r/houseofplantagenet

Edward had technically been king since his father Henry III died in 1272, but he was away on crusade and did not return to England until August 1274. He was anointed and crowned by Archbishop Robert Kilwardby, with Alexander III of Scotland and many of the English nobility present.

The coronation marked the beginning of a long, turbulent, and memorable reign. Edward would go on to conquer Wales and wage decades of war against Scotland, earning the nickname “Hammer of the Scots.”

Eleanor of Castile was also crowned Queen of England on the same day as her husband.

The fate of our three Richards in their deaths

Was much alike ; though otherwise their lot

Was most dissimilar. Each of these kings

Died without issue, cut off by a death

Sudden and cruel. But the First acquir'd

The greatest glory. In the Holy Land

He fought ; and thence returning safe, he fell,

Pierc'd by an arrow in a foreign clime.

Reft of his throne, and many a month immur'd

Within a dungeon's walls, the Second chose

Rather to die than forfeit his fair name.

Edward's vast hoards of wealth consum'd, the Third

Was not content therewith, but must destroy

His brother's progeny, and then proscribe

Their partisans. Two years had he usurp'd

The throne, when, meeting these, he lost his life

And ill-gain'd crown, upon the battle-field.

The year one thousand, hundreds four, and five

To eighty added, when of August came

The twice eleventh day, the Boar's tusks quail'd;

And, to avenge the White, the Red Rose bloom'd.

>"The age of gold returns,

>The world's reform draws nigh,

>The rich man now cast down,

>The pauper raised on high"

Following the death of their father at Chinon, the designated king-elect and his brother crossed the Channel from Normandy and arrived in England on the Sunday prior to the Feast of the Virgin, with Richard docking at Portsmouth to widespread cheer and celebration as the people gathered to see their new king (John meanwhile crossed over on a different ship - possibly in order to avoid arousing his envy).

Crossing with them were Baldwin the Archbishop, the bishops of Rochester and Chester, and the saintly Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln. They were greeted on their arrival by those Normans that Richard had already sent ahead - the Archbishop of Rouen and the bishops of Bayeux and Evreux - as well as the loyal knight Sir William Marshal and the royal princes' mother Eleanor, who had been newly-released from her confinement at Salisbury Castle.

>And although some, though but very few, were hurt at the death of the old king, still it was some consolation that, as the poet says, "Wonders I sing, the sun has set, no night ensued"; for truly no night did ensue after the setting of the sun. For a ray of the sun, occupying the throne of the sun, spreads its own lustre more brilliantly, and to a greater distance than its own original sun. For when the sun has set below the earth from his throne, his ray, still remaining, and subject to neither eclipse or setting, being suddenly cut off from the body of the sun, and wholly reflected back upon itself, as though a sun itself, it becomes much greater and much more brilliant than the sun, of which it was a ray, by reason of no clouds intervening and no impediment obstructing its course. But, in order that no difficulties may harass the mind of the reader, the meaning of this may be more fully ascertained on reading the following pentameter:

>"The father was the sun, his son his ray."

>And thus, the son becoming greater and greater, enlarged the good works of his father, while the bad ones he cut short.

>For those whom the father disinherited, the son restored to their former rights; those whom the father had banished, the son recalled; those whom the father kept confined in irons, the son allowed to depart unhurt; those upon whom the father, in the cause of justice, inflicted punishment, the son, in the cause of humanity, forgave.

Richard first sent his mother around his kingdom with an order that all imprisoned by the justiciars for violating forest laws were to be granted royal pardons - something which Eleanor, knowing all too well the pains of captivity, was eager to do. Then word was sent that every freeman throughout the kingdom should pledge allegiance to Richard as their overlord and soon-to-be king.

After this, Robert Beaumont, Earl of Leicester, and other nobles whom his father had deprived of their estates were restored to their former glory. Those who had served the late King Henry faithfully were rewarded for their loyalty - including William Marshal, who was married to the Countess of Pembroke, Isabella. Various other heiresses were married off to his retainers, including his Poitevin cousin, Andrew Chauvigny, the wedding being celebrated at Salisbury.

