Part III
In this part . . .
The medieval world revolved around its kings. This was the age of the Plantagenet dynasty, but others claimed the throne, too. The Plantagenets sought to conquer their neighbours in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland - and in France, which led to a prolonged era of warfare.
Then the Church existed. The Church set up monasteries and sent out friars to pray with the people and bring help to the poor, and continually vied for power with the king. And all the while the ordinary people were ploughing the land and grinding the corn and making the very wealth that gave these nobles their power. The ordinary people were at the bottom of the feudal system: They fought in the battles and they died of the plague.
Chapter 8
In This Chapter
● Discovering how England goes Angevin
● Describing Henry II’s battles, with Becket, Strongbow, Wales, Ireland, Eleanor, Young Henry, Geoffrey, Richard, John, - you get the idea
● Following the reigns of Henry’s sons: King Richard the Lionheart and King John
● Messing things up with King John, angry lords, and the Magna Carta
Mesdames et Messieurs, bienvenue a I’Angleterre au moyen age! Or, to put it another way, welcome to merrie medieval England, a land of maypoles and castles and knights in armour, and a country and a time that are probably not quite what you thought - if you think of it as British history. Sure, this chapter tells you about people like Archbishop Thomas a Becket, who was murdered in his cathedral; Richard the Lionheart, who fought it out with Saladin on the Third Crusade; and King John, who unwillingly agreed to the great charter of liberties known as Magna Carta. You can even find a glimpse here of Robin Hood and his Merry (sorry, Merrie) Men, and a discussion of how the Kings of England first began acting on their claims to Ireland. But this isn’t British history. For this chapter, my friends, we are well and truly in French history. These ‘English’ kings spoke French, they acted French, they had French names and French titles, they ate baguettes and smelt of garlic, and opened a new pharmacy every week. They were French. Now, don’t get the wrong idea: England wasn’t ruled by France, or even by the king of France - he should be so lucky. But Merrie England was neither quite so Merrie nor quite so English as it looked.
Meet the Family
If you’ve seen the film The Lion in Winter, you’ll have a good idea of the dysfunctional family that ruled England in the late twelfth century (some things don’t change much, do they?) First, is the king, Henry II, who’s tough, but easily hurt if you know how to do it. Next, is his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who’s more than a match for Henry, except that Henry’s got her locked up and only lets her out for Christmas and birthdays. And finally, are the boys: Young Henry, who resents his dad and can’t wait to be king; Geoffrey, who hates his parents for calling him that (well, did you ever hear of a King Geoffrey?); Richard, who is arrogant and impatient and thinks he’s better than his elder brothers; and John, the daddy’s boy who’s nasty and horribly spoilt. These people are the Plantagenets.
If the name Plantagenets seems a bit of a mouthful, it’s because the word is French. The name came from Henry’s personal badge, which he wore in his hat and which happened to be a sprig of broom - plante a genet in French.
The obvious question to ask is: How did England’s royal family suddenly turn French? It’s tempting to say it all started with the Normans (read Chapter 7 to find out about them), and in a way it did. But the real explanation lies in the Middle Age concept of lordship.
Good lords! (Sacre bleu!)
Nowadays, if you own a bit of land, that plot’s yours and you can do what you like with it, but in the Middle Ages, you held land from someone. Different names existed for the land that you held: A castle, and the farms around it, was known as a manor or an honor, any land you held in return for helping in war was known as a Knight’s Fee or a feof-and some feofs could be pretty large.
If you traced all the lines of lordship back as far as they would go, everyone held their land from the king and had to pay him homage. Paying homage was a ceremony where you knelt before your lord, placed your hands between his, and promised to be his loyal subject while he promised to be your good lord and protect you from your enemies. Which system is fine when it involves, say, a French lord paying homage to the French king for a bit of French land, but when nobles started getting kingdoms for themselves, things got a bit complicated.
