The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  The mystery of Richard’s whereabouts had remained unsolved up to this point. The story generally accepted is that he owed the happy chance of his discovery to an old troubadour friend from Aquitaine, one Blondel de Nesle. There is no reason to believe the story—in fact, every reason to set it aside as apocryphal—but it is a highly imaginative yarn and so must be told.

  Blondel, so the story goes, was depressed over what had happened to the hero of the Crusade and set out to find him. Once he and Richard had collaborated in the writing of a ballad, each of them doing one verse. Wandering through Germany in the guise of a common minstrel, Blondel sang this song under the windows of every castle he passed. He was rewarded finally for his courage and resourcefulness. After singing the first verse, which was the one he had written, he heard a voice from within take up the air and sing the second verse, which had been the King’s contribution. He had found the cage which held the Lion of England.

  So great has been the desire to believe this story of the discovery of the chained King that serious efforts have been made to find the tenson which Blondel sang; without success, it is hardly necessary to state. Richard, however, proved his ability as a poet and troubadour by composing a lament on the length of time he had been held in confinement. “Two winters am I bound” was the refrain running through it and, when this appeal for the aid of friends reached England, the demand for his release became nationwide.

  The Emperor finally threw aside pretense and openly avowed his jailership. He summoned Richard before the Diet of the empire which met at Hagenau and there charged him with a long list of crimes, renewing the absurd story of the murder of Conrad and actually having the effrontery to claim that the English King had betrayed the cause by making a truce with the Saracen. Richard defended himself with vigor and eloquence, throwing the blame on the pusillanimous leaders who had deserted him within sight of the Holy City. He spoke so convincingly, in fact, that the electors of the empire, who were antagonistic to Henry VI, welcomed the chance to accept Richard’s version. Henry concluded after the sessions were over that the best he could get now was a large ransom. He agreed to accept the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand marks.

  Hubert Walter, who had been placed in command of the army after Richard’s departure from Palestine, had succeeded in getting the men back to England. He now crossed to Germany and was allowed to confer with his imprisoned master. Richard put in his hands the formidable task of raising the money for the ransom. That his deputy might have the needed authority, he appointed Walter chief justiciar and expressed his desire that he be elected to the vacant post of archbishop.

  Philip of France tried desperately to prevent the release of Richard. He decided to double the ransom figure if the Emperor would refuse to let his captive loose. When this failed because of the clamorous opposition of the German princes, Philip made another proposition. He would pay twenty thousand marks for each month that the departure of Richard was delayed.

  Back in England, Hubert Walter proceeded to carry out his instructions with great ability and resource. He had been elected Archbishop of Canterbury on the King’s urgent demand. With control of both Church and State in his hands, he set to work to raise the huge sum of money needed. It was a hard task, for England had not yet recovered from the drain of the Crusade. Walter even found it necessary to make a radical experiment, placing a tax on the land. The amount assessed was twenty shillings on each knight’s fee, and the landowners groaned at what seemed a ruinous exaction. In addition, demands were made on the Church, even on the monastic institutions, which had always been exempt from taxation. The heads of the Church responded by contributing a quarter of all their rents, and the local clergy agreed to give a tenth of their tithes. A few of the richest monasteries voluntarily melted down their plate and thus raised a sum of thirty thousand marks. Three times the new primate had to go back with additional levies before the first payment of one hundred thousand marks was available.

  Eleanor could not wait in England to greet her beloved son. Although she was now seventy-two years old, she accompanied Walter of Rouen, who had been deputed to deliver the money in Germany. Berengaria also would have walked on foot through the mud of Flanders and the snows of the Black Forest in order to see her long-lost husband. But the little-wanted Queen was not invited to go and remained at the home she had found for herself somewhere in Anjou, waiting anxiously for word of his release.

  It was a good thing that Eleanor accompanied the English party. When the money had been handed over at a ceremony in the city of Mentz and the sixty-five hostages demanded as security for the payment of the balance had been taken into German custody, an intuitive sense of peril warned the Queen that there must be no delay in getting the ransomed King out of the country. She kept her eyes fixed on the Emperor, realizing that he was acting against his own wishes. He was a man of delicate appearance, with nicely chiseled features and beautifully formed white hands, and seemed on the surface of a gentle humor and the highest honor. The long years had made Eleanor a good judge of men, however, and she was certain this monarch in his scarlet cloak and ermine-trimmed cap had reservations to which he was not giving expression. She was quite right. Henry was inwardly against letting his captive go. The indecision of his mind was shown every time he lifted his eyes and in the way his hands tugged at his well-waxed beard.

  It was learned later that he had received further propositions from Philip and would have repudiated the agreement if there had been a loophole. There was none, however, none that the prince electors would recognize. Richard accordingly was released and started immediately for Antwerp, where a ship was waiting to take him to England. The Queen Mother would permit of no delay. It was well that she allowed her sense of distrust to dictate their movements. Soon after they left, the Emperor changed his mind and sent orders that Richard was to be apprehended and brought back. When the imperial officers reached Antwerp, however, the English had already embarked and were on their way down the Scheldt.