His brother John, in the meanwhile, was gifted Cornwall, Dorset, Somerset, Nottingham, Derby, Lancaster, the castles of Marlborough and Luggershall with their forests, the honours of Wallingford, Tickhill and Haye, as well as the Peak and Bolsover. John was also granted the hand of Isabella, Countess of Gloucester. Several castles in these counties, however, were retained by Richard. His elder half-brother Geoffrey was made Archbishop of York.

Richard's arrival at the royal stronghold of Winchester was greeted with crowds of his new subjects, gathering to glimpse the man on horseback who was already renowned for his courage, being nicknamed the Lionheart. Entering the castle, he first looked over the treasury and had its contents weighed - his father had raised around £100,000 for the liberation of Jerusalem: money which Richard was keen to put to good use. For the coming expedition to Outremer he had those who had already pledged to take the cross reaffirm their oaths, with those who now wished to opt out being able to do so in exchange for a sum of money or military aid; and those who had fallen out of his favour were given the chance to redeem themselves by making their own pledges.

>After this, he sent his servants and bailiffs throughout all the sea-ports of England, Normandy, Poitou, and others of his lands, and caused the largest and best of all the ships to be selected for himself, which were able to carry large freights, and then distributed some of them among those of his friends who had assumed the cross for the purpose of setting out for Jerusalem, while the others were reserved for his own use.

For much of the rest of that summer he spent time at Winchester and the surrounding environs, ensuing the loyalty of his barons and seeing those vacant offices of state filled. His father's most hated justiciar, Ranulf Glanville, was removed from power on charges of corruption, to widespread cheer and applause. Another, the Seneschal of Anjou, was brought through the streets under arrest. In return, new justices were raised to posts, fines were paid, and Glanville took the cross. The Saladin Tithe, though viewed as for a worthy cause, had been the source of much unrest in England that past year, for which many of Henry's justiciars (including Glanville) had made themselves quite unpopular. Richard's first acts upon the succession focused on appeasing and hearing the complaints of his subjects, as well as raising money through the buying and selling of offices, as well as taking the customary fee in lieu of military service from those - both clergy and laity - who were to remain behind in England during his absence. With the great offices of state filled, his mother freed, and his brothers rewarded with lands, he could now focus his attentions on the upcoming coronation.

Really, if you think about it, it’s not much more centralized than the HRE until we get to Philip II Augustus.

>FROM THE mid twelfth century to the end of the thirteenth century the five reigning queens of England were Eleanor of Aquitaine, Berengaria of Navarre, Isabella of Angouleme, Eleanor of Provence and Eleanor of Castile. Simply to list these names is to suggest that their husbands had important political and diplomatic interests in south-western Europe. On the other hand to read what historians have written about the kings of England in this period is to gain the impression that this was not the case. Historians have tended to concentrate almost exclusively on the lands on either side of the English Channel, on the area of the old Anglo-Norman realm. It is easy enough to understand why they have chosen to confine their history within these narrow geographical limits. The northern Plantagenet lands and, above all, England are relatively rich in the kind of documentation to which historians of politics have grown accustomed: narrative sources and the records of central government. By contrast, there is relatively little of this type of evidence to be found in the lands which comprised the southern part of the Plantagenet empire. Although this difference may, in practice cause historians to neglect the south, we should not assume that the Plantagenets themselves shared this attitude. The paucity of familiar kinds of evidence may imply that politically and culturally, the south was a very different sort of society from the north; but it does not mean that the Plantagenets were northerners who believed that the south did not matter.

>The well-known facts about the marriage are few and can be quickly summarised. Berengaria of Navarre was brought to Richard's court, then at Messina in Sicily, in March 1191. She accompanied the crusader-king on his journey east and they were married in Cyprus, at Limassol, on 12th May 1191. After the crusade they saw little of each other and there were no children. These facts can be fitted quite easily into the conventional portrait of Richard as an irresponsible crusader, indifferent to serious matters of politics like the succession to the throne, sacrificing his kingdom's future for the sake of present pleasures. As a result no historian has bothered to give them much thought.

