The Troubadour's Song

by David Boyle

  One of those who fell victim to Robin Hood, or the outlaws who provided the pattern for him, was Hugh of Nonant, the Bishop of Coventry, who had appointed himself John's senior propagandist, and led the campaign to persuade the barons that Richard was dead. Since John had fled to the French court, Hugh's position had become increasingly delicate — and even more so since his brother Robert Brito had refused to be a hostage on the grounds that he was a pledged supporter of John's. All too soon, the message that Hugh must have dreaded arrived: a summons from Richard to visit him in Germany. Very sensibly, he loaded himself up with all the money he could, but he was robbed of everything on the road near Canterbury. Longchamp's brother-in-law, still castellan of Dover Castle, was again suspected of complicity and was excommunicated.

  Two worries dominated the minds of the English government by the beginning of September 1193. One was that there was still no firm date for Richard's release, even though they had long since accepted the principle of the ransom and agreed its sum as manyas three months before. The other was that still not nearly enough money was coming in.

  You have to sympathize with the officials of the Exchequer of Ransom. England had the most sophisticated system of taxation in Western Europe, but it was still rudimentary compared to modern systems, and the most important tax — the 25 per cent — had barely been tested before. There was no census of the kingdom, no economic data about incomes and production were available, and the voluminous Domesday Book survey of landholding was over a century old. It really was impossible to predict how much money should be forthcoming, even before the horse-trading at local level between the juries, the bailiffs and the barons.

  Perhaps it should not have been a surprise to them, then, that the main disappointment was the paltry sum that had been forthcoming from the 25 per cent tax on income and movables, which seems to have raised a meagre £7,000. If it had been administered fault­lessly, the authorities had believed it would raise £25,000. It was probably organized along the lines of the old system set up by Henry II, yet even this should have yielded £12,000. It was soon apparent that more taxes were going to be needed. A second tax round was imposed on anyone with property valued over ten shillings (known as the 'Ten Shillings and Upwards Tax'). Some months later — at the Great Council meeting in Nottingham in April the following year — a third round of taxes was set out, including a tax of two shillings per landowner per hide. This was a very old-fashioned tax, based on the Danegeld introduced by the Anglo-Saxons and known as carucage. Its efficiency can be judged by the fact that the Exchequer of Ransom was forced to use the Domesday Book, despite its age, as the basis for working out who owned what.

  There was also the idea of a fine on some of those who had supported John in 1191, including a special fine on the people of York of 200 marks, for their role in the anti-Semitic slaughter of the same year. Eleanor sent emissaries to Anjou and Aquitaine with special requests to some of the abbeys in Angevin lands on the Continent. This was obviously heeded, especially in Normandy —which felt especially threatened by the French — and where the people of Caen finally gave even more money than the people of London.

  The local coinages were continuing to circulate among peasants and small businesses, and were probably increased to compensate for the loss of all that silver. But when the moneylenders were forced to call in loans to pay the extra demands of the Exchequer of Ransom, that hardship — on top of the extra tax the small landowners were having to pay — came as an enormous burden on the class that borrowed most: the minor aristocrats, the landowners, the emerging middle classes, the small traders. It was they who bore the brunt of the ransom, and they directed their rage not against the king or his advisers, but against the people who had lent them money.

  The obvious pressure on the Jewish community also seems to have been high on Hubert Walter's agenda. He set up a belated inquiry into the events in 1190 and 1191, intended to bring the leaders of the murderous riots to justice, and the whole adminis­tration's stance on Jewish affairs was put into better order — partly as a way of regulating bank lending, and partly as a way of protect­ing the nation's Jews better than before when the ransom was having the side-effect of putting them in danger. William of St Mary Église was given the job of supervising Jewish affairs and joint Christian-Jewish committees were set up in seven cities where Jewish financiers were working. Records of debts were to be pro­tected and financiers were asked to take an oath on the Pentateuch to conduct their banking openly.

  But there was another payback expected from them as well. In March 1194 Walter organized a major conference of Jewish finan­ciers in Northampton, with representatives of the Jewish com­munities from all over the country, to work out how much more they could afford to pay and lend to the ransom. It must have been especially poignant to all those who attended that there were no representatives left from the cities that had suffered the worst anti-Jewish violence in 1190 — York, Stamford, Dunstable, King's Lynn and Bury St Edmunds.

  But that is to leap ahead by six months, because it was actually September 1193 when these matters first came to a head. The feast of Michaelmas in September was the end of the farming and therefore of the financial year, when all around the country, reeves were called upon by the bailiffs to account for the yield of the manors they were responsible for. It was the moment the Exche­quer of Ransom began to take stock and realized just how far the yield was falling short. It also marked the arrival in London of a number of German emissaries from the emperor, sent to find out how the ransom-raising was progressing. They inspected the great chests under St Paul's, looked at the Pipe Rolls of the Exchequer of Ransom, checked through the tally sticks and seem to have had a riotous visit to London for a month. Some time in late October or early November — the date was not recorded — the preparations seemed to the emissaries to be complete enough to allow them to take delivery of the first tranche of the ransom. Eleanor and the other trustees must have been present to make sure that their valuable charge was safely dispatched.

