History of the English People, Volume I: Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216Green, John Richard
History
History of the English People, Volume I: Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216
Green, John Richard
Great Britain -- History
The fall of Henry the Second only showed the strength of the system he
had built up on this side the sea. In the hands of the Justiciar, Ranulf
de Glanvill, England remained peaceful through the last stormy months of
his reign, and his successor Richard found it undisturbed when he came
for his crowning in the autumn of 1189. Though born at Oxford, Richard
had been bred in Aquitaine; he was an utter stranger to his realm, and
his visit was simply for the purpose of gathering money for a Crusade.
Sheriffdoms, bishopricks, were sold; even the supremacy over Scotland was
bought back again by William the Lion; and it was with the wealth which
these measures won that Richard made his way in 1190 to Marseilles and
sailed thence to Messina. Here he found his army and a host under King
Philip of France; and the winter was spent in quarrels between the two
kings and a strife between Richard and Tancred of Sicily. In the spring
of 1191 his mother Eleanor arrived with ill news from England. Richard
had left the realm under the regency of two bishops, Hugh Puiset of
Durham and William Longchamp of Ely; but before quitting France he had
entrusted it wholly to the latter, who stood at the head of Church and
State as at once Justiciar and Papal Legate. Longchamp was loyal to the
king, but his exactions and scorn of Englishmen roused a fierce hatred
among the baronage, and this hatred found a head in John. While richly
gifting his brother with earldoms and lands, Richard had taken oath from
him that he would quit England for three years. But tidings that the
Justiciar was striving to secure the succession of Arthur, the child of
his elder brother Geoffry and of Constance of Britanny, to the English
crown at once recalled John to the realm, and peace between him and
Longchamp was only preserved by the influence of the queen-mother
Eleanor. Richard met this news by sending Walter of Coutances, the
Archbishop of Rouen, with full but secret powers to England. On his
landing in the summer of 1191 Walter found the country already in arms.
No battle had been fought, but John had seized many of the royal castles,
and the indignation stirred by Longchamp's arrest of Archbishop Geoffry
of York, a bastard son of Henry the Second, called the whole baronage to
the field. The nobles swore fealty to John as Richard's successor, and
Walter of Coutances saw himself forced to show his commission as
Justiciar, and to assent to Longchamp's exile from the realm.
[Sidenote: Richard]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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