Richard meanwhile had been making a progress through Mid-England,[1687] similar to that which he had made before his crowning in 1189, and ending at Winchester, where he solemnly “wore his crown” in the cathedral church on the first Sunday after Easter.[1688] This ceremonial was in itself merely a revival of the old regal practice which Henry II. had formally abandoned in 1158; but its revival on this occasion was prompted by other motives than Richard’s love of pomp and shew. As a concession to the Emperor’s vanity—for we can scarcely conceive any other motive—Richard had accepted from Henry VI. the investiture of the kingdom of Burgundy; “over which,” says a contemporary English writer, “be it known that the Emperor had really no power at all,” but for which, nevertheless, he had received Richard’s homage.[1689] The homage was, of course, as empty as the gift for which it was due; but insular pride, which had always boasted that an English king, alone among European sovereigns, had no superior upon earth, was offended by it none the less; and although the story that Richard had formally surrendered England itself into Henry’s hands and received it back from him as a fief of the Empire[1690] may perhaps be set down as an exaggeration, still it seems to have been felt that the majesty of the island-crown had been so far dimmed by the transactions of his captivity as to require a distinct re-assertion.[1691] As he stood in his royal robes, sceptre in hand and crown on head,[1692] amid the throng of bishops and barons in the “Old Minster” where so many of his English forefathers lay sleeping, past shame was forgotten, and England was ready once again to welcome him as a new king.[1693] But the welcome met with no response. On May 12—just two months after his landing at Sandwich—Richard again sailed for Normandy;[1694] and this time he went to return no more.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE LATER YEARS OF RICHARD.
1194–1199.

The political history of England during the four years which followed Richard’s departure over sea is simply the history of the administration of Hubert Walter. Richard never again interfered in the concerns of his island realm, save for the purpose of obtaining money from it; and even the method whereby the money was to be raised he left, like all other details of administration, wholly to the justiciar’s discretion. Hubert in fact, as justiciar and archbishop, wielded during these years a power even more absolute than that which William of Longchamp had wielded during the king’s absence on crusade. But Richard’s second experiment in governing England by deputy succeeded far otherwise than the first. It was, indeed, attended with far less risk; for the king himself was never really out of reach, and could at any moment have returned to take up the reins of government in person, had there been any need to do so. Moreover, the man whom he now left as viceroy had far other qualifications for the office than William of Longchamp.

Hubert Walter had been trained under the greatest constitutional lawyer and most successful administrator of the age, Ralf de Glanville. He was nephew to Ralf’s wife,[1695] and had been a clerk or chaplain in Ralf’s household until 1186, when he was appointed dean of York.[1696] A few months later he was one of five persons nominated by the York chapter in answer to a royal mandate for election to the vacant see.[1697] King Henry, however, refused all five, and Hubert remained dean of York for three years longer. He seems to have held, besides his deanery, an office at court, either as protonotary or as vice-chancellor under Geoffrey; for during the last few months of Henry’s life he is found in Maine attending upon the king, and apparently charged with the keeping of the royal seal.[1698] Consecrated to Salisbury by Archbishop Baldwin on October 22, 1189,[1699] he immediately afterwards set out with him for Palestine; there he won universal esteem by the zeal and ability with which he exerted himself to relieve the wants of the poorer crusaders;[1700] on Baldwin’s death Hubert virtually succeeded to his place as the chief spiritual authority in the host;[1701] and after Richard’s arrival he made himself no less useful as the king’s best adviser and most trusty diplomatic agent in Palestine.[1702] It was Hubert who headed in Richard’s stead the first body of pilgrims whom the Turks admitted to visit the Holy Sepulchre;[1703] and it seems to have been he, too, who led back the English host from Palestine to Europe after Richard’s departure. He hastened as early as possible to visit the king in his captivity;[1704] and Richard lost no time in sending him to England to be made archbishop, and to help the justiciars in collecting the ransom.[1705] They had refused the help of William of Longchamp, but they could not reject that of Hubert; for they knew that, as a contemporary historian says, “the king had no one so like-minded with himself, whose fidelity, prudence and honesty he had proved in so many changes of fortune.”[1706] Hubert was one of the commissioners appointed to have the custody of the ransom;[1707] and there can be little doubt that the scheme by which it was raised was in part at least devised by his financial genius, and carried into execution by his energy and skill—qualities which he displayed no less effectively in dealing with the revolt which was finally quelled by the return of Richard himself.

