The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part A. · David Hume
RICHARD I.
The English council was astonished on receiving this fatal intelligence, and foresaw all the dangerous consequences which might naturally arise from that event. The queen dowager wrote reiterated letters to Pope Celestine; exclaiming against the injury which her son had sustained, representing the impiety of detaining in prison the most illustrious prince that had yet carried the banners of Christ into the Holy Land; claiming the protection of the apostolic see, which was due even to the meanest of those adventurers; and upbraiding the pope, that, in a cause where justice, religion, and the dignity of the church, were so much concerned, a cause which it might well befit his holiness himself to support by taking in person a journey to Germany, the spiritual thunders should so long be suspended over those sacrilegious offenders.[**] The zeal of Celestine corresponded not to the impatience of the queen mother; and the regency of England were, for a long time, left to struggle alone with all their domestic and foreign enemies.
The king of France, quickly informed of Richard’s confinement by a message from the emperor,[***] prepared himself to take advantage of the incident; and he employed every means of force and intrigue, of war and negotiation, against the dominions and the person of his unfortunate rival. He revived the calumny of Richard’s assassinating the marquis of Montferrat; and by that absurd pretence he induced his barons to violate their oaths, by which they had engaged that, during the crusade, they never would, on any account, attack the dominions of the king of England. He made the emperor the largest offers, if he would deliver into his hands the royal prisoner, or at least detain him in perpetual captivity he even formed an alliance by marriage with the king of Denmark, desired that the ancient Danish claim to the crown of England should be transferred to him, and solicited a supply of shipping to maintain it. [* Chron. T. Wykes, p. 35.] [** Rymer, vol. i. p. 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, etc] [*** Rymer, vol. i. p. 70.] But the most successful of Philip’s negotiations was with Prince John, who, forgetting every tie to his brother, his sovereign, and his benefactor, thought of nothing but how to make his own advantage of the public calamities. That traitor, on the first invitation from the court of France, suddenly went abroad, had a conference with Philip, and made a treaty, of which the object was the perpetual ruin of his unhappy brother. He stipulated to deliver into Philip’s hands a great part of Normandy:[*] he received, in return, the investiture of all Richard’s transmarine dominions; and it is reported by several historians, that he even did homage to the French king for the crown of England.
Meanwhile the high spirit of Richard suffered in Germany every kind of insult and indignity. The French ambassadors, in their master’s name, renounced him as a vassal to the crown of France, and declared all his fiefs to be forfeited to his liege lord. The emperor, that he might render him more impatient for the recovery of his liberty, and make him submit to the payment of a larger ransom, treated him with the greatest severity, and reduced him to a condition worse than that of the meanest malefactor. He was even produced before the diet of the empire at Worms, and accused by Henry of many crimes and misdemeanors; of making an alliance with Tancred, the usurper of Sicily; of turning the arms of the crusade against a Christian prince, and subduing Cyprus; of affronting the duke of Austria before Acre; of obstructing the progress of the Christian arms by his quarrels with the king of France; of assassinating Conrade, marquis of Montferrat; and of concluding a truce with Saladin, and leaving Jerusalem in the hands of the Saracen emperor.[***] [* Hoveden, p. 724.] [** W Heming. p. 556.] [*** M. Paris, p. 121. W. Heming. p. 536.] Richard, whose spirit was not broken by his misfortunes, and whose genius was rather roused by these frivolous or scandalous imputations, after premising that his dignity exempted him from answering before any jurisdiction, except that of Heaven, yet condescended, for the sake of his reputation, to justify his conduct before that great assembly.
