Richard I Part 3

The Jews had gradually increased in numbers and influence in France until the time of the accession of Philip, and then he determined to extirpate them from the realm; so he issued an edict by which they were all banished from the kingdom, their property was confiscated, and every person that owed them money was released from all obligation to pay them. Of course, a great many of their debtors would pay them, notwithstanding this release, from the influence of that natural sense of justice which, in all nations and in all ages, has a very great control in human hearts; still, there were others who would, of course, avail themselves of this opportunity to defraud their creditors of what was justly their due; and being obliged, too, at the same time, to fly precipitately from the country in consequence of the decree of banishment, the poor Jews were reduced to a state of extreme distress.

Now the Jews of England, when Henry died and Richard succeeded him, began to be afraid that the new king would follow Philip's example, and in order to prevent this, and to conciliate Richard's favor, they determined to send a delegation to him at Westminster, at the time of his coronation, with rich presents which had been procured by contributions made by the wealthy. Accordingly, on the day of the coronation, when the great crowds of people a.s.sembled at Westminster to honor the occasion, these Jews came among them.

The ceremony of the coronation was performed in the following manner: The king, in entering the church and proceeding up toward the high altar, walked upon a rich cloth laid down for him, which had been dyed with the famous Tyrian purple. Over his head was a beautifully-wrought canopy of silk, supported by four long lances. These lances were borne by four great barons of the realm. A great n.o.bleman, the Earl of Albemarle, bore the crown, and walked with it before the king as he advanced toward the altar. When the earl reached the altar he placed the crown upon it. The Archbishop of Canterbury stood before the altar to receive the king as he approached, and then administered the usual oath to him.

The oath was in three parts:

1. That all the days of his life he would bear peace, honor, and reverence to G.o.d and the Holy Church, and to all the ordinances thereof.

2. That he would exercise right, justice, and law on the people unto him committed.

3. That he would abrogate wicked laws and perverse customs, if any such should be brought into his kingdom, and that he would enact good laws, and the same in good faith keep, without mental reservation.

Having taken this oath, the king removed his upper garment, and put golden sandals upon his feet, and then was anointed by the archbishop with the holy oil on his head, breast, and shoulders. This oil was poured from a rich vessel called an _ampulla_.[C]

[Footnote C: The ampulla used now for anointing the English sovereigns is in the form of an eagle. It is made of the purest chased gold, and weighs about ten ounces. It is deposited in the Tower of London.]

The anointing having been performed, the king received various articles of royal dress and decoration from the hands of the great n.o.bles around him, who officiated as servitors on the occasion, and with their a.s.sistance put them on. When thus robed and adorned, he advanced up the steps of the altar. As he went up, the archbishop adjured him in the name of the living G.o.d not to a.s.sume the crown unless he was fully resolved to keep the oaths that he had sworn.

Richard again solemnly called G.o.d to witness that he would faithfully keep them, and then advancing to the altar, he took the crown and put it into the hands of the archbishop, who then placed it upon his head, and thus the coronation ceremony was completed.

The people who had presents for the king now approached and offered them to him. Among them came the Jews. Their presents were very rich and valuable, and the king received them very gladly, although in announcing the arrangements for the ceremony he had declared that no Jew and no woman was to be allowed to be present. Notwithstanding this prohibition, the Jewish deputation had come in and offered their presents among the rest. There was, however, a great murmuring among the crowd in respect to them, and a great desire to drive them out.

This crowd consisted chiefly, of course, of barons, earls, knights, and other great dignitaries of the realm, for very few of the lower ranks would be admitted to see the ceremony; and these people, in addition to the usual religious prejudice against the Jews, had many of them been exasperated against the bankers and money-lenders on account of difficulties that they had had with them in relation to money that they had borrowed, and to the high interest which they had been compelled to pay. Some wise observer of the working of human pa.s.sions has said that men always hate more or less those to whom they owe money. This is a reason why there should ordinarily be very few pecuniary transactions between friends.

