Richard & John: Kings at War (45 page)

Richard’s first major stop on the journey back to England was Cologne, where he spent three days as the guest of his friend the archbishop. The sung mass in the cathedral on 12 February contained the pointed words: ‘Now I know that God has sent his angel and taken me from the land of Herod.’ He was at Louvain on 16 February and at Brussels on the 25th.
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At Antwerp next day a flotilla of ships from England met him, but Richard tarried in the port for a week and then spent another five days in Zwin, ostensibly delayed by the weather but really, the best historians think, scouting out the estuaries, inlets and islands of the Low Countries, assessing the plausibility of Philip Augustus’s oft-made threat of an invasion of England and charting the waters.
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At last, on 13 March, he landed at Sandwich, from where he hastened to Canterbury, declaring that he did not want to visit any other church in England until he had visited the seat of St Thomas Becket of blessed memory - proof in itself that Richard was an able ecclesiastical politician.
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Although one may doubt whether Richard, always more a Frenchman than an English king, really did say that he did not consider himself truly freed from the yoke of Henry VI until he had trodden English soil, there is no doubt that in the month of his homecoming he enjoyed a honeymoon relationship with the Anglo-Norman realm.
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The explosion of joy, at any rate among the literate classes, seems genuine. William Marshal, often at cross-purposes with Richard in the past, missed the funeral of his brother John so that he could greet the king in person.
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Making his way to London via Rochester, Richard was feted at a thanksgiving service in St Paul’s, where Ralph of Coggleshall, in a justifiably hyperbolic moment, claimed that the heavens themselves rejoiced. Even the normally sceptical French received glowing reports from their spies about the enthusiastic popular reception of the homecoming king. The impatient Lionheart stayed just one day in the capital, then rode north to Nottingham by way of Bury St Edmund’s and Huntingdon.
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It was time to deal with his treacherous brother and indeed, while the king was still on his way to England, the great Council had declared all John’s estates forfeit and the assembled bishops excommunicated him.
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By now John’s supporters were panicking. It was said that the castellan of St Michael’s Mount in Cornwall dropped dead of fright when he heard the Lionheart had landed. Once the constable of Tickhill castle ascertained that King Richard really had returned from the crusade, he and the garrison surrendered without a fight on the promise that their lives would be spared. Only Nottingham castle held out, and it was this that Richard immediately besieged on his arrival there on 25 March, commencing operations with just a few hours of daylight left. Such were his military talents that he took the outer bailey and the barbican before dusk came on. When the garrison burned down the castle’s outer works during the night, Richard retaliated by bringing up two pieces of equipment: siege engines with which to batter down the citadel and gallows, on which the previous night’s prisoners were ostentatiously hanged, to show the defenders what was in store for them. On the 27th he gave a safe-conduct for two knights from the garrison to visit his camp, and showed them his scars, as if to a doubting Thomas. What the envoys reported back did the trick: fourteen knights left the citadel at once, and the more recalcitrant rump of defenders threw in the towel next day.
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In accordance with the chivalric code - which was to protect men of high birth and sacrifice all commoners - Richard pardoned the aristocratic rebels, on payment of hefty ransoms, but punished their foot soldiers severely, hanging all the sergeants.
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Yet he was very angry about the rebellion and decided to make an example of two of the oligarchs who had supported John in his treason. He flayed one of them to death and ordered that another be starved to death in prison. This unfortunate, Robert of Brito, was a marked man as he was the brother of that Hugh de Nonant who had so enraged Richard by refusing to be a hostage in Germany on the grounds that he was John’s man.
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Next Richard turned to administration, involving his council during an exhausting four-day session commencing on 30 March in shaking up the system of sheriffs, both appointing new ones and making them pay more for their office-holding.
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Richard liked to reward the faithful by granting them these lucrative offices, but he was not above neutralising potential troublemakers like his half-brother Geoffrey, appointing him sheriff of Yorkshire. For all that, he still had to spend valuable time at the council trying to sort out the multitudinous feuds and quarrels Geoffrey, a true scion of the Devil’s Brood, had become involved in, principally with the chancellor and Hubert Walter; it was enough that someone enjoyed Richard’s favour for Geoffrey to find a reason to assail him.