  This was the time when London began to assume its pre­eminence among the English cities, while the government was increasingly based a little to the west at Westminister. So it was from Westminster Palace, with the great medieval hall built by Wil­liam Rufus and the cathedral built by Edward the Confessor, that Eleanor and her entourage set out for the ceremony of handing over the largest tranche of silver to the Germans. Eleanor was in her early seventies and must have been carried in her litter along the 'Royal Street', what is now Whitehall, with the leper hospital of St James across the fields to her left, a figure of legendary veneration and fascination to everyone standing transfixed as she passed by.

  At the hermitage of St Catherine in the small village of Charing, she turned right into Akeman Street, with a glance perhaps down the road to the west towards what is now Piccadilly. Akeman Street, also known as the Strand, was not yet the magnificent road built by the Templars with palaces along either side. It was still a Saxon track with open spaces and bushes along it, with a view down to the sandy edge of the river and its wharves to the right, and construction taking place to build the first of the great houses that would soon line the road. Past the fields and occasional cattle drover, she came to the dairy farm that marked the beginning of the parish of Danish merchants and seafarers, and St Clement Danes Church, with its tomb of Cnut's son Harold Harefoot. Then past the new Temple Church in the distance to her right — scene of her recent encounter with her husband's illegitimate son Geoffrey of York — and on down the gentle slope to the bridge over the River Fleet, with its small ships and lighters packed together, with their square sails furled, jostling in the current below Baynard's Castle next to the Thames. Then through Ludgate and up the hill towards St Paul's, with its great square tower soaring above it.

  It was an excitable city, filled with soldiers, banners and crowds of the usual mixture of traders, artisans, prostitutes, beggars, quacks and street performers, with pigs and horses in the street, and the wo
rkshops crowded at eye level as she passed by, and the overhanging upper storeys, painted in bright red, blue or black above them. And Eleanor herself was the main object of excitement — Eleanor and the money.

  The great chests filled with silver in the crypt were emptied and their contents put into boxes and barrels, and then carried up through the cathedral and out of the door in the south transept, where the wagons and packhorses were waiting. From there it was a short but slow journey, surrounded by soldiers and fascinated Londoners, down to the dock at Queenhithe, then London's most important wharf, and much frequented now that it was also home to London's first public lavatory. As the wagon wheels crunched along the stone streets, the sound of dancing songs known as carols from St Paul's choristers on the top of the cathedral tower wafted over the hunched houses to speed the ransom on its way.

  It is hard to work out exactly how much was sent to Germany at Michaelmas with the emissaries and, presumably, a powerful armed force of English soldiers. It was probably rather more than half of the initial downpayment of 100,000 silver marks, mostly in ingots — the melted-down treasures of churches across the land -and in barrel upon barrel of silver coins, tied to wagons and horses. It may have been the whole 100,000 marks. But we can be certain that, in this small fleet of ships, the consignment of at least fifteen tons of silver began its long journey down the Thames estuary, across the North Sea and down the Rhine — in precisely the opposite direction to the usual flow of silver coins cascading north across Europe to buy English wool and wheat.

  Eleanor and her officials from the Exchequer of Ransom stood on the dock at Queenhithe, watching the fleet manoeuvre past the half-completed London Bridge and sail up the river on the tide. As they held their breath for its safe passage across the sea, they must also have been praying that this would finally succeed in wresting a clear date for Richard's release from the emperor.

  The emperor was delighted with the arrival of the first tranche of silver. He was even more pleased to hear from his emissaries of the detailed preparations being made in England to raise the rest, and of the wealth of London — Europe's boom city — where it was being held. But now it came to the point of actually agreeing a date for the release of his priceless captive, Henry was in a dilemma. Should he stick to his word, or would holding on to Richard longer prove equally valuable to the French?

  For the rest of November the emperor agonized over the decision, weighing up the diplomatic possibilities. But there was now a powerful contingent of English diplomats at his court and they were pressing on his own officials the benefits of a long-term alliance with England, reminding him of his ultimate ambition to subject France and the rest of continental Europe to the old boun­daries of the empire, as it was in the days of Charlemagne. Finally the imperial court made its decision, and the following letter arrived in London in early December:

  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 ourdearly 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 Speyer, 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 to him; and this you are to consider certain and undoubted. For it is our purpose and our will to exalt and highly honour your aforesaid lord, as being our special friend.