  The French King fell into the deepest rage of a lifetime spent in umbrage when he learned what had happened. Now he would have Richard to deal with and, from long experience, he knew it was going to be neither easy nor pleasant. John in England, certain that the treacherous diplomacy of the French King would succeed, was in a perilous position. Philip sent him a brief message of warning:

  Take care. The devil is loose.

  CHAPTER X

  While the Devil Was Loose

  THE remaining years of Richard’s life were an anticlimax, the twilight of a somewhat tarnished god. Richard himself, fighting continuously in France, demanding more and ever more money, does not seem actually to play a large part. Three other men dominate the scene, the first being, of course, John.

  The second was Hubert Walter. This able, thoroughly practical, and always realistic man provides the final scene, in a sense, in the tragedy of Thomas à Becket, for he shows what could have happened if Becket had followed King Henry’s orders when he became Archbishop of Canterbury. Walter had been elected archbishop first, and when he accepted the post of chancellor, Hugh Bardolph said to him: “By your leave, my lord, if you really well consider the power of your name and the dignity of your position, you would not impose upon yourself the yoke of slavery. For we have never before seen or heard of a chancellor being made out of an archbishop, though we have seen an archbishop made out of a chancellor.”

  England had suffered years of strife when the Chancellor Becket was made archbishop. Now, when a chancellor was made out of an archbishop, the country settled down under an efficient but stern administration. Becket had tried to put Church above State. Walter always put the state first, subordinating Canterbury to Westminster.

  His first concern on returning to England, after his visit with the glum royal captive, had been to raise the ransom money. While the purses of the people were being emptied and the treasured stores of the monasteries converted into money, the new archbishop had also on his hands the problem of
John. He was acutely conscious of that thoroughly unscrupulous member of the royal family moving under the surface, of approaches being made to members of the baronage, of the spinning of a great web. The matter came to a head rather unexpectedly. The story of how things fell out should be told because of the light thrown on the devious character of John and, still more, on the courage and decision of Hubert Walter.

  John was a believer in the power of the bribe. Why should he not be? He had accepted many bribes himself in his time and he had successfully dangled them before other men. He was sure, therefore, that the businesslike chancellor could be corrupted. As a first step in that direction, he sent a creature of his to sound out the primate.

  The man selected to make the approach was an oily specimen named Adam of St. Edmunds. John was not discerning enough to realize that this fat and unctuous clerk would be wax in the hands of the archbishop-justiciar-chancellor, that Hubert Walter would see through the maladroit Adam at one glance.

  This was exactly what happened. Walter had a large company for supper at Westminster in the same hall where Becket had dined in such state and had so often attracted King Henry to the table by the fascination of his talk when Master Adam of St. Edmunds put in an appearance. The primate knew him at once for a spy, an informer, a stalking horse for John. It went against the grain to set him down to supper with his own honored guests, but there was nothing else to be done. So through the course of a long and elaborate meal Walter sat in silence while the uninvited visitor proceeded to make the nature of his mission clear to everyone. His beady eyes roving from face to face, Master Adam discoursed of the generosity of his sweet and puissant master, the great Count of Mortaigne, of the wealth and power he was getting into his hands and his willingness to share it, of the closeness of the alliance he had formed with the King of France. Filling his mouth the while with fried eel and peppered leg of capon, and sloshing them down with great gulps of the archbishop’s finest imported wines, the suet-bellied clerk tried to do more than drop hints in the ear of the primate. He went far beyond his instructions and endeavored to seduce the whole company as well to the side of England’s Roger the Counter.

  The wry-faced Walter listened to all this attentively and without interrupting. Once he motioned to his state secretary, who sat at table some considerable distance away. When the latter came and stooped behind his back, the primate whispered in his ear at length, after which the assistant vanished unobtrusively. When the last tranchoir, a slice of bread which served the double purpose of plate and final mouthful, had been consumed with smacking lips and the last swallow of wine had trickled down the throats of his guests, Hubert Walter rose. He pronounced the blessing, thanked his guests, and saw them away. Adam of St. Edmunds, a little inclined to stumble and blissfully certain in his unsteady mind that it had been a successful evening, went with them.

  The archbishop did not match guile with guile. That was not his way. He met guile with an open and quick display of the authority vested in him. While Master Adam had bumbled over his wine cup, the mayor of London, on instructions delivered by the secretary, had paid a domiciliary visit to his lodgings and had seized all his papers. They were lying now in the Curia offices, awaiting the primate’s attention. When the adipose Adam had tumbled into his bed and fallen asleep, guards stood outside the doors and windows of the inn, with instructions that he was not to be allowed to leave.

  Walter went at once to his cabinet and examined the papers with the thoroughness he brought to every task. Adam was wakened later and subjected to a questioning which left him limp of body and damp of brow.

