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The Plantagenets
The 1100s
August 1100
(The Death of William Rufus )
to
April 1199
(The Death of Richard I)

The Accession of Henry I and Robert's Invasion from Normandy
Henry I’s Battle with the Church
Henry I’s Conquest of Normandy and his European Expansion
The Question of Henry I's Succession
The Anarchy and the Reign of Stephen
The Accession of Henry II and the Foundation of Plantagenet Rule
Henry II and the Development of Government and Common Law
The Murder of Thomas Becket
Henry II's Succession and his Final Years
The Reign of Richard the Lionheart and the Third Crusade
The Capture of Richard I and the Rebellions of Prince John
Richard's Return and his Final Years

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The Accession of Henry I and Robert's Invasion from Normandy
Mystery and intrigue have always surrounded Henry’s role in the death of
his brother in the New Forest
...
Losing no time in riding the 30 or so miles to
Winchester, and accompanied by the body of his dead brother in his baggage
train, Henry quickly seized the Treasury that since his father’s reign had
represented the most crucial component of the king’s office
...

So with the Treasury under his control and with his brother quickly and
safely interred in the hallowed grounds of Winchester Cathedral, Henry rode
on to London where three days later at a ceremony in Westminster Abbey, he
was crowned king of England
...
His main rival in both England and
Normandy was his elder brother, Robert Curthose, who at the time was
returning in some style from his successes in the Holy Land
...

In the meantime, Henry I tried, and succeeded, to increase his popularity
with both the Anglo-Norman aristocracy and the Anglo-Saxon peasantry
...
Henry I’s coronation charter was
one of the first records in English history to document the civil liberties that
could be expected and, as such, even if less in practice was done for the
ordinary Anglo-Saxon populace than first promised, it can be seen as an early
precursor to other declarations such as the Magna Carta of 1215
...
Setting out his intention to return to the
laws and customs of the Anglo-Saxon kings last practised under Edward the
Confessor, and organising a new legal system that included travelling judges,
Henry I immediately guaranteed the support of the Anglo-Saxon peasantry
who would form the bulk of his army against Robert
...

But Henry I also made promises to the Anglo-Norman aristocracy who had
made England their home in the generation since Hastings
...
At the heart of this political process was the growth of a landed
nobility whose position in society was guaranteed by the taxes that it paid to
the crown rather than that earlier sign of loyalty, men for the king’s army
...

This ruling cadre, divided over time into five hierarchical echelons of
aristocracy ranking from duke, although this rank was not introduced until
the 1300s, through marquess, earl and viscount down to baron, was drawn
almost exclusively, after the 1069 uprising, from the handful of Norman
supporters, the Companions of the Conqueror and their descendents, and
these men were supported by the knights in the shires
...
All this
meant that Henry I emerged as a strong and central figurehead and, with
land and income in England and in France stretching down the Atlantic coast

3

towards the Pyrenees, he was soon to rank as one of the most powerful
monarchs in Europe
...
At the centre of this financial revolution was the
rise of the Exchequer, which was soon established as a crucial department at
the heart of government
...
This was
used to count and account for the taxes, rents and fines due to the king, with
these proceedings controlled by the Barons of the Exchequer who met around
this table twice a year, in the spring and the autumn
...
As this money was
placed on the table, it were moved, added to and calculated by those
appointed by the king to perform as his accountants
...
This system for collecting royal dues and
accounting for the nation's finances continued for much of the medieval
period
...

Despite the new king’s entreaties, many Norman and Anglo-Norman barons
still wished to see the reunification of Normandy and England, and saw
Robert, the Conqueror’s eldest son and a fêted knight from the First Crusade,
as the man best placed to do this
...