William the Conqueror was a king in England, but he still had to pay homage to the King of France for Normandy because it was a French duchy. In fact, the Normans regarded Normandy, not England, as the main bit of William’s legacy, which is why Normandy went to his eldest boy, Robert, and his second son, William Rufus, got England. If the situation had stayed like that, England and Normandy would have gone their separate ways, but as Chapter 7 reveals, William Rufus got greedy and grabbed Normandy for himself, so from then on, if you became King of England, you got Normandy for free.
England was nice, but France was home
When Henry I died, there was a lot of trouble (see Chapter 7 for the details).
Henry wanted his daughter Matilda to succeed him, but a lot of the Norman barons didn’t like the idea and supported her cousin, Stephen of Blois, instead. The main reason the Normans supported Stephen was the Normans weren’t happy with the idea of having a queen. There was another reason as well: Everyone assumed that if you had a queen her husband would run the show, and they didn’t like Matilda’s husband one bit. Not so much because his name was Geoffrey, which it was, but because (are you ready for this?) he came from Anjou.
Now if you or I met someone from Anjou, we’d probably smile politely and say ‘Really? How interesting,’ and all the time we’d be thinking ‘Where the heck is Anjou?’ but the Normans really hated people from Anjou, or Angevins, as they were called.
Have a look at the map, and you’ll see that Anjou is a fairly small French duchy, much smaller than its neighbours. Maybe that was the problem. The Normans couldn’t stand the idea of being ruled by the duke of such a tiny little place. And while you’re looking at the map, cast an eye over the other places nearby: Poitou and Maine and Touraine and Limousin, and all the other ones. Get to know them, because those were the places, unlike England, that really meant something to the Angevin Kings of England. England wasn’t somehow less important, but these kings just felt completely at home in France. Because, well, they were French.
King Stephen won the great civil war with the Empress Matilda, but he didn’t have any children to succeed him. That lack of an heir meant that Matilda’s son Henry had the best claim to be next in line (in fact, if you really follow the family tree, Henry had the best claim to the throne whether Stephen had any children or not). Henry was young and ambitious, and no one but no one wanted any more fighting. So Stephen and Henry did a deal. Stephen could stay on the throne until he died (which, Henry rightly reckoned, wouldn’t be long) and then Henry could become Henry II, King of England (and still Duke of Anjou, naturally).
Henry II and the Angevin Empire
Being King of France in the twelfth century really can’t have been much fun. That all the Dukes of Normandy had gone and become Kings of England was bad enough; now Henry, the Duke of Anjou, was doing the same thing. And of course Henry wouldn’t just get England, he’d get Normandy, too. And he’d gone and married Eleanor of Aquitaine, one of the most powerful women in France. (And why was Henry able to marry Eleanor of Aquitaine in the first place? Because King Louis VII of France had gone and divorced her, that’s why. Ouch!). Eleanor just happened to own both Aquitaine and Gascony, which meant, to put it bluntly, the whole of the south west of France right down to the Spanish border, and Aquitaine even stretched across to the border with Italy. So Henry, through marriage, got the whole of western France except Brittany. And he even got Brittany because his kid brother, as Duke of Brittany, owed him allegiance. In fact, when he became King, Henry would end up with almost as much of France as the King of France had.
Then in 1154, King Stephen died. Henry simply dropped what he was doing (which just happened to be fighting Normans - you can see why they didn’t like him) and went to London for his coronation. And what a list of titles he had: King of England, Duke of Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, Poitou, Aquitaine - shall I go on? Poor old Louis VII. All he was left with was Paris and all the boring bits up near Belgium.
A trek to Toulouse
One of Henry’s first moves as king was to try to get even more land in France. He fancied adding Toulouse to his collection, because it would look so much neater on the map and that way he would have all of the south and the west of France. With this additional land, he would be as powerful as King Louis. But Louis got to Toulouse first and dared Henry to do his worst. Henry tried, but Louis and the Count of Toulouse threw him out. Okay, thought Henry, Plan B. If I can’t expand in France, I’ll expand in England. Or rather, to be more precise, in Wales.