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On the second day of his council, Richard discussed the legal implications of the case against John and his partisan Hugh de Nonant, bishop of Coventry, making watertight arrangements for the disposal and running of the forfeited estates. Nonant was ordered to submit ‘to the judgement of bishops in that he was himself a bishop and to the judgement of laymen in that he was a sheriff of the king’. Deprived of his three sheriffdoms (in Stafford, Leicester and Warwick), he was later allowed to buy the king’s pardon for 2,000 marks but was effectively disgraced, retiring to Normandy where he died in 1198.
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The third day was taken up with budgetary and fiscal matters, introducing new taxes and varying the rates and conditions of existing ones and their exemptions. Day four saw a demand from his councillors to a reluctant Richard that he should make a public display of kingship at Winchester on 7 April, so that everyone could know that he had returned from crusade and captivity stronger and more powerful than ever.
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Richard was destined to become a legendary figure on three main counts: his duel with Saladin in Palestine; Blondel’s fictitious ‘finding’ of him at Durnstein castle; and his alleged connection with Robin Hood. It was on 29 March, just before the four-day council, that Richard approached the realm of myth most closely, for on this day he made a visit to Sherwood Forest. Legend makes this the day he met and pardoned the outlaws of Sherwood but sober history, alas, records no such encounter. The quest for a historical Robin Hood is as entertaining, but just as fruitless, as the search for a historical Arthur. Robin is clearly a creature of syncretism, part woodland spirit, part a confused recollection of some historical figure. It is tempting to see him as an entirely mythical creation, and the circumstantial evidence for this is compelling. Both outlaws and fairies live in the forest, both wear green, and Robin is a name for spirits, as in Robin Goodfellow. Robin Hood was the traditional figure of the medieval summer festival, of May Day rites and Morris dances. The story of the apple shot off a human head by expert archery is a motif common to William Tell and Norse legend. The character of Maid Marian underlines the link to fertility cults, even though she is a later accretion to the Robin Hood ballads (like Lancelot in the Arthurian cycle). Whether mischievous woodland sprite or more profound fertility symbol, Robin would therefore link with Herne the Hunter and the legendary King Arthur in terms of ontology. Some researchers go even further and assert that Robin, or Puck, was really a warlock leading a coven of witches (the Merrie Men).
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But the difficulties of (literally) spiriting away Robin into the ether of pure legend and mythology are legion. Many aspects of the Robin Hood ballads - our only reliable source for the entire story - make no sense or become even more mysterious if not granted some kind of historical basis. What is the meaning of the persistent ‘topos’ of yeomanry against noblemen - an issue which becomes even more problematical if Robin is considered historically? Does not the theme of Saxon versus Norman (which so influenced Sir Walter Scott), making Robin a kind of latter-day Hereward the Wake, suggest something more than mere pagan fertility rites? And how do we explain the archetype of Robin as master of the longbow, given that the longbow came to the fore only in the years 1333-1453, roughly between the battles of Halidon Hill and Chastillon?
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For this reason it has usually been argued that there must be some historical tincture to the story of Robin Hood. Many are the candidates as the possible ‘real’ Robin. One of the prime sources for the legend, Fordun’s
Scotichronicon
, places Robin Hood firmly in the period immediately after Simon de Montfort’s defeat at Evesham in 1265; here he features as a mere cut-throat (
siccarius
), one of the dissident ‘primitive rebels’ (or on some fanciful views a proto-parliamentarian in the de Montfort mould).
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William Stukeley, the famous eighteenth-century antiquarian, was adamant that he should be identified as one Robert fitz Ooth (1160-1247), earl of Huntingdon, but others locate him around the year 1322, involved in the rising of Thomas, earl of Lancaster.
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Another favourite candidate as Robin Hood is the Robin Hod, aka Robin of Loxley in Barnsdale Forest, who appears in the records of York Assizes and in the Wakefield Rolls and is tentatively assigned dates of 1290-1347. But the truth is that there are so many possible Robin Hoods spreading over a two-hundred-year period, ranging from such unlikely characters as Sir Robert Foliot (1110-65) and Robert de Kyme (1210-85), that the historian must throw up his hands in despair.
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Possibly the most cogent historical argument yet made is that Robin Hood may be the man mentioned in the 1230 Pipe Roll and also involved in the rebel movement led by Sir Robert Twing in 1231-32 - an inference strengthened by the fact that the ballads overwhelmingly place Robin in the first part of the thirteenth century.
