“In the year 1199,” says a contemporary French writer, “God visited the realm of France; for King Richard was slain.”[1941] Richard’s death was in truth the signal for the break-up of the Angevin dominions to the profit of the French Crown. John, who was at the moment in Britanny, hurried southward as soon as he heard the news. Three days after the funeral—on April 14, the Wednesday before Easter—he arrived at Chinon, the seat of the Angevin treasury; the wardens of the castle[1942] welcomed him as their lord in his brother’s stead; the household of the late king came to meet him and acknowledged him in like manner, after receiving from him a solemn oath that he would carry out Richard’s testamentary directions and maintain the customs of the lands over which he was called to rule.[1943] On this understanding the treasury was given up to him by the Angevin seneschal, Robert of Turnham.[1944] After keeping Easter at Beaufort,[1945] he proceeded into Normandy; here he was received without opposition, and on the Sunday after Easter was invested with the sword, lance and coronet of the duchy by Archbishop Walter at Rouen.[1946] As the lance was put into his hands he turned with characteristic levity to join in the laughing comments of the young courtiers behind him, and in so doing let the symbol of his ducal authority fall to the ground. His irreverent behaviour and refusal to communicate on Easter-day had already drawn upon him a solemn warning from S. Hugh; and this fresh example of his profane recklessness, and its consequence, were noted as omens which later events made but too easy of interpretation.[1947] For the moment, however, the Normans were willing to transfer to Richard’s chosen successor the loyalty which they had shewn towards Richard himself; and so, too, were the representatives of the English Church and baronage who happened to be on the spot, Archbishop Hubert and William the Marshal.[1948] But in the Angevin lands Philip’s alliance with the Bretons, fruitless so long as Richard lived, bore fruit as soon as the lion-heart had ceased to beat. While Philip himself invaded the county of Evreux and took its capital,[1949] Arthur was at once sent into Anjou with a body of troops;[1950] his mother, released or escaped from her prison, joined him at the head of the Breton forces;[1951] they marched upon Le Mans, whence John himself only escaped the night before it fell into their hands;[1952] Angers was given up to them by its governor, a nephew of the seneschal Robert of Turnham;[1953] and on Easter-day,[1954] while John was actually holding court within fifteen miles of them at Beaufort, the barons of Anjou, Touraine and Maine held a council at which Arthur was unanimously acknowledged as lawful heir to his uncle Richard according to the customs of the three counties, and their capital cities were surrendered to him at once.[1955] At Le Mans he met the French king and did homage to him for his new dominions, Constance swearing fealty with him.[1956] Shortly afterwards, at Tours, Constance formally placed her boy, who was now twelve years old, under the guardianship of Philip; and Philip at once took upon himself the custody and the administration of all the territories of his ward.[1957]
Neither in personal influence nor in political skill, however, was Constance a match for her mother-in-law. Eleanor was, as has been seen, at Fontevraud when Richard died. Feeling and policy alike inclined her to favour the cause of his chosen successor, her own only surviving son, rather than that of a grandson whom most likely she had never even seen. She therefore effected a junction with Mercadier and his Brabantines as soon as they had had time to march up from Châlus, and the whole band of mercenaries, headed by the aged queen and the ruthless but faithful Provençal captain, overran Anjou with fire and sword to punish its inhabitants for their abandonment of John.[1958] Having given this proof of her undiminished energy, Eleanor, to take away all pretext for French intermeddling in the south, went to meet Philip at Tours and herself did homage to him for Poitou.[1959] By this means Aquitaine was secured for John. John himself had made a dash into Maine and burned Le Mans in vengeance for the defection of its citizens.[1960] He could, however, venture upon no serious attempt at the reconquest of the Angevin lands till he had secured his hold upon Normandy and England; and for this his presence was now urgently needed on the English side of the Channel.