At length, as one of the Jews who was outside was attempting to go in, a by-stander at the gate cried out, "Here comes a Jew!" and struck at him. This excited the pa.s.sions of the rest, and they struck and pushed the poor Jew in order to drive him back; and at the same time a general outcry against the Jews arose, and spread into the interior of the hall. The people there, glad of the opportunity afforded them by the excitement, began to a.s.sault the Jews and drive them out; and as they came out at the door beaten and bruised, a rumor was raised that they had been expelled by the king's orders. This rumor, as it spread through the streets, was soon changed into a report that the king had ordered all the unbelievers to be destroyed; and so, whenever a Jew was found in the street, a riot was raised about him, he was a.s.saulted with sticks and stones, cruelly beaten, and if he was not killed, he was driven to seek refuge in his home, wounded and bleeding.

In the mean time, the news that the king had ordered all the Jews to be killed spread rapidly over the town, and in the evening crowds collected, and after murdering all the Jews that they could find in the streets, they gathered round their houses, and finally broke into them and killed the inhabitants. In some cases where the houses were strong, the Jews barricaded the doors and the mob could not get in. In such cases they brought combustibles, and piled them up before the windows and doors, and then, setting them on fire, they burned the houses to the ground, and men, women, and children were consumed together in the flames. If any of the unhappy wretches burning in these fires attempted to escape by leaping from the windows, the mob below held up spears and lances for them to fall upon.

There were so many of these fires in the course of the night that the whole sky was illuminated, and at one time there was danger that the flames would spread so as to produce a general conflagration. Indeed, as the night pa.s.sed on, the excitement became more and more violent, until at length the streets, in all the quarters where Jews resided, were filled with the shouts of the mob, raving in demoniacal phrensy, and with the screams of the terrified and dying sufferers, and the crackling of the lurid flames in which they were burning.

The king, in the mean time, was carousing with his lords and barons in the great banqueting-hall at Westminster, and for a time took no notice of these disturbances. He seemed to consider them as of very little moment. At length, however, in the course of the night, he sent an officer and a few men to suppress the riot. But it was too late.

The mob paid no heed to remonstrances which came from the leader of so small a force, but, on the other hand, threatened to kill the soldiers too, if they did not go away. So the officer returned to the king, and the riot went on undisturbed until about two o'clock of the next day, when it gradually ceased from the mere weariness and exhaustion of the people.

A few of the men who had been engaged in this riot were afterward brought to trial, and three were hung, not for murdering Jews, but for burning some Christian houses, which, either by mistake or accident, took fire in the confusion and were burned with the rest. This was all that was ever done to punish this dreadful crime.

In justice to King Richard, however, it must be stated that he issued an edict after this forbidding that the Jews should be injured or maltreated any more. He took the whole people, he said, thenceforth under his special protection, and all men were strictly forbidden to harm them personally, or to molest them in the possession of their property.

And this was the terrible coronation scene which signalized the invest.i.ture of Richard with the crown and the royal robes of England.

CHAPTER VI.

PREPARATIONS FOR THE CRUSADE.

1189

Richard was thirty-two years of age at his accession.--His ardent desires for distinction in crusades.--Motives of the crusaders.--A strange delusion.--The preparations.--Navies.--Armies.--Accoutrements.--Customs of old times.--Richard's reckless course.--Richard sold lands, offices, and t.i.tles of honor.--Extortion under pretense of public justice.--Creating a regency.--Richard's regents.--John's acquiescence.--The time for sailing appointed.--Richard crosses the Channel.--Fears of treachery.--The treaty of alliance between Richard and Philip.--Completion of the preparations.

At the time of his accession to the throne, Richard, as has already been remarked, was about thirty-two years of age. On the following page you have a portrait of him, with the crown upon his head.

This portrait is taken from a sculpture on his tomb, and is undoubtedly a good representation of him as he appeared when he was alive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTRAIT OF RICHARD I.]