Hubert entered upon his vice-royalty—for it was nothing less—under more favourable conditions than William of Longchamp. He came to it not as an upstart stranger, but as an Englishman already of high personal and official standing, thoroughly familiar and thoroughly in sympathy with the people whom he had to govern, intimately acquainted with the principles and the details of the system which he was called upon to administer; his qualifications were well known, and they were universally acknowledged. Moreover, there was now no one capable of heading any serious opposition to his authority, at least in secular affairs. William of Longchamp was still chancellor; but like the royal master to whose side he clave for the rest of his life, he had left England for ever. From John there was also nothing to fear. His intended trial never took place, for he threw himself at Richard’s feet at the first opportunity, and was personally forgiven; but the king was wise enough to leave untouched the sentence of forfeiture passed by the justiciar, and to keep his brother at his own side, a dependent upon his royal bounty, for nearly twelve months;[1708] and then he restored to him nothing but the counties of Mortain and Gloucester and the honour of Eye, but without their castles, giving him in compensation for the latter and for his other estates a yearly pension of eight thousand pounds Angevin.[1709] Even John’s capacities for mischief-making were so far paralyzed by this arrangement that he seems to have made no further attempt to meddle in English politics so long as Richard lived. The one man in whom Hubert saw, or fancied he saw, a possible rival on personal and ecclesiastical grounds, he swept roughly out of his path. The two primates had already quarrelled over the privileges of their respective sees, and nothing but the king’s presence had availed to keep peace between them.[1710] The northern one had been at feud with his own chapter ever since his appointment, and they were now prosecuting an appeal against him at Rome. In June 1194, backed, it can hardly be doubted, by Hubert’s influence, they obtained from the Pope a sentence which practically condemned Geoffrey without trial;[1711] and before these tidings reached England in September, a committee of royal justices, sent by Hubert to deal with the case in its temporal aspect, had already punished Geoffrey’s refusal to acknowledge their jurisdiction by confiscating all his archiepiscopal estates except Ripon.[1712] He went over sea and appealed to the king, but in vain;[1713] and for the next five years there was again but one primate in the land. One northern bishop, however, was still ready to defy Hubert as he had defied William of Longchamp and his own metropolitan. When the newly appointed sheriff of Northumberland, Hugh Bardulf, sought to enter upon his office shortly after Richard’s departure, he found that Hugh of Durham had already made a fresh bargain with the king, whereby he was to retain the county on a payment of two thousand marks. He tried, however, as before, to evade the necessity of payment, and was in consequence forcibly disseized by Richard’s orders.[1714] Still he was unwilling to give up the game; and in the spring of 1195 he made another attempt to regain the territorial influence in the north which Geoffrey’s fall seemed to have placed again within his reach. The story went in Yorkshire that he actually succeeded in once more obtaining from Richard—of course on Richard’s usual terms—a commission as co-justiciar with Hubert.[1715] Such a commission can hardly have been given otherwise than in mockery; yet the aged bishop, untaught by all his experience of the king’s shifty ways, once again set out from York, where he had just been excommunicating some of Geoffrey’s partizans,[1716] to publish his supposed triumph in London. Sickness, however, overtook him on the way; from Doncaster he was compelled to turn back to his old refuge at Howden, and there on March 3 he died.[1717] His palatinate was of course taken into the custody of the royal justiciars.[1718] A fortnight later Celestine III. sent to Archbishop Hubert a commission as legate for all England;[1719] and thenceforth he was undisputed ruler alike in Church and state.