King Richard I
(Lionhearted)
Robin Hood and his men paying homage to King Richard in the Greenwood. 
King Richard I was born in Oxford, England to parents who held power on the continent as well as England but there was little mutual cohesion between the lands that King Henry held and so he attempted to unite his posessions by assigning his children to the territories they were to govern and to this end he allowed them to be brought up among the people they would ultimately rule. To Richard he allotted the territories in the South of France that belonged to his mother Eleanor of Aquitaine and so Richard spent his childhood there. By the time he was sixteen he had been inducted as Duke of Aquitaine and he had gained an appalling reputation by committing rapes and murders. It is said, “He seized and raped the daughters and relatives of free men and when the violence of his lust had been quenched he handed them over to his soldiers to use.” His younger brother John it was decided should be King of England.
There were quarrels and Richard I cared much more for his mother who bitterly resented her husband's infidelities than he did for his father. Family considerations influenced much of his life and he fought alongside his brothers Prince Henry and Geoffrey in their rebellion of 1173-4 against his father, then he fought for his father against his brothers when they supported an 1183 revolt in Aquitane; and then he joined Philip II of France whose astuteness contrived to implicate Henry's favourite son John. When the old king saw his sons name he died broken-hearted, 6 July, 1189.
Richard took possession of the English crown and one of the first things he did after his fathers death was to make peace with his opponents who had been loyal to his father and far from showing himself vindictive he actually rewarded their fidelity for he had a chivalrous respect of loyalty. It was in this spirit that he pardoned William Marshall who had stood by the old king till the end and had unhorsed Richard and nearly caused his death in the recent fighting. Not only that but in accordance with his father’s wishes he gave him in marriage one of the richest of the Crown heiresses, Isabel, daughter of Richard of Clare, earl of Pembroke and from being an impecunious (poor) knight errant the Marshall became one of the most powerful of the English barons. He extended the same generous treatment to his brothers and he was the only member of his family who attended his father at his deathbed.
His staunch loyalty to his younger brother John was shown when he gave him the profits from the archbishopric of York which had been vacant for the last eight years and in one year alone (1182) had rendered a solid net profit of over £1,750 and this was only a drop in the ocean compared to the possessions he had given his brother at home and abroad. King Richard I was received for his coronation with great enthusiasm when he landed in England in the summer of 1189 for he had thrown open the prison doors and liberated all who had been arbitrarily or unjustly imprisoned, especially for offences against forest law. He couldn’t speak any English.
King Richard in an Inn, in Germany, in disguise, fleeing for his life.
 His priority was to embark on the third crusade for which finance was needed and the leaders of London’s Jews came to his court bearing valuable gifts, but as Jews were not allowed there they were beaten up and there were general anti-Jewish riots. Richard was profoundly disturbed at the idiocy of attacking people who could give him what he needed. He raised money for his Crusade by selling anything he could. Hugh de Puiset gave 2,000 marks for the sheriffdom of Northumberland and another 1,000 marks for the justiciarship on condition he was released from the crusade. The King’s half brother Geoffrey had to pay £3,000 for the archbishopric of York, William Longchamp Bishop of Ely was made chancellor on payment of 3,000 marks. Burgesses (freemen) purchased their right to have their cities at fee farm (without homage or fealty) varying from £100 in the case of Northampton and 40 marks in the case of Shrewsbury. The sheriffs were nearly all dismissed and if they were allowed to regain their position, they did so only on payment of fees. The generalisation of a contemporary writer was that, “everything was for sale, powers, lordships, earldoms, shrievalties, castles, towns, manors, and suchlike” was indeed not far from the truth. King Richard had famously said that he would sell off London to anyone who was prepared to buy it. The largest contribution for the crusade fund came from William the Lion, King of Scots who for 10,000 marks (£6,600) bought his release from the covenants of the treaty of Falaise effectively gaining Scotland’s independence from England. William the Lion refused to countenance the nefarious plans of John during Richard’s captivity; not only that but he subscribed 2,000 marks to King Richard’s ransom and another 2,000 marks for the wars in Normandy and on 17 April 1194 he carried a sword of state before the king at his second coronation. Throughout King Richard's reign “the most cordial of friendships prevailed”
Having squeezed all the money he could from every class of subject and institution in England Richard set off for Palestine in December 1189. His adventures abroad are too numerous to mention here and on 9 October 1193 he said farewell to Palestine and set sail for home. As the coast receded from view the king was in tears and exclaimed, “O Holy Land, I commend thee and thy people unto God. May He grant me yet to return to aid thee.
On his journey home Richard was captured and carried off to Vienna, and thence to the lonely castle of Durrenstein on the Danube, then to the strong castle of Triefels. Eventually a ransom was raised for his release and one writer said, “The whole nation behaved nobly. Enormous contributions were raised, the knights paid a scutage to aid the ransom their lord, the Cistercians surrendered their wool, the whole people paid a forth of their movable goods, clergy as well as laity, and as mentioned before William the Lion gave 2,000 marks. Richard Coeur-de-Lion eventually landed in England in March 1194 having been absent for over four years.
