Richard the Lion Heart

by Kate Norgate

A weightier matter was settled in that same council at Canterbury. Shortly after the accession of Henry II to the English crown the Scot king Malcolm had done homage to him “in the same manner as his grandfather had been the man of King Henry the First.”[428] What were the precise grounds and conditions of the homage due to the sovereign of England from the rulers of the composite realm which was generally known as Scotland, but would have been more correctly termed North Britain—whether that homage was due for the whole realm, consisting of the Highlands (or “Scotland” properly so called), the Lowlands, and Galloway, as well as for the lands which the Scot kings held in England, or only for the last three, or even for the English lands alone—was a question which both parties had for many generations found it prudent 1189 to evade by the use of some such formula as the one adopted in 1157. But in 1175 Malcolm’s brother and successor, William the Lion, having invaded England and been made prisoner, purchased his release by definitely becoming Henry’s liegeman “for Scotland and all his other lands,” promising that all his barons should likewise do liege homage to Henry, and that his own heirs and the heirs of his barons should do the same to Henry’s successors, and giving up to the English king the castles of Roxburgh, Berwick, Jedburgh, Edinburgh, and Stirling, with an annual payment from the Scottish Crown revenue for their maintenance.[429] Edinburgh was given back to William in 1186 to form part of the dower of his wife, Henry’s cousin Ermengard of Beaumont.[430] In the summer of 1188 some abortive negotiations concerning the restoration of the other castles to the Scot king took place between him and Henry. According to one account, Henry attempted to levy the Saladin tithe for the Crusade in Scotland as well as in his own dominions; William refused to permit this, but offered to give five thousand marks instead of the tithe if his castles were restored to him; this, however, Henry “would not do.”[431] Another version of the story is that William spontaneously began negotiations by offering four thousand marks for the castles; that Henry answered “the thing should be done if William would give a tithe of his land” for the Crusade and that the Scot king was willing to do this if he could obtain the consent of his barons, but they refused emphatically, so the project came to nothing.[432] It is not likely that Henry imagined himself to have by the settlement made in 1175 finally disposed of the question about the homage. A settlement which had been forced upon William the Lion when he was powerless in the English king’s hands could not possibly be final on such a matter; he, or the Scot kings after him, would be certain to repudiate it at the first opportunity; and the opportunity came in autumn 1189 when he was summoned to the English court to do homage to Henry’s 1189 successor. It was imperatively necessary for Richard to secure William’s homage before setting out on the Crusade. To go without having done so would have been to leave northern England without any safeguard against invasion and ravage during his absence. He himself had neither time nor means to spare for an expedition against Scotland. Had William chosen to delay indefinitely—as more than one of his predecessors had done—his appearance at the English court, he could easily, and probably with impunity, have put Richard in a very awkward position. Most likely he would have done so but for Richard’s tact in turning the difficulty. Overlord and vassal agreed upon a bargain which was in all likelihood more profitable to both parties than the one proposed a year before could ever have been to either of them. William covenanted to give Richard a lump sum of ten thousand marks;[433] Richard quit-claimed “all customs and agreements which King Henry extorted from William by reason of his capture, so that he shall fully and completely do to us what his brother Malcolm King of Scots rightly did to our predecessors and what he ought rightly to do”; he renounced the liege homage of William’s men and restored all the charters given to Henry by William when he was Henry’s prisoner; and he undertook to do to William “whatsoever our predecessors rightly did and ought to have done to Malcolm according to a recognition to be made by four English nobles chosen by Dec. 5 William and four Scottish nobles chosen by ourself”; to make good any encroachments which had taken place on the Scottish Marches since William’s capture; to confirm any grants made to William by Henry; and finally, that William and his heirs for ever should possess his English lands as fully and freely as Malcolm had possessed or ought to have possessed them.[434]