The Big Match: England vs. Wales
The Normans had had a pretty good go at conquering Wales. They knew only too well that the Welsh had been very good at breaking into England in Anglo-Saxon times, and William the Conqueror didn’t want that sort of thing happening again. So he had built a huge line of castles along the border with Wales and gave whole swathes of land to a set of tough Norman barons who became known as the Marcher Lords. (‘Marcher’ comes from ‘march’ or ‘marches’, meaning ‘border’.) These Marcher Lords had pushed further into Wales until they controlled all of the south and east, and the Welsh princes were stuck up in the north, in what they called Wallia Pura or ‘pure Wales’. During all the fighting in England between Stephen and Matilda (see the earlier section, ‘England was nice, but France was home’), the Welsh had managed to get some of their lands back off the Marcher Lords, but now the Norman Marchers were hoping that Henry II would give them the green light to hit back. He did.
Eleanor of Aquitaine
Eleanor of Aquitaine was quite a lady. Like all her family, her first loyalty was to her lands and her rights and titles, and woe betide anyone who got in the way, even her husbands. Eleanor's first husband was Prince Louis, who soon became King Louis VII of France. Not a happy marriage. Louis was all very good and pious and really rather boring, whereas Eleanor was fiery and full of zip. Louis decided to go off on the Second Crusade - a silly idea because sequels are never as good as the original - and he was a hopeless soldier: He soon had the Second Crusade going nowhere fast. Eleanor started flirting with her uncle, the Count of Antioch, and when Louis refused to march and help him against the Saracens, she stormed out of the royal tent and demanded a divorce. While the Saracens cut her uncle's head off, Eleanor and Louis returned home in separate ships. Poor old Louis got shipwrecked on the way home (it just wasn't his day), and even the Pope couldn't patch things up with him and Eleanor. So Eleanor got her divorce and immediately made a beeline for young Henry of Anjou, who was going to be the next King of England - after all, not many women get to be Queen of France and Queen of England. Henry and Eleanor had plenty of children, but their marriage wasn't a happy one. They were both unfaithful, and soon Eleanor started scheming with her sons against Henry until he had her locked up. She didn't get out till he died. If you're into girl power, then you'll like Eleanor of Aquitaine. Just be thankful she wasn't your mother.
Henry was no fool. He didn’t want any of these Marcher Lords doing to him what he had done to Louis VII, so he came to Wales to sort things out himself: He would decide who got what, which meant, in effect, that everything went to him. The Welsh princes had to give the Marcher Lords their lands back and recognise that Henry ruled in north Wales. All in all, things were going very satisfactorily for Henry, when he blew it. Absolutely blew it.
Henry decided to do for Wales what William the Conqueror had done for England: Declare himself overlord and require everyone to come and pay him homage. Well! The Welsh may have lost some battles, but they were not about to accept that Henry had the right to the whole country. So just when Henry was drawing up plans for a statue of himself trampling on a set of Welsh princes and eating a leek, his messengers brought news that he had a full-scale war on his hands - and he was losing. Henry set off again, but this time, the campaign was much harder. It rained like there was no tomorrow, and Henry just seems to have decided that conquering Wales himself wasn’t worth the trouble. He was a top-rank European monarch, don’t forget: He had better things to do. So he left the Welsh and the Marchers to it, and they carried on hammer and tongs for a good few years, though a number of the Marchers were rather wishing they’d tried taking over somewhere a bit easier. And then someone suggested, Have you thought of Ireland?
Bad news for Ireland
The Pope was losing patience with the Irish because they were still doing things their way, celebrating Easter at the wrong time and generally not going along with the rest of the Church (this problem went back a long way. See Chapter 6 to find out how it had all started). Pope Adrian IV, formerly Nicholas Breakspear, an Englishman, decided to settle the matter once and for all, so he wrote a special papal order known as a bull saying that if Henry II wanted to go over to Ireland to sort things out, he would have the full backing of the Pope. Hint, hint. But Henry didn’t take the hint. He wasn’t interested in taking on a whole new war. And then one day, an Irish king turned up at Henry’s court in France, and everything changed.
