Richard began his reign with some show of penitence. He got absolution for his disobedience to his father, and gave his friendship to the existing ministers, with the exception of the Seneschal of Anjou and Ranulf de Glanvill. It is possible that the government of this great justiciary had been over arbitrary, for in England, where his mother acted principally for him, Richard is said to have freed all those prisoners who were confined by the orders of his father or the justiciary, but demanded bail for those who were legally imprisoned. He also seems to have punished the severity of some of the sheriffs. His coronation pomp was interrupted by a strange disturbance. The Jews had been ordered to absent themselves from the ceremony. This strange people had been admitted to England by the Conqueror; the only capitalists of the time, their ability and willingness to lend money rendered them invaluable both to the rising industry of the country and to the crown; and to their knowledge is due much of the growth in science which was beginning to be made in this century. So great was their use, in spite of the heavy usury they demanded, that they were allowed to establish themselves in various towns, in districts known as Jewries, to build synagogues, and follow their own customs. They were not however admitted to full citizenship. The Jewries, like the forests, were not under the protection of the common law of the country, but were entirely in the King’s power. In spite of the evident advantages derived from their presence in England, their wealth, their foreign manners, their high usury, and their strange worship rendered them objects at once of contempt and hatred to the people. Some of them, in spite of the order forbidding their presence, showed themselves at the ceremony of the consecration. They were assaulted by the soldiery. This gave a signal to the the crowd who attacked the detested people in all parts of the city. Nor was this all; the same feeling spread throughout England. In some places the Jews gained safety by conversion; but early in 1190, in Norwich, in Stamford, and in York, many were put to death. In the last-mentioned place, the Jews sought refuge in the castle, and being besieged there, determined to die together. Firing the tower, they first killed their own women and children, and then sprang with them into the flames.
In fact, the Crusades brought with them a passion for adventure and licentiousness, as well as religious enthusiasm. This spirit was now abroad in England, and the King, with his wild love of adventure at any price, was its fitting representative. For the sake of adventure, honesty, good government, and national honour, were sacrificed. Thus there was scarcely an office which was not openly put up up for sale; cities bought their charters, judges their seats on the bench, bishops their sees. Thus too Hugh de Pudsey bought the Earldom of Northumberland for £1000; and Longchamp, the Bishopric of Ely for £3000; while the King relinquished all the advantages his father had won over William the Lion of Scotland for 10,000 marks; it was for Huntingdon alone that the Northern King did fealty to Richard.
Having by such unjustifiable means procured money for his purposes, entirely regardless of the misery he could scarcely fail to leave behind him, Richard crossed over to France to join his forces with those of Philip Augustus. Such precautions as he did take against maladministration in England were not of the wisest. He put the whole power into the hands of William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely, whom he made at once Chancellor and Chief Justiciary, securing for him also the authority of Papal Legate. But Longchamp was a man who could not fail to have many enemies. Of low extraction, and regarded as merely the favourite of Richard, he was fond of exhibiting his grandeur in the most ostentatious manner; moreover, in making him justiciary Richard supplanted Hugh de Pudsey, to whom the office had already been given. Pudsey did not surrender without some opposition. He obtained from the King letters patent, naming him justiciary north of the Humber; when he exhibited these to Longchamp, the Chancellor contrived indeed to entrap him to London, and there made him surrender his claims, but he had made himself a powerful enemy for life. Richard also, as a second precaution, made his brother John, and his half-brother Geoffrey, who had got the Archbishopric of York in exchange for the chancellorship, promise not to enter England during his absence. But he afterwards unwisely absolved John from his vow. He thus left behind him in England a possible claimant to the succession, whose power as a baron was very great, for he was the possessor of Derbyshire, the inheritance of the Earl of Gloucester, which he had obtained by marriage, and of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset, and Somerset, which Richard had himself given him.