He observed, that he had no hand in Tancred’s elevation, and only concluded a treaty with a prince whom he found in possession of the throne: that the king, or rather tyrant, of Cyprus had provoked his indignation by the most ungenerous and unjust proceedings; and though he chastised this aggressor, he had not retarded a moment the progress of his chief enterprise: that if he had at any time been wanting in civility to the duke of Austria, he had already been sufficiently punished for that sally of passion; and it better became men, embarked together in so holy a cause, to forgive each other’s infirmities, than to pursue a slight offence with such unrelenting vengeance: that it had sufficiently appeared by the event, whether the king of France or he were most zealous for the conquest of the Holy Land, and were most likely to sacrifice private passions and animosities to that great object: that if the whole tenor of his life had not shown him incapable of a base assassination, and justified him from that imputation in the eyes of his very enemies, it was in vain for him, at present, to make his apology, or plead the many irrefragable arguments which he could produce in his own favor: and that, however he might regret the necessity, he was so far from being ashamed of his truce with Saladin, that he rather gloried in that event; and thought it extremely honorable that, though abandoned by all the world, supported only by his own courage, and by the small remains of his national troops, he could yet obtain such conditions from the most powerful and most warlike emperor that the East had ever yet produced.
Richard, after thus deigning to apologize for his conduct, burst out into indignation at the cruel treatment which he had met with; that he, the champion of the cross, still wearing that honorable badge, should, after expending the blood and treasure of his subjects in the common cause of Christendom, be intercepted by Christian princes in his return to his own country, be thrown into a dungeon, be loaded with irons, be obliged to plead his cause as if he were a subject and a malefactor, and, what he still more regretted, be thereby prevented from making preparations for a new crusade, which he had projected, after the expiration of the truce, and from redeeming the sepulchre of Christ, which had so long been profaned by the dominion of infidels. The spirit and eloquence of Richard made such impression on the German princes, that they exclaimed loudly against the conduct of the emperor; the pope threatened him with excommunication; and Henry, who had hearkened to the proposals of the king of France and Prince John, found that it would be impracticable for him to execute his and their base purposes, or to detain the king of England any longer in captivity. He therefore concluded with him a treaty for his ransom, and agreed to restore him to his freedom for the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand marks about three hundred thousand pounds of our present money of which one hundred thousand marks were to be paid before he received his liberty, and sixty-seven hostages delivered for the remainder.[*] The emperor, as if to gloss over the infamy of this transaction, made at the same time a present to Richard of the kingdom of Arles, comprehending Provence, Dauphiny, Narbonne, and other states, over which the empire had some antiquated claims; a present which the king very wisely neglected.
During this war, Prince John deserted from Philip, threw himself at his brother’s feet, craved pardon for his offences, and by the intercession of Queen Eleanor was received into favor. “I forgive him,” said the king, “and hope I shall as easily forget his injuries as he will my pardon.” John was incapable even of returning to his duty without committing a baseness. Before he left Philip’s party, he invited to dinner all the officers of the garrison which that prince had placed in the citadel of Evreux; he massacred them during the entertainment; fell, with the assistance of the townsmen, on the garrison, whom he put to the sword; and then delivered up the place to his brother. The king of France was the great object of Richard’s resentment and animosity. The conduct of John, as well as that of the emperor and duke of Austria, had been so base, and was exposed to such general odium and reproach, that the king deemed himself sufficiently revenged for their injuries; and he seems never to have entertained any project of vengeance against any of them. The duke of Austria, about this time, having crushed his leg by the fall of his horse at a tournament, was thrown into a fever; and being struck, on the approaches of death, with remorse for his injustice to Richard, he ordered by will all the English hostages in his hands to be set at liberty and the remainder of the debt due to him to be remitted: his son, who seemed inclined to disobey these orders, was constrained by his ecclesiastics to execute them.[*] {1195.} The emperor also made advances for Richard’s friendship, and offered to give him a discharge of all the debt not yet paid to him, provided he would enter into an offensive alliance against the king of France; a proposal which was very acceptable to Richard, and was greedily embraced by him. The treaty with the emperor took no effect; but it served to rekindle the war between France and England before the expiration of the truce.