Even Worse news for Ireland: a king with a grudge
Dermot (or Diarmait Mac Murchada to give him his full Gaelic name) was the King of Leinster; or rather the ex-King of Leinster, because he’d run off with another king’s wife, and Rory, High King of Ireland, had thrown him out. Now Dermot wanted Henry II to help him get his own back. (Dermot was no fool: The Normans and Angevins fought as great knights in armour, whereas the Irish were still playing around with slings and stones.) Henry was interested - he hadn’t forgotten the Pope’s letter - but he didn’t have the time to invade Ireland himself. On the other hand, some of those Norman Marcher Lords from Wales might be interested (see the earlier section ‘The Big Match: England vs. Wales’). They were. A great army of them set off for Ireland, headed by the Earl of Pembroke, Richard FitzGilbert de Clare, known to his friends, enemies, and to history as Strongbow.
Everything about the invasion went according to plan. The Irish hadn’t faced such an invasion since the Vikings (see Chapter 6 for more about that little problem). The Normans conquered Leinster, Waterford, Wexford, and Dublin. Strongbow married Dermot’s daughter, and when Dermot died Strongbow became King of Leinster in his place. And that little detail rang alarm bells in Henry II’s mind back at base.
Look out! Here comes Henry
A nobleman who owes you homage suddenly becoming a king in his own right? Remind you of anyone? The scenario certainly reminded Henry II, and he wasn’t going to stand by while Strongbow declared independence, or even war. So Henry got a huge army together, raced over to Dublin, and demanded to see Strongbow. But if Henry was expecting trouble, for once he got a pleasant surprise. Strongbow knew there was no point in fighting Henry: The two men reached a deal. Strongbow would hand most of the important parts of Ireland over to Henry and stay on as Henry’s Keeper or Guardian of Ireland, a Governor-General, if you like. And Strongbow did like. He died a very powerful man. He’s buried in Christchurch Cathedral in Dublin.
All (fairly) quiet on the Scottish front
Now you may be expecting that, along with campaigns in Wales and Ireland, the Anglo-Normans would’ve launched some sort of campaign in Scotland, but just for once you’d be wrong. Scottish King Malcolm Canmore and his sons had been redrafting Scotland more along English lines (see Chapter 7 to find out why), and the next Scottish kings weren’t looking to change tack. Malcolm’s youngest son, David I, had grown up in England at Henry I’s court, and he even held an English title, as Earl of Huntingdon (for which, of course, he had to pay homage to the King of England). David was very loyal to Henry I. He supported Matilda in the civil war, and it was he who first knighted her son, Henry of Anjou. In fact, David did pretty well out of the anarchy in England. He got Cumbria and Northumberland to add to his Huntingdon title, and he was on very good terms with the Angevins when they finally came to the throne. He even started getting Anglo-Normans, like the de Bruces, the Comyns, and the Stewards (yes, they’ll be the Stuarts in years to come), to move up to Scotland and serve him.
If you’re feeling let down because there wasn’t more mutual bashing between the Scots and the English, look at the situation from David I’s point of view. Peace with England meant that he could get a proper grip on Scotland. His new Anglo-Norman barons built strong castles, and David invited some of the most important religious orders to build monasteries in Scotland. Thanks to David, Scotland got a proper money system for the first time, which helped trade to flourish. If Scotland developed as an independent kingdom, a lot of it was down to the wise rule of King David I.
The situation couldn’t last, of course. The next King of Scotland was a wee lad called Malcolm - Malcolm IV to be precise, but he’s known in the books as Malcolm the Maiden because he never married, and he had no children. Henry II reckoned the time had come to take Northumberland and Cumbria back, so he did and poor little Malcolm had to agree to it. When Malcolm died, his brother William ‘the Lion’ became king. William decided it was time to remind Henry II that Kings of Scotland couldn’t be pushed around, but unfortunately for him, Henry showed that they could. Here’s what happened. When Henry’s sons rose in revolt against him (see the later section ‘Royal Families and How to Survive Them’ for details), William thought joining in would be a good idea. Bad mistake. Henry won, William got taken prisoner, and Henry only let him go when William agreed to recognise Henry as his overlord and to do him homage, not just for Huntingdon, but for Scotland itself. Scotland had become an English feof.
