The Troubadour's Song

by David Boyle

  The most senior Church figure available was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he angrily denied the petition to dissolve Isabella and Humphrey's marriage. But there were others who recognized the urgency of the military situation, and Conrad turned next to the Archbishop of Pisa (a number of senior European churchmen felt it was their duty to be on the spot). Brushing aside rumours that Conrad had at least one wife still alive, he gave the necessary permission in return for a series of trade concessions for Pisa — and handed over the desperate couple for marriage to the king of France's cousin Philip, Bishop of Beauvais. Baldwin furiously excommunicated everyone involved, to little effect. Five days before the grizzled old warrior Conrad of Montferrat married Isabella — on 24 November 1190 — the Archbishop of Canterbury died of rage.

  Already the rival parties that would lead directly to Richard's future imprisonment were beginning to emerge. One camp was in Tyre under the leadership of Conrad; one was perched outside the city of Acre. Relations between the two were disintegrating, but they had agreed on one thing at least — by themselves, they could not stand up against the combined forces of the Arab world. All they could do was to hold out and wait for help from the West.

  Within months of the loss of Jerusalem, the campaign to raise an army to recapture it was in full swing. Troubadours were writing songs about crusading, preachers were setting up in market places all over Europe, carrying with them a widely distributed poster of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, with a Saracen knight on a horse that was urinating on it from above. Those who conspicuously refused to go were sent a distaff and wool, the equivalent of white feathers. 'I can offer you a splendid bargain,' St Bernard had said a generation before, urging on the Second Crusade, and the same message was adapted for the Third. 'Do not miss this opportunity. Take the sign of the cross. At once you will have indulgence for all the sins which you confess with a contrite heart. It does not cost you much to buy and if you wear it with humility you will find that it is worth the kingdom of heaven.'

  'Taking the cross' was the promise to go on crusade, and it must have seemed for some people a bargain commitment. Not only would you get to see the Holy City, but your debts would be postponed until your return and your property would be under the protection of the Church while you were away.

  When the disastrous news of the Battle of the Horns of Hattin arrived in Paris in November 1187, Richard had taken the cross from the Archbishop of Tours and sewn it on to his surcoat, evenbefore asking his father's permission. When Henry heard, he was so shocked that he shut himself up and refused to see anyone for days. Richard said he would go as long as his father promised him the succession, and this Henry calculatingly refused to do — twisting a little further the cycle of suspicion that would finally divide father and son. Henry and Philip met for a conference on the Normandy border on 21 January the following year — hearing a sermon by the Archbishop of Tyre himself— and both felt moved to take the cross as well. Chroniclers reported that they could see the shape of another cross in the sky above their heads as they did so.

  Their agreement was that French soldiers were to wear red crosses, English soldiers white crosses and Flemish soldiers green crosses. There would be special rules forbidding swearing or gam­bling among the troops, and this time there would be no women, except what they called 'washerwomen of good character'. The whole project was to be paid for with a serious tax across the whole of both kingdoms, known as the Saladin Tithe — one-tenth of every­one's income for three years. Those who refused to pay would be excommunicated; those who took the cross were exempt.

  Impatience to see the heroic armies set off forced Henry and Philip together for a peace conference a year later, early in 1189, in Bonmoulins. Henry's first shock was to see Richard arrive with Philip hand in hand. His second was their joint ultimatum -including the demand that Richard should be allowed immediately to marry Philip's sister Alys (still Henry's lover) and that Henry should acknowledge Richard as his heir. Philip had been playing on Richard's fears — why hadn't his father's favourite son, John, taken the cross? Was it because he was grooming him to replace Richard? But Henry refused to be forced into any commitment that might relieve his fears. 'Now at last I must believe what I had always thought was impossible,' said Richard bitterly, and he knelt and gave homage to Philip for all Angevin lands on the Continent. It was a kind of declaration of war against his father.