Archbishop Hubert and William the Marshal had already returned to England charged with a commission from John to assist the justiciar Geoffrey Fitz-Peter in maintaining order there until the new king should arrive.[1961] The precaution was far from being a needless one. The news of Richard’s death reached England on Easter Eve; and its consequences appeared the very next morning, when some of the nobles and knights went straight from their Easter feast to begin a course of rapine and depredation which recalls the disorders after the death of Henry I., and which was only checked by the return of the primate. Hubert at once excommunicated the evil-doers,[1962] and, in concert with the Marshal, summoned all the men of the realm to swear fealty and peaceable submission to John, as heir of Henry Fitz-Empress. The peace, however, was not so easy to keep now as it had been during the interval between Henry’s death and Richard’s coronation. Since then John himself had set an example which those whom he now claimed as his subjects were not slow to follow. All who had castles, whether bishops, earls or barons, furnished them with men, victuals and arms, and assumed an attitude of defence, if not of defiance; and this attitude they quitted only when the archbishop, the marshal and the justiciar had called all the malcontents to a conference at Northampton, and there solemnly promised that John should render to all men their rights, if they would keep faith and peace towards him. On this the barons took the oath of fealty and liege homage to John. The king of Scots refused to do the like unless his lost counties of Northumberland and Cumberland were restored to him, and despatched messengers charged with these demands to John himself; the envoys were, however, intercepted by the archbishop and his colleagues, and the Scot king was for a while appeased by a promise of satisfaction when the new sovereign should arrive in his island-realm.[1963]
On May 25 John landed at Shoreham; next day he reached London;[1964] on the 27th—Ascension-day—the bishops and barons assembled for the crowning in Westminster abbey.[1965] John’s coronation is one of the most memorable in English history. It was the last occasion on which the old English doctrine of succession to the crown was formally asserted and publicly vindicated, and that more distinctly than it had ever been since the Norman conquest. In the midst of the crowded church the archbishop stood forth and spoke: “Hearken, all ye that are here present! Be it known unto you that no man hath any antecedent right to succeed another in the kingdom, except he be unanimously chosen by the whole realm, after invocation of the Holy Spirit’s grace, and unless he be also manifestly thereunto called by the pre-eminence of his character and conversation, after the pattern of Saul the first anointed king, whom God set over his people, although he was not of royal race, and likewise after him David, the one being chosen for his energy and fitness for the regal dignity, the other for his humility and holiness; that so he who surpassed all other men of the realm in vigour should also be preferred before them in authority and power. But indeed if there be one of the dead king’s race who excelleth, that one should be the more promptly and willingly chosen. And these things have I spoken in behalf of the noble Count John here present, the brother of our late illustrious King Richard, now deceased without direct heir; and forasmuch as we see him to be prudent and vigorous, we all, after invoking the Holy Spirit’s grace, for his merits no less than his royal blood, have with one consent chosen him for our king.” The archbishop’s hearers wondered at his speech, because they could not see any occasion for it; but none of them disputed his doctrine; still less did they dispute its immediate practical application. “Long live King John!” was the unanimous response;[1966] and, disregarding a protest from Bishop Philip of Durham against the accomplishment of such an important rite in the absence of his metropolitan Geoffrey of York,[1967] Archbishop Hubert proceeded to anoint and crown the king. A foreboding which he could not put aside, however, moved him to make yet another significant interpolation in the ritual. When he tendered to the king-elect the usual oath for the defence of the Church, the redressing of wrongs and the maintenance of justice, he added a solemn personal adjuration to John, in Heaven’s name, warning him not to venture upon accepting the regal office unless he truly purposed in his own mind to perform his oath. John answered that by God’s help he intended to do so.[1968] But he contrived to omit the act which should have sealed his vow. For the first and last time probably in the history of Latin Christendom, the king did not communicate upon his coronation-day.[1969]