The death of William II. of Sicily, and of the French Queen Isabella, delayed the Crusade till June 1190. But at the end of that month, the Kings set out towards their first point, which was Sicily, Philip by Genoa, Richard by Marseilles. At the same time, a fleet of more than a hundred sail left the harbours of Brittany and Guienne. On reaching Sicily the friendship of the two kings was at first most edifying, but it was not long before various causes of dispute arose between them. To the inhabitants of the island the Crusaders seemed a horde of new invaders. The overbearing character of Richard exasperated the feelings of jealousy thus aroused. The conciliatory manners of Philip, on the other hand, were such that he was known as the Lamb, in contradistinction to Richard, who was called the Lion. The difference of feeling with which they were regarded was plainly shown when, on the occasion of some quarrel, the town of Messina was closed against Richard, while Philip was admitted within its walls. The enemies of the French King suggested indeed that his mildness was a proof of treasonable lukewarmness towards his fellow Crusaders. These suspicions were afterwards confirmed. On the death of William II.,[30] Tancred, an illegitimate son of William’s brother Roger, had seized the throne, despoiling of her rights Constance, the daughter of Roger and the wife of Henry VI. of Germany, and keeping in some sort of confinement Richard’s sister Joanna, the widow of William the Good, and retaining the dowry secured her by her husband’s will. The enmity thus excited in Richard’s mind gave way, after a lengthened dispute, to the natural feeling of friendship between the two Norman houses. Joanna and her dowry were given back to Richard; and at one of the meetings between the two princes, Tancred informed him of a plot on the part of the French to fall treacherously on the English army. Philip does not seem to have denied the charge, and it was perhaps the consciousness of his guilt which prevented him from making any effectual opposition when Richard repudiated his sister Alice. Contrary to the national feelings, and on purely political grounds, Richard had been contracted to this princess by his father. He now, throwing over this unnatural match, sought for himself a wife from Spain, a country then and for long afterwards connected by close friendship with England. This wife was Berengaria, the daughter of Sancho I. of Navarre. Though unavenged, the insult was felt. From that time onwards Philip and Richard were enemies.
At length the armies broke up from Sicily and sailed for Acre. With the three leading ships of the English fleet were Berengaria and the King’s sister Joanna. Richard brought up the rear. Two of the Queen’s vessels were wrecked upon the Isle of Cyprus, and their crew imprisoned by Isaac, the ruler of that island. This monarch, a descendant of the Emperor John Comnenus, banished from Byzantium, had established himself with the title of Emperor in the Isle of Cyprus. He was an inhuman tyrant, the dread of pilgrims and of shipwrecked sailors. He tried to entice the two queens to land, but luckily Richard’s fleet arrived. The Cyprians were driven from Lymesol, where the King established his court. He there received Guy of Lusignan, the nominal King of Jerusalem, completed his marriage with Berengaria, and made a treaty with Isaac. But when the Emperor sought to evade his engagements, Richard conquered the rest of the island, and organized it in the feudal fashion. On the 8th of July he reached Acre. The arrival of this warlike prince raised the spirit of the besiegers, who were in a very depressed condition. The siege had lasted since 1189, having been undertaken by Guy of Lusignan, who saw the importance of the place, if he was to continue to hold his kingdom. This was indeed a doubtful question. The Christian fortunes had sunk very low. Among the Mahomedans power after power had arisen with rapid success, and sunk as rapidly under the attacks of its own slaves or vassals. As the Abbassid Caliphs yielded to the Seljukian Turks, the Seljukians in their turn yielded to the Atabeks. The power of this race was brought to its height by Noureddin, who established his rule at Damascus, and extended it even into Egypt. Saladin, the son of Ayub, had attended his uncle Shiracouh, when he destroyed the rule of the Fatimite Caliphs in Egypt, and brought that province under the power of Noureddin. On Noureddin’s death, Saladin acquired possession of Egypt, to which he subsequently added the provinces of Damascus and Aleppo, and raised an empire which reached from Tripoli in Africa to the Tigris. It was this new warlike power which had overwhelmed