Royal Murder Read online

  One of Richard’s first acts after the death of Henry was to order the release of his mother, Queen Eleanor, from her confinement at Winchester to be regent of England until his arrival. Having secured his father’s treasure, he took formal possession of Normandy and then travelled to Winchester to check the Royal Treasury, an act that had become almost traditional with new English sovereigns/Then, on September 3, 1189, Richard, walking under a silken canopy supported by lances of four noble lords, entered Westminster Abbey for his coronation.

  John took a leading part in his brother’s coronation, for Richard treated him with generosity, assigning him the revenues of Cornwall, Derby, Devon, Dorset, Nottingham and Somerset, as well as bestowing on him various fiefs and castles and creating him Count of Mortain with a palatine jurisdiction which almost made him independent of the crown. Added to this was the fact that four days before the ceremony John had married Isabella of Gloucester who brought him the lordship of Gloucester as her dowry. Despite this newfound power, John was soon to suffer a disappointment which was to lead to his treachery against Richard.

  In 1187 news had reached France that the Saracens, under the inspired leadership of Saladin, had taken Jerusalem. Christian anger boiled over at the rumour that the True Cross had been desecrated thus inspiring a new crusade.

  Although Richard may have been the idol of Robin Hood and England’s most romantic king, he regarded his kingdom merely as a source of revenue for his dream of leading the greatest crusade in history. He had “taken the Cross” before he became king, and as soon as the crown was on his head he began his preparations, raising the funds by selling whatever he could, royal demesnes, positions of high office — the archbishopric of York brought in £3,000 — and exemptions from the crusade. He is credited with having declared that he would sell London itself if he could find a buyer. In December, 1189, he crossed to France and, with his friend King Philip, the Third Crusade was begun.

  Though Richard had treated John generously he had shrewd doubts on the question of his loyalty, and to protect his royal interests he made it a condition that his brother should not enter England for three years, the Papal Legate William Longchamp being left in control as Justiciar. Doubtless Richard had learned from the example set by William II’s relationship with his brother Robert.

  What must have been particularly galling to John was the fact that the king regarded his four-years-old nephew Arthur of Brittany as his heir. In The Treaty of Messina, Richard declared Arthur should succeed him if he should die without issue. John may have consoled himself with the thought that the laws of succession were still fluid in Europe and should Richard succumb to Saracen steel he still might win the throne. Therefore he prevailed upon his mother Queen Eleanor, whose influence with Richard was paramount, to obtain his release from the vow to remain beyond England’s shores. In 1190 he was allowed to return and, exploiting the unpopularity of Longchamp, was able to engineer a movement against him. This finally resulted in the Justiciar fleeing the country and John being recognised as the royal heir by the Council.

  A note of humour now creeps into the generally depressing story of John’s career. On hearing of the situation while in Sicily, Richard ordered Walter de Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen, to England to take over as Justiciar which left John in an indeterminate but powerful position. In Paris William Longchamp, still the Papal Legate, excommunicated his opponents across the Channel, and at the same time secretly offering John £700 to be allowed to return. John happily accepted the bribe — and then took £2,000 from the Council to expel him again.

  When Queen Eleanor arrived in England in 1192 she was alarmed to find that John, who had control of the Tower of London and the country’s major castles, was supported by the citizens of London and a number of bishops and barons. She immediately sent a message to impress Richard with the need to hurry home. On his return journey he fell into the hands of Leopold, Duke of Austria, after being shipwrecked in the Adriatic. The duke handed over his prisoner to the Emperor Henry VI, who quickly sent word of the capture to King Philip of France. Philip and Richard’s friendship had not stood the stresses of the Holy Land — at one stage the English and French crusaders were practically at war with each other — and the French king lost no time in passing the news on to John with the suggestion that they should divide Richard’s French dominions between them. Part of the proposal was that John should divorce his wife, on the grounds that she was a second cousin and the Pope’s approval had not been obtained for the match, and marry Philip’s half-sister Alice.

  In Paris John agreed to the divorce, surrendered the Vexin to Philip and in return was allowed to do homage for Anjou, Aquitaine and Normandy. On returning to England he told the Council that King Richard was dead “though no one believed it”, according to the chronicle of Roger of Hoveden. He attempted to make himself king and, when he realised public feeling was against him, sent for French mercenaries. These plans were thwarted by Queen Eleanor, who at seventy was as indomitable as ever, and who rallied soldiers loyal to her eldest son and forced John to make a truce, which was also influenced by the fact that most of the magnates had remained loyal to the regency of de Coutances. At the same time Eleanor worked tirelessly for the release of her favourite son whose ransom had been set by the German emperor at £100,000, the money being collected in England, Normandy, Anjou and the queen’s home country of Aquitaine. When the ransom was raised Queen Eleanor and de Coutances travelled with the bullion convoy to Germany, their main fear being that John might attempt to seize it.