4

But Henry I’s policy of buying off the English-based Anglo-Norman
aristocracy and his support from the peasantry worked in his favour and,
with Robert's support in the West countered by Henry I's in London and from
within the English Church, a truce was eventually worked out that resulted in
Robert’s withdrawal to Normandy
...
It was not until 1489 and
the reign of Henry VII that England was to mint the gold sovereign coin, with
a value of one-pound sterling
...
This eventually came about in
September 1106 when Robert rashly decided to fight with his brother's
superior forces at Tinchebrai in western Normandy
...
As a result, Robert was captured and was to spend
the remaining 28 years of his life as a prisoner of his brother in various
dungeons in England and Wales, eventually dying at Cardiff Castle at the age
of eighty
...
This revolved around the continuing
Investiture Controversy, the dispute between the Roman Catholic Church in
Rome and the secular rulers of Europe that had been rumbling on since the
reforms of various popes during the last century
...
This
power to appoint senior Church officials was jealously guarded by secular
leaders across Europe in the years after the fall of Rome and it became
particularly important to the Holy Roman Emperor
...
His effort to strengthen
the authority of the Church continued work begun a little earlier by the
Benedictine Cluniac reform movement
...

Henry IV tried to depose Gregory but in 1076 he was excommunicated for his
troubles
...

In England, the controversy had not affected William I due to his close
relation with Archbishop Lanfranc, the king's appointee and a close political
ally
...
He was a renowned author and philosopher, and was
one of the most important and influential theological figures of his time
...

However, the new king and his archbishop had fallen out almost
immediately, with Anselm once again returning to a life in exile on the
continent, before the issue was finally resolved in 1107 when a compromise
that suited both parties was finally worked out between papal legates sent
from Rome and representatives of the king
...

Despite these wranglings, however, England participated increasingly in the
intellectual and religious life of Europe, and Henry I’s reign was noted for its
patronage of scholarship and learning with the king coming to be called
Beauclerc, the learned scholar
...
The many exotic animals kept at Woodstock were
transferred to a new menagerie at the Tower of London in the time of King

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John a century later, and this was to remain in operation for a further 600
years until the 1830s when London Zoo in Regent’s Park was opened
...

These years before the tragic drowning of his son and heir in 1120 were his
most successful, and they established him as one of Europe’s richest and most
powerful kings whose lands compared to those of the Holy Roman Emperor
himself
...
However, it was to be in
England that his initial offensive began, soon after the truce that had led to
Robert's return to the continent, and this led to war with all those towns and
barons that had gone over to Robert
...
This conflict of interest between the monarchy and those at his
right hand charged with defending his crown was a theme that was to run
through English history for the next 600 years
...
These territories were under the nominal
rule of the king of France, but the real holders of power and authority in these
lands were the jealously independent dukes, counts and barons
...
These included his infamous intervention in Rouen in
October 1090 when he fought with his brother Robert against supporters of
William Rufus
...

Henry I's continental campaign began in Normandy and led to his victory
over his elder brother at Tinchebrai in 1106
...
Henry had found an ally in his war
against Robert Curthose in Philip I of France
...

Diplomacy and war saw the various factions ebb and flow over the second
decade of the eleventh century, although Henry I greatly strengthened his
hand by marrying his only son, William, to Matilda, the daughter of Fulk V,
the Count of Anjou
...
The king also
used his many illegitimate daughters as diplomatic pawns, marrying many to
various counts and barons on the periphery of his lands
...

England remained settled and secure throughout this period but his rule at
times in Normandy came under pressure
...
Henry I's many
campaigns cost huge amounts of money and so one important repercussion
of his sustained military offensives on the continent was the rapid
development in England of the Exchequer during the middle years of his
reign
...
The prince and his retinue were returning to England late at night and
the ship was being skippered by the son of a sea captain who had been
involved in transporting William’s troops across the English Channel to
Hastings in 1066
...