On that very day he made his arrangements for the government of the realm which he was already anxious to leave as soon as he could do so with safety. Geoffrey Fitz-Peter was confirmed in his office of justiciar, William in that of marshal, and both were formally invested with the earldoms whose lands and revenues they had already enjoyed for some years—Geoffrey with the earldom of Essex, William with that of Striguil. At the same time, in defiance alike of precedent, of ecclesiastical propriety, and of the warnings of an old colleague in the administration, Hugh Bardulf, Archbishop Hubert undertook the office of chancellor.[1970] Next day John received the homage of the barons, and went on pilgrimage to S. Alban’s abbey;[1971] he afterwards visited Canterbury and S. Edmund’s,[1972] and thence proceeded to keep the Whitsun feast at Northampton.[1973] An interchange of embassies with the king of Scots failed to win either the restitution of the two shires on the one hand, or the required homage on the other; William threatened to invade the disputed territories if they were not made over to him within forty days; John retorted by giving them in charge to a new sheriff, the brave and loyal William de Stuteville, and by appointing new guardians to the temporalities of York, as security for the defence of the north against the Scots,[1974] while he himself hurried back to the sea, and on June 20 sailed again for Normandy.[1975]
On Midsummer-day he made a truce with Philip for three weeks.[1976] At its expiration the two kings held a personal meeting; John’s occupation of his brother’s territories without previous investiture from and homage to Philip was complained of by the latter as an unpardonable wrong; and John was required to expiate it by the cession of the whole Vexin to Philip in absolute ownership, and of Poitou and the three Angevin counties for the benefit of Arthur. This John refused.[1977] His fortunes were not yet so desperate as to compel him to such humiliation. He had already secured the alliance of Flanders;[1978] his nephew Otto, now fully acknowledged by the Pope as Emperor-elect, was urging him to war with France and promising him the aid of the imperial forces;[1979] and his refusal of submission to Philip was at once followed by offers of homage and mutual alliance from all those French feudataries who had been in league with Richard against their own sovereign.[1980] The war began in September, with the taking of Conches by the French king; this was followed by the capture of Ballon. Philip, however, chose to celebrate these first successes by levelling Ballon to the ground. As the castle stood upon Cenomannian soil, it ought, according to the theory proclaimed by Philip himself, to have been handed over by him to Arthur; Arthur’s seneschal William des Roches therefore remonstrated against its demolition as an injury done to his young lord. Philip retorted that “he would not for Arthur’s sake stay from dealing as he pleased with his own acquisitions.” The consequence was a momentary desertion of all his Breton allies. William des Roches not only surrendered to John the city of Le Mans, which Philip and Arthur had intrusted to him as governor, but contrived to get the boy-duke of Britanny out of Philip’s custody and bring him to his uncle, who received him into seeming favour and peace.[1981] That very day, however, a warning reached Arthur of the fate to which he was already doomed by John; and on the following night he fled away to Angers with his mother and a number of their friends. Among the latter was the viscount Almeric of Thouars, who had just been compelled to resign into John’s hands the office of seneschal of Anjou and the custody of the fortress of Chinon, which he held in Arthur’s name; and it seems to have been shortly afterwards that Constance, apparently casting off Ralf of Chester without even an attempt at divorce, went through a ceremony of marriage with Almeric’s brother Guy.[1982]
The year’s warfare again ended in a truce, made in October to last till S. Hilary’s day.[1983] Its author was that Cardinal Peter of Capua[1984] who had negotiated the last truce between Philip and Richard, and who now found another occupation in punishing the matrimonial sins of the French king:—Philip having sent away his queen Ingebiorg of Denmark immediately after his marriage with her in 1193, and three years later taken as his wife another princess, Agnes of Merania.[1985] At a Church council at Dijon on December 6, 1199, the legate passed a sentence of interdict upon the whole royal domain, to be publicly proclaimed on the twentieth day after Christmas[1986]—the very day on which Philip’s truce with John would expire. It was no doubt the prospect of this new trouble which moved Philip, when he met John in conference between Gaillon and Les Andelys,[1987] to accept terms far more favourable to the English king than those which he had offered six months before. As a pledge of future peace and amity between the two kings, Philip’s son Louis was to marry John’s niece Blanche, a daughter of his sister Eleanor and her husband King Alfonso of Castille; John was to bestow upon the bride, by way of dowry, the city and county of Evreux and all those Norman castles which had been in Philip’s possession on the day of Richard’s death; he was also to give Philip thirty thousand marks of silver, and to swear that he would give no help to Otto for the vindication of his claim to the Empire. The formal execution of the treaty was deferred till the octave of midsummer; and while the aged queen-mother Eleanor went to fetch her granddaughter from Spain, John at the end of February took advantage of the respite to make a hurried visit to England,[1988] for the purpose of raising the thirty thousand marks which he had promised to Philip. This was done by means of a carucage or aid of three shillings on every ploughland.