  When news of Richard’s imminent release reached King Philip he sent a message to John “to take care of himself as the Devil was loose.” This warning caused the castellan of John’s fortress at St Michael’s Mount to drop dead with a heart attack, and sent John hurrying to France where he and Philip offered the Emperor a large sum of money to keep Richard prisoner — a proposal which the amused Emperor lost no time in describing to Richard.

  In March, 1194, Richard Coeur-de-Lion returned to England where he quickly went to Nottingham to capture John’s chief castle, at the same time summoning his brother to appear before the Council within forty days to stand trial as a rebel. The next month he was re-crowned at Winchester to remove the taint of imprisonment from his sovereignty. Within a few days he learned that his erstwhile companion Philip of France was invading Normandy. Leaving his mother as regent, Richard left England for the last time to defend his territory, demonstrating that his long imprisonment had in no way impaired his military ability when he easily repulsed the French forces.

  At Lisieux John threw himself at his feet in submission, and the king almost carelessly pardoned him — perhaps because of his Plantagenet understanding of betrayal — only remarking that he wished he could forget his brother’s crime and that his brother could remember it.

  The royal brothers were soon reconciled, within a year John was given back some of his lands and an allowance of money, and for the rest of Richard’s reign he decided that loyalty was the best policy. He captured Evieux for Richard and signalised the victory by decapitating 300 members of the garrison and lining the town’s walls with their heads, an act that even turned Coeur-de-Lion’s battle-hardened stomach.

  Now once more in control of his realm, Richard proved his genius as a military engineer and made himself a lasting monument with the construction of the Chateau Gaillard which stands to this day on a 300 foot cliff overlooking the River Seine at Eure. Designed to defend his continental territory against the French, it was one of the most powerful medieval fortresses ever built. When Richard saw it completed in 1198 he cried with delight, “Behold, what a beautiful daughter of one year!”

  The next year a hoard of ancient gold coins was found at the Castle of Chaluz which belonged to the Viscount of Limoges. As a vassal of the English king he sent him half the treasure, but Richard deemed he had a right to the whole amount. The viscount refused to hand over another coin and^ the king, who had grown more cruel and embittered
since his imprisonment, besieged the castle and threatened to hang its defenders from the walls.

  Riding beneath these walls Richard was struck in the left shoulder by an arrow. The wound was not considered serious at first, but as the assault continued it became infected. Stubbornly the dying king continued the siege, being carried to the scene of action in a silver litter from which he fired his crossbow. While Richard was a match for his mortal enemies, he had no power over the microscopic organisms at work in his own body, and on April 6, 1199, he died in his tent. According to some accounts he named John as his successor just before he drew his last breath.

  * * *

  John was staying in Brittany with his nephew Prince Arthur and his mother, the Duchess Constance, when word reached him of Richard’s death. Immediately he acted to safeguard his inheritance, hurrying to Chinon to seize the royal treasury there. After attending his brother’s funeral at Fontevrault Abbey he rode to Le Mans only to find that a French army and a number of Arthur’s supporters were about to take the town. The citizens eyed John coldly, knowing that the barons of Anjou and Touraine had declared the twelve-years-old Arthur their rightful prince. King Philip had taken over his guardianship and sent him to the safety of Paris, and his mother was travelling with her Breton troops to invade Normandy on his behalf.

  Hastily John left the ill-omened town and retired to Normandy where, at Rouen, he was hailed as Duke. Soon afterwards he led a Norman army against Le Mans, exacting his revenge by razing its castle and throwing its prominent citizens in gaol. Meanwhile there remained the question of who should wear the crown of England. In Normandy at that time were two key figures, Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and William Marshal, soon to become Earl of Pembroke. It was they who decided the question, in a conversation recorded by Marshal’s squire.

  “I think and believe that according to right we should make Arthur king,” declared the archbishop.

  “To my thinking that would be bad,” replied William Marshal. “Arthur is counselled by traitors, he is haughty and proud, and if we set him over us he will seek to do evil against us. . . He will not come here by my advice. Look rather at Count John, my conscience and knowledge both point him out to me as the rightful heir to the land of his father and brother.”

  “Marshal, is that what you truly want?”

  “Yes, my lord, for it is reason. Without doubt a son has a nearer claim to his father’s land than a grandson.”

  “So be it then, but mark my words, Marshal, never have you done anything that you will repent as you will repent what you are going to do.”

  “I thank you. All the same, I believe that this is what should be.”

  Thus a few words can sometimes alter the destiny of a nation.

  Back in England the two magnates declared for John with the result there was little opposition when he was crowned at Westminster on May 27, 1199. Queen Eleanor did not attend, she was too busy looking after John’s interests across the Channel with the late king’s mercenary forces, just as the Duchess Constance was doing her best for her son.

  After the coronation King John obtained permission to divorce his wife Isabella who, though she had been married to him for ten years, had not managed to produce a child. Then, in August, 1200, he married the beautiful twelve-years-old daughter of the Count of Angouleme, who also bore the name of Isabella. Although she was a great heiress and was to have sons, it was an unfortunate match as the girl was already betrothed to Hugh de Lusignan, the son of the Count de la Marche, and he burned to revenge himself on the man who had taken his fiancée.

