Richard’s
last years.
Otho of
Saxony,
emperor.
During this time Richard was engaged in foiling the projects of Philip, and drawing together the strings of a great Continental alliance against him. Alternate interviews, battles, treaties, or projects of treaties, truces and truce-breakings, form the history of years, interesting only to those who care to follow the military and geographical side of the history. Philip gains strength on the whole; it would not be true to say that Richard loses strength, and he would probably, if he had lived, have completely overwhelmed his enemy. But still they were more on an equality than they had been, Philip gaining experience which was far more valuable to him than any mere access of force. In 1198 Richard made a great step, by securing the crown of Germany for his nephew, the son of Henry, the Lion of Saxony, who had been brought up at the English court, and was, of course, in the closest alliance with his benefactor. With Otho’s aid he drew in all the Flemish nobles and the Low Country Germans, who hated the Hohenstaufen, and so hated their ally the King of France not only as a bad neighbor but as an ally of the Emperor. This confederation might ultimately have been successful if Richard had lived to guide it. He had at last by patient and forgiving kindness drawn John from Philip’s side; he had got the King of Scots also safe under his influence.
Death of
Richard,
1199.
In the spring of 1199 he was, as usual, in appearance negotiating a peace, probably in reality meditating a brisker war, when he heard that the Viscount of Limoges had found a great buried treasure: a golden emperor and all his court sitting at a golden table. The very name of the gold aroused Richard: he demanded his share—the lion’s share. The viscount gave, but not all. So the king besieged his castles; and before one of them, Chalus-Chabrol, he received a wound in the shoulder, which the awkwardness of the surgeons made mortal to him. He lived long enough to set his house in order. He left his jewels to Otho; John he declared his heir, and directed the barons to swear allegiance to him; he sent for his mother to receive his last words; he ordered the man who had wounded him to be set free, and declared his forgiveness of all his enemies. Then in an agony of penitence he made a very solemn and very sad confession. It was said that he had not confessed for seven years, because he would not profess to be reconciled to Philip; and he had much besides that to ask pardon for. After receiving the last sacraments he closed his laborious life on the 7th of April, and was buried with his father, by St. Hugh of Lincoln, in the abbey church of Fontevraud; a very strong man, who knew at least his own need of mercy.
CHAPTER VII.
JOHN.
John’s succession—Arthur’s claims—Loss of Normandy—Quarrel with the Church—Submission to the Pope—Quarrel with the Barons—The Great Charter and its consequences—Arrival of Lewis—John’s death.
John and
Arthur.
The death of Richard placed John at last in the position for which he had toiled and intrigued so long; not, it is true, without a competitor, and that one whose claims were destined, after his own death, to be fatal to John’s retention of half his possessions. But the competitor was for the moment in the background, and in England at least never gained a footing or gathered the semblance of a party. Arthur was now twelve years old; his mother, Constance of Brittany, who was left a widow before he was born, had been married in the year of his birth to Earl Ranulf of Chester, whom she disliked, and who, after having been married to her for some years, found himself unable to manage her, and, following the example of Henry II., imprisoned her. She was an imprudent, probably a bad woman, as her later conduct tends to show; but it may be questioned whether, in her management of her hereditary state of Brittany, she went farther than any good patriot might go in opposition to the centralizing policy by which Richard carried out the schemes of his father. Anyhow she had made herself the champion of the independence of Brittany, and so had imperilled the chances of her son’s succession to the right of the inheritance. She seems to have been in constant opposition to Richard, and likewise to Eleanor, who alone after Richard’s death could have maintained Arthur’s rights. It is probably for this reason that, after Richard returned from the Crusade, we never again hear of Arthur as heir; that John therefore, although personally disliked, was accepted as an inevitable necessity; and that Arthur, when he was old enough to act for himself, ruined his own cause by his wanton attack upon his grandmother.