Philip at once forwarded the news to John, with a renewal of the proposal which he had made to him a year before. John hurried over sea and formally did homage to the French king for all his brother’s continental dominions; but the seneschal and barons of Normandy refused to acknowledge the transaction, and he hastened back again to try his luck in England.[1648] There he met with no better success. He called the justiciars to a council in London, assured them that the king was dead, and demanded their homage; they refused it; he withdrew in a rage to fortify his castles, and the justiciars prepared to attack them.[1649] Before Easter a French fleet sailed to his assistance, but was repulsed by the English militia assembled at the summons of Archbishop Walter.[1650] While the justiciars laid siege to Windsor, Geoffrey of York fortified Doncaster for the king, and thence went to help his gallant old suffragan and rival, Hugh of Durham, who was busy with the siege of Tickhill.[1651] The castles had all but fallen, and John was on the eve of submission, when the victorious justiciars suddenly grew alarmed at their own success. Richard’s fate was still so uncertain that they dared not humiliate his heir; and at Eleanor’s instigation they made a truce with John, to last until All-Saints’ day.[1652]

The six months of tranquillity thus gained were spent in negotiations for the king’s release. As soon as the justiciars heard of his capture they had despatched Bishop Savaric of Bath to treat with the Emperor, and the abbots of Boxley and Robertsbridge to open communications, if possible, with Richard himself;[1653] this however was a difficult matter, for of the place of his confinement nothing was known except that it was somewhere in the Austrian dominions, and these were to most Englishmen of that day a wholly undiscovered country. How the captive was first found history does not say. Tradition filled the blank with the beautiful story of the minstrel Blondel, wandering through Europe till he reached a castle where there was said to be a prisoner whose name no one could tell—winning the favour of its lord and thus gaining admittance within its walls—peering about it on every side in a vain effort to catch a glimpse of the mysterious captive, till at last a well-known voice, singing “a song which they two had made between them, and which no one knew save they alone,” fell upon his delighted ear through the narrow prison-window whence Richard had seen and recognized the face of his friend.[1654] It may after all have been Blondel who guided the two abbots to the spot; we only know that they met Richard at Ochsenfurt on his way to be delivered up on Palm Sunday to the Emperor Henry at Speyer.[1655] Thenceforth the negotiations proceeded without intermission; but it took nearly a year to complete them. Personal jealousy, family interest, and pride at finding himself actually arbiter of the fate of the most illustrious living hero in Christendom, all tempted Henry VI. to throw as many obstacles as possible in the way of his captive’s release. Taking advantage of his own position as titular head of western Christendom, he demanded satisfaction for all the wrongs which the various princes of the Empire had received, or considered themselves to have received, at Richard’s hands, and for all his alleged misdoings on the Crusade, from his alliance with Tancred to the death of Conrad of Montferrat, in which it was suggested that he had had a share.[1656] Not one of the charges would bear examination; but they served Henry as an excuse for playing fast and loose with Richard on the one side and Philip of France on the other, and for making endless changes in the conditions required for Richard’s liberation. These were ultimately fixed at a ransom of a hundred and fifty thousand marks, the liberation of Isaac of Cyprus, and the betrothal of Eleanor of Britanny to a son of the Austrian duke.[1657]

The duty of superintending the collection of the ransom and the transmission of the hostages required by the Emperor for its payment had been at first intrusted by Richard to his old friend and confidant, the chancellor William of Longchamp. William, however, found it impossible to fulfil his instructions; before the justiciars would allow him to set foot in England at all, they made him swear to meddle with nothing outside his immediate commission; when compelled to meet him in council at S. Albans, Walter of Rouen refused him the kiss of peace, and the queen-mother and the barons all alike refused to trust him with the hostages.[1658] Prompt and vigorous measures were however taken for raising the money. An “aid for the king’s ransom” was one of the three regular feudal obligations, which in strict law fell only upon the tenants-in-chivalry; but all the knights’ fees in Richard’s whole dominions would have been unable to furnish so large a sum as was required in his case. In addition therefore to an aid of twenty shillings on the knight’s fee, the justiciars imposed a wholly new tax: they demanded a fourth part of the revenue and of the moveable goods of every man, whether layman or clerk, throughout the realm. Severe and unprecedented as was this demand, it provoked no opposition, even from the clergy;[1659] it had indeed the active co-operation of the bishops, under the direction of a new primate—Hubert Walter, the bishop of Salisbury, who had been one of Richard’s fellow-crusaders, and was now at Richard’s desire elected to the see of Canterbury.[1660] The nation seems to have responded willingly to the demands made upon it; yet the response proved inadequate, and the deficiency had to be supplied partly by a contribution from the Cistercians and Gilbertines of a fourth part of the wool of the flocks which were their chief source of revenue, and partly by confiscating the gold and silver vessels and ornaments of the wealthier churches.[1661] Similar measures were taken in Richard’s continental dominions, and they were so far successful that when the appointed time arrived for his release, in January 1194, the greater part of the ransom was paid.[1662] For the remainder hostages were given, of whom one was Archbishop Walter of Rouen.[1663] This selection left the chief justiciarship of England practically vacant, and accordingly Richard, before summoning the Norman primate to Germany, superseded him in that office by bestowing it upon the new archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter.[1664]

