by Douglas Boyd
But in one significant duty he failed – by not begetting a warrior prince to defend the empire by force of arms after his death. He must have been aware that his brother John would never be able to hold together the empire assembled by their parents, so why, whatever his sexual preferences, did he not sire a legitimate son or daughter as a duty to the state? Homosexuals have had children for all sorts of reasons, and what more important reason was there than to provide an heir for an empire?
But was he homosexual, as some historians have inferred? Was his bastard Philip of Cognac the result of possibly a single aberration from his normal preference? ‘The love that dare not speak its name’, as Oscar Wilde termed it, was a taboo subject for the Victorian divines who translated from Latin the chronicles and charters that continue to illuminate twelfth-century history for modern readers – and this prudery continued for the first half of the twentieth century. Yet, Ralph of Diceto and Gervase are among the chroniclers who commented on Richard’s treatment of women. Roger of Howden went so far as to write, ‘He carried off his subjects’ wives, daughters and kinswomen by force and made them his concubines. When he had sated his own lust on them, he handed them down for his soldiers to enjoy.’1 Alfred Richard, among others, lent credence to this allegation.
In the latter half of the twentieth century, when the media search for scandal made celebrities’ sex lives a fertile field for journalists to plough, historians reflected that trend by attributing to homosexuality Richard’s lack of legitimate progeny, his tolerance of, and closeness to, pederast William Longchamp, his preference for male company and especially his period of intense intimacy with Philip Augustus. The pendulum effect has recently seen some biographers leaning the other way, pointing out that hand-holding between men – normal conduct in many Arab countries today – and even sharing bed and board with Philip Augustus did not at the time necessarily indicate sexual congress any more than the symbolic kiss of peace implied genuine affection.
Infertile marriages have often been, and remarkably often still are, blamed on the wife, so some have switched the blame for Richard’s lack of progeny on to Berengaria by suggesting that she was sterile. She may have been, but Richard spent so little time with her that it would be hard to test that argument. In any case, the remedy for a sterile wife was simple for a king, who could always have the marriage annulled by a complaisant primate and take a new wife known to be fertile – as indeed Alais was.
Even fertile unions failed very often in the Middle Ages to produce more than one or two offspring. There are exceptions, like William the Conqueror, whose ten children fought over the inheritance, and Henry II, whose five sons and three daughters with Eleanor constituted a large family for the time. But knights and nobles so often died leaving only one living infant or no heir at all that feudal practice allowed the overlord to allocate their fiefs to favoured vassals.
This leads to another possible explanation for Richard’s failure to leave an heir: infertility due to low sex drive and/or low sperm count. Of the pre-testicular causes, the most common is hypogonadism or low testosterone secretion, but that usually shows up in other ways: low energy levels, low bone density, low aggression and low muscle strength and mass. None of these apply to Richard. He was unusually tall for the time, or even for today, standing well over 6ft tall. He was also very heavily built. His numerous injuries, except the last, at Châlus, seem not to have produced lingering effects and he suffered no broken limbs on the many occasions when he was unhorsed, so we can write off low bone density. When in good health, he was very strong, controlling powerful, spirited destriers with heels and left arm while wielding heavy weapons to terrifying effect in combat with the right arm and hand, so his muscle strength and mass must have been well above the norms for healthy, active men. As to aggression, anyone reading this book knows that he was extremely aggressive.
Malaria was endemic in Europe at the time. Richard was known to suffer from it, both on the crusade and at home. Whilst the disease is extremely debilitating during crises, it is not generally blamed for lowering sperm production; modern complications in this direction are usually attributed to the drugs used in the treatment of the disease.
So much for pre-testicular causes of infertility. There is however another, more likely possible explanation for his lack of issue.
Two and a half thousand years ago, the Greeks noted that the Scythian nomads and other Asiatic peoples then arriving in Europe tended to have low fertility. Hippocrates (460–370 BCE) imputed this to the fact that the males spent most of every day astride their horses, with the testicles compressed by their body weight and kept constantly too warm, with the perineum suffering repeated trauma when thumped against the horse’s spine or saddlecloth in rough riding and combat. Both Plato (424–438 BCE) and Herodotus (484–425 BCE) agreed with this finding.
The scrotum is, after all, an adaptation of the female labia expressly designed by nature to contain the testes outside the body because sperm production is severely reduced or non-existent at body temperature. The Greeks worked out the connection philosophically and by observation, but modern fertility clinics using more scientific methods find exactly the same thing happens with men who, for example, habitually wear tight underpants or trousers, or sit for hours in school and offices and cars – and especially those who practise long-distance cycle racing or mountain biking, or … regularly ride horses.