the kingdom of Jerusalem. Baldwin IV.,[31] King of Jerusalem, became a leper. His sister Sybilla married Guy of Lusignan, a French prince of weak character, who succeeded to the throne. His elevation excited the jealousy of Raymond, Count of Tripoli, the greatest of his vassals. By his treacherous advice, Saladin attacked Tiberias. To complete his treachery, Raymond persuaded the Christians to take up a position in a camp destitute of water, and withdrew with his forces at the moment of attack. The destruction of the Christians was complete. In a few months Jerusalem itself was taken, and Tyre and Tripoli the only places left in Christian hands. Tyre was defended with success by the bravery of Conrad of Montferrat, who, in consequence of this success, was regarded as the great champion of the Christians. He had married a young sister of Sybilla of Lusignan, and upon the death of Sybilla, holding that the right went to the living princess, his wife, rather than to Lusignan, the husband of the dead princess, he demanded the throne. Meanwhile Guy besieged Acre, thirty miles south of Tyre, and was there surrounded by an army under the command of Saladin, and cut off from all assistance except by sea. It was under these circumstances, in the midst of the disputed succession to the throne, that the third crusade had begun. Frederick Barbarossa, who had marched with the Germans by land, perished on the road, and the Duke of Swabia reached the camp with only five thousand wearied men. The arrival of the hosts of England and France by sea changed the aspect of affairs; and the kingdom might have regained had it not been for the bad feeling which existed between Richard and Philip, which found new food in the rivalry of the two claimants for the crown of Jerusalem. Conrad of Montferrat at once allied himself with the French monarch; Guy of Lusignan, whose family in Languedoc were English vassals, attached himself to Richard. Directed by the enthusiasm of Richard, who, whenever mere fighting was the question, came prominently forward, the arms of the besiegers were successful, and Acre fell. The superiority which Richard acquired in actual warfare added fresh fuel to Philip’s anger. There were besides certain circumstances in his own kingdom, where he had lately acquired Flanders, which seemed to require his presence. He therefore withdrew from the crusade, leaving the Duke of Burgundy with a part of his army under Richard’s command. Had Richard been a general as well as a soldier, he had still forces enough to have brought this crusade to a successful issue. As it was, it consisted but of a series of brilliant but useless skirmishes. Even the great battle of Arsouf, which Richard won in September on his way to Joppa, brought him no nearer his object.
The presence of Philip in France, in close proximity to his own dominions, made him wish to be at home; and in 1192 he began negotiations with Saladin. He might even yet have been successful. In the course of the year he marched within sight of the Holy City. But his allies insisted that the capture was impossible, and he withdrew to Ascalon. There all causes for giving up his enterprise became stronger. The split with France widened. He quarrelled deeply with the Archduke of Austria, and with the faction of Conrad of Montferrat, who was also intriguing with Saladin. News of the disturbances in his own kingdom reached him. Everything urged him to go home. He summoned a council to settle the dispute as to the kingdom, was astonished when Conrad was named, but unwillingly gave his consent. At this very time, in what appeared to be only too opportune a moment for Richard, Conrad was murdered, as there seems no reason to doubt, by two members of the sect of the Assassins sent by the Old Man of the Mountain;[32] but the crime was soon fastened upon Richard. For the present, however, he was free to take advantage of the death of Montferrat. Sure of the incompetence of Lusignan, he gave the kingdom to Henry of Champagne. To save appearances, he made one more rapid advance towards Jerusalem, but halted within sight of the city, apparently overborne by the argument that an attack on Egypt would be more profitable. Hearing that Saladin was besieging Joppa, he hastened to the relief of that town, and there won his final victory. Both he and Saladin were worn in health and weary of the strife. A three years’ truce was arranged between them. By this it was agreed that Ascalon should be shared with the Turks, while the Christians should possess from Joppa to Tyre, the Counts of Tripoli and Antioch should be included in the treaty, and pilgrims have free access to Jerusalem. He then set off on his homeward voyage.
