Notwithstanding his apprehensions, real or affected, of his brother John, Richard made no particular haste to come over to England, but, contenting himself with ordering his mother, Queen Eleanor, to be liberated from confinement, and to be invested with the regency of that kingdom, he first proceeded to Rouen, where he was formally acknowledged as Duke of Normandy on July 20th, and it was August 13th before he arrived at Portsmouth (or, as others say, at Southampton). His coronation, from which the commencement of his reign is dated, took place in Westminster Abbey on September 3d. It was on occasion of that ceremony that a furious riot broke out among the Jews in London, which was in the course of the next six months renewed in most of the great towns throughout the kingdom. At York, in March, 1190, a body of 500 Jews, with their wives and children, having taken refuge in the castle, found no other way of saving themselves from their assailants than by first cutting the throats of the women and children and then stabbing one another.
A short time before his father's death Richard, and his then friend, Philip Augustus, had, as it was expressed, taken the cross, that is to say, had publicly vowed to proceed to the Holy Land, to assist in recovering from the infidels the city and kingdom of Jerusalem, which had recently (1187) fallen into the hands of the great Saladin. The mighty expedition, in which all the principal nations of Western Christendom now joined, for the accomplishment of this object is known by the name of the Third Crusade. Leaving the government of his kingdom during his absence in the hands of William Longchamp, Bishop of Ely and chancellor, and Hugh Pudsey, Bishop of Durham and justiciary, Richard took his departure from England on December 11th of this same year, 1189, and proceeding to Normandy, united his forces with those of Philip Augustus in the plain of Vezelay on July 1, 1190. The two friends proceeded together at the head of an army of more than 100,000 men as far as Lyons, where they separated on the 31st; Philip taking the road to Genoa, Richard that to Marseilles, where he was to meet his fleet. The fleet, however, not arriving so soon as was expected, Richard in his impatience hired thirty small vessels for the conveyance of himself and his suite, and, sailing for Naples, arrived there on August 28th. On September 8th he proceeded by sea to Salerno, where he remained till the 23d, and then sailed for Messina, which port his fleet had reached about a week before, with the army, which it had taken on board at Marseilles. The French king had also arrived at Messina a few days before his brother of England.
The two kings remained together at Messina till the end of March, 1191. During their stay Richard compelled Tancred, who had usurped the crown of Sicily, to relinquish the dower of his sister Joan, the widow of William, the late sovereign, and to pay him besides forty thousand ounces of gold. In return he betrothed his nephew, Arthur, the son of his next brother, Geoffrey, to Tancred's infant daughter, and formed a league offensive and defensive with the Sicilian king—a connection which afterward cost him dear, for it was the source of the enmity of the Emperor Henry VI., who had married Constantia, the aunt of William, and claimed the throne of Sicily in right of his wife. After the dispute with Tancred had been settled, the latent rivalry of Richard and Philip broke out in a quarrel about the Princess Adelais, whom her brother Philip insisted that Richard should espouse, in conformity with their betrothment, now that his father no longer lived to oppose their union. But if Richard had ever cared anything for the French princess, that attachment had now been obliterated by another, which he had some years before formed for Berengaria, the beautiful daughter of Sancho VI. (styled the Wise), King of Navarre; in fact he had by this time sent his mother Eleanor to her father's court to solicit that lady in marriage, and, his proposals having been accepted, the two were now actually on their way to join him. In these circumstances Philip found himself obliged to recede from his demand; and the matter was arranged by an agreement that Richard should pay a sum of ten thousand marks, in five yearly instalments, and restore Adelais, who had previously been conducted into England, and the places of strength that had been given along with her as her marriage portion, when he should have returned from Palestine.