But even regular indulgence in modern equestrian sports like polo and endurance trials are nowhere near as punishing to a male rider’s perineum and testicles as the lifestyle of a medieval knight. Richard was an archetypical horseback warrior who, throughout his adolescent sexual development and for the whole of his adult life, spent many hours every day in the saddle. This was frequently a war saddle with high pommel and high cantle, designed like a western saddle to lock the rider tightly in place so that he could not easily be unseated in the heat of combat. The modern equestrian custom is to have the stirrup leathers short, which enables the rider to rise out of the saddle on broken ground and avoid the worst shocks to the perineum. In Richard’s day the leathers were long to keep the centre of gravity low. Since the rider could not easily lift himself by standing on the stirrups, the pounding hooves of his mount transferred into a sustained series of shocks to the crotch from banging up and down against the hard leather saddle. Such repeated punishment frequently produced haemorrhoids, from which Henry II suffered greatly. More seriously, it also caused chronic prostatitis and/or blocked the sperm ducts or the epididymis, where semen is stored. Richard was known to ride his horses so hard that many foundered under him, so it would be strange indeed if he suffered no trauma to his reproductive organs.
Richard’s maternal grandfather Duke William X of Aquitaine had produced only three children. Similarly, Richard’s paternal grandfather Geoffrey the Fair of Anjou had only three legitimate offspring. But by no means all knights inherited a fief like them and married to found a family early in life. Indeed, the typical landless knight spent many years’ riding in the service of his lord before winning a noble wife as reward for some great feat of arms, by which time his ability to inseminate his spouse was in many cases severely reduced. The statute de donis conditionalibus – concerning conditional gifts – was passed into English law in 1285. It provided for the entailment of property through the male line so that, in the event of its owner dying without leaving a son, title would go to his nearest male relative, effectively disinheriting female progeny. So long as the horse was the principle means of travel, damage to ‘male parts’ from horse riding continued to bedevil inheritance in the aristocracy. Entailment to the male line was therefore very common in equestrian society and this is reflected in books by authors such as Jane Austen, where it is an important element in the plot of novels such as Pride and Prejudice and Sense and Sensibility.
So, was Richard gay, as some historians have concluded? Or was he heterosexual or bisexual, but rendered infertile by the saddle? DNA analysis might have g
iven an answer, but although his effigy still lies in the Cistercian simplicity of Fontevraud abbey, the remains originally beneath it were scattered, no one knows where, when the Plantagenet tombs were despoiled during the French Revolution. The greatest of his many failings as monarch – the lack of progeny – must therefore remain a mystery.
NOTES
1. Quoted in Gillingham, J., Richard I (Yale: Yale University Press, 1999), p.66.
On the Trail of the Lionheart – Places to Visit
British Museum medieval rooms: floor tiles from Clarendon Palace, Limoges enamel work, chess sets and other twelfth-century artefacts.
Worcester Cathedral: tomb of John.
The castle and cathedral of Rochester.
Pilgrims’ hospice at Ospringe, Kent.
Canterbury Westgate and Canterbury Cathedral.
Portchester Castle.
Rouen Cathedral: effigy above tomb of Richard’s heart.
Le Mans: Abbey of l’Épau: effigy of Berengaria.
Chinon: Sainte Radegonde chapel and Chinon Castle.
Fontevraud Abbey: effigies of Richard, Eleanor, Henry II and Isabelle of Angoulême.
Taillebourg Castle ruins.
Poitiers: the great hall (now the law court), the Tour Maubergeonne and cathedral.
Saintes: Roman triumphal arch used as town gate (re-sited); cathedral and cloisters; Abbaye aux Dames.
Bordeaux: Musée d’Aquitaine for enamelled cross given to La Sauve Abbey by Richard or Eleanor; tiles and other artefacts.
Créon: La Sauve Majeure Abbey.
Châlus Castle.