Henry the lawgiver
You’ll be pleased to hear that Henry didn’t spend all his time as king fighting. Henry completely revamped the English legal system. Royal justices went travelling round, and instead of having to wait for the victim or the victim’s family to bring a case, a special Jury of Presentment drawn from local people could accuse someone. The Jury of Presentment is the origin of the Grand Jury system in the USA.
Henry also brought in new methods of dealing with cases quickly, with the whole idea being to strengthen his authority over his subjects. One more area of law that Henry didn’t control was that in the Church. But Henry had plans for the Church, and he knew just the right man to carry them out.
Murder in the Cathedral
Every ruler in Christendom had a problem with the Church, not just Kings of England, and certainly not just Henry II. The Holy Roman Emperor once even had to kneel in the mud and the snow for two days before the Pope would agree to see him.
In England, the big problem was the law. As things stood, if anyone within the Church got arrested (even the lowest ranking scribe) that person could claim the right to go before a Church court instead of a royal court. A Church court would be more likely to let the offender off with a caution, and because Church courts couldn’t impose the death penalty, a criminous clerk, as these people were called, could quite literally get away with murder. When Henry tried to get the Church to change the rules on criminous clerks, the Church threw up its hands in horror and said he was trying to take away its holy and ancient privileges. So when the Archbishop of Canterbury died, Henry decided it was time to put someone more biddable in charge. He chose Thomas a Becket.
Becket was one of those people who really stood on ceremony. He’d been Henry’s legal adviser and had served as Henry’s Chancellor, the most important post under the king. Becket was good, but boy, did he insist on everything he was entitled to. When Becket went over to France on a mission, the French had never seen anything like it: Becket had so many servants and horses and fine rich clothes, you’d think he was a pharoah. But, of course, the message was this: If you think this is impressive, wait till you see my master. So Henry must have thought using Becket to bring the Church to heel was a stroke of genius.
Henry's cunning plan . . . doesn't Work
Perhaps Henry should have guessed what would happen, but he wasn’t the only one who got caught out. Once Becket became Archbishop, he changed completely. If he was going to be a churchman, he was going to be a churchman. He stopped giving lavish parties and started praying regularly.
Underneath his archbishop’s robes, he wore a rough hair shirt that scratched his flesh raw. And he insisted on his rights. This insistence was a big problem because Henry was seriously expecting Thomas a Becket to give up the Church’s ancient rights of hearing its own legal cases.
Henry tried to reduce the Church’s power. He got the Church leaders together for a big meeting at Clarendon, and they drew up a new set of rules called the Constitutions of Clarendon. The most important bit said the following:
● Any clerks charged or accused of anything are to be summoned by the King’s justice (the King’s justice, note, not the Church’s).
● The King’s (not the Church’s) court shall decide which cases it would hear and which cases should go to the Church courts.
● The King’s justice shall keep an eye on what the Church courts are doing.
● If the clerk confesses or is convicted, the Church ought not to protect him further (bad luck, criminous clerks, your happy days are over).
At first, the bishops didn’t think they should sign this document, but, rather surprisingly, Becket said they should, so they did. Then Becket seemed to change his mind: He declared that signing up to the Constitutions of Clarendon had been a great sin, and that meant the Pope decided not to sign them either. Henry was no further forward than he had been at the beginning, but now he was very angry. No one, repeat no one, undermined Henry II and got away with it. Henry came up with a whole set of charges against Becket, most of which were pretty obviously made up. Becket got up in his full canonical robes, complete with his archbishop’s processional cross, declared the king had no right to try an archbishop - and promptly slipped away to France. Becket was a brave man, but he was no fool!
Recipe for Instant Martyr
Henry had a problem. You simply couldn’t carry on in the twelfth century in open dispute with the Church. True, Becket could be impossible, and many of his fellow bishops couldn’t stand him, but he was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Henry had selected him. When all was said and done, Becket was defending the Church. So Henry had to find a compromise. Eventually Henry and Becket met up in France. The meeting was surprisingly congenial. The two men just forgot all their quarrels and arguments and let their friendship flow. Tears poured, and Henry said he was sorry, and Becket said he was sorry, and Henry said Becket could come home, and Becket said he would come home, and no doubt violins played in the background. And then Becket got back to England - and immediately excommunicated the Archbishop of York and everyone else who had supported the king while he’d been away.