The first thing that Richard turned his attention to, when he found himself securely seated on his throne, was the preparation for a crusade. It had been the height of his ambition for a long time to lead a crusade. It was undoubtedly through the influence of his mother, and of her early conversations with him, that he imbibed his extraordinary eagerness to seek adventures in the Holy Land. She had been a crusader herself during her first marriage, as has already been related in this volume, and she had undoubtedly, in Richard's early life, entertained him with a thousand stories of what she had seen, and of the romantic adventures which she had met with there. These stories, and the various conversations which arose out of them, kindled Richard's youthful imagination with ardent desires to go and distinguish himself on the same field. These desires had been greatly increased as Richard grew up to manhood by observing the exalted military glory to which successful crusaders attained. And then, besides this, Richard was endued with a sort of reckless and lion-like courage, which led him to look upon danger as a sport, and made him long for a field where there were plenty of enemies to fight, and enemies so abhorred by the whole Christian world that he could indulge in the excitement of hatred and rage against them without any restraint whatever. He could there satiate himself, too, with the luxury of killing men without any misgiving of conscience, or, at least, without any condemnation on the part of his fellow-men, for it was understood throughout Christendom that the crimes committed against the Saracens in the Holy Land were committed in the name of Christ. What a strange delusion! To think of honoring the memory of the meek and lowly Jesus by utterly disregarding his peaceful precepts and his loving and gentle example, and going forth in thousands to the work of murder, rapine, and devastation, in order to get possession of his tomb.

In preparing for the crusade, the first and most important thing to be attended to, in Richard's view, was the raising of money. A great deal of money would be required, as has already been intimated, to fit out the expedition on the magnificent scale which Richard intended.

There was a fleet of s.h.i.+ps to be built and equipped, and stores of provisions to be put on board. There were armies to be levied and paid, and immense expenses were to be incurred in the manufacture of arms and ammunition. The armor and the arms used in those days, especially those worn by knights and n.o.blemen, and the caparisons of the horses, were extremely costly. The armor was fas.h.i.+oned with great labor and skill out of plates or rings of steel, and the helmets, and the bucklers, and the swords, and all the military trappings of the horses and hors.e.m.e.n, being fas.h.i.+oned altogether by hand, required great labor and skill in the artisan who made them; and then, moreover, it was customary to decorate them very profusely with embroidery, and gold, and gems. At the present day, men display their wealth in the costliness of their houses, and the gorgeousness and luxury of the furniture which they contain. It is not considered in good taste--except for ladies--to make a display of wealth upon the person. In those days, however, the reverse was the case. The knights and barons lived in the rudest stone castles, dark and frowning without, and meagerly furnished and comfortless within, while all the means of display which the owners possessed were lavished in arming and decorating themselves and their horses magnificently for the field of battle.

For all these things Richard knew that he should require a large sum of money, and he proceeded at once to carry into effect the most wasteful and reckless measures for obtaining it. His father, Henry the Second, had in various ways acquired a great many estates in different parts of the kingdom, which estates he had added to the royal domains.

These Richard at once proceeded to sell to whomsoever would give the most for them. In this manner he disposed of a great number of castles, fortresses, and towns, so as greatly to diminish the value of the crown property. The purchasers of this property, if they had not money enough of their own to pay for what they bought, would borrow of the Jews. Some of the king's counselors remonstrated with him against this wasteful policy, but he replied that he needed money so much for the crusade, that, if necessary, he would sell the city of London itself to raise it, if he could only find a man rich enough to be the purchaser.

After having raised as much money as he could by the sale of the royal lands, the next resource to which Richard turned was the sale of public offices and t.i.tles of honor. He looked about the country for wealthy men, and he offered them severally high office on condition of their paying large sums of money into the treasury as a consideration for them. He sold t.i.tles of n.o.bility, too, in the same way. If any man who was not rich held a high or important office, he would find some pretext for removing him, and then would offer the office for sale.

One of the historians of those times says that at this period Richard's presence-chamber became a regular place of trade--like the counting-room of a merchant or an exchange--where every thing that could be derived from the bounty of the crown or bestowed by the royal prerogative was offered for sale in open market to the man who would give the best bargain for it.