Plates
1 The first seal of Richard
2 The second seal of Richard, showing on his shield the three lions passant, which are still on the British royal coat of arms today
3 The knight as a Christ-like figure at Melle Church, shown protecting either a child or a poor person, the comparative size denoting importance, or lack of it
4 The chivalric fantasy: a knight rescuing a damsel from the dragon of lust. (Angoulême Cathedral)
5 Chronicler Matthew Paris came closer to the reality of knightly violence with this sanitised sketch of William the Marshal unhorsing Baldwin de Guisnes in a mêlée
6 The truth of knightly conduct: this eroded carving at Parthenay Church shows a knight riding roughshod over a peasant. From the symbolic gyrfalcon on his wrist, this is a duke of Aquitaine – possibly Richard indulging in his favourite activity
7 When not at war, knights relaxed by killing animals instead of people
8 Going on crusade won the pope’s assurance that all their earthly sins would thereby be cancelled out. With so much blood-crime on their consciences, knights feared the weighing of their soul after death by an angel and a demon
9 In the twelfth century, everyone could estimate a horse’s value and, therefore, the wealth or importance of its owner. A knight would have been judged by his mount, much as people today may be judged by the cost and make of the car they drive
10 Reflecting the importance of the horse, the church at St-Front-sur-Gironde is decorated with twenty-six horse heads (the detail of which is shown in the image above), rather than the usual images of saints and angels
11 Richard’s powerful mother, Eleanor of Aquitaine, aged 22 at Chartres Cathedral
12 Eleanor of Aquitaine as she looked at the time of her death
13 No clear contemporary image of Richard exists, but he was said to closely resemble his own father Henry II and his grandfather Count Geoffrey the Fair of Anjou, as seen in this polychrome enamel portrait
14 Detail of side chapel in La Sauve Majure abbey
15 Riding from Bordeaux to punish his Gascon vassals with fire and sword, Richard gave alms to the monks at Cayac Abbey (above) so they would pray for his soul. He claimed that his favourite abbey of La Sauve Majeure (detail, top) was ‘dearer to me than my own eye-balls’
16 Richard adored singing and music and would dress up for grand occasions
17 The great audience hall in Poitiers, built by Eleanor and Henry II, where Richard held court
18 The Angevin treasure castle at Chinon, as seen from the river
19 The view from the battlements over the Loire Valley. In the foreground is the Tour du Moulin, where Eleanor was imprisoned by Henry II after the rebellion of 1174
20 (above) 21 (below) At the end of the rebellion, Richard took refuge in Saintes Cathedral, using the cloisters (below) as an armoury and magazine. Abandoning his knights and men for Henry II to take hostage, he fled to the mighty fortress of Taillebourg (above). Later, he besieged and destroyed the castle where he had been given asylum
22 In the chapel of Ste-Radegonde at Chinon amateur archaeologists uncovered this fresco, painted shortly after the rebellion of 1174. It depicts Henry II leading Queen Eleanor away to fifteen years’ imprisonment in England. The young woman between them is Princess Joanna
23 On the left of the fresco, Eleanor is depicted yielding to Richard a white gyrfalcon, the emblem of the duchy of Aquitaine. Richard is so eager to take it that he is nearly leaning out of the saddle
24 Climbing the scaling ladder into the breach in the walls of Acre, Albéric Clément said: ‘If it please God I shall enter the city.’ God was not pleased, and he was hacked to death at the top of the ladder
25 After the city surrendered, Richard ordered the slaughter of the 2,700 men, women and children living there
26 In the Manesse Codex, created around 1315, Richard’s captor Heinrich VI is portrayed as a strong and wise ruler. Setting the ransom for the release of Richard was complicated by Prince John conspiring with Philip of France to bribe Heinrich not to free the Lionheart
27 In the Liber ad honorem Augusti by Petrus de Ebolo, written around 1196, Richard is shown kissing the Emperor’s feet, while begging his pardon. This did not go down well with his Anglo-Norman vassals
28 The donjon of Châlus Castle, from which the fatal crossbow bolt was fired
29 The nave of the abbey church at Fontevraud, showing the effigies of Richard (foreground, right) and Isabel of Angoulême (foreground, left), with Henry II and Eleanor in the background
30 Among Queen Berengaria’s good works was the founding of the convent of L’Épau, near Le Mans
31 Queen Berengaria was described as virtuous and docile, rather than beautiful or intelligent
32 At the foot of Queen Berengaria’s effigy there is a carving of a lamb being mounted by a lion, in reference to the wifely duty she can rarely have performed for Richard
33 Nineteenth-century ground plan of the most costly fortress in the world, drawn by architect Viollet le Duc. Richard’s ‘impregnable’ Château Gaillard incorporated all the latest improvements in castle design
34 Viollet le Duc also produced this reconstruction of the siege of the castle, destroyed by the French king just five years after Richard’s death
Also by Douglas Boyd
April Queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine
Voices from the Dark Years
The French Foreign Legion
The Kremlin Conspiracy
Blood in the Snow, Blood on the Grass
De Gaulle: the man who defied six US presidents
Normandy in the Time of Darkness
The Other First World War
Copyright
First published in 2014
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