Richard, having sent his mother home to England, sailed from Messina on April 7th, at the head of a fleet of about two hundred ships, of which fifty-three were large vessels of the sort styled galleys; his sister, the queen dowager of Sicily, and the Princess Berengaria accompanying him. The King of France had set sail about a week before. Several months, however, elapsed before Richard reached the Holy Land, having been detained by an attack which he made upon the island of Cyprus; Isaac, the king, or emperor, of which had ill used the crews of some of the English ships that had been driven upon his coasts in a storm. Richard took Limasol, the capital, by assault; and that blow was soon followed by the complete submission of Isaac and the surrender of the whole island. Isaac was put into confinement, and remained a captive till his death in 1195. Meanwhile the island of Cyprus was made over by Richard, in 1192, to Guy of Lusignan, upon his resignation of the now merely titular royalty of Jerusalem to his rival Henry of Champagne and Guy's posterity reigned in that island till the year 1458.
Having married Berengaria at Limasol, Richard set sail from Cyprus, on June 4th (1191), with a fleet now described as consisting of thirteen large ships called busses, fifty galleys, and a hundred transports; and on the 10th he reached the camp of the crusaders assembled before the fortress of Acre, the siege of which had already occupied them not much less than two years, and had cost the lives, it is said of nearly two hundred thousand of the assailants. But the presence of the English king, although he was suffering from severe illness, and had to be carried to the trenches on a litter, immediately inspired so much new vigor into the operations of the Christian army that, on July 12th, the place surrendered, and Saladin, who had been harassing the besiegers from the neighboring mountains, withdrew, in conformity with the terms of capitulation. This great event, however, was immediately followed by an open rupture between Richard and King Philip, whose rivalry had already exhibited itself in a variety of ways, and more particularly in the support given by Richard to the claim of Guy of Lusignan, and by Philip to that of Conrad of Montferrat to the vacant crown of Jerusalem. Philip, in fact, took his departure from Palestine on the last day of July, leaving only ten thousand men, under the command of the Duke of Burgundy.
Richard at the Battle of Arsur.
Richard performed prodigies of valor in the Holy Land, but, although a signal defeat of Saladin on September 7th at Arsur was followed by the capture of Jaffa and some other places of less importance, Jerusalem, which was the main object of the crusade, so far from being taken was not even attacked. Jaffa, however, after it had again fallen into the hands of Saladin, was recovered by the impetuous valor of the English king. At last, on October 9, 1192, Richard set sail from Acre in a single vessel, his fleet, having on board his wife, his sister, and the daughter of the captive King of Cyprus, having put to sea a few days before. The three ladies got safe to Sicily; but the first land the king made was the island of Corfu, which he took about a month to reach. He left Corfu about the middle of November with three coasting-vessels which he hired there; but after being a few days at sea he was compelled by a storm to land on the coast of Istria, at a spot between the towns of Aquileia and Venice. After narrowly escaping first from falling at Goritz into the hands of Maynard, a nephew of Conrad of Montferrat (to whose murder in Palestine Richard, upon very insufficient evidence, was suspected to be an accessory), and then at Friesach from Maynard's brother, Frederick of Batesow, he was taken on December 21st, at Erperg, near Vienna, by Leopold, Duke of Austria (a brother-in-law of Isaac of Cyprus), and was by him consigned to close confinement in the castle of Tyernsteign, under the care of his vassal, Baron Haldmar. In the course of a few days, however, by an arrangement between Leopold and the Emperor Henry VI., the captive king was transferred to the custody of the latter, who shut him up in a castle in the Tyrol, where he was bound with chains, and guarded by a band of men who surrounded him day and night with drawn swords. In this state he remained about three months. Meanwhile, intelligence of his having fallen into the hands of the emperor had reached England, and excited the strongest sensation among all ranks of the people. It is sufficient to mention that during his absence a struggle for supremacy had for some time been carried on with varying success between the king's brother, John, and Longchamp, the chancellor, who had acquired the entire regency, and had also been appointed papal legate for England and Scotland; and that this had resulted, in October, 1191, in the deposition of Longchamp, by a council of the nobility held in St Paul's Churchyard, London; after which he left the country, and although he soon ventured to return, ultimately deemed it most prudent to retire to Normandy. The supreme authority was thus left for a time in the hands of John, who, as soon as he learned the news of his brother's captivity, openly repaired to Paris, and did homage to the French king for the English dominions on the Continent.