It was said that the crew and most of the passengers were drunk when they
left Barfleur late at night, and that William had in fact initially survived,
returning to the wreck site only after hearing a cry for help from his
drowning sister
...
There were only to be two survivors from The White Ship, with one being
a local butcher who had boarded the ship only at the last moment in order to
try and settle an outstanding bill
...
However, this did not stop him soon marrying again in an attempt to
produce another legitimate male heir, having lost his first wife, Matilda, in
May 1118
...

This new plan centred on his only remaining legitimate child, Matilda, who
had been, in January 1114 at the age of 12, married to Henry V, the Holy
Roman Emperor
...
Two years later, Henry I received word
from Europe that William Clito, the son of his imprisoned brother and a thorn
in his side since Robert's capture in 1106, had been accepted as Count of
Flanders
...

So feeling his dynasty weak and vulnerable with only Matilda to follow,
Henry I approached Fulk V of Anjou, the father-in-law of his drowned son,
with a proposal for a marriage alliance against Clito
...
It was
this liaison that first tied the crown of England to lands in France, as opposed
to Normandy, that were to be fought over for the next 300 years
...
However, court intrigue eventually forced him back
into the saddle and, late in 1135, he found himself once again campaigning in
Normandy
...
This has always
traditionally been blamed on ‘a surfeit of lampreys’, an eel-like fish
...

The Anarchy and the Reign of Stephen
The last years of the old king's reign had been dominated by uncertainty
caused by the question of his succession and this uncertainty was to continue
for a further 19 years during a period known as the Anarchy
...
Stephen’s brother, who was,

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among others things, the Bishop of Winchester, led these a position that
brought huge wealth and huge power
...

Matters were also made considerably more intriguing by the fact that
Geoffrey Plantagenet and Matilda were actually at war in Anjou with the old
king at the time of the latter’s death
...
For the 70 years since the Conquest, many towns and
barons had become jealous of the rights and privileges granted by the
Norman kings and so were not willing to give these up to another latter-day
Conqueror, this time led by Angevin, rather than, Norman interests
...
Setting
sail from Normandy in the depths of winter, he landed on the south coast and
marched on Winchester where, like his uncle before him, he quickly secured
the Treasury
...
All this early activity
should have produced the support that would allow Stephen a long and
successful reign as England’s fourth Norman king
...

But Stephen’s early good relations with the majority of England's barons did
not dent his cousin’s ambition and, in the summer of 1139, a year or so after
the outbreak of civil war, Matilda landed on the Sussex coast
...
Matilda
also was to find support from her uncle, David I, the king of Scotland
...
This culminated in
their victory at the siege and Battle of Lincoln in February 1141 with this
hugely important encounter leading to Stephen’s capture and eventual
imprisonment in Bristol, a Matilda stronghold
...
So for a few months in the spring of 1141, Matilda held the upper
hand although she was never crowned queen of England, taking instead the
title Lady of the English
...
As a result, she and her retinue were
driven out of the city only a few months later in June 1141, and she was soon
replaced by the wife of Stephen, another Matilda, who marched from Kent
...
The Lady
herself escaped and returned to the safety of her headquarters in Devizes
where she once again set up court
...
As a result, Matlida was besieged for three months while at
residence in Oxford Castle, which formed the eastern extent of her area of
control, and only finally escaped at the beginning of 1142 by slipping past
Stephen’s lookouts camouflaged in a white cape during a snow storm
...

The siege of Oxford was a huge turning point in the civil war but Stephen
was never able to unite his kingdom in the years that followed with the

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Anarchy, a period of perpetual civil war, continuing for the rest of the
decade
...
In this
atmosphere of social and economic dislocation, the diminution of royal
authority was used by powerful Anglo-Norman barons on both sides to
extend their control and local power bases still further, with deals often being
done without either royals’ consent or knowledge
...
In addition, Stephen
had to endure the constant threat of invasion in the Marcher counties
bordering both Scotland and Wales with this continuously threatening to tear
his dominion apart
...
This was despite the efforts of the Knights
Templar, a military and religious order founded in Jerusalem in 1119 to
protect pilgrims on their journeys in the Holy Land, and the Knights
Hospitaller, another military and religious order who grew out of a mission
set up to care for the sick after the First Crusade
...
The Hospitallers were to build many
castles, especially in Syria, to protect the Holy Land, with Krak des Chevaliers
one of the largest and most impressive
...