It was indeed time for the King to return. Richard had left William of Ely the chief command both in Church and State. An ambitious upstart, of ostentatious habits, William speedily roused against himself the bitterest hatred. He had one dangerous enemy who could give a voice to this unpopularity. This was the King’s brother John, who wished to secure what he believed would be the speedy succession to the throne, while William sought to give a seeming legality to his position by upholding the claim of young Arthur of Brittany. Hence arose two great factions in the kingdom. The King, hearing in Sicily of the misdeeds of his Chancellor, had commissioned Archbishop Walter of Rouen, and William, the heir of Strongbow of Pembroke, if necessary, to remove him from the regency; at all events to join themselves with him and Fitz-Peter in a committee of government. Archbishop Walter shrank from the task. The quarrel came to an issue at Lincoln, which Gerard of Camville held in the interests of John, and which the Chancellor claimed for the crown. John seized the royal castles of Nottingham and Tickhill, and the question was brought before a meeting at Winchester, where a compromise was effected. A second cause of quarrel occurred, when the Bishop caused Geoffrey, the King’s natural brother, the new Archbishop of York, who had landed in England contrary to his oath, to be apprehended in the very church at Dover. The two brothers made common cause. They demanded satisfaction for Geoffrey, and summoned a meeting between Reading and Windsor. Meanwhile the Chancellor suddenly left Windsor, and shut himself up in the Tower of London, and the meeting reassembled in St. Paul’s. There all the charges against the Chancellor were produced; Hugh of Durham produced his old grievances, Geoffrey of York his late injuries. The Tower was ill provided with food; the Chancellor was obliged to appear and to plead; but now at length Richard’s envoys produced their authority. Longchamp was dismissed from his offices. Walter of Rouen was put in his place, and the fallen Chancellor took refuge in France. The Pope received him, and excommunicated his enemies; but as usual this proceeding, when against the popular feeling, had but little effect.
Meanwhile Philip Augustus had been returning from the Holy Land. In December 1192 he reached Paris, and early in the following year demanded from the Seneschal of Normandy the restoration of his sister Alice, the Castle of Gisors, and the towns of Aumale and Eu, which he said that Richard had promised him. On the refusal of this request he began to tamper with John, begging him to come to him, when Normandy and England should be assured to him. John was stopped from immediate action by the influence of Queen Eleanor, but the disorder in the country was becoming flagrant. Richard’s French vassals in Aquitaine were with difficulty suppressed.
It was plain that the return of the King alone could save the kingdom. Yet those English pilgrims who returned home before Christmas were surprised to find the King yet absent. He did not come, and the gloomy news was at length noised abroad that he was in a dungeon in Germany. He had attempted to return by sea, but afraid to travel through France, he had made his way up the Adriatic, intending to cross Germany to the dominions of his friend and relative the Duke of Saxony. Travelling in disguise, he had been discovered while in the Duchy of Austria; and the Archduke, whose anger he had roused at Ascalon, made him his prisoner. He shortly after sold him to Henry VI., Emperor of Germany. The capture of the King, whose name was in every one’s mouth, strongly excited the feelings of Europe, and steps were immediately taken for his liberation. But to John his imprisonment served only as a means of aggrandizement. He hurried abroad, did homage to Philip, purchasing his favour with Gisors, the Vexin, and with Tours, and pledging himself not to make peace with his brother without Philip’s permission. He tried to persuade the English justiciaries that his brother was dead, and secured, with his auxiliaries, Wallingford and Windsor. Philip, too, basely took advantage of his rival’s position, used all his influence to lengthen his imprisonment, broke off the feudal connection between them, and invaded his dominions. Richard’s subjects were, however, remarkably true to him. The justiciaries, assisted by Queen Eleanor, boldly opposed John in England, and the burghers of Rouen put Philip to a shameful flight.
In Germany Richard did homage to Henry for England. The connection of England with Germany makes it possible that there may have been some political meaning in this act. Some general action against France, or against Apulia, may have been thought of. But it came to nothing. It was afterwards cancelled by Henry himself, and has been generally regarded as a mere formality. However formal the act of homage may have been, Richard was certainly much connected with the German Empire. He mixed authoritatively in the next imperial election, after the death of Henry VI. in 1198; and it was chiefly by his influence that Otho, his nephew, a prince of the Guelphic royal family, and generally regarded as an English prince, was elected to succeed him. Of more immediate importance to England than this connection was the sum of money demanded for the King’s ransom. The form of a trial was gone through at Spiers. All the charges which had been brought against him in the East were repeated;—his friendship with Tancred, his victory over Isaac, the murder of Conrad, his insults to Austria, even his final treaty with Saladin. He replied frankly and eloquently to these charges, and it was finally agreed that he should be liberated on the payment of 100,000 marks of silver, and 50,000 additional as a contribution to the Emperor’s proposed march against Apulia. He was to be liberated as soon as the first sum was paid; for the payment of the second hostages were to be left. With considerable difficulty the money was collected, chiefly from the estates of the Church; and after some further difficulties, caused by the intrigues of Philip Augustus, in 1194, on the 13th of March the King landed at Sandwich.