  Having done so, Richard stormed out of the meeting. Henry sent his illegitimate son Geoffrey — his legitimate son Geoffrey of Brittany had already died — and William the Marshal after him, but when they reached the place he had stayed the night before, they found he had sent out 200 letters that evening. There was clearly little chance of persuading him to return and an open rift between father and son seemed inevitable. The Pope's legate failed to bring the sides together and, in June 1189, Richard and Philip jointly invaded the Angevin county of Maine, bringing Richard face to face again unexpectedly with William the Marshal in an ambush.

  'By God's legs, do not kill me,' shouted Richard in the melee. 'I am unarmed.'

  'No, let the devil kill you, for I won't,' said William, chivalrous as always, spearing his horse instead, and leaving Richard in tears on the ground, surrounded by his knights.

  But Henry was ill and tired, and for once the rebellion was too much for him. He limped exhausted back to the safety of his own castle of Chinon. From his sickbed he agreed to an amnesty for everyone who had conspired against him, and on 5 July he was brought a list of their names. And there on the top he saw his own favourite son, John. 'Is it true that John, my heart, John, whom I loved more than all my sons, and for whose gain I suffered all these evils, has forsaken me?' asked Henry in despair. When it was clear that the list was accurate, he turned to the wall and lapsed into a delirium. He died the following day, leaving instructions that his brain should be buried in Charroux in Poitou, his heart in Rouen in Normandy, and his embalmed body next to his father in Fontevrault Abbey. His last words had been, 'Shame, shame on a conquered king.'

  As soon as he was dead and Geoffrey, the only one of his children who was still with him, had left the room, his servants stole all his personal effects and fled. When Richard reached Chinon and stared at the corpse, it was said that blood flowed suddenly out of its nose as an accusation of murder. When the news reached Salisbury, Eleanor's jailors set her free after nearly sixteen years' imprisonment, and — in the name of her son — she started issuing edicts, relaxing the forest laws and emptying the prisons. She also had poor Alys — her husband's mistress, whom Richard had nowfailed to marry for nearly two decades — confined to her apartments in Winchester.

  Richard was now king, and his first acts were — rather perversely, it seemed to his closest followers — to reward those who had stayed loyal to his father. There was a scene of chivalric reconciliation with William the Marshal, who had nearly killed him less than a week before. 'Thank you, sire. Thank you, fair sweet sire,' said William, rewarded with a marriage to a considerable heiress. 'I did by no means desire your death.'

  On 13 August, Richard sailed from Barfleur and was welcomed with enthusiasm in Portsmouth. Two days later he was received in Winchester, was reunited with his mother and, to his great relief, secured the royal treasury. On 1 September, mother and son rode through the streets of London, which were hung with tapestries and garlands, the roads spread with fresh rushes all the way to St Paul's Cathedral. From there, a procession escorted them across the River Fleet, up what is now the Strand and to the royal palace at Westminster. Two days later, he was crowned in Westminster Abbey, the traditional place of coronation of English kings and already more than a century old. He was determined that his coro­nation should be the most sumptuous. You would expect nothing less from the first king of England since the Norman Conquest to have succeeded to the throne without question or opposition, and from a romantic determined to wrap himself in the spirit of Arthurian chivalry — and, what's more, as a Christian prince e
mbarking on a voyage to seize Jerusalem back for Christendom.

  He processed along a path of woollen cloth from his chamber in the palace right up to the Abbey's high altar. At the head of the procession was a group of priests carrying crosses and sprinkling holy water. Ahead of him came four senior barons carrying golden candelabra and the crown jewels — including the great golden crown of precious stones looted from the German treasury two generations before by his grandmother the Empress Matilda. Barechested at the altar, he was anointed with holy oil. Then he handed the crown to Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury — about to leave for the Holy Land — who in turn placed it on his head. Itwas so heavy that it required two earls to reach over and take part of the weight. A bat fluttered around the throne as Richard sat there. It was considered a bad omen.