The first victory for these Muslim armies was against the Kingdom of Edessa,
one of four Christian states founded at the end of the First Crusade
...
The result of this was
the disastrous Second Crusade, launched in 1145, that was jointly led by the

13

King of France, Louis VII, who took with him his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine,
one of the most powerful women of the medieval age, and the Holy Roman
Emperor, Conrad III
...
The
French force faired better and were to reach Jerusalem in the spring of 1148
where they helped relieve King Baldwin and his people
...
The only lasting success for
the Christian side during this Second Crusade was the capture of Lisbon from
Islamic rule in 1147
...

Matilda's counter claim to the throne was hugely weakened by the deaths of
both her husband and her half-brother in the late 1140s, and she herself set
sail for Normandy in early 1148 never to return
...
Gilbert of Sempringham founded the order and he was to be
canonised in 1202 for his work in building monasteries, leper hospitals and
orphanages
...
Matilda, the Lady of the English and the country’s first female
monarch for a few months in 1141, set up court in Rouen where she busied
herself for the rest of her long life with matters to do with Normandy
...

After Matilda's return to her ancestral lands on the continent, her family’s
claim in England was continued by her son, Henry Plantagenet, whose
campaign in the summer of 1153, launched in Wiltshire and supported by a
large army of Flemish mercenaries, finally persuaded Stephen that a peace
deal was needed
...
As
a result, the two, after their armies had nearly come to blows after an initial

14

meeting where each side mustered on opposite sides of the River Thames at
Wallingford, agreed to meet at Winchester at the end of the year
...

The Treaty of Winchester, sometimes also known as the Treaty of
Wallingford, brought the Anarchy to an end and this seemed to galvanise the
king who spent much of the next year travelling across his English kingdom
in an attempt to re-establish his royal authority
...
Stephen was buried in Kent at Faversham Abbey where his son and
wife had earlier also been laid to rest
...
Gaining their name from an anglicisation of planta genista, the Latin
name for the yellow-flowered broom plant that was worn by Geoffrey,
Henry’s father, and that was an emblem on the coat of arms of the House of
Anjou, the Plantagenets were to rule England until 1399 when Richard II was
deposed by Henry IV, the first of the Lancastrians
...

Eight more Plantagenet kings were to follow Henry II, or fourteen more if the
kings from the Houses of Lancaster and York are also to be included,
although it was not a name that was used until in the mid-fifteenth century
...
But most of all,

15

under the long and sometimes cruel rule of the Plantagenets, there developed
a distinct and defined identity of Englishness
...
But he was born in France, and it was there that he had spent
most of his childhood and youth
...
By that time, he had
already, at the age of 21, inherited or won through battle a huge empire in
France
...
Through his
marriage to Eleanor, who had had her 15-year-long marriage to the king of
France annulled in 1152 after her return from the unsuccessful Second
Crusade, despite the presence of two princesses from this marriage, he gained
Aquitaine, which comprised most of south western France, a quarter of
France, while from his truce with Stephen he gained England
...
After her arrival in London, Eleanor set up her court and household
in a new palace that she had built on the south bank of the Thames at
Bermondsey, with her second child, Prince Henry, born there in 1155
...
This liaison between these two
hugely ambitious individuals was to mark a huge transformation in the
politics and geopolitics of Western Europe
...
This Angevin Empire, this empire of Anjou,
stretching down the western side of Europe along the Atlantic seaboard, was
to be held and contested by the king and by the next two Plantagenet kings,

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his two sons
...