  In the morning a meeting of the Council was held, with the primate presiding. His manner, as he placed a hand on the pile of letters and notes in front of him, was grave and concerned. He told the members of the Council that he had at last the proofs of John’s guilt, of his treasonable plotting with Philip to seize the throne and then to give away a large part of the overseas dominions. In the seized papers were orders to the seneschals of John’s castles to prepare for resistance to the home-coming King. Going further, the primate pointed out the gravity of the situation in which they now stood. Richard was not yet free, so far as they knew at this point. There might still be a slip in the negotiations. He might, in fact, be done away with by the bitter enemies in whose power he lay. In the latter event, John would become King and the treasonable course on which he was now launched would be cleansed by success. In spite of this possibility, Richard was King and they were his servants.

  To the credit of the Council thus called upon to gamble their lives in the execution of their duty, the decision was unanimous in favor of taking immediate steps against John. He was pronounced a traitor, and a writ was issued for the seizure of all his castles and lands. The primate, as fearless and ruthless as Becket had ever been, went further and excommunicated the rebel brother.

  England, it developed, was fiercely and exuberantly against John and in favor of the course followed by the ministers of the absent King. The fame Richard had won in the Holy Land had endeared him to his English subjects, in spite of the way he had robbed and mistreated them. They wanted to see the stay-at-home brother punished.

  It became a relatively easy matter to capture the castles which the prince had garrisoned with small bodies of unpaid mercenaries. The only one to hold out was Nottingham, where the defenders retired into the keep and refused to yield. Walter was directing the siege in person when on March 20, a blustery day, Richard landed at Sandwich in a mood as blustery as the weather.

  The King was wildly acclaimed in London. The church bells rang out, the people shouted their delight, and there was such a richness of pageantry and so much sumptuous feasting that the agents of the Emperor, who were to stay until the last of the ransom had been paid, were glumly convinced that they had been weak in not demanding a larger sum from a country as prosperous as this. Two days of feasting and drinking were all that Richard could stand, however. He had been so long inactive that his hands itched for the feel of a battle-ax. He took to horse and galloped off to share in the excitement at Nottingham.

  Richard’s tactics brought the garrison to their knees in quick order. He had a large gibbet set up outside the walls and proceeded to hang the men who had been captured earlier. The inference could not be missed: unless the garrison surrendered at once they would all share the same fate. The flag was hauled down.

  John made his submission just as quickly. Queen Eleanor brought him into the presence of the King and asked that his transgressions be overlooked. She was, after all, his mother and had always felt compassion, without a doubt, for her landless young chick. He was now a thoroughly plucked bird and needed her support against the bright-plumaged fighting cock at the head of the family.

  Richard had always been fond of his small brother, even though he understood him thoroughly. This was apparent when he told the kneeling John to get up. “I forgive you,” he said. “I wish I could as readily forget your offense as you will my pardon.”

  The King then had himself crowned a second time. This was his opportunity to have the Queen crowned also. Berengaria, naturally, wished nothing so much as to stand beside her husband at Westminster and be confirmed as his consort. But she was not invited to cross the Channel for the purpose. The breach had not been healed.

  Perhaps he followed the course of being anointed again to convince the people of his right to take certain ruthless steps. He relieved Walter of the chancellorship and gave that post back to Longchamp, who had accompanied him from Germany. By this action he flew straight in the face of public opinion, for the weazened Longchamp had been expelled on the almost unanimous demand of the country. This, however, was no more than the beginning of the King’s recklessness. He proceeded to annul the sale of his lands and castles, by which he had raised money for the Crusade, asserting that the transactions had been in the nature of loans. His statement of claim read as follows:

  What pretence have you for keeping in your hands that which is
mine? Have you not completely reimbursed yourselves for your advances by the revenues of our possessions? … If, after reckoning what you have paid and what you have received, there justly remains any balance in your favor, we will supply the deficit from our treasury, and so leave you no cause for complaint.

  Naturally there were no complaints. The unlucky purchasers swallowed the loss in grim silence. It would have done no good to demand a refund, as it happened. The royal treasury was as bare as a bleached bone.

  If Longchamp expected to assume more authority for himself, as he had done before, he was soon disillusioned. The primate had retained the post of chief justiciar and so was the chancellor’s superior. He had no intention of yielding as much as an inch to the ambitious man under him, and he was not another Hugh de Puiset to be hoodwinked and pushed aside. Walter’s stern eye never relaxed its vigilance, and all maneuvering on the part of the reinstated hobgoblin to extend his authority was promptly detected and squelched. Longchamp had to content himself with routine, and he spent his days preparing writs and stamping them, not airily as before with his own signet ring, but properly with the Great Seal.

  One step which stemmed directly from the chancellor was the distribution of a letter which purported to have been received direct from the Old Man of the Mountain! This extraordinary document read as follows:

  To Leopold, Duke of Austria, and every prince and people of the Christian faith, greeting; Seeing that several kings in the country beyond the sea impute the death of the marquis to Richard, King and lord of England: I swear by the God who reigns eternally, and by the law which we observe, that Richard had no part in that murder.… Be it known to you that we have given these presents at our house and castle of Messiac, in the middle of September, and have sealed them with our seal, in the year after Alexander 1505.