  The following year he attacked John’s Poitou possessions which forced the king to cross the Channel with an army. Meanwhile Philip of France had betrothed Arthur to his own daughter and had taken up his cause as the rightful heir to the English throne, demanding that John should compensate him by giving him his French possessions. The French king was John’s suzerain, a paramount lord with nominal sovereignty over the ruler of an internally autonomous state. Now he ordered John to Paris to hand over his French fiefs to Arthur, but John ignored the summons, remaining at Rouen where, according to one chronicler, he spent the time “eating splendid dinners with his beautiful wife and lying in bed until noon.” This was to be a popular picture of John, for he had already — perhaps unfairly — been given the cognomen of “Softsword”. Soon John was to achieve a remarkable victory which was to prove that he could become a man of action.

  The chance for his finest hour came on July 30, 1202, with an exhausted courier carrying a message from his eighty-year-old mother, informing him that she was besieged with her small garrison at Mirebeau by Prince Arthur and Hugh de Lusignan. In her wild youth Queen Eleanor had taken part in a crusade; in her old age it was unlikely that she would meekly surrender to her young grandson; nevertheless it could only be a matter of time before the keep she was defending fell.

  John received the news when he was on the march to Poitou; Mirebeau lay over a hundred miles away in Anjou. yet after forty-eight hours of hard riding he and his followers entered the town and trapped the besiegers between the castle walls and the donjon. They had been at breakfast when John’s knights fell upon them, and their resistance was short-lived. In one brilliant stroke John had his principal enemies at his mercy — Prince Arthur and his sister Eleanor, Hugh de Lusignan and his uncle Geoffrey, and 200 Poictevin knights. The latter were bound hand and foot by John’s elated troops and placed in a convoy of carts which wound its way triumphantly to Falaise. Some of the knights were later imprisoned in Corfe Castle in Dorset where twenty-two of them were starved to death. Arthur’s sister Eleanor, “the Rose of Brittany”, was kept captive in Bristol while Arthur remained for some months at Falaise in the custody of William de Braose who had actually captured him at Mirebeau.

  The next step in the tragedy was described by Roger of Wendover: “After a while, King John came to Falaise Castle and commanded that his nephew should be brought before him. When Arthur appeared, the king spoke to him with kindness, promising him many honours if he would break from the King of France and pledge his loyalty to his lord and uncle. But Arthur unwisely replied with indignation and threats, demanding that the king should surrender to him the kingdom of England and all the territories Richard had held at the time of his death. With an oath, Arthur asserted that all these possessions belonged to him by hereditary right, and that unless they were quickly restored to him, John would not enjoy much peace. The king was upset by these words, and ordered that Arthur should be removed to Rouen and aggrieved under close guard in the new tower there. Shortly afterwards, the said Arthur disappeared.”

  * * *

  Following his success at Mirebeau John tried to consolidate his position in France by getting on good terms with the de Lusignans (which he did by allowing Hugh de Lusignan to purchase his liberty), and by murdering his rival. There are several versions of the fate which befell the young prince. One account states that John, infuriated by the success of Breton forces against him, sent men to Falaise with orders to blind and castrate the royal prisoner, thus rendering him harmless as a rival. According to the chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall three executioners were sent to Falaise Castle to carry out their savage work, but Hubert de Burgh, the commander who had taken over from William de Braose, would not allow Arthur to be harmed. One version of the story was that his piteous cries made the garrison threaten to revolt. De Burgh told the king that Arthur had died, hoping that the loss of their duke would take the heart out of the Bretons, but it had the opposite effect, and when, in order to lessen their fury, Hubert announced that Arthur was unharmed he was not believed.

  This story was used effectively by Shakespeare in his tragedy The Life and Death of King John. In Act IV, Scene I, Hubert and Arthur talk, the prince not being aware that off-stage the executioners are heating the irons:

  Arthur ...By my Christendom,

  So I were out of prison and kept sheep,

  I should be as merry as the day is long;
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  And so I would be here, but that I doubt

  My uncle practises more harm to me:

  He is afraid of me, and I of him.

  Is it my fault that I was Geoffrey’s son?

  No, indeed, is’t not; and I would to heaven

  I were your son, so you would love me, Hubert.

  Hubert (aside) If I talk with his innocent prate

  He will awake my mercy which lies dead:

  Therefore I will be sudden and dispatch.

  Arthur Are you sick, Hubert? you look pale to-day;

  In sooth, I would you were a little sick,

  That I might sit all night and watch with you:

  I warrant I love you more than you do me.

  Hubert (aside) His words do take possession of my bosom.

  Read here, young Arthur. (Showing him a paper),

  (aside) How now, foolish rheum!

  I must be brief, lest resolution drop

  Out of mine eyes in tender womanish tears.

  Can you not read it? is it not fair writ?

  Arthur Too fairly, Hubert, for so foul effect.

  Must you with hot irons burn out both mine eyes?

  Hubert Young boy, I must.

  Arthur And will you?

  Hubert And I will.