But Henry II faced a country devastated by the decimation and dislocation
brought about by a generation of civil war, and the first actions of the new
dynamic young king was to work to banish the various mercenary armies
that had grown under his predecessor and that indeed he had brought across
the Channel himself
...
In
England, this included the extension of the practice of accepting scutage, a
levy paid by his barons and knights in lieu of military service to the feudal
overlord
...

He soon used this to destroy or demand the surrender of all the 300 or so
castles that had been built during Stephen's reign as he went on to assert his
royal authority over all those counties that had fallen into the hands of his
rivals
...
The peace and royal authority in the years after 1155 allowed the
new king to replenish the coffers that had been so badly depleted under
Stephen
...
Henry II
now brought to bear the full political authority of his position as perhaps
Europe's most powerful ruler, and this soon resulted in their restoration
...
This
was given by Pope Adrian IV, the only pope ever to have been an
Englishman
...
This followed the end of a two-year-long revolt by his brother, Geoffrey,
but this was resolved before the latter’s untimely death in 1158
...

Henry II and the Development of Government and Common Law
Content that his English kingdom was once again united and safe after the
years of the Anarchy under Stephen, Henry II was not to return from Europe
until the Becket crisis at the end of 1163
...
At the heart of these reforms was
the establishment of a professional civil service and this was to revolutionise
the way government in England was run
...

In all of these reforms, he continued the modernising practices of his
grandfather, Henry I
...
These five ports on the south
coast, which included Dover and Hastings, were given special rights,
privileges and customs, and excise exemptions in return for their obligation
to provide sea defence and transport for the king and his retinue
...

This was a series of royal laws issued by the Crown that were common
throughout the land, a situation at the time unique to England, and it
replaced the collection of various other legal systems that had been in
operation when he came to the throne
...
With
each movement along this chain came a set of rights and obligations that

18

included the right to a fair trial
...
In this pre-industrial age when agricultural
production was the main source of wealth throughout the kingdom, the main
arguments settled by these courts concerned land rights and ownership
...
The legal system set up by the Conqueror
had been used by powerful barons during the reigns of weak monarchs to
extend and cement their control over feudal lands
...
He did this by evoking the memory of and
borrowing the tactics of his grandfather
...
This was
especially the case in 1170 when Henry ordered the Inquest of the Sheriffs
that looked to reorganise local government
...

Henry II also instituted a legal procedure called the Grand Assize that proved
to be the precursor to the jury system that was to form the basis of the English
justice system for the next 800 years
...
This
increasingly replaced trial by ordeal or combat as a means of settling
disputes, and the jury system soon became enshrined within Common Law
...

The Murder of Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket was born in London to Norman parents from the gentry and
was educated in London and Paris before training as a clerk in the Church
and as an accountant
...
Gaining the confidence of the archbishop
through his obvious competence, Becket soon rose within his mentor's house
and was sent to the continent to study law
...
Becket's efficiency and loyalty soon
made him the king's closest aide and companion, and he was quick to show
his skills when ordered to organise the campaign against those barons who
refused to pay homage to the king after Stephen’s death
...
As a result, Becket received more power and
authority than any other man in the realm while the king received in return a
loyal, trusted and ultra-efficient lieutenant who could be left to look after
royal affairs in England while he was away maintaining and expanding his
Angevin Empire in France
...

Becket's greatest asset was his control of the English Church in the king's
favour based on precedents set by the Norman kings
...
Under Henry I and Stephen, some of these points had been
taken up by Theobald and his predecessors, and Henry II therefore hoped
that he could next appoint a man at Canterbury whose loyalty in the
continuing fight against Rome could be guaranteed
...
But this placed Becket,
a devout and religious man as well as a staunch ally of the king, in an

20

intolerable position
...
This was a
position that in religious terms he was patently unqualified to hold, having
been ordained as a priest only on the previous day, and it was one that even
Henry’s mother, Matilda, in Rouen advised against
...
As a result, he soon resigned as
the king’s chancellor, forcing Henry to return to England for the first time
since 1158
...

