The Plantagenets: The Warrior Kings and Queens Who Made England

by Dan Jones

  Return of the Lionheart

  On 17 April 1194, Richard emerged from his rooms at the priory of Winchester Cathedral dressed in the finest regalia of kingship. He wore a heavy crown on his head, and the great ceremonial robes that he had last donned at Westminster in 1189. Just as at his coronation, three earls processed before him carrying swords. One was King William of Scotland: the Lion walking before the Lionheart.

  From the priory, Richard walked to the cathedral church, surrounded by the great earls and knights of England. Inside the cathedral, the old but still politically acute Eleanor and her ladies waited to witness the king in his splendour. Outside, crowds of people gathered to watch. Here was the hero of the Holy Land, the bête noire of Europe’s princes. His face scorched by the sun of Outremer, lined by his year of captivity, Richard was back in his kingdom, making a forthright show of his might and regality.

  This was an official crown-wearing – a public occasion almost as great in its solemnity as a full coronation. It was a habit that the Norman kings of England had kept up several times a year, but which had fallen into disuse under Henry II. The last king to wear a crown after a period in captivity had been Stephen, when he was released from the clutch of Richard’s grandmother, Empress Matilda, in 1141. It was not Richard’s choice to resurrect the tradition; rather, he was persuaded by his leading advisers, who in a great council held following his return recommended the ceremony as an important and highly visible way to reassert royal authority. It was clear that England wished to be shown that illness, captivity and homage to a foreign emperor had not diluted Richard’s majesty. Expensive and absentee it may have been, but the Plantagenet kingship was highly valued in England, both for its practical use in providing stable governance and for its rich and lofty symbolism. Richard, usually impatient of ritual and public posturing, made sure he paid kingship its due.

  Once the crown-wearing was over, Richard spent the spring of 1194 consolidating his control over English government. He had squashed the flickering embers of John’s revolt within days of entering the country, laying siege to the castles of Tickhill and Nottingham, hanging disloyal rebels and announcing himself the returned king to all who clapped eyes upon him. He had confiscated vast swathes of English estates from his feckless brother and his supporters. He had cast out of office a large number of English sheriffs, and leased the positions to new, loyal men whom he trusted to keep order maintained and the royal coffers filled. And he confirmed the position of his crusading ally Hubert Walter at the head of government.

  Walter was archbishop of Canterbury, chief justiciar and, by early 1195, a papal legate. An outstanding administrator, and famous for his bravery and courage on crusade, Walter was probably the greatest in a tradition of medieval royal servants. Rich, generous, pious and ambitious, he was the nephew of Henry II’s exchequer chief Ranulf Glanvill, and had made his way in life through practical legal and administrative training, rather than formal education. He had been a faithful, effective servant to Henry II and a subtle, successful diplomat on Richard’s behalf in Outremer. When Richard was taken captive, Walter had been the first English subject to reach him, and had begun the process of negotiating his release. Richard had appointed him archbishop of Canterbury by letters sent from prison and Walter had repaid him by rallying the political support that prevented John from doing fatal damage to his absent brother’s kingship. Now Walter was promoted effectively to the post of vice-regent, and he did not let Richard down. Royal and ecclesiastical business flowed smoothly through his hands. His reforms of England’s judiciary, its exchequer and its chancery made government more profitable, available and efficient. He was widely trusted, his word as good as the king’s itself.

  With Walter at the head of the royal administration, Richard was confident that he would not be starved of cash when he returned to France on campaign. Even after the demands made on England by the ransom, spare capacity was still found. Richard raised a great deal of money from the sale of offices, either to new incumbents, or to existing holders who were sometimes put out to be told that they must pay again for positions they already occupied. Walter personally led a sweeping judicial visitation of England. This was partly with the aim of restoring law and order following John’s rebellion, but there was also meticulous attention paid to the profits and state of royal manors and lands, as well as feudal rights such as wardships, custodies and escheats (inheritances due to the Crown). Local knights were appointed to oversee the maximizing of all sources of royal revenue in the shires, which could be sent back to the exchequer for accounting. Walter also oversaw the establishment of a new system that supervised, recorded and regulated moneylending by England’s Jews – a matter of concern to the royal finances, since unpaid Jewish debt passed to the Crown when the lender died.