[1989] As a scutage of a most unusual amount—two marks on the knight’s fee—had already been levied since John’s accession, this new impost was a sore burthen upon the country. The abbots of some of the great Cistercian houses in Yorkshire withstood it as an unheard-of infringement of their rights, to which they could not assent without the permission of a general chapter of their order. John in a fury bade the sheriffs put all the White Monks outside the protection of the law. The remonstrances of the primate compelled him to revoke this command; but he rejected all offers of compromise on the part of the monks, and “breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord” went over sea again at the end of April.[1990] As France had been suffering the miseries of an interdict ever since January,[1991] Philip was now growing eager for peace. He therefore met John at Gouleton, between Vernon and Les Andelys, on May 22, and there a treaty was signed. Its solid advantages were wholly on the side of John. In addition to the concessions made in January, he did indeed resign in favour of Blanche and her bridegroom his claims upon the fiefs of Berry; but the thirty thousand marks due to Philip were reduced to twenty thousand; Arthur was acknowledged as owing homage to his uncle for Britanny; and John was formally recognized by the French king as rightful heir to all the dominions of his father and his elder brother.[1992] On the morrow Louis and Blanche were married, by the archbishop of Bordeaux, and on Norman soil, in consequence of the interdict in France;[1993] and on the same day, at Vernon, John received in Philip’s presence Arthur’s homage for Britanny,[1994] Philip having already accepted that of John for the whole continental dominions of the house of Anjou.[1995]
The next six weeks were spent by John in a triumphant progress southward, through Le Mans, Angers, Chinon, Tours and Loches, into Aquitaine, where he remained until the end of August.[1996] While there, he received the homage of his brother-in-law Count Raymond of Toulouse for the dower-lands of Jane,[1997] who had died in the preceding autumn.[1998] Of all these successes, however, John went far to cast away the fruit by a desecration of the marriage-bond almost as shameless and quite as impolitic as that which had brought upon Philip the wrath of Rome. He persuaded the Aquitanian and Norman bishops to annul his marriage with his cousin Avice of Gloucester, apparently by making them believe that the dispensation granted by Clement III. had been revoked by Innocent.[1999] Instead however of restoring to Avice the vast heritage which had been settled upon her at her betrothal, he gave her county of Gloucester to her sister’s husband Count Almeric of Evreux as compensation for the loss of his Norman honour,[2000] and apparently kept the remainder of her estates in his own hands. These proceedings were enough to excite the ill-will of a powerful section of the English baronage. John’s next step was a direct challenge to the most active, turbulent and troublesome house in all Aquitaine. He gave out that he desired to wed a daughter of the king of Portugal, and despatched an honourable company of ambassadors, headed by the bishop of Lisieux, to sue for her hand; after these envoys had started, however, and without a word of notice to them, he suddenly married the daughter of Count Ademar of Angoulême.[2001] Twenty-nine years before, Richard, as duke of Aquitaine, had vainly striven to wrest Angoulême from Ademar in behalf of Matilda, the only child of Ademar’s brother Count Vulgrin III. Matilda was now the wife of Hugh “the Brown” of Lusignan, who in 1179 or 1180 had in spite of King Henry made himself master of La Marche,[2002] and whose personal importance in southern Gaul was increased by the rank and fame which his brothers Geoffrey, Guy and Almeric had won in the kingdoms of Palestine and Cyprus. His son by Matilda—another Hugh the Brown—had through Richard’s good offices been betrothed in boyhood to his infant cousin Isabel, Ademar’s only child; the little girl was educated with her future husband, and it was hoped that in due time their marriage would heal the family feud and unite the lands of Angoulême and La Marche without possibility of further dissension. No sooner however did Count Ademar discover that a king wished to marry his daughter than he took her away from her bridegroom; and at the end of August she was married to John at Angoulême by the archbishop of Bordeaux.[2003]