counter-offer, the emperor showed the letter from Paris to Eleanor and to Richard. Whatever the barons and bishops of England thought of William Longchamp, he was still an able advocate when addressing the imperial court at the castle of Mayence in Eleanor’s presence that day. His argument was simple, but to the point: Philip and John had no chance of amassing the colossal sums being bandied about, and which totalled many times the annual taxation income of the whole of France, even if they did manage to conquer and plunder Normandy and the other Plantagenet possessions. Their offer was therefore invalid, whereas Richard’s vastly greater territory could certainly assemble the agreed ransom.
The political complication for Henry Hohenstaufen was that in allowing Richard to walk free he would lose French support in the dispute with his bishops. The quid pro quo was that Richard pay homage, admitting that he held England as a vassal of the emperor.2 Eleanor’s retinue may have been horrified, but to her flexible mind, it mattered little if Richard thus denied his feudal allegiance to the House of Capet, which, in the person of Philip Augustus, had shown itself to be unworthy of it, and doffed his bonnet to place it in the emperor’s hands, signifying that he was henceforth a vassal of the House of Hohenstaufen. As to the annual tribute of £5,000 demanded by the emperor, what was a promise like that worth in the mouth of a son of Henry of Anjou?
After swearing fealty to Henry and declaring with his customary eloquence that he held his possessions on both sides of the Channel as a vassal of the emperor, Richard was at last released on 4 February after agreeing to one last requirement: that the archbishop of Rouen, who had played a leading part in the negotiations, should be left behind as a hostage.
Philip managed to get a message to Prince John in England, warning him, ‘The devil has broken his chains.’ Terrified, John fled the country and took refuge in Paris.3 Given the widespread unrest and disaffection in England during the Third Crusade and the long captivity in Germany, one would think that Richard would hurry home to punish those who had committed treason. Was it Eleanor’s influence that persuaded him to take the leisurely but statesmanlike route they followed, spending a weekend as guest of the bishop of Cologne and stopping in Brussels and other cities to make alliances that might one day be useful on this, the eastern flank of Philip’s realm? Six weeks after leaving Mayence, they were guests of the duke of Louvain in his castle at Antwerp, and may have been feeling a certain uneasiness at spending so long on Hohenstaufen territory.
In the port of Antwerp, the faithful Stephen of Turnham welcomed Eleanor and the king aboard the Trenchemer. It is unlikely that this was the same vessel that had taken part in the naval action off Tyre, and there was a shipmaster in Richard’s service named Alan Trenchemer, so this might be the name not of the vessel but of its master. From this they trans-shipped to a larger vessel at the mouth of the Schelde for safety during the night and then moved back to the swifter Trenchemer for the Channel crossing the next day.4 In case Philip had set naval patrols to intercept the royal party, they weighed anchor in the evening under cover of darkness. With 100 miles to row – possibly with a following wind and favourable tides – they are reported as landing at Sandwich ‘at the ninth hour of the day’ – meaning after noon – on 12 March. Six weeks after leaving Speyer, they rode 12 miles to give thanks at Becket’s tomb in Canterbury Cathedral. Somewhere near Rochester, Archbishop Hubert Walter met the royal party and dismounted to kneel before the king. Richard too dismounted, knelt and embraced his fellow crusader with tears in his eyes, showing more emotion and gratitude than to all his other subjects. That night was spent in the keep of Rochester C
astle, which still stands, bleak and grim beside the cathedral.
The news of Richard’s return had preceded them, giving the citizens of London time to deck with banners and bunting the city that had contributed a sizeable share of the ransom. To the ringing of all the bells within the walls, Richard was led in procession to St Paul’s, now emptied of the treasure hoard. Agents of Henry Hohenstaufen present to oversee payment of the balance outstanding had expected to find a country on its knees after all the exactions.7 In the countryside there was visible hardship, but the pace of business in London made them comment that the ransom had been set far too low.
Richard’s gratitude to the jubilant Londoners was limited to a stay of a few hours only. On 18 March he was at Bury St Edmunds – giving thanks at the shrine of one of his favourite saints, the eponymous martyred king of East Anglia. Eleanor travelled with him because he knew nothing of England or its customs and she feared that the arrogance which had caused all his problems in Outremer might otherwise alienate Anglo-Norman vassals who had still to make good their pledges for the unpaid part of the ransom.
After the Great Council meeting that dispossessed John, Archbishop Hubert Walter departed at the head of an army equipped to reduce his castles with copious supplies of arrows, armour and shields as well as pitch and sulphur to make Greek fire – the formula of which must have been brought to England by returning crusaders – plus a battery of mangonels. Marlborough surrendered in a few days, as did Lancaster. John’s castle at St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall did not require a siege: its castellan dropped dead from a heart attack when he heard Richard was back in England,5 but when the garrison at Tickhill Castle offered to surrender if he would guarantee their lives, he refused – in exactly the intransigent mood that Eleanor had feared. Fortunately, Bishop Hugh of Durham, commanding the loyalist besiegers, took it upon himself to agree terms.