>In fact, they are extraordinary and remarkable. Plantagenet kings did not ordinarily get married in Cyprus. It is true, of course, that Richard was going on crusade, but if he was anxious to get married, why had he not married in the twelve months which elapsed between the death of his father in July 1189 and the start of the crusade in July 1190? On the other hand, if he was reluctant to get married, why not use the crusade as an excuse to postpone the wedding? The hypothesis which will be advanced here is that marrying Berengaria of Navarre while on his way to Jerusalem was an ingenious diplomatic device deliberately adopted by Richard in order to cut his way through a thicket of political problems, and that this in itself given some indication of the importance which he attached to the alliance with Navarre.

>Few historians have given any thought to the preliminaries to Richard's marriage, but those who have are unanimous in stating that Sancho was persuaded by Eleanor of Aquitaine. She, it was said, "went in person to Spain to conduct the negotiations and to escort Berengaria to Sicily". For Edmond-Rene Labande it was Eleanor who saw that Richard's marriage was a political necessity and took action in order to bring it about. Elizabeth Brown, the most recent and by far the most level-headed historian of Eleanor, takes the same view. She writes that "in an even grander display of her power in matters domestic and political, she [Eleanor] then arranged, and perhaps personally negotiated, the marriage of Richard and Berengaria, daughter of the king of Navarre. Thus she set aside his long-standing engagement to Alice ... If Henry II had, as the gossips said, actually dallied with Alice, Eleanor may have been motivated by disgust and spite."

>But there is, in fact, not a shred of evidence to show that it was Eleanor who had conducted the negotiations. Historians have taken it for granted that she did, partly because she escorted Berengaria to Sicily and partly because of their belief that Richard was uninterested in such matters. They have assumed - without evidence - that the negotiations filled a gap in Eleanor's itinerary, between 6th April 1190 when she was with Richard at Argentan in Normandy and 20th January 1191 when she and Berengaria arrived at Lodi [Sicily]. The effect of this assumption was to make it seem likely that the major part of the negotiations had taken place during the second half of the year 1190 i.e. after Richard had already set out on the first stage of his journey to Outremer. But this interpretation makes Sancho as rash as it makes Richard negligent, and it is fundamentally implausible. Before allowing his daughter to leave home in such ambiguous and difficult circumstances, Sancho must have demanded far-reaching assurances and, with the best will in the world, the negotiations which preceded Berengaria's departure from Navarre must have been complex and prolonged.

>There is a further point to be borne in mind: Berengaria's dowry. Clearly this was a profoundly important question which cannot have been decided on the spur of the moment either in Cyprus or in Sicily. It involved not only Richard, Berengaria and the Gascons. It was also bound up with diplomatic relations between Gascony, Navarre and Castile. An assembly attended by the magnates of Gascony would he the proper occasion for some formal announcement, if not discussion, of a matter of this kind. Twenty years earlier a very similar court had assembled at Bordeaux to witness the formal marriage settlement between Eleanor [Richard's sister] and Alfonso VIII of Castile in the summer of 1170. And that questions of foreign policy were indeed being discussed [in Richard's council] at La Reole in February 1190 is suggested by the presence of one man who, in the witness lists, stands out in striking contrast to all those Gascons: Henry, son of the duke of Saxony, i.e. Henry of Brunswick, son of Henry the Lion [Richard's brother-in-law]. I suggest, therefore, that the question of Richard's marriage was among the important public and dynastic business discussed at La Reole and that it was to take this further that, on 2nd February 1190, Richard sent writs summoning a council to meet in Normandy. The facts that the council was to meet on the eve of a conference with Philip of France and that Alice was summoned to attend point in this direction.

