In The Tablet of June 18 is a leading article on the proposed erection of Baron Marochetti's statue of Richard Cœur de Lion. Theology and history are mixed: of course I shall carefully exclude the former. I have tried to trace the statements to their sources; and where I have failed, perhaps some of your readers may be able to help me.
"When the physicians told him that they could do nothing more for him, and when his confessor had done his duty faithfully and with all honesty, the stern old soldier commanded his attendants to take him off the bed, and lay him naked on the bare floor. When this was done, he then bade them take a discipline and scourge him with all their might. This was the last command of their royal master; and in this he was obeyed with more zeal than he found displayed when at the head of his troops in Palestine."
I find no record that "the stern old soldier," who was then forty-two years of age, and whom the writer oddly calls Richard II., had any reason to complain of want of zeal in his troops. They fought well, and flogged well—if they flogged at all. Richard died of gangrene in the shoulder; and I have the authority of an eminent physician for saying, that gangrene, so near the vital parts, would produce such mental and bodily prostration, that it is highly improbable that the patient, unless in delirium, should give such an order, and impossible that he should live through its execution.
Hume and Lingard do not allude to the "discipline;" and the silence of the latter is important. Henry says:
"Having expressed great penitence for his vices, and having undergone a very severe discipline from the hands of the clergy, who attended him in his last moments," &c.—Vol. iii. p. 161. ed. 1777.
He cites Brompton, and there I find the penance given much stronger than in The Tablet:
"Præcepitque pedes sibi ligari, et in altum suspendi nudumque corpus flagellis cædi et lacerari, donec ipse præciperat ut silerent. Cumque diu cæderetur, ex præcepto, ad modicum siluerunt. Et spiritu iterum reassumpto, hoc idem secundo ac tertio in abundantiâ sanguinis compleverunt. Tamdiu in se revertens, afferri viaticum sibi jussit et se velut proditorem et hostem, contra dominum suum ligatis pedibus fune trahi."
This is taken from Brompton's Chronicle in Decem Scriptores Historiæ Anglicanæ, 1652, p. 1279., edited by Selden. As Brompton lived in the reign of Edward III., he is not a high authority upon any matter in that of Richard I. I cannot find any other. Hoveden and Knyghton are silent. Is the fact stated elsewhere? Hoveden states, and the modern historians follow him, that after the king's death, Marchader seized the archer, flayed him alive, and then hanged him. My medical authority says, that no man could be flayed alive: and that the most skilful operator could not remove the skin of one arm from the elbow to the wrist, before the patient would die from the shock to his system.
Mr. Riley, in a note on the passage in Hoveden, cites from the Winchester Chronicle a possible account of Gurdum being tortured to death. The historian of The Tablet, in the same article, says:
"We are far from attributing absolute perfection to the son of Henry II., one of that awful race popularly believed to be descended from the devil. When Henry, as a boy, practising Whiggery by revolting against his father, was presented to St. Bernard at the Court of the King of France, the saint looked at him with a sort of terror, and said, 'From the Devil you came, and to the Devil you will go.'"