Henry had had enough. ‘Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest!’ he roared. Of course, he didn’t really mean it, but a group of four knights decided to take Henry at his word. They slipped over to England, went fully armed into Canterbury Cathedral, and tried to drag Becket away. When he resisted, they hacked him to pieces.
Royal Families and How to Survive Them
As if fighting the Welsh and the Irish, trying to work out a legal system, run the biggest empire in western Europe, and deal with the most difficult Archbishop of Canterbury in history wasn’t enough, Henry II ended up fighting his own family. Eleanor was angry because of all Henry’s affairs, especially the really serious one with ‘fair Rosamund’, the real love of his life. (Henry was considering divorcing Eleanor so he could marry Rosamund, which would have meant that Eleanor had been married to the Kings of France and England and lost both of them.) Another problem was Henry’s will. In it, Henry said Young Henry was to get England, Normandy, and Anjou; Aquitaine was to go to Richard (not a bad second prize); Geoffrey was getting Brittany (very acceptable); and John ‘Lackland’ was getting Ireland. John wasn’t overjoyed, and neither were the Irish. Henry even had Young Henry crowned king while he was still alive, just in case anyone was thinking of trying to seize the throne (‘Seize the throne? Moi?’ said Richard, Geoffrey, and John all together). Young Henry’s coronation caused more trouble with Becket, because the Archbishop of York did the crowning and Becket thought he should have done it. But the crowning also created even more trouble with Young Henry, because he was getting impatient for his old man to hurry up and die. So the battles began:
Henry vs. Young Henry, Round One: Young Henry staged a rebellion against his father. Practically the whole family, except John, joined in, including Eleanor. Even King William the Lion of Scotland joined in. This involvement didn’t do any of them any good. Henry won the war, captured Eleanor and William (Eleanor was trying to escape dressed as a man), made William submit (see the earlier section ‘All (fairly) quiet on the Scottish front’ for details), and locked Eleanor up. Then he met the boys. Following lots of tears and manly hugs, Henry agreed to give the boys a bit more pocket money. So that was all right then.
● Henry vs. Young Henry, Round Two: Young Henry was getting into debt, and his dad refused to bail him out. So Young Henry started plotting another rebellion. This time Richard stuck by his dad, but Geoffrey joined in and so did the new King of France, Philip Augustus. Henry won again (You win again!), and Young Henry had to run away. And he died. Dysentery. Very sad (and messy).
Henry now had to do some re-jigging of his will. Geoffrey could keep Brittany, but Henry wanted Richard to give up Aquitaine to John (because, duh, Richard was going to be getting England and Normandy and Anjou - everything Young Henry had been down for, in fact). But Richard had become very attached to Aquitaine (he was very close to his mum), and he decided he didn’t trust his father. So that led to the battle between Henry and Richard (see the next bullet item).
● Henry vs. Richard: Richard got together with the French king, Philip Augustus, and ambushed Henry after a peace conference to try to sort everything out. Henry escaped to Anjou (his home), but then came the bad news. John had joined in the rebellion. John! Henry’s favourite, the one he had always felt closest to. And the whole quarrel had started because he was trying to get John some land. It broke Henry’s heart. And killed him.
St Thomas a Becket
Who won, Henry or Becket? Henry, you may think, since the man who had plagued him was now gone. But if you're after hearts and minds, then Becket won hands down. Priests do get murdered, but killing an archbishop in his own cathedral was going way too far, even for the twelfth century. Henry had to pay a harsh penance: He was stripped naked while the monks of Canterbury whipped him mercilessly. Becket became St Thomas of Canterbury, and his shrine in Canterbury Cathedral became one of the most popular places of pilgrimage in England. Chaucer's pilgrims in Canterbury Tales were all heading there, nearly two hundred years later.