  All these measures helped to reinforce the sense, which had been established under Henry II, that royal government was settling ever deeper and more uniformly into local society. Not that this was Richard’s primary concern. Hubert Walter’s financial policies were necessary simply because Richard had already demanded more revenue from his kingdom than any other king before him. It is testament to the wealth of England (and Normandy, whose coffers began to swell during the late 1190s) that even these demands were met without insurrection or constitutional crisis. One of Richard’s greatest feats as king was to impose financial sacrifices while retaining the trust of the great men of the kingdom. The sums he demanded may have been fed directly into the insatiable maw of siegecraft and bloody warfare, but they were never wasted.

  Richard sailed from Portsmouth for Barfleur on 12 May 1194. He would never return to England. Before he left, he granted Portsmouth a charter and began the process of building a town and palace that would transform the town into the most important military port on the south coast – a conduit for treasure, men and weapons as they were funnelled out of England and on to the continental war. Then he boarded the lead ship in his fleet, and left his kingdom. For the next five years of his life, he spent between nine and ten months a year in Normandy, and the rest in his other continental territories, engaged in a war against Philip II for the very soul of the Plantagenet empire in France.

  When Richard sailed into Barfleur, the town erupted into celebration. It was a triumphant sight: the returning duke, at the head of a fleet of 100 ships, with siege engines and flags, armour and soldiers, horses, knights, mercenaries and royal servants. There were scenes of dancing and singing, triumph and feasting that astonished veterans of great Plantagenet successes of old. William Marshal had never seen anything like it.

  When the king arrived in Normandy, all his people, as soon as they saw him come, made him fine gifts and spoke fine words to him. He had folk tripping and dancing gracefully around him all the time … Such a great, dense overpowering crowd of joyous folk that … you could not have thrown an apple in the air and seen it land … The bells rang out everywhere, and old and young formed long processions, singing as they walked: ‘God has come with all his might, now the King of France will go away!’

  But amid all the celebration, Richard was troubled. His enemy was strong. Since his return from crusade Philip had aquired the rich Flemish country of Artois. It had significantly increased his wealth and power, and the French king had pressed his advantage where it hurt: in Normandy. Not since his paternal grandfather Geoffrey Plantagenet had conquered it in the 1140s had the duchy of Normandy faced so severe an assault as Philip began to muster in the 1190s. With the treacherous connivance of John, blackmail carried out in conjunction with Emperor Henry VI, and the switched allegiance of lords whose lands straddled the French–Norman borders, Philip had overrun great swathes of the duchy.

  Thanks to John’s craven treaty-making during his attempt to grasp the English Crown during Richard’s captivity, Philip had not only overrun the Vexin; he also held much of western Normandy, including the seaboard lordships of Arques and Eu. These, along with his new territories in Flanders, allowed the Capetians for
the first time to threaten the English coast by sea. Furthermore, John had granted away vital castles in Touraine and had disclaimed overlordship in Angoulême – the most troubled part of Aquitaine. While these did not affect Norman security directly, they provided unwelcome distractions far from the main theatre of war, which Philip would be able to stir up whenever he wished to distract Richard’s attention.

  The most serious loss was the castle at Gisors, in the Vexin. Gisors was one of the finest castles in all of France. Its huge octagonal wall surrounded a cylindrical keep and a stone motte. It bristled with heavy defences, as befitted its vital strategic position between the rival capitals of Rouen and Paris. From this castle, the dukes of Normandy had been able to control and defend the most important marchland in western Europe. Now that it lay in Philip’s hands, the tables were turned. All over the Plantagenet empire, a half-century of border security, designed by Henry II and maintained by Richard I, had been undermined by the venal hand of John.