His appearance in England at once destroyed the influence of John’s party. Hubert the Justiciary had been doing his best to suppress it; such castles as still held out surrendered at the presence of Richard. His residence in England was short. He caused himself to be re-crowned, to remove the stain of his captivity, had recourse to his old nefarious means of gathering money, and then, weary of idleness, crossed into the more troubled country of France. With Philip it was impossible that he should have peace. An almost continuous war between the kings occupied the rest of the reign. Richard never displayed the talents of a general, and the war dwindled into an uninteresting series of petty skirmishes. These were usually decided in favour of Richard. Once, in the year 1196, united action among the enemies of France seemed to threaten Philip with a heavy blow. Raymond of St. Gilles, Richard’s old enemy, married his sister, Joanna of Sicily; the Count of Flanders, the Bretons, and the Count of Champagne joined in the league; and in the following year, Count Baldwin of Flanders succeeded in taking Philip prisoner, but he was freed on promising peace; nor for want of leaders did the alliance get much beyond the ordinary petty warfare of the time. At length, in 1198, a truce was patched up by the Papal influence, but before disbanding his troops, Richard led them to attack the Castle of Chaluz, where the Count of Limoges was said to be keeping some treasure which the King claimed. He was there wounded in the shoulder, as he rode round the walls, and the wound proved fatal. During his illness the castle was taken, and all the garrison hanged, with the exception of Bertrand de Gourdon, who had discharged the fatal arrow. He was reserved for the King’s own judgment. “What have I done,” asked the King, “that you should take my life?” “You have killed my father and my two brothers,” answered he, “and I would willingly bear any torture to see you die.” King Richard is said, in spite of his merciless temper, to have ordered his life to be spared. Mercadi, the chief of his mercenaries, was not so scrupulous; he had him flayed and hanged.
Although the King himself was but a few months in his own country, the conduct of affairs in England possesses some interest, as showing the further advance of the administrative system established by Henry II. After the King’s return from his captivity, and final triumph over the machinations of John, the kingdom was left in the hand of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury. He had been trained by Glanvill, and belonged to the class of officials created by the late King. It was through his activity that, while the ransom was still being collected, the kingdom was reduced to tranquillity, and John’s castles captured in the name of the King. On Richard’s withdrawal to his native dominions, Hubert held the three high offices of Justiciary, Archbishop, and Papal Legate. The whole government of the kingdom was virtually in his hands. It was carried on by him in harmony with the system in which he had been trained; and in the instructions given to the justices, for a great visitation of the kingdom in the year 1194, we find the superiority of the central to the local courts still further increased by an order, that sheriffs should not act as justices in their own counties. The dangerous power of these officers was for the time destroyed, when afterwards by the Magna Charta they were forbidden to hold the pleas of the crown at all, that is to say, all business in which the crown was interested was removed from their jurisdiction to that of the central courts. The demands of Richard for money were incessant. And on one occasion, when a large carucage, or tax upon every carucate of land, was demanded, which was in fact a renewal of the Danegelt in another shape, a fresh survey of the country, established by sworn and representative witnesses, and very similar to the Domesday survey, was ordered. In this system of representative inquiry for financial purposes is to be found the beginning of the representative system subsequently employed in Parliament. So heavy were the taxes, that opposition was finally excited, and Hugh of Lincoln followed the example of Thomas à Becket, and refused payment from his Church land. It was apparently in connection with this opposition that Hubert, in 1198, withdrew from his secular work, and was succeeded by Geoffrey Fitz-Peter. Politically, the strength of the crown exhibited in these transactions, the very completeness and excellence of Henry’s system, tended to change the interests of the various classes in England. The crown, hitherto the champion of the people against the feudal barons, began to overstrain its power, and all classes were gradually forced into opposition to it,—a work completed by the greater and less glorious tyranny of John, and by the increased feeling of nationality excited among the barons, when the loss of Normandy severed them entirely from France.