This simmering enmity was ultimately to culminate in the issue of 'criminous
clerks', those Church clerics who under Gregorian reform would be tried in
Church courts
...
Among other things, it
meant that clerics could be banished or dismissed from office but that they
could not be flogged or put to death
...
In essence, he was claiming the
right as a monarch to try clerics as his subjects
...
Consequently, he signed the 16 articles that were put before him in
the Constitution of Clarendon with these restating the king's traditional and
customary rights over the Church that had grown up since the Norman
Conquest a hundred years before
...

However, Becket rejected the Constitution almost immediately after the
meeting and never again was to bend to the king’s intimidation
...
As a
result, Becket fled to the court of the king of France and then went on to Rome
where he was received by the pope
...
As a result, Thomas Becket remained in exile in France
for 6 years at Pontigny Abbey in Burgundy
...
This ceremony consecrated the
young Henry as heir to his father's throne, and it was conducted by Becket's
old rival, the Archbishop of York
...
As a result, and fearing an interdict
from Rome that would close all of England's churches, thus hugely
weakening his own position, Henry II agreed to meet Becket in France in the
summer of 1170 in order to finally solve their differences
...

However, neither the king nor Becket withdrew their claims over Clarendon
and the feuding between the two continued into the autumn of 1170
...
The return of England's spiritual leader was well received in
Canterbury, but Becket’s excommunication the previous month of Henry II's
ally, the Archbishop of York, as well as that of two other bishops who had
supported him, infuriated the king who was campaigning in Normandy
...
Taking the law into
their own hands, they crossed the Channel and rode to Canterbury where, on
29 December 1170, they broke into the cathedral and murdered Becket
...
As a result, he was forced to seek
penance in order to absolve himself from the sin of the murder
...
Becket's tomb at Canterbury soon
became a destination for pilgrimage, and it was Becket's shrine that was being
sought by Chaucer's pilgrims in The Canterbury Tales
...
Later, Henry VIII desecrated the shrine
during his arguments with Rome
...

Henry II's Succession and his Final Years
In reality, however, Becket's death caused only a minor inconvenience to
Henry II who, in the 1170s when his powers were at their height, sat down
with his closest advisers to decide how best to divide his massive Angevin
Empire
...
However, this did not stop her and Henry
producing 8 children that included 4 sons, Henry, Richard, Geoffrey and
John, and these, for 20 years, had fought with him to secure his PlantagenetAngevin Empire
...
After a series of fights and riots between students
and townspeople 40 years later, many moved to the quieter surroundings of
Cambridge where the university was founded in 1209
...
Henry, the Young King, was the eldest and he was to receive the king’s
own own inheritance of Anjou, Normandy and England
...
The fourth son,
John, was to receive nothing at the time, but was later in 1185 awarded
Ireland
...
This Great
Rebellion of 1173-74, which was focused on Normandy although it affected
Plantagenet lands from Scotland to the south of France, was led by Henry, the
Young King, who schemed with his mother and his brothers, as well as many
other rebel barons
...
Eleanor had rebelled against her
husband on behalf of Aquitaine that was now held by her son, Richard
...
Soon after, with his task completed and
with the King of Scotland, William the Lion, a captive following the Battle of
Alnwick in the summer of 1174, the king once again returned to Normandy
where he besieged the magnificent Norman castle at Rouen
...

As a result, his sons slowly came back to his court by the end of the decade,
although many other rebels were not so well received
...

However, these halcyon days were not to last, and soon the old king was once
again at war with his sons who increasingly tended to be in league with King
Philip Augustus, the son of Louis VII who replaced his father in 1180
...
The king’s difficulties were made more complicated by the premature
deaths of this eldest and third sons, Henry, the Young King and Geoffrey, in
1183 and 1186 respectively, and the subsequent elevation of John to the
position of his favourite
...