Richard’s phrase about the conditions of release which 1189 Henry had “extorted”[435] from the king of Scots seems to indicate a consciousness that his father had, in forcing upon the caged Lion of Scotland terms of such abject submission, taken a somewhat dishonourable advantage of the lucky combination of accidents—for it was really nothing more—which had placed William at his mercy.[436] But policy, as well as chivalry, had a share in Richard’s agreement with his royal vassal. Ten thousand marks, paid down in a lump and almost immediately, was probably a much larger contribution than could have been obtained from a country so poor as Scotland without some very substantial concession in return. The retention of the castles was quite unnecessary to the security of England; it must inevitably be a source of constant irritation to the Scots, and thus tend to endanger rather than to safeguard the tranquillity of the border; and the restitution of them was the only real sacrifice which the treaty involved. Richard’s charter is most cautiously worded; he renounces nothing except the direct homage of the Scot king’s subvassals and the explicit mention of “Scotland” by name in William’s own act of homage on this occasion. The former would have been extremely difficult to enforce at the moment, and of very little practical value. As to the latter point, the form of words chosen by Richard involved no recognition of the Scottish claim to a partial independence, and no renunciation or abatement of the English claim to the overlordship of all North Britain. It left Richard and his successors quite free to re-assert that claim explicitly at any future time, and to re-assert it as based not on a concession wrung from a helpless prisoner 1189 in 1175, but on their acknowledged right to “all” that William’s predecessors “had done and ought to have done” to the predecessors of Richard in virtue of a series of agreements going back from Henry II and Malcolm III to Eadward the Elder and Donald IV; for the English theory on the subject was that those ancient agreements included, or involved, the homage of the Scot kings to the kings of England for the whole realm of Scotland. The Scottish view was, of course, different; but these divergent views were of little practical consequence so long as no necessity arose for expressing them in words or carrying them out in action; no such necessity had yet arisen, and none was destined to arise for another hundred years. A formula capable of this double interpretation was thus the only kind of formula on which the two parties could agree; and the point of immediate importance was that they should agree so that the Scot’s homage should be done and done quickly, not delayed indefinitely or altogether refused at the eleventh hour. It was done at Canterbury Dec. 5 on December 5.[437]

On the same day Richard proceeded to Dover;[438] about a week later he went to Normandy.[439] He kept Dec. 11, 14 Christmas[440] in great state, “but,” adds a poet-chronicler, “there was little singing of gestes”; Richard, who usually revelled in Dec. 25 that kind of entertainment, was now too busy and in too grave a mood for minstrelsy.[441] On December 30 he and Philip, after holding a conference at the Gué St. Rémi, Dec. 30 1189 issued a joint proclamation setting forth their arrangements for going together on the Crusade and for the safety and mutual protection of each other’s subjects and dominions during their absence, and bidding all their Crusader subjects either to precede them or be ready to set out with them from Vézelay within the octave of Easter (March 25-April 1).[442] 1190
Jan. By the middle of January, however, both kings had discovered that they could not be ready by April. The date of departure was again postponed, to S. John the Baptist’s day; and at a third conference held in the middle of March the delay was further prolonged to the octave of that festival.[443] Richard meanwhile had made a visit to Aquitaine; on February 2-4 he was at La Réole,[444] on February 12 at Londigny on the border of the Angoumois and Poitou,[445] moving back towards Normandy to meet certain persons whom he had summoned thither from England soon after Candlemas. One of the two men whom he had appointed as joint chief justiciars, William de Mandeville, had died on November 14.[446] For a time, it seems, the king put no one formally into Mandeville’s place, and thus left Hugh of Durham legally sole chief justiciar; but he gave the custody of the Tower of London, which usually appertained 1190 to that officer, to the chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, whom he also, before leaving England, intrusted with one of the royal seals “to carry out the king’s orders in the realm,” thus making him virtually independent of Hugh.[447] In February, however, the king summoned his mother, his betrothed, his brothers John and Geoffrey (the archbishop-elect of York), Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, and seven bishops, among whom were Hugh of Durham and William of Ely, to join him in Normandy. “And when he had taken counsel with them, he appointed his chancellor, Bishop William of Ely, chief justiciar of Feb. England, and granted to Bishop Hugh of Durham the justiciarship from the river Humber to the Scot king’s border.”[448] He also made both his brothers swear that they would not enter England for three years “from that hour” except by leave from him.[449] At the end of March or early in April[450] he sent the new chief justiciar, William of Ely, back to England “to prepare things necessary for him”—that is, for the king—“and for his journey.”[451]