  After all that John had done to erode the empire, it would have been natural if Richard had considered him a lifelong enemy. But he did not. As soon as Richard arrived in Normandy, John came to his court and threw himself at his brother’s feet, begging forgiveness. William Marshal recalls the scene that spoke both of the compassion and the disdain with which Richard regarded his brother:

  The king lifted up by the hand his natural brother and kissed him, saying ‘John, have no fear. You are a child, and you have had bad men looking after you. Those who thought to give you bad advice will get their deserts! Get up, and go and eat.’

  The king had just been presented with a salmon, and ordered it cooked for his delinquent brother.

  Why did Richard forgive John? Roger of Howden says that the reconciliation was engineered by Eleanor of Aquitaine. She knew enough of Plantagenet history to realize that the family had been strongest when it fought together rather than against itself. On her advice, Richard accepted that his 27-year-old brother was devious and cowardly, but considered him a better ally than an enemy. As soon as Richard had bestowed his forgiveness, John showed his treacherous value. He made for the town of Evreux, which he had been holding for Philip, and had the French garrison killed, before declaring that it was now held for the English king. Eleanor, meanwhile, assuming that her work was finally done, retired in splendour to the family abbey at Fontevraud. She was seventy-two years old.

  Richard took to the field. He knew that the contest against Philip was destined to last long. William Marshal described it as a ‘fierce and dangerous war’, which ‘hung in the balance for some time’. Richard’s armies were made up of a combination of knights doing feudal service, vicious Welsh mercenaries, units deploying Greek fire, an exotic smattering of Saracen fighters, large numbers of siege machines, and the usual bands of crossbowmen and archers. His basic policy was to keep armies in the field under his personal command, while simultaneously paying large sums to an alliance of princes around the French borders to maintain a united front against Philip II.

  Philip, meanwhile, deployed greater resources than any Capetian in recent memory, and shifted Richard up and down the borders of the Plantagenet empire. Siege followed siege; alliances shifted and knights from both sides engaged each other with a ferocity that bordered at times on the comical. Marshal describes one battle in which he fought his way alone onto the battlements of the castle of Milly, and so exhausted himself with the blows he dealt the defenders that he eventually disarmed the castle’s constable by sitting on him.

  The winter of 1195–6 belonged to Richard. He sacked the vital port of Dieppe, which had been granted by Philip to his ally the count of Ponthieu, and disarmed Philip’s attempt to lay siege to Issoudun, in Berry. In the subsequent peace, Philip showed his hand, abandoning all claims to Plantagenet territory except to that of the Norman Vexin and a clutch of particularly sensitive border castles. More importantly, he gave up his alliance with Toulouse, finally ending the long and tiresome proxy war that had been waged in the deep south-west of Aquitaine for four long decades. This removed a dangerous enemy from Aquitaine’s borders, and reshaped the politics of an entire region at a stroke. Philip’s priorities were becoming clear. He had no immediate wish to break up the Plantagenet empire in the south, or to threaten England. His eyes were on Normandy and the Vexin.

  In pushing the dukes of Normandy permanently out of the Vexin, Philip was prepared to use whatever means he could, and in 1196 his fortunes changed when he managed to gain custody of Richard’s nine-year-old nephew Arthur of Brittany.

  Arthur was Henry II’s only legitimate grandson. His mother, Constance, had given birth to him after Richard’s elder brother Geoffrey had died. Aside from John, Arthur was the only alternative as heir presumptive to the Plantagenet possessions, in the event that Richard should die childless. Since John had proven himself such an unpromising prospect, it was hardly surprising that, in early 1196, Richard sent an imperious demand to Constance that she bring Arthur to his court in Normandy. When the Bretons refused to hand over their scion, Richard invaded the duchy. The Bretons, who had never taken kindly to Plantagenet invasions, promptly packed Arthur off to the French court.