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The tradition (which has now become the ‘hegemonic’ one in popular culture) that Robin was extant in the 1190s and led the opposition to John while Richard was on crusade, was first mooted by the Scottish historian John Major in 1521 and was later heavily promulgated by writers as diverse as Sir Walter Scott, Augustin Thierry and L.V.D. Owens.
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Unfortunately for those who prefer romance to fact, this notion has less real historical authority than most of the other candidates. If there was a ‘real’ Robin, he should almost certainly be sought somewhere in the years 1215-1381. One of the core problems concerning an historical Robin Hood is that there is no consensus on where he should be located geographically. Sherwood Forest near Nottingham is the traditional abode of the ‘Merrie Men’ but Barnsdale Forest in Yorkshire has many powerful backers and in some ways makes more sense of the ballad evidence: roughly speaking, we can say that a thirteenth-century setting favours Nottingham and the fourteenth century Yorkshire.
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Yet even these waters are muddied, for some sleuths contend that the said Barnsdale Forest refers to the Forest of Barnsdale in Rutland (whose lord was the earl of Huntingdon) rather than the Barnsdale Forest in Yorkshire. As for chronology, the issue of the longbow argues for the latest possible dates, since even in Simon de Montfort’s time this weapon had not been invented. The most plausible overall suggestion is that the ballad cycles are concerned with two very different men, possibly a nobleman in Sherwood and a yeoman in Barnsdale, conflated to form ‘Robin Hood’ and thus like the two different stories of Odysseus and Ulysses in Homer’s
Odyssey
.
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We must return to the world of documented historical fact. On 4 April, at Southwell, Richard met King William of Scotland, who had come south to ask to have the counties of Northumberland, Westmorland, Cumberland and Lancashire restored to him, as in the days of Scottish kings of yore. For eighteen days the two monarchs were together, with Richard charming and accommodating, but forever finding reasons not to grant William’s request. He had a difficult balancing act to perform, as William’s demand was unacceptable, but Richard owed him for past services and, besides, did not want to alienate him and thus set his northern frontier alight. Richard fobbed off his fellow king by speaking earnestly of the need to discuss the matter in a grand council of all the English nobility. Meanwhile he flattered, cajoled and feasted William as the two of them wound their way slowly southwards, spending nights in Melton Mowbray, Geddington and Northampton. Finally, in Northampton, where they remained four nights, Richard could stall no longer. Summoning an ad hoc council to paper over a foregone conclusion, he then told William that what he asked was impossible at present, but sweetened the pill by inviting him to the second coronation that the council at Nottingham had insisted on, adding that he would have something advantageous to tell him there. Cutting across country via Silverstone, Woodstock and Fremantle, he arrived in Winchester, the coronation venue.
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On the Sunday after Easter (17 April) Richard was recrowned in the presence of his mother and all the notables of the realm. The king of Scotland, Ranulf, earl of Chester, and Hamelin, earl Warenne carried the three ceremonial swords, while four other earls bore the canopy.
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The evening was rounded off with a great feast but, before banqueting, Richard did two significant things. First, he sent envoys to the Pope, asking the Holy Father to demand the release of the hostages held in Austria, the return of all monies paid to Leopold plus a substantial sum in compensation for the injuries and insults inflicted on him in captivity.
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Then he granted William of Scotland a charter paying all his expenses whenever he visited England. William was taken aback: he expected more from the cryptic promise made to him at Northampton on 11 April. Noticing Richard’s acute sensitivity on matters financial, as evinced by the embassy to Rome, a few days later he offered 25,000 marks for Northumberland alone, with all its castles. Richard replied that he would sell Northumberland for that price, but without the castles. A disconsolate William departed on 22 April, having achieved nothing, but by no means bitter or scheming, as John or Philip Augustus would have been; his extremely good relations with the Lionheart continued.
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Indeed, the good relations England enjoyed with Scotland during his reign were a major achievement when one ponders the turbulent and bloody relations between the two nations before and after. In 1195 King William went so far as to propose marrying his daughter Margaret to Richard’s nephew Otto and making him heir to the Scottish throne. Although the scheme foundered when William’s queen suddenly became pregnant and he began to hope for a male heir, the mere fact that the Otto-Margaret match was broached in the first place shows the warmth of Anglo-Scottish relations in the 1190s.
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