  Whether Eleanor entirely trusted Henry or not, this was defi­nitely hopeful. The coronation of Richard as king of Provence was only a gesture — Henry had absolutely no power to enforce his jurisdiction around Aries and Marseilles — but it was a useful one. It would strengthen Richard in his southern territories, and it would surround Philip Augustus even further. It was intended as a special mark of imperial affection, and an outward symbol of the new alliance between England and Germany.

  So it was that on 20 December — exactly a year since Richard's arrest in Vienna — Eleanor set off from Queenhithe herself with the rest of the original 100,000 marks downpayment. She was accompanied by another powerful force of soldiers, plus bishops and barons and the sixty-seven hostages, and travelled across the North Sea and down the Rhine. It was an arduous winter journey for a woman in her seventies and they arrived exhausted at the imperial court on 17 January the following year. With every mile they progressed, Eleanor's suspicions of the emperor deepened.

  The payment of such an unimaginable sum of money, when it was still unclear whether Henry VI would actually release Richard at all, was a painful gamble for Eleanor. She would not then have understood that she was also helping the English economy. Removing a quarter of the nation's money from circulation ought perhaps to have provided just the deflationary shock that England needed to calm the inflation that was beginning to eat its way into everyday life, although there is no evidence that it actually did yet. On the other hand, taken together, the vast ransom plus the other large payments that followed in later years — the enormous sumsspent to secure the post of Holy Roman Emperor for Richard's favourite nephew, Otto — eventually did the trick. Early the next century, the rising prices fell back to more manageable levels.

  Taxation for Richard's ransom had a profound effect on English government. The accounts may have long since disappeared — and may even have been destroyed by those who felt embarrassed by the public record of their generosity to Richard when his brother was on the throne. But it marked the beginning of a shift from feudal payments to the very start of taxing income. The English would have to wait just over 600 years before the first proper income tax was instituted, and then it was set at only 10 per cent. When it finally arrived, just for eighteen years, to pay for the Napoleonic Wars, those who paid it so grudgingly might have reflected that the tax took its first tentative steps to release a king from prison.

  All that survived as a record of the greatest tax ever imposed on England were those wrooden tally sticks, the receipts and raw material for the accounts, which marked each transaction for the ransom. They may have survived, along with all the other tally sticks that were used by the English administration for centuries, kept in large, useless piles around the Palace of Westminster long after they had become redundant antiques. By the early nineteenth century they were simply stored in heaps in the room that had originally been the Court of the Star Chamber under King James II, and when it was decided to restore the courtroom for other uses in 1834, the Westminster clerk of works was ordered simply to get rid of the tally sticks however he could.

  On 16 October his workmen put them into the stove in the House of Lords, which overheated and set fire to the panelling. As a result, the receipts from Richard's ransom, nearly six and a half centuries later, contributed to the disastrous fire that left the Houses of Parliament a smouldering heap of rubble. The conflagration was immortalized in an extraordinary painting by the young J. M. W. Turner, and all that remained of the old medieval Palace of West­minster, except for Westminster Hall, where Eleanor held her councils, was burned to the ground. It was replaced by the neo- Gothic structure, along with Big Ben, that represents a nineteenth-century medievalist's view of what the Age of Chivalry should have been like.

  *It was a long-standing joke among the continentals that the English had tails. Quite what this meant — and it was unlikely to have been meant literally — has been lost in the mists of time.

  *The government set up a special Scaccarium Aaronis to gather in all his debts, and this turned out to be such a complex business that it took them twenty years to bring in the whole £ 1 5,000.

  *The chronicler Ralph of Diceto, then Dean of St Paul's, praised Isaac rather as the English praised Mussolini for getting the trains to run on time, on the grounds that he had managed for
once to make the coins round.

  * In later centuries this became known as Duke Humphrey's Walk. Layabouts, hopeless gossips and people who had nowhere better to go at dinnertime were said to be 'dining with Duke Humphrey'.

  † Wren is supposed to have arranged for his grave ('If you seek my monument, look around') to be on the spot where the high altar had been in the twelfth century.

  *One was John of Bethune, brother of Richard's great friend and companion Baldwin. Another was Richard's clerk, Philip of Poitou, who had also been shipwrecked with him.

  * St Paul's Cross, the scene of London's folkmoots, lasted rather longer. It was pulled down and replaced by an elm tree by Parliament in 1643.

  *Sir John Conyers is supposed to have killed a dragon in the forests near Darlington during Richard's reign. So the legend goes.

  † As with Robin Hood, Fulk's name was borrowed by rival outlaw groups. When one robber did so in his own lifetime, Fulk hunted him down and forced him personally to behead the rest of his gang.

  *The grave was opened in 1764 and a thirty-inch thigh bone extracted, which was put in the window of the home of the parish clerk. It was stolen from there by the antiquarian Sir George Strickland.

  10. The Return of the King

  Venison and fowls were plenty there,

  With fish out of the river.

  King Richard swore, on sea or shore,

  He ne'er was feasted better.

  The Ballad of Robin Hood