English kings weren't very fond of St Thomas, however. He had defied the king, and they didn't want other people getting ideas. Henry VIII had Becket's shrine destroyed and told everyone to scratch out St Thomas's face from any picture of him they may have in their local churches. You can still see these defaced Beckets today. And to add real insult to injury, the French playwright Jean Anouilh wrote a play about Becket, which has him as a Saxon. That misnomer would really have had him spinning inside his shrine!
Richard I: The Lion King
A rather splendid statue of Richard I stands outside the Houses of Parliament, though explaining why is difficult. Richard was a very good example of an Angevin who was French first, second, and last. The land he loved was Aquitaine, and as far as he was concerned, England existed only to help finance the Third Crusade.
A-crusading we will go
Richard had promised his father to go on crusade, and this was one filial promise he kept. He set off with his old friend-rival King Philip Augustus and the rather alarming German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa. The three kings soon fell out (literally in Barbarossa’s case - he fell into a river and drowned), and Philip Augustus ended up turning round and going home. Richard proved a very effective Crusader and a fearsome fighter - he wasn’t called Coeur de Lion (‘Lionheart’) for nothing. He took on Saladin, the formidable Kurdish Sultan who was leading the Muslims in Syria and the Holy Land, and beat him at the Battle of Arsuf. Saladin recognised Richard as a very worthy enemy.
But Richard didn’t manage to take Jerusalem, and in the end doing so was what counted. And then he heard about what John was up to back in England, so he decided the time had come to head home. (For more about the Crusades, see European History For Dummies (Wiley)).
Christians and Muslims
The Crusades were not about trying to kill as many Muslims as possible (though the Crusaders did try that with Jews). Nor were they a sort of early version of European imperialism, even though the Crusaders did set up kingdoms in the Holy Land. People didn't get rich by crusading; in fact, it often ruined them. Crusading was about one thing and one thing only: Jerusalem. Nothing else mattered. Christian Europe believed that it was a scandal that Jerusalem should be in Muslim hands. They were also badly scared by the speed with which the Turks were advancing into Europe. Both sides believed they were fighting in God's
cosmic battle of Good and Evil, and that they'd get their reward in heaven. The First Crusade did retake Jerusalem and set up Christian kingdoms, but the Turks recovered and took back one of the kingdoms, which is why a Second Crusade was necessary. The Second Crusade was a complete shambles, and then Saladin moved in for the kill: He destroyed the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and took back the Holy City. Hence, the Third Crusade was needed. Richard won back a lot of the land Saladin had taken, including the port of Acre, but he didn't get Jerusalem. (And neither did the Fourth Crusade.)
A king's ransom
Richard had made a lot of enemies in the Holy Land. He’d quarrelled with Philip Augustus, been very short with the Duke of Austria, and even threw his banner off the walls of Acre in his temper. But you know what they say: Don’t kick people on the way up; you may meet them on the way down.
When Philip Augustus got home, he quickly got in touch with Prince John to see if the two of them couldn’t get rid of Richard and put John on the throne. Philip Augustus also started taking some of Richard’s lands in France.
‘What?!’ said Richard when he heard all this, and he set off home at once. But he got shipwrecked in Italy and decided to take a short cut home through, er, Austria. Bad idea.
The Duke of Austria’s men (yes, the one Richard had had a quarrel with) caught him and locked him up. The Duke handed Richard over to his boss, the Holy Roman Emperor. And the Emperor started cutting letters out of illustrated manuscripts for a ransom note to send to London: ‘WE HAVE GOT HIM. PAY 100,000 MARKS IN USED NOTES.’
If John was making the decisions, Richard would probably have rotted in jail, but Richard was Eleanor’s favourite, and she wasn’t allowing that to happen. She jacked up everyone’s taxes to pay the ransom. John was going to have to act fast if he wanted to take power before Richard got home, and he wasn’t quite fast enough. Richard came home. John said he was very sorry and that he would never try to usurp the throne again, and Richard said, ‘That’s Okay, kid. I know Philip Augustus was really to blame,’ and he set off back over the Channel to deal with him. And deal with Philip he did.