>From Nonancourt Richard rode the eight miles to Dreux to meet Philip on 16th March. We do not know what the two kings said to each other, only that the crusade, which had been due to start at Easter, was postponed until 24th June. They needed more time to complete their preparation. Were these preparations simply the massive material organisation of the crusade - or did they include diplomatic preparations? In wishing to discard Alice and marry Berengaria, Richard was caught in a very awkward diplomatic situation. It is clear that Philip would be disgraced if his sister were dropped in this fashion and he did nothing to avenge her honour. Could Richard afford to state his intentions publicly? If he did. would that destroy the fragile peace between the kingdoms and cause further interminable delays to the crusade on which his heart was set? Perhaps only when he and Philip were already on crusade could he marry someone else without inviting an immediate attack upon his lands. But it could not have been easy to persuade Sancho of Navarre to send his daughter to be married somewhere abroad in these ambiguous and hazardous circumstances. In February 1190 Richard may well have found that he needed more time to complete such intricate negotiations. In April Richard travelled south again, through Anjou and Poitou. By 8th May he was at Cognac on the river Charente. We next find him at Bayonne close to the border with Navarre on 6 June. According to Roger of Howden it was on this trip to Gascony that he hanged the lord of the castle of Chis for the crime of highway robbery. Though many of this lord's victims had been pilgrims on the way to Compostella, it is hard to believe that it was devotion to the cult of St. James - however much the Moor-slayer may have appealed to Richard - which alone had brought him into the Pyrenees. It may well have been on this occasion that Richard found the opportunity for a face-to-face meeting with Sancho to bring the negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion. Now at last Richard was ready to go. But far from him going on crusade without a thought for the problem of the succession, it rather looks as though the opposite was the case: that he had postponed his departure until most of the problems surrounding his marriage had been resolved. Richard was by no means just a fanatical crusader who neglected everything else.

>Not until February 1191 did the question of Richard's marriage come to the surface once more. The news reached Messina that Eleanor and Berengaria, accompanied by Count Philip of Flanders, had arrived at Naples. Richard sent some galleys to meet them there and convey them to Messina. But although Count Philip was allowed to embark, Eleanor and Berengaria were not: [King] Tancred's officials apparently claimed that their escort was too large. There was obviously more to it than this transparent excuse and so Richard went to Tancred to demand an explanation. Tancred eventually confessed to Richard that he had been listening to Philip's insinuations. The French king apparently had warned Tancred that Richard's word was not to be relied upon: that he had no intention of keeping the treaty they had made last October, and instead was planning to deprive Tancred of his kingdom.

>The French king had been playing a dangerous game. Once Tancred was convinced that he had nothing to fear from Richard, then Philip became the victim of his own intrigue. He protested his innocence, claiming that the whole thing was a put-up job, a scheme devised by Richard to give him an excuse for breaking his promise to marry Alice. For two reasons, however, Philip's defence does not ring quite true. Firstly, because Tancred's agents had prevented Berengaria from leaving Naples - an unnecessary complication if it was all just a charade. And secondly, because the count of Flanders, on his arrival in Sicily, took Richard's side against King Philip - which might suggest that he did not believe the French king's story. At all events it is clear that Philip was now isolated and in a weak bargaining position. Richard drove home his advantage. He had no wish, he said, to discard Alice but he could never marry her since she had been his father's mistress and had borne him a son. This was a grim accusation to make since Alice had been entrusted to the Old King's custody, but Richard claimed that he could summon many witnesses able to testify to its truth. In the face of this terrible threat to his sister's honour Philip gave up his struggle to save her marriage. In return for 10,000 marks he released Richard from his promise.

>Why was Richard so anxious to marry Berengaria? A romantic attachment is not impossible, but it would inevitably have been secondary to the requirements of diplomacy. In France alone the Angevin empire was faced by tour other 'feudal empires' - to use Professor Le Patourel's terminology. These were the empire of the counts of Flanders, the Capetian empire, the empire of Blois-Champagne and the empire of Saint-Gilles-Toulouse. In the crisis of 1173-4 three of these 'empires' had joined in the attack on Henry II. In the crisis of Richard's rule as duke of Aquitaine in 1183, the fourth - Toulouse - had supported the Young King in his war against Richard. In 1190 the position was that the princes who ruled three of these neighbouring empires had taken the cross: Count Philip of Flanders, King Philip of France, Count Theobald of Blois and Count Henry of Champagne. Only Count Raymond of Toulouse intended to stay at home. Richard can have been in no doubt what this meant. For the last six years he and Raymond had been in an almost continuous state of war. It was inevitable that Raymond would grasp at the opportunity presented by Richard's crusade. All the length of the Angevin frontiers there was no threat so serious as that posed by the count of Toulouse. It is in this context that we must see the marriage to Berengaria of Navarre. When in the first six months of 1190 Richard twice travelled south it was to arrange a crucial alliance which would help safeguard his dominions at their most vulnerable point.