The chief item in this commission was the requisitioning of a supply of horses; William “took for the king’s use from every city in England two palfreys and two additional sumpter horses, and from every manor of the king’s own March
to April one palfrey and one sumpter horse.”[452] These horses were doubtless shipped across to Normandy, being, it seems, for the use of the king and his immediate companions, who, together with his continental followers, were going overland with Philip to meet the English fleet at Marseille. 1189 Immediately on reaching England Richard had set about collecting a transport fleet, by sending his bailiffs to “all the sea-ports of England, Normandy, Poitou, and his other 1189 lands” to choose for him the largest and best of all the ships they found there and the fittest to carry heavy burdens. Some of these he gave to certain of his familiar friends who were bound on Crusade; some he retained for his own use, and had them loaded with arms and victuals.[453] The terms on which these ships were acquired seem to have varied considerably; in some cases the Crown paid half their value, in others the whole; a few were gifts from wealthy individuals.[454] In addition to all these the king already had some “smacks” (esneccae) in ordinary use for the transport of himself and his treasure between England and Normandy; these were now put in repair to fit them for a longer and more dangerous voyage. The crews and captains of the other ships were of course taken over together with the vessels, and were paid by the king 1190 from Michaelmas 1189.[455] Some time in March or early in April (1190) Richard held a council at Chinon and thence issued an ordinance for the maintenance of discipline in the fleet, in the form of a charter which he delivered into the hands of the archbishop of Auch, the bishop of Bayonne, Robert de Sabloil, Richard de Camville, and William de Fors of Oléron, appointing them justiciars over “his whole navy of England, Normandy, Poitou, and Britanny, about to sail for Holy Land.” The regulations which they had to administer were drastic. Any man who slew another on board ship was to be tied to the corpse and cast with it into the sea; one who slew a man ashore to be tied to the corpse and buried with it. A man convicted of drawing knife on another or striking him so that 1190 blood flowed was to lose his hand. If he only struck with his palm, so that no blood flowed, he was to be ducked three times in the sea. Anyone who insulted or cursed a comrade was to forfeit an ounce of silver for every such offence. A convicted thief was to be “shorn like a professional champion, then tarred and feathered so as to be known,” and cast ashore on the first land at which the ship touched.[456] Another writ from the king bade all those of his subjects who were going to Jerusalem by sea, as they valued their lives “and their return home,” swear to keep these “assizes” and obey the justiciars of the fleet, who were further bidden to set out on the voyage as soon as possible; which they did shortly after Easter.[457]

The next step in Richard’s preparations for departure was of a very different kind. Of all the country seats belonging to the counts of Poitou the one in which for many generations they seem to have most delighted was Talmont. The lordship of which this castle was the head included a territory known as “the Land of the Countess,” because it had formed part of the dower of the successive countesses of Poitou ever since the middle of the eleventh century. Here, “on the sea-shore, in the wood of La Roche, and not far from the mouth of the Jard”—a little 1190 stream which falls into the sea some few miles south-east of the castle of Talmont—Richard now founded a house of Augustinian canons. Its dedication was to “our Lord and the glorious Virgin Mary His Mother”; its name was to be “God’s Place,” Locus Dei, Lieu-Dieu; and its endowment consisted of the whole “Land of the Countess” with all its appurtenances, “including everything that his mother, as well as himself, had or might have in that place,” with the addition of other gifts and privileges.[458] Eleanor had no need of “the Countess’s Land,” for Richard before leaving England had granted to her, in addition to the dowry given her by his father, the whole of that which Henry I had given to his queen and that which Stephen had given to Maud of Boulogne.[459] Evidently it was with his mother’s sanction that the king now dedicated to higher uses this large share of a cherished possession of her forefathers which was also a favourite pleasure-resort of his own. In God’s Place at Talmont we may surely see an offering made with special intention by the offerer and his mother for his safety and welfare in his great adventure and for the success of the enterprise on which his heart was set.

On May 6 Richard issued, at Fontenay, a charter for the foundation of another religious house, a small minster dedicated to S. Andrew, at Gourfaille, in the same neighbourhood.[460] May 8 Two days later he was at Cognac;[461] a month later, at Bayonne,[462] and it seems to have been about this June 6 time that he besieged and took the castle of Chis in the 1190 county of Bigorre and hanged its lord for the crime of having robbed pilgrims to S. James and other persons who passed through his lands.[463] By June 20 Richard was again at Chinon;[464] thence he went to Tours, where he held a final conference with Philip,[465] and received his pilgrim’s scrip and staff from the hands of Archbishop Bartholomew.[466] He seems to have characteristically proved the staff by leaning on it with all his gigantic strength, for a chronicler adds: “When the king leaned on the staff, it broke.”[467] Never before, probably never again, was there seen at Tours such a muster as that of the Crusaders who followed the banner of Richard the Lion Heart. City and suburbs were overcrowded; “there were many good knights and famous crossbowmen; and dames and damsels were sorrowful and heavy-hearted for their friends who were going away, and all the people were in sadness because of their valiant lord’s departure” when he and his host set out June 27 “with a good courage”[468] on June 27 for Vézelay. Whether the two kings actually kept their tryst on the appointed day, July 1, is doubtful. Richard was certainly at the meeting-place on the 3rd, but according to one account Philip did not arrive till the 4th.[469] When they did meet, 1190 they took a reciprocal oath that they would loyally divide between them whatever conquests they should make together, and that whichever of them reached Messina first should wait there for the other.[470] They spent two days at Vézelay together,[471] and then at last the united host began its march towards the Holy Land, “the two kings riding in front and discoursing of their great journey.”[472]

CHAPTER II
THE OUTWARD VOYAGE
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Initia Regis Ricardi, qui nondum elapso triennio regni sui probitatis suae radios longe lateque dispersit; nam Messanas civitatem Siciliae uno die viriliter subjecit, et terram Cypri in quindecim diebus potenter subjugavit.—Chron. Edw. II, auct. monacho Malmesburiensi, ii. 191.

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