Richard knocked Philip’s army into the middle of next week, crushed the rebels Philip had been encouraging down in Aquitaine, linked up with the Holy Roman Emperor (amazing how quickly these guys forgave and forgot!), and launched Operation Take Over The Rest Of France And Do Something Very Nasty To King Philip Augustus. This operation was going very well when disaster struck in the form of a crossbow bolt. It hit Richard in the shoulder and turned septic. No penicillin in those days. If a wound turned septic, you died. Lionhearts were no exception.
King John
John shouldn’t actually have been king at all. When Richard died, the next in line was Geoffrey’s little boy, Arthur of Brittany, but when did that sort of thing ever count? John seized the throne, had Arthur locked up, and, after a little while, had him murdered as well, just to be on the safe side. And then John’s troubles really began.
Robin Hood
Between the time that Richard was captured in Austria and returned to England, Robin Hood usually puts in an appearance. First you get all those jolly scenes with Little John and Will Scarlet tricking the Sheriff's men, and Friar Tuck stuffing his face; then it's Robin entering archery contests in disguise and taking First Prize ('Who are you, sirrah, that hath shot so well?') before rescuing whichever poor girl the Sheriff or Sir Guy of Gisborne is due to marry; until at the end you get the Sheriff of Nottingham in cahoots with Prince John, and King Richard coming back in disguise and finding his most loyal subjects all living in the middle of Sherwood Forest and wearing bad tights. Great stories, and people did tell them in the Middle Ages, but sadly not until a lot later.
People did exist with names that may be the basis for 'Robin Hood', but none of them seems to have lived as an outlaw robbing innocent travellers in Sherwood Forest, Barnsdale Forest, or any of the other forests that claim to have had Robin Hood in them. Sorry, but you didn't really expect anything else, did you?
The Pope goes one up
John got into an even greater mess with the Church than his father had with Becket (refer to the section ‘Murder in the Cathedral’, earlier in this chapter). The lesson John learned from the Becket business was to make very sure you got the right archbishop, and as far as he was concerned, that meant not having one foisted on him by the Pope. So when the Pope tried to choose a new archbishop, John refused to accept him, even though the man the Pope had chosen was actually very good. ‘All right,’ said the Pope, ‘In that case I’m putting England under Interdict.’ An Interdict is an order barring people from the sacraments of the Church - think of it as a complete strike by the English Church. No masses, no confessions, no burials, no baptisms, no sins forgiven, no people going to heaven, nothing. For a deeply God-fearing age, this prospect was terrifying. John had to give way and accept the archbishop.
Er, I seem to have lost my empire
Next, John made a mess in France. Philip Augustus was scared of Richard, but he wasn’t scared of John. The French started attacking John’s Angevin and Norman lands, and even the Holy Roman Emperor couldn’t help him. Philip beat the Emperor in a huge battle at a place called Bouvines, and the upshot was that John lost Anjou, Poitou, and Normandy - and he was lucky not to lose his mum’s lands in Aquitaine. For once, John’s Anglo-Norman barons and the Angevin barons all agreed on one thing: King John was a disaster. Something had to be done.
Magna Carta
The Anglo-Normans and Angevin lords made John agree to Magna Carta, the Great Charter of English liberties that got the British and Americans so excited many years later. No, the Magna Carta didn’t make the world safe for democracy, but don’t get too cynical. This charter wasn’t just about rights for the rich either. The barons thought John had been treading on their rights and privileges too much. He needed reining in, and certain things, like the rights of the Church, needed to be clarified on paper. The Magna Carta was about good lordship. It lays down certain rights that a good lord would recognise, like the right only to be taxed by consent and the right to proper justice.
John agreed to the Magna Carta because he had to, but he wasn’t going to keep to it if he could avoid doing so. He had no trouble persuading the Pope to declare Magna Carta null and void (because it went against the rights of kings). So the barons had to decide what to do with him. John had to go, and the barons invited the French over to help get rid of him. Suddenly everything was chaos. French soldiers and barons’ soldiers and John’s soldiers were involved. When John tried to take a short cut across a tricky bit of seaway called the Wash, all his baggage was washed away, and in the end he had just had enough. He ate too many peaches in cider and died. And the moral of this story is: Go easy on peaches in cider.