The new justiciar immediately had his hands full of trouble. At the prospect of Richard’s return John grew half frantic with rage and dismay. As early as July 1193, when it became known that Richard and the Emperor had come to terms, Philip had sent warning to John—“Beware, the devil is loose again!” and John, without stopping to reflect that the “devil” could not be really loose till his ransom was paid, had hurried over sea to seek shelter from his brother’s wrath under the protection of the French king. Richard, however, at once made overtures of reconciliation to both;[1665] the terms which he offered to John were indeed so favourable that the Norman constables refused to execute them, and thereby put an end to the negotiation.[1666] In January Philip and John made a last effort to bribe the Emperor either to keep Richard in custody for another year, or actually to sell him into their hands.[1667] When this failed, John in the frenzy of desperation sent a confidential clerk over to England with letters to his adherents there, bidding them make all his castles ready for defence against the king. The messenger’s foolish boasting, however, betrayed him as he passed through London; he was arrested by order of the mayor, his letters were seized, and a council was hurriedly called to hear their contents. Its prompt and vigorous measures were clearly due to the initiative of the new justiciar-archbishop. John was excommunicated and declared disseized of all his English tenements, and the assembly broke up to execute its own decree by force of arms. The old bishop of Durham returned to his siege of Tickhill; the earls of Huntingdon, Chester and Ferrers led their forces against Nottingham; Archbishop Hubert himself besieged Marlborough, and took it in a few days; Lancaster was given up to him by its constable, who happened to be his own brother; and S. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall—a monastery whose site, not unlike that of its great Norman namesake, had tempted one of John’s partizans to drive out the monks and fortify it in his interest—surrendered on the death of its commander, who is said to have died of terror at the news of the king’s approach.[1668] Richard had been set free on February 4.[1669] After a slow progress through Germany and the Low Countries, he embarked at Swine, near Antwerp, and landed at Sandwich on March 13.[1670] Following the invariable practice of his father, he hastened first to the martyr’s shrine at Canterbury;[1671] next day he was met by the victorious archbishop hastening to welcome him home,[1672] and three days later he was solemnly received in London.[1673] As soon as the defenders of Tickhill were certified of his arrival they surrendered to the bishop of Durham.[1674] As Windsor, Wallingford and the Peak had been in the queen-mother’s custody since the truce of May 1193,[1675] only Nottingham now remained to be won. Richard at once marched against it with all his forces; the archbishop followed, Hugh of Durham brought up his men from Tickhill; in three days the castle surrendered, and Richard was once again undisputed master in his realm.[1676]

It must have seemed, to say the least, an ungracious return for the sacrifices which England had made in his behalf, when the king at once demanded from the English knighthood the services of a third of their number to accompany him into Normandy, from the freeholders a contribution of two shillings on every carucate of land, and from the Cistercians the whole of their wool for the current year.[1677] In view of a war with France, of which it was impossible to calculate either the exigencies or the duration, Richard undoubtedly needed money; but his needs pressed heavily upon a country which had already been almost drained to provide his ransom. In justice to him, it must however be added that the “carucage,” as the new land-tax came to be called, seems to have been levied not for his personal profit, but as a supplement to the measures taken by the justiciars in the previous year, to complete the sum still due to Henry VI. It was in reality an old impost revived under a new name, for the carucate or ploughland was in practice reckoned as equivalent to the ancient hide,[1678] and the sum levied upon it was precisely that which the hide had furnished for the Danegeld of earlier times.[1679] Its re-imposition in these circumstances, under a new appellation and for the payment of what the whole nation regarded as a debt of honour, met with no resistance. The Cistercians, however, remonstrated so strongly against the demand for their wool that they were allowed to escape with a money-compensation.[1680] The taxes were imposed in a great council held at Nottingham at the end of March and beginning of April,[1681] where measures were also taken for the punishment of the traitors and the reconstruction of the administrative body. These two objects were accomplished both at once, and both were turned to account for the replenishment of the royal coffers. Except John, Bishop Hugh of Chester, and Gerard de Camville, who were cited before the king’s court on a charge of high treason,[1682] none of the delinquents were even threatened with any worse punishment than dismissal from office. This was inflicted upon most of those who had taken part in the proceedings against the chancellor. Several of the sheriffs indeed were only transferred from one shire to another;[1683] but Gerard de Camville was ejected without compensation from the sheriffdom of Lincolnshire, and Hugh Bardulf, one of the subordinate justiciars who had joined the party of John, from those of Yorkshire and Westmoreland. These three offices Richard at once put up for sale, and, with a strange inconsistency, William of Longchamp, whose well-grounded resistance to the accumulation of sheriffdoms in episcopal hands had been the beginning of his troubles, now sought to buy the two former, and also that of Northamptonshire, for himself. He was however outbid by Archbishop Geoffrey of York, who bought the sheriffdom of Yorkshire for three thousand marks and a promise of a hundred marks annually as increment.[1684] This purchase made Geoffrey the most influential man in the north, for Hugh of Durham, apparently finding himself powerless to hold Northumberland, had resigned it into the king’s hands.[1685] William of Scotland immediately opened negotiations with Richard for its re-purchase, as well as for that of Cumberland, Westmoreland, Lancaster, and the other English lands held by his grandfather David. The barons, however, before whom Richard laid the proposal in a council at Northampton, resented it strongly; Richard’s own military instinct led him to refuse the cession of the castles, and as William would not be satisfied without them, the scheme came to nothing.[1686]