  Philip now held a trump card. Richard’s marital relationship with Berengaria of Navarre was not close. She produced no children in six years of marriage. After the same period of marriage to Henry II, Eleanor of Aquitaine had produced five. Richard was more heavily occupied than his father during his early reign, but to have left the succession dangling so long smacked either of carelessness or physical deficiency. (The old tale that Richard was more interested in his male friends than his wife has been roundly discredited.)

  Either way, in 1196 Philip established a relationship with Arthur that would prove problematic for many years to come. The boy spent several months at the French court, and was acquainted with Philip’s young son Louis, who was about the same age as Arthur. Philip had discovered another useful wedge to drive into the Plantagenets when the time was right.

  But this was a short spell in the sun for Philip. By the summer of 1197, Richard’s fortunes had risen once more. His policy of buying the loyalty of Philip’s neighbours was proving highly successful, and the war turned in the English king’s favour. Arthur was returned to Brittany following Richard’s withdrawal, and Constance began to involve her son in the government of the duchy. Richard undermined a dangerous alliance between Philip and Baldwin count of Flanders by imposing a strict embargo on valuable Anglo–Flemish commerce. The English king survived being wounded in the knee by a crossbow bolt during a siege of the French Vexin castle of Gaillon. And construction was under way on a new Plantagenet forward base in Normandy: the vast, luxurious palace, town and castle at Les Andelys known as Château Gaillard.

  Château Gaillard – the ‘saucy castle’ – was Richard’s greatest pride, and the town of Les Andelys fast became his favourite residence. Towering high on the rock of Andelys, just five miles from the French stronghold of Gaillon, it was a statement of defiance: a stake driven into the ground deep inside the Vexin; a monument to Richard’s martial legacy. This huge, round castle perched hundreds of feet above a fully realized town and palace, which included a river-port, a system of bridges and luxurious quarters in which the Plantagenet king could hold court. Incredibly, it took just two years to build (Henry II’s reconstruction of Dover castle had taken more than a decade), and it drained more money from Anglo-Norman coffers than every other castle-building project of Richard’s reign. It was said that while Château Gaillard was being built, blood rained from the skies. That the cost was astronomical would have surprised no one, for Richard based his kingship on the principle that he knew how to raise and spend money better than any other European ruler.

  Château Gaillard formed one end of a defensive line that ran from the new military base at Portsmouth, through Rouen to Les Andelys. It allowed joined-up government in a literal sense – communications could run safely from Normandy to England, allowing English sovereig
nty to run smoothly even with the king entrenched in the Vexin.

  With Château Gaillard flying up, the war effort continued to move in Richard’s favour. In July 1197 he finally prised Baldwin of Flanders away from Philip, and by the autumn the tilt in power had led Philip to sue for a year’s peace. While the truce was in effect, yet another boon fell Richard’s way. The contacts he had made with the German princes during his imprisonment bore fruit when the Emperor Henry VI died. In February 1198 the imperial electors were persuaded to appoint Richard’s nephew Otto – son of his sister Matilda and Henry the Lion of Saxony – to the throne. This was a significant advantage for Richard: Otto had been brought up at the Plantagenet court, and as count of Poitou he was closely tied to the duchy of Aquitaine. He could be counted on for support. With the tide tugging so definitively in Richard’s direction, Philip began to haemorrhage allies to the east and west alike. Noblemen all across France judged that the Plantagenet empire was once again in the military ascendance. As quickly as they had abandoned Richard during his years in captivity, they now scorned Philip.

  Richard turned the screw. Baldwin of Flanders attacked Philip in Artois, opening a second front of war. Richard harried the French troops as they moved around the Vexin. At Gisors in September, he launched a surprise attack against Philip’s army. According to William Marshal, Richard led the attack personally, bellowing ‘God is with us!’ as he ‘rode at them just as a ravening lion, starved of food, runs at its prey’. As the French scattered, a bridge collapsed under the weight of the knights trying to cross it, and Philip was fortunate to be pulled alive from a ford. ‘When they had pulled the king out of the water – he had been very frightened for his life – he declined to stay at Gisors … for he feared his enemies very much,’ wrote Marshal, cheerfully.