>In diplomatic terms Richard's marriage proved its worth. In 1192 while he was still in Outremer a revolt broke out in Aquitaine. The leading rebels were the count of Perigord and Bernard, viscount of Brosse, but in all probability they were encouraged by Philip - who had returned in time to celebrate the Christmas of 1191 at Fontaineblea - and by Raymond of Toulouse. Berengaria's brother, Sancho, brought a large force of knights to help the seneschal of Gascony and together they took the war into Raymond's lands, advancing right up to the walls of Toulouse. Nowhere else in the Angevin empire had Richard's absence caused any serious unrest. If he had returned home by January or February 1193, as seemed likely when he left Acre in October 1192, it would have been clear to historians that the arrangements he had made for the government of his dominions during his crusade had worked extremely well. As it turned out, however, the unforeseeable eventuality of his capture and imprisonment called everything into question.

>In one respect the marriage clearly failed. There were no children, no heirs. The terms of the treaty of Messina in March 1191 make it clear that heirs were very much in Richard's mind, as one would expect, as he awaited Berengaria's arrival in Sicily. After all, he already had one son, Philip, to whom he had granted the lordship of Cognac. But no legitimate children came. Historians sometimes write as though Richard was responsible for this - but suppose Berengaria were barren or that, for some other reason, like Henry I and Adela of Louvain, Richard and Berengaria could not have children. What then could Richard have done? He might, presumably, have had the marriage annulled - but while the Navarre alliance remained important this would have been politically foolish. Nonetheless by 1197-8 the marriage was clearly no longer working - either as a diplomatic instrument or as a means of producing an heir.

>Berengaria did not re-marry and, for the rest of her life, she remained a shadowy figure in the background. Never again did she stand as close to the centre of the stage as she did during the complex negotiations of 1190-1. But for the historian of the politics of western Europe this brief episode in her life is important for the light which it sheds on Richard's style as a ruler. Although by 1197-8 Richard may have been disappointed by the results of his marriage, we are not entitled to believe that his attitude towards it was negative from the start. On the contrary, in the light of the remarkable circumstances in which he was married, it is clear that, as a politician, Richard was able to outmanoeuvre a tactician as astute as Philip Augustus. It is equally clear, moreover, that he was neither a reluctant husband nor an irresponsible ruler who went off on crusade while neglecting to provide for the security of his dominions, in the south as well as in the north.

William of Canterbury was a monk and clerk who served under Thomas Becket, the martyred archbishop, and wrote his biography after his death. He records an antiphon sung in Norfolk, said to have been taught to Reginald, a priest of Wretham, in a dream or vision. As Becket was not yet formally canonised, no Latin antiphon existed in the liturgy: this one was revealed to Reginald in English, and taught to the local clergy.

>Holy Thomas of heaven's kingdom,

>Equal to the apostles,

>The martyrs lift up thee

>Daily by their hands;

>Our Lord, he did a wondrous thing

>When he turned water into wine;

>Thou art our help in England,

>Our voices lifted up;

>Thou art comfort among mankind,

>Aid us now against our sins.

>[Hali Thomas of hevenriche,

>Alle postles evenliche,

>Dhe martyrs dhe understande

>Deyhuamliche on here hande;

>Selcuth ded ure Drichtin

>Dhat he dhi wetter wente to wyn;

>Dhu ert help in Engelande,

>Ure stefne understande;

>Thu hert froure imang mankynne,

>Help us nu of ure senne.]

Thomas Becket was rapidly becoming a major saint: his anthems are very much in the tradition of those of other English saints, such as Dunstan, Aidan, Cuthbert, Augustine, Edmund or Edward. As they had been for centuries, he was likewise being praised in poetry written in the vernacular English as early as the 1100s. An Order of St. Thomas was founded at Acre by the end of that century, which was a chapter of the Hospitallers established for English knights and pilgrims.

The granting of an earldom to Gaveston on August 6th, 1307 was one of Edward II's first acts as king, and the charter contains the de Clare arms as well as the Gaveston arms, which indicates that Piers and Margaret de Clare were already betrothed at this point.

Images:

Original at The National Archives, E 41/460., Scan from Creative Commons

A modern drawing of Piers as an Eagle, by u/Sturgeon_Swimulator