The wound was not in itself dangerous; but the unskilfulness of the surgeon made it mortal; he so rankled Richard’s shoulder in pulling out the arrow, that a gangrene ensued; and that prince was now sensible that his life was drawing towards a period. He sent for Gourdon, and asked him, “Wretch, what have I ever done to you, to oblige you to seek my life?” “What have you done to me?” replied coolly the prisoner: “you killed with your own hands my father, and my two brothers; and you intended to have hanged myself: I am now in your power, and you may take revenge by inflicting on me the most severe torments; but I shall endure them all with pleasure, provided I can think that I have been so happy as to rid the world of such a nuisance,”[***] Richard, struck with the reasonableness of this reply, and humbled by the near approach of death, ordered Gourdon to be set at liberty, and a sum of money to be given him; but Marcadée, unknown to him, seized the unhappy man, flayed him alive, and then hanged him. Richard died in the tenth year of his reign, and the forty-second of his age; and he left no issue behind him. [* Hoveden, p. 791. Knyghton, p. 2413.] [** Hoveden, p. 791. Knyghton, p. 2413.]
Though the English pleased themselves with the glory which the king’s martial genius procured them, his reign was very oppressive, and somewhat arbitrary, by the high taxes which he levied on them, and often without consent of the states or great council. In the ninth year of his reign, he levied five shillings on each hide of land; and because the clergy refused to contribute their share, he put them out of the protection of law, and ordered the civil courts to give them no sentence for any debts which they might claim.[*] Twice in his reign he ordered all his charters to be sealed anew, and the parties to pay fees for the renewal.[**] [* Hoveden, p. 743. Tyrrel, vol. ii. p, 563.] [** Pryrnne’s Chronol. Vindic. tom. i. p. 1133.]
Richard renewed the severe laws against transgressors in his forests, whom he punished by castration and putting out their eyes, as in the reign of his great-grandfather. He established by law one weight and measure throughout his kingdom;[***] a useful institution, which the mercenary disposition and necessities of his successor engaged him to dispense with for money. [* Hoveden, p. 745.] [** See note S, at the end of the volume.] [*** M. Paris, p. 109, 134. Trivet, p. 127. Ann. Waverl. p. 165. Hoveden, p. 7.] The disorders in London, derived from its bad police, had risen to a great height during this reign; and in the year 1196, there seemed to be formed so regular a conspiracy among the numerous malefactors, as threatened the city with destruction. There was one William Fitz-Osbert, commonly called Longbeard, a lawyer, who had rendered himself extremely popular among the lower rank of citizens; and by defend ing-them on all occasions, had acquired the appellation of the advocate or savior of the poor. He exerted his authority by injuring and insulting the more substantial citizens, with whom he lived in a state of hostility, and who were every moment exposed to the most outrageous violences from him and his licentious emissaries. Murders were daily committed in the streets; houses were broken open and pillaged in daylight; and it is pretended, that no less than fifty-two thousand persons had entered into an association, by which they bound themselves to obey all the orders of this dangerous ruffian. Archbishop Hubert, who was then chief justiciary, summoned him before the council to answer for his conduct; but he came so well attended, that no one durst accuse him, or give evidence against him; and the primate, finding the impotence of law, contented himself with exacting from the citizens hostages for their good behavior. He kept, however, a watchful eye on Fitz-Osbert, and seizing a favorable opportunity, attempted to commit him to custody; but the criminal, murdering one of the public officers, escaped with his concubine to the church of St. Mary le Bow, where he defended himself by force of arms. He was at last forced from his retreat, condemned, and executed, amidst the regrets of the populace, who were so devoted to his memory, that they stole his gibbet, paid the same veneration to it as to the cross, and were equally zealous in propagating and attesting reports of the miracles wrought by it.[*] But though the sectaries of this superstition were punished by the justiciary,[**] it received so little encouragement from the established clergy whose property was endangered by such seditious practices, that it suddenly sunk and vanished.
Ideas discussed in this chapter
Text from Project Gutenberg, public domain in the United States.