  The coronation banquet was a sumptuous affair, including 5,050 dishes, 1,700 pitchers of wine and 900 cups. But at the height of the meal, a disaster took place outside which was to cast a dark shadow over Richard's reputation. In line with the holiness of the ceremony — a coronation for a departing crusader — no women had been allowed to the coronation, and the wealthy Jewish moneylenders had also been asked to stay away. This was to be a male, Christian affair. But a group of Jewish leaders decided it would be politic to arrive anyway, bringing gifts for the new king. Not only were they barred from the banquet, but they found themselves attacked by the crowd outside. Many of them were killed, including Jacob of Orleans, one of the most learned men in Europe, who happened to be visiting London at the time. The riots then spread quickly across the city and Jewish families shut themselves up in the Tower of London for safety.

  When he heard about the disaster, Richard ordered that the ringleaders should be executed, and sent letters around the country demanding that Jews should be left in peace. But thanks to crusade fever, some new spirit was abroad that was demonstrating the shadow side of the twelfth century's tolerance. The anti-Semitic crusading spirit spread quickly across the country to Bishop's (now King's) Lynn, Norwich, Stamford and Lincoln. In March the following year, a hideous massacre took place in York, where 150 Jews took refuge from the mob in the castle. Many of them killed their own wives and children and committed suicide rather than surrender. The rest were promised safe conduct if they would accept Christian baptism, but when they came out they were murdered anyway.

  It was a crime that was repeated in other parts of Europe in the grip of crusading insanity, and it tainted the reign of the new king. But by then Richard was already back on the Continent and on his way to the Holy Land and destiny. Among his entourage, by tradition anyway, were his other illegitimate brother, William Longspee, Jehan I of Nesle and the trouvères Gace Brulé and Blondel.

  It would take more than eighteen months from the coronation for Richard to arrive outside the walls of Acre as joint leader of the Anglo-French Third Crusade. The first few months of his reign were a period of frenetic organization and fund-raising, partly by collecting the Saladin Tithe, but also by any other means that emerged. The English court was in for an unpleasant surprise. They knew, of course, that their splendid new king was intending to leave as soon as he could for Palestine, just as they knew that the German emperor Frederick Barbarossa was preparing an enormous army with the same purpose. But they were unprepared for his sweeping series of new appointments and his vigorous fund-raising methods.

  The biggest shock was the appointment of William Longchamp, the Bishop of Ely — Richard's former chancellor in Aquitaine — as Chancellor of England, in charge of all the finances of the kingdom. Longchamp was short and limping and he had a stammer — he was like a 'hairy deformed ape', according to the chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis — and was rumoured to be the grandson of a runaway serf. He was unswervingly loyal to Richard, but also worryingly confident and ambitious. He spoke no English and not only disliked the English but made the mistake of saying so. He was also widely accused of paedophilia.

  Crusades were staggeringly expensive, and Richard and Long­champ together were a fund-raising duo of frightening deter­mination, selling off manors and sheriffdoms all over the empire. Richard 'would fight for anything whatever, but would sell every­thing that was worth fighting for,' said the Victorian historian Bishop Stubbs. He was, in short, an enthusiastic privatizer. Even existing office holders were expected to pay for their continued employment. Longchamp himself set an example by paying £3,000 for his own position as chancellor, though someone called Reginald the Italian had actually put in a higher bid. Ranulf de Glanville, John's former tutor and the keeper of Henry's prisoners— not a popular man with the new king, since one of the prisoners had been Eleanor — was ruined by the effort of buying back his own titles and had to leave for Palestine himself to postpone settling his debts. The new Pope, Clement III, also allowed Richard to excuse his vassals from their crusading pledge on payment of a hefty fee.

  Thanks to the efficient Angevin administration of England, Longchamp was able to levy high taxes on what was an increasingly prosperous country, with a population of somewhere between 2 and 3 million. For Richard, England was not just the jewel in the crown of his inheritance but the equivalent of a giant bank. 'I would sell London itself if I could find a buyer,' he said.

