Lionheart (45 page)

Infertile marriages have often been, and remarkably often still are, blamed on the wife, so some have switched the blame for Richard’s lack of progeny on to Berengaria by suggesting that she was sterile. She may have been, but Richard spent so little time with her that it would be hard to test that argument. In any case, the remedy for a sterile wife was simple for a king, who could always have the marriage annulled by a complaisant primate and take a new wife known to be fertile – as indeed Alais was.

Even fertile unions failed very often in the Middle Ages to produce more than one or two offspring. There are exceptions, like William the Conqueror, whose ten children fought over the inheritance, and Henry II, whose five sons and three daughters with Eleanor constituted a large family for the time. But knights and nobles so often died leaving only one living infant or no heir at all that feudal practice allowed the overlord to allocate their fiefs to favoured vassals.

This leads to another possible explanation for Richard’s failure to leave an heir: infertility due to low sex drive and/or low sperm count. Of the pre-testicular causes, the most common is hypogonadism or low testosterone secretion, but that usually shows up in other ways: low energy levels, low bone density, low aggression and low muscle strength and mass. None of these apply to Richard. He was unusually tall for the time, or even for today, standing well over 6ft tall. He was also very heavily built. His numerous injuries, except the last, at Châlus, seem not to have produced lingering effects and he suffered no broken limbs on the many occasions when he was unhorsed, so we can write off low bone density. When in good health, he was very strong, controlling powerful, spirited
destriers
with heels and left arm while wielding heavy weapons to terrifying effect in combat with the right arm and hand, so his muscle strength and mass must have been well above the norms for healthy, active men. As to aggression, anyone reading this book knows that he was extremely aggressive.

Malaria was endemic in Europe at the time. Richard was known to suffer from it, both on the crusade and at home. Whilst the disease is extremely debilitating during crises, it is not generally blamed for lowering sperm production; modern complications in this direction are usually attributed to the drugs used in the treatment of the disease.

So much for pre-testicular causes of infertility. There is however another, more likely possible explanation for his lack of issue.

Two and a half thousand years ago, the Greeks noted that the Scythian nomads and other Asiatic peoples then arriving in Europe tended to have low fertility. Hippocrates (460–370
BCE
) imputed this to the fact that the males spent most of every day astride their horses, with the testicles compressed by their body weight and kept constantly too warm, with the perineum suffering repeated trauma when thumped against the horse’s spine or saddlecloth in rough riding and combat. Both Plato (424–438
BCE
) and Herodotus (484–425
BCE
) agreed with this finding.

The scrotum is, after all, an adaptation of the female labia expressly designed by nature to contain the testes outside the body because sperm production is severely reduced or non-existent at body temperature. The Greeks worked out the connection philosophically and by observation, but modern fertility clinics using more scientific methods find exactly the same thing happens with men who, for example, habitually wear tight underpants or trousers, or sit for hours in school and offices and cars – and especially those who practise long-distance cycle racing or mountain biking, or … regularly ride horses.

But even regular indulgence in modern equestrian sports like polo and endurance trials are nowhere near as punishing to a male rider’s perineum and testicles as the lifestyle of a medieval knight. Richard was an archetypical horseback warrior who, throughout his adolescent sexual development and for the whole of his adult life, spent many hours every day in the saddle. This was frequently a war saddle with high pommel and high cantle, designed like a western saddle to lock the rider tightly in place so that he could not easily be unseated in the heat of combat. The modern equestrian custom is to have the stirrup leathers short, which enables the rider to rise out of the saddle on broken ground and avoid the worst shocks to the perineum. In Richard’s day the leathers were long to keep the centre of gravity low. Since the rider could not easily lift himself by standing on the stirrups, the pounding hooves of his mount transferred into a sustained series of shocks to the crotch from banging up and down against the hard leather saddle. Such repeated punishment frequently produced haemorrhoids, from which Henry II suffered greatly. More seriously, it also caused chronic prostatitis and/or blocked the sperm ducts or the epididymis, where semen is stored. Richard was known to ride his horses so hard that many foundered under him, so it would be strange indeed if he suffered no trauma to his reproductive organs.

Richard’s maternal grandfather Duke William X of Aquitaine had produced only three children. Similarly, Richard’s paternal grandfather Geoffrey the Fair of Anjou had only three legitimate offspring. But by no means all knights inherited a fief like them and married to found a family early in life. Indeed, the typical landless knight spent many years’ riding in the service of his lord before winning a noble wife as reward for some great feat of arms, by which time his ability to inseminate his spouse was in many cases severely reduced. The statute
de donis conditionalibus –
concerning conditional gifts – was passed into English law in 1285. It provided for the entailment of property through the male line so that, in the event of its owner dying without leaving a son, title would go to his nearest male relative, effectively disinheriting female progeny. So long as the horse was the principle means of travel, damage to ‘male parts’ from horse riding continued to bedevil inheritance in the aristocracy. Entailment to the male line was therefore very common in equestrian society and this is reflected in books by authors such as Jane Austen, where it is an important element in the plot of novels such as
Pride and Prejudice
and
Sense and Sensibility
.

So, was Richard gay, as some historians have concluded? Or was he heterosexual or bisexual, but rendered infertile by the saddle? DNA analysis might have given an answer, but although his effigy still lies in the Cistercian simplicity of Fontevraud abbey, the remains originally beneath it were scattered, no one knows where, when the Plantagenet tombs were despoiled during the French Revolution. The greatest of his many failings as monarch – the lack of progeny – must therefore remain a mystery.

NOTES

1.
  Quoted in Gillingham, J.,
Richard I
(Yale: Yale University Press, 1999), p.66.

On the Trail of the Lionheart – Places to Visit

British Museum medieval rooms: floor tiles from Clarendon Palace, Limoges enamel work, chess sets and other twelfth-century artefacts.

Worcester Cathedral: tomb of John.

The castle and cathedral of Rochester.

Pilgrims’ hospice at Ospringe, Kent.

Canterbury Westgate and Canterbury Cathedral.

Portchester Castle.

Rouen Cathedral: effigy above tomb of Richard’s heart.

Le Mans: Abbey of l’Épau: effigy of Berengaria.

Chinon: Sainte Radegonde chapel and Chinon Castle.

Fontevraud Abbey: effigies of Richard, Eleanor, Henry II and Isabelle of Angoulême.

Taillebourg Castle ruins.

Poitiers: the great hall (now the law court), the Tour Maubergeonne and cathedral.

Saintes: Roman triumphal arch used as town gate (re-sited); cathedral and cloisters; Abbaye aux Dames.

Bordeaux: Musée d’Aquitaine for enamelled cross given to La Sauve Abbey by Richard or Eleanor; tiles and other artefacts.

Créon: La Sauve Majeure Abbey.

Châlus Castle.

Plates

1 The first seal of Richard

2 The second seal of Richard, showing on his shield the three lions passant, which are still on the British royal coat of arms today

3 The knight as a Christ-like figure at Melle Church, shown protecting either a child or a poor person, the comparative size denoting importance, or lack of it

4 The chivalric fantasy: a knight rescuing a damsel from the dragon of lust. (Angoulême Cathedral)