The rebellion which John had raised in his absence had been mainly suppressed and it was short work to bring the two castles that still held out, Tickhill and Nottingham into submission. Now that Richard Lionhearted was back in England, John at once sought safety in flight and when the barons met in council at Nottingham they ordered prince John to appear within forty days on pain of loosing all his estates. He was already again “Lackland” as the counties he had controlled had been taken over by the government at the outbreak of the rebellion and his castles had been captured during the course of it. The two brothers were personally reconciled through the mediation of their mother at Lisieux although it was not until the following year that John was partially reinstated in his former possessions.
The English people however, even though they had been taxed so heavily for their kings ransom seem to have been remarkably loyal to him. As a brave warrior who had gone to Palestine to win back the holy places, he was in their minds crowned with a halo and when he landed at Sandwich enthusiastic crowds gathered round him and gave him an uproarious welcome. He was accompanied all the way to London with shouts of rejoicing and was given a magnificent reception. It was arranged that Richard should be crowned a second time. The ceremony was carried out at Winchester on Easter Sunday.
The servent of King Richard shopping in the market. The embroidered gloves gave him away.
But no sooner were the rejoicings at his second coronation over that the thoroughly unprincipled and dishonest Richard annulled at one stroke all the sales of domains that he had made before departing for Jerusalem. He destroyed the Great Seal of England and then declared by proclamation that no grant under the former seal was to be reckoned valid in any court of law. All holders of such grants were to show them at the office of the chancellor and pay the usual fee a second time. It was an iniquitous piece of injustice and downright roguery.
What had been happening in England during the king’s absence? Many Jews were massacred, and William Longchamp the chancellor carried out his office with avarice and tyranny. Such was the rapacity of the chancellor says Matthew Parris that not a knight could keep his baldrick nor a woman her bracelet, not a noble his ring, not a Jew his hoards of gold or merchandise. Longchamp used his power to enrich his relations and friends. He gave them the best paid offices and placed them in charge of towns and castles which he took away from those who had previously held them. When he travelled through the country he went with all the pomp and parade of royalty attended by more than a thousand horsemen and we are told that whenever he stopped to lodge for the night, three years income was not sufficient to defray the expenses of his cavalcade for a single day. He was accompanied by minstrels and jugglers who had been brought from France, and they sang his praises, declaring that there was none like him in all the world. Longchamp exceeded his powers and eventually the future King John had to take a hand. John attacked the royal fortresses of Nottingham and Tickhill and planted his standard on their walls and took control of other castles. Eventually John removed Longchamp from office. This made the future King John a popular figure and he became the centre of opposition to his brother King Richard I. He made an alliance with the King of France with the intention of usurping his brother off the English throne.
King Richard's intention had been to stay in England but this he was unable to do owing to the alliance between his brother John and Philip Augustus, king of France who were plotting against him and after two months in England he went back to Normandy in May 1194. He defeated Philip and two years later made peace with him.
The fighting in which Richard lost his life had nothing to do with the Crusades; it was while he was besieging the castle of Chalus to punish a baron of the Limousin in a trivial dispute over treasure trove. A poisoned arrow struck him in the shoulder. Fever set in and soon it became clear that the king would die. The castle was taken and the young man named Bertram de Gurdon was brought before the king.
“What was your grievance?” asked the dying monarch.
“You killed my father and brother,” replied de Gurdon, “and I hope that I have killed you.”
Richard showed no resentment and generously ordered the youth to be released. The wound became infected and he died on 6 April 1199. Unfortunately it is stated that afterwards Richard’s followers took the young man and hanged him.
Contemporaries held varying opinions about the character of Richard I, to some he was thoroughly bad, “bad to all, worse to his friends, and worst of all to himself;” and it has been said that, “He was unbelievably cruel and so far from being a gentleman he was one of the most faithless and unprincipled thieves that ever sat upon a throne. Friend and foe alike were robbed and no trick was too unscrupulous for him to play in order to gain funds from his English subjects for foreign wars.” “Scarcely any king” says one historian “has left so little mark on our history as Richard. He was hot tempered and irresponsible, his arrogance almost amounted to insanity and his greed of money was unparallel in English history." He used England as a bank on which to draw and then overdraw to finance his exploits abroad. He bankrupted England and people of all classes were left much poorer.
Having said that it seems clear that he was personally brave, probably devout, he appealed to the imaginations of the London mob, he was generous, he was a lover of music, he was a skilled linguist, a patron of the troubadours and an accomplished troubadour himself. He was a suburb soldier with the strength and ferocity of a savage and the strategy of a general of division and even though the English people had been taxed so heavily they were remarkably loyal to him. When he returned to England enthusiastic crowds gathered round him and gave him an uproarious welcome. He was accompanied all the way to London with shouts of rejoicing and was given a magnificent reception. Richard was crowned for a second time at Winchester on Easter Sunday and one clerk in an official document called him “Richard the Good.” Despite all his bad traits the accounts of the chroniclers point to Richard as the most popular of all the medieval English kings whereas King John seems to have been almost universally disliked.
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