It was this alliance that eventually brought Henry II to his knees with a series
of campaign losses that pinned the old king in Anjou
...
Henry II died two days after the
truce was signed from a perforated ulcer
...

The Reign of Richard the Lionheart and the Third Crusade
Richard I was 32 years old when he came to the throne and had spent most of
his adult life up to that point fighting, primarily in France, with and against
his brothers and father over who should have control of their Angevin
Empire
...
Soon after his coronation, he signalled that his elevation to
the throne of England was going to change neither his commitment to this

25

continental empire nor that to the recapture of Jerusalem, which had been
consuming noble society throughout Europe since 1187
...
So having
spent only 6 months in England and having used the country primarily as a
source of taxes for his crusading and his military campaigns in France, it is
perhaps peculiar that Richard the Lionheart, a king who never actually learnt
the English language, should be remembered as one England's most revered
and lauded monarchs
...
These had
been orchestrated by Saladin, the great Saracen general who had united the
Islamic world in a holy war against the four crusader kingdoms that had been
set up after the First Crusade
...

In 1174, Saladin had taken Damascus and, 9 years later, he had gained control
of Aleppo
...
Hattin
greatly weakened the authority of the Crusader kingdoms, and three months
later, in October 1187, Jerusalem was to fall, with news of this sending shock
waves across the Christian world
...
However, the campaign began inauspiciously for the

26

Crusaders when Frederick drowned in an accident crossing a river in
Anatolia
...
Despite being Christian comrades in the fight for
Jerusalem, these two great warriors were to clash more than once during the
next few years
...
He also raised money from the sale of
charters that gave towns the right to elect mayors, hold fairs and markets, and
raise local taxes
...

Sicily was ruled by Tancred who had imprisoned the wife of its late king,
Richard's sister Joan
...
The catalyst that sent
the two kings into open hostility was an outbreak of fighting between the
people of Messina on the island's eastern tip and Richard's Crusader army
...

In addition, Tancred was forced to agree to a marriage contract between his
daughter and Richard's infant nephew, Arthur, the Duke of Brittany, with
this tying Sicily to Richard's continental empire
...

Eventually, Richard left the island in the spring of 1190, taking his sister with
him
...
Richard had been betrothed to Alice since 1169 when they were both
children but, time and time again, Richard had refused to bind the two

27

empires together through this union
...
As a result, Philip left for the Holy Land
angry and alone
...
That concerned matters between the two
monarchs in Europe
...
This was a document used by Philip for
the next 15 years to justify his wars against both Richard and John
...
However, on the journey
eastwards across the Mediterranean Sea, Richard was waylaid by a storm that
initially blew the ship carrying Joan, his freed sister, and Princess Berengaria,
his newly betrothed, towards Limassol in Cyprus where they were
threatened by the king of Cyprus
...
Richard then married
Berengaria, in May 1191, in Limassol, with this tying him closer to Navarre,
the kingdom in north east Spain bordering his mother's ancestral lands in
Aquitaine
...
As
such, she was to be the only English queen never to set foot in England itself
...
The bloody result of this victory
was that the 2,000 Muslim defenders of the city were then all beheaded on
Richard's orders
...
These victories took the Crusaders south across the Holy
Land to within sight of the walls of Jerusalem
...
As a result, the
Treaty of Jaffa was signed in September 1192, and this agreed a truce for 3
years
...
Consequently, the Crusader kingdoms were able to keep a
foothold in the Holy Land for another hundred years
...
However, despite his perceived courage and fortitude, the
Third Crusade actually achieved very little for the Christian world and its
real victor was Saladin
...

The Capture of Richard I and the Rebellions of Prince John
Having signed the truce with Saladin, Richard quickly set sail for England
where news had arrived of rebellion
...
However, it was on this
journey that he was captured by Duke Leopold of Austria, in Vienna in
December 1192, while travelling in disguise
...
As a result, Richard was held captive for a further 13 months, at
Trifels Castle in the Rhineland, while negotiations for his release were
conducted
...