  His need for money and the demand of towns for self-government happened to coincide neatly. He and his brother John later were great providers of charters to towns, setting up new links with the town 'communes' against the staunch opposition of the local aristocrats. Other rulers across Europe were brutally suppressing these early communes, the self-appointed corporations of local townspeople. But when they received petitions from towns and cities asking for the right to form a commune, to run their own affairs rather than live with the continued despotism of the local lord, Richard and Eleanor's instinct was to agree. And with Richard, it helped that he could also charge a reasonable fee. London took the opportunity of a break for self-government, and in 1190 they appointed the first Mayor of London, Henry Fitz Ailwin. He stayed mayor for life.

  Richard prepared the country for his departure at breakneck speed. The Scots were reassured and released from treaty obliga­tions in return for another large payment. The feuding monks of Canterbury were successfully brought together. Richard's illegiti­mate brother Geoffrey was neutralized as a claimant to the throne by forcing him to take holy orders — priests could not inherit — and making him Archbishop of York. In the position of justiciar -the prime minister's role — Richard appointed Longchamp south of the Humber and, to keep him in check, Bishop Hugh de Puiset of Durham north of it. To Eleanor's grandson Otto of Brunswick, the son of Henry the Lion of Saxony, was delegated the task of ruling Aquitaine, and the untrustworthy John was loaded with lands in the West Country to make him a little less hungry for taking over his brother's.

  There were two routes to Palestine in those days: the hot, exhausting overland route and the fast, cool but unpredictable way by sea. The Third Crusade was the first to plan a sea voyage and Philip had contracted with the Genoese republic to take his own men down the Mediterranean. Richard commandeered every sea­worthy ship on the English coast from Hull to Bristol and ordered them to Dover, agreeing to pay two-thirds of the cost. He also placed orders for arms and armour all over his domains, including 50,000 horseshoes from one ironworks in the Forest of Dean. Some were too impatient to wait for the king, like Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, and a flotilla from London sailed through the Straits of Gibraltar on Michaelmas Day 1189. Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem Inn, underneath Nottingham Castle, dates from this momentous point in English history when the whole nation was impatient for the army's departure on a holy enterprise for which so many of them had contributed with extra taxes.

  Richard divided his treasury among the fleet and decided to leave behind the mummified hand of St James from Reading Abbey. This was another of the priceless items looted by Richard's grandmother from the Germans in Cologne, and a festering sore in his relations with the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barba­rossa, that
would prove important on his journey home. Richard contented himself with stripping the hand of its gold covering. But as both kings prepared for their armies to meet in France, ready to set sail, there was a series of disconcerting pieces of news. First there was the unexpected death in childbirth of Philip's wife (she became the first French queen to be buried in Notre-Dame). As she died it was reported that Frederick Barbarossa had crossed the Bosphorus and into Asia Minor at the head of a gigantic army, following the route of Alexander the Great fifteen centuries before. But by the time the French and English armies met outside Lyons in July 1190 — probably around 10,000 of them rather than the chroniclers'100,000 — the news was filtering through that Barbarossa had been thrown by his horse crossing the Calycadnus River and had died after suffering a heart attack from the shock of the cold water.

  It was a devastating blow. Barbarossa's body was kept in vinegar for the rest of the long, hot march, but this turned out not to be an adequate preservative. All that remained of him was buried quickly in Antioch Cathedral, with a few bones secretly taken with what remained of his army under the command of his younger son, Frederick of Swabia.

  Meanwhile, the English fleet set sail from Dartmouth at Easter 1190, complete with a set of fearsome regulations about proper conduct, which were entirely ignored when the soldiers went on the rampage after putting in at Lisbon. Gathered on either side of the Rhone, with the banners of Richard (golden lions on a red background) and Philip (golden fleurs-de-lis against blue) fluttering over them, the main body of French, English and Flemish troops finally set off southwards on 4 July 1190 by the light of flares. Women brought jugs of water to the roadside for them, people cheered and sang hymns as they went by, and there were tearful final embraces and babies lifted up high to see them pass by. The peasants fled, taking their livestock as far from the army as possible — medieval armies had to fend for themselves and could have the same effect as locusts on the surrounding countryside.