Early in October he left Palestine, the Bishop of Salisbury remaining to lead home the remnant of the host, as soon as they had performed the pilgrimage which they were to make under the protection of Saladin. Richard, impatient of delay, and not deeming himself worthy to look on the city which he had not strength and grace to win back for Christendom, left his fleet and committed himself to the ordinary means of transport. After bargaining with pirates and smugglers for a passage, and losing time by unnecessary hurry, he was shipwrecked on the coast of the Adriatic near Aquileia; travelled in disguise through Friuli and part of Salzburg, and was caught by Duke Leopold of Austria, his bitter personal enemy, at Vienna in December. In March 1193 he was handed over to the Emperor Henry VI., who was in correspondence with Philip of France, as Philip was with John. For more than a year Richard was in captivity. We may take the opportunity of turning back and seeing how England had fared during his absence.

England during
the crusade.

Hugh de
Puiset.

William
Longchamp.

Quarrel of the
justices.

When he started on the Crusade, early in December 1189, he left the regency in the hands of Bishop Hugh of Durham and Bishop William of Ely, the Chancellor, with a committee of associate justices. John and Geoffrey had sworn to stay away for three years. As soon as he was out of the country, as early as January, 1190, the justices quarrelled. They were, indeed, very ill-mated. Hugh de Puiset, the Bishop of Durham, was a great lord of the house of Champagne, nephew to King Stephen, and cousin to the king: a rich man, an old man, the father of a fine family, one son being chancellor to the King of France; a great captain, a great hunter, a most splendid builder; not a very clerical character, but altogether a grand figure for nearly fifty years of English history. William of Longchamp, although perhaps, notwithstanding the stigma of low birth cast upon him by his rivals, a man of good family, was an upstart by the side of Bishop Hugh. He was a man of very unpopular manners; very ambitious for himself and his relations, very arrogant, priding himself on his Norman blood, but laughed at as a parvenu by the Norman nobles; disliking and showing contempt in the coarsest way for the English, whose language he would not speak and declared that he did not understand; very jealous of a sharer in power, and unscrupulous in his use of it. With all this, however, he was, it is certain, faithful to Richard; his designs were all directed to the securing and increasing of his master’s power, and his bitterest enemies were his master’s enemies. Richard knew this, and never discarded his minister, although his unpopularity once endangered the throne, and was always so great that he thought it best to keep him out of the country. He continued to be chancellor as long as he lived. William, as the king’s confidant, chancellor, justiciar, and prospective legate, was far more than a match for Bishop Hugh. They quarrelled at the Exchequer as soon as Richard left for France. The chancellor crossed over and laid his complaint before the king; then Hugh followed, and obtained a favorable answer; but when he presented the royal letters to Longchamp he was arrested and kept in honorable confinement until the king’s pleasure should be further known. Richard was probably aware of this summary treatment of the bishop, but he had extracted from his coffers as much of his treasure as he was likely for the present to get, and he practically rewarded the chancellor by showing him increased confidence. In June Longchamp became legate of the pope and sole justiciar.

Longchamp
supreme.

After Hugh de Puiset’s defeat Longchamp had several months of practical sovereignty; supreme in Church and State, he travelled about in royal pomp, making double exactions, as chancellor and legate, from the religious houses. He fortified the Tower of London. He punished the rioters at York who had attacked the Jews and driven them to destroy themselves. He put his own brothers into high and lucrative posts, married his nephews and nieces to great wards of the crown, taught the noble pages of his household to serve on the knee, and, partly by misconduct, partly by mismanagement and contumelious behaviour in general, did his best to make himself intolerable.

Position of
John.

By this time John was released from the oath to stay three years on the Continent and had come to England, where he was keeping royal state in his castles of Marlborough and Lancaster. John’s position, if not his ability, made him a more formidable antagonist than Bishop Hugh de Puiset, and John’s enmity was no doubt first incurred by the support which Longchamp gave to the idea that Arthur should be Richard’s heir. Whether Richard really intended Arthur to succeed, or merely allowed him to be set up as a check upon John, cannot perhaps be certainly decided; but he was so set up, and Longchamp’s policy was, for a time, devoted to the securing of his claim. For a time John remained quiet, angry at not having his proper share of power, but restrained by the presence, and probably by the advice, of Eleanor, his mother, who certainly never intended that Arthur should exclude him from the throne. Eleanor, however, early in 1191, went to Messina with Berengaria of Navarre, and probably with the express purpose of laying before her son the imprudent behaviour of his chancellor. John was thus released from her influence, and in a very short time found an opportunity of asserting himself as the protector of the nation against the tyranny of Longchamp.