29

Eventually, the threat of being handed over to Philip of France persuaded
Richard to agree to the Emperor's ransom terms that demanded the huge sum
of 150,000 marks, an amount that computed to about three or four times
Richard's annual income
...

But the country's ultimate ability to raise this king's ransom illustrate both the
power and strength of the English economy, and the political stability and
robustness of the institutions of government set up by Richard's father, Henry
II
...
Once he had located his
king, Blondel is said to have hurried back to England where the ransom
payment was arranged
...
In addition, though, the Emperor had also demanded the
surrender of Richard's English kingdom that would be received back as a fief
...

During his long absence abroad, Richard had entrusted the government of
England to William Longchamp, his chancellor and justicular
...
John had received his lands eventually from his father in
the 1180s, and the old king had hoped that this would buy his youngest son's
loyalty
...

Richard, who gave him land in England and France in the hope that he would
not conspire against his king while he was crusading in the Holy Land, had
also tried to buy John’s loyalty
...
This eventually led to the first ever siege of the Tower of
London in October 1191, which ended with John taking the tower after three
days
...

However, John's threat to the Crown also led to the end of Longchamp's
career
...
The Frenchman Longchamps was eventually
replaced by Hubert Walter who, as justicular and Archbishop of Canterbury,
represented Richard in England until the end of his reign
...
He was also John's
chancellor during the early years of the new king's reign
...

Early in 1193, John used his brother's imprisonment as an excuse to claim the
throne
...
Philip was to
receive Richard's land in Europe while John was to have England and Ireland
...
Their aim was to have Richard handed over into their custody
...
John eventually realised the
weakness of his position and belatedly, in an effort to show his loyalty, raised

31

money for his brother's ransom
...
John, as a result, fled to his lands in
France
...
Although innumerable ballads and stories have been
written about him, there is no actual evidence for either his existence or for
that of his followers, Little John, Friar Tuck or Maid Marion, and he was only
later described as the fallen nobleman, Robin of Locksley
...

Richard's Return and his Final Years
It can only be guessed whether Richard's return from captivity in Germany
was helped by the efforts of such men as Robin Hood and Blondel
...
It was one in which the political organs of the
nation had withheld the monarch's absence and imprisonment for 5 years and
this allowed him to return to a kingdom that remained sturdy, prosperous
and functioning
...

Richard I returned to London in March 1194, and had himself crowned for a
second time at Westminster Abbey a month later in a ceremony that
contemporaries describe as being even more elaborate that his first
...
Richard I spent only two months in England
raising the army and taxes needed for this military campaign and, having
filled his ships with soldiers and money, left England in May 1194 never to
return
...
This campaign was
punctuated by truces and winter breaks, and slowly Richard edged out from
his power base in Normandy, with notable victories over his old rival, Philip
Augustus, at the Battle of Freteval in 1194 and the Battle of Gisors in 1198,
where Richard used the battle cry Dieu et mon Droit for the first time
...
Richard the
Lionheart was also at this time to place three lions on his standard, with these
representing Normandy, England and Aquitaine
...
It
was also during this period of war, in 1196, that a gallows was erected for the
first time to the north of the old city walls in London near the Tyburn River
that at the time flowed into the Thames
...
The last public execution in Britain was to take place there in 1868
...
However, the count claimed the money for
himself and locked himself up in his castle at Châluz in Aquitaine, confident
that Richard would soon depart for more pressing matters elsewhere
...


33

Infection soon set in and it became clear that the wound was mortal
...
Richard the Lionheart, in the
company of his mother, died after ten days from gangrene at the age of fortytwo
...
His body of Richard
the Lionheart was buried at the abbey at Fontevraud where his father was
interred and where later his mother would join them
...
It was perhaps apt that a king of England who
spent such little time there and who spoke no English should be buried in
France

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