Another of the modes which the king adopted for raising money, and in some respects the worst of all, was to impose fines as a punishment for crime, and then, in order to make the fines produce as much as possible, every imaginable pretext was resorted to to charge wealthy persons with offenses, with a view of exacting large sums from them as the penalty. It was said that a great officer of state was charged with some offense, and was put in prison and not released until he had paid a fine of three thousand pounds.

One of the worst of these cases was that of his half-brother Geoffrey, the son of Rosamond. Geoffrey had been appointed Archbishop of York in accordance with the wish that his father Henry had expressed on his death-bed. Richard pretended to be displeased with this. Perhaps he wished to have had that office to dispose of like the rest. At any rate, he exacted a very large sum from Geoffrey as the condition on which he would "grant him his peace," as he termed it, and Geoffrey paid the money.

When, by these and other similar means, Richard had raised all that he could in England, he prepared to cross the Channel into Normandy, in order to see what more he could do there. Before he went, however, he had first to make arrangements for a regency to govern England while he should be away. This is always the custom in monarchical countries.

Whenever, for any reason, the true sovereign can not personally exercise the supreme power, whether from minority, insanity, long-continued sickness, or protracted absence from the realm, a regency, as it is called, is created to govern the kingdom in his stead. The person appointed to act as regent is usually some near relation of the king. Richard's brother John hoped to be made regent, but this did not suit Richard's views, for he wished to make this office the means, as all the others had been, of raising money, and John had no money to give. For the same reason, he could not appoint his mother, who in other respects would have been a very suitable person. So Richard contrived a sort of middle course. He sold the nominal regency to two wealthy courtiers, whom he a.s.sociated together for the purpose. One was a bishop, and the other was an earl. It may, perhaps, be too much to say that he directly sold them the office, but, at any rate, he appointed them jointly to it, and under the arrangement that was made he received a large sum of money. He, however, stipulated that John, and also his mother, should have a large share of influence in deciding upon all the measures of the government. John would have been by no means satisfied with this divided and uncertain share of power were it not that he was so desirous of favoring the expedition in every possible way, in hopes that if Richard could once get to the Holy Land he would soon perish there, and that then he should be king altogether. It was of comparatively little consequence who was regent in the mean time. So he resolved to make no objection to any plan that the king might propose.

Richard was now ready to cross to Normandy; but just before he went there came a deputation from Philip to consult with him in respect to the plans of the crusade, and to fix upon the time for setting out.

The time proposed by Philip was the latter part of March. It was now late in the fall. It would not be safe to set out before March on account of the inclemency of the season, and Richard supposed that he should have ample time to complete his preparations by the time that Philip named. So both parties agreed to it, and they took a solemn oath on both sides that they would all be ready without fail.

Soon after this Richard took leave of his friends, and, accompanied by a long retinue of earls, barons, knights, and other adventurers who were to accompany him to the Holy Land, he left England, and crossed the Channel to Normandy.

In such cases as this there are always a great many last words to be said and a great many last arrangements to be made, and Richard found it necessary to see his mother and his brother John again before finally taking his departure from Europe. So he sent for them to come to Normandy, and there another great council of state was held, at which every thing in relation to the internal affairs of his dominions was finally arranged. There was still one other danger to be guarded against, and that was some treachery on the part of Philip himself. So little reliance did these valiant champions of Christianity place in each other in those days, that both Richard and Philip, in joining together to form this expedition, had many misgivings and suspicions in respect to each other's honesty. Undoubtedly neither of them would have thought it safe to leave his dominions and go on a crusade unless the other had been going too. The one left behind would have been sure to have found some pretext, during the absence of his neighbor, to invade his dominions and plunder him of some of his possessions. This was one reason why the two kings had agreed to go together; and now, as an additional safeguard, they made a formal treaty of alliance and fraternity, in which they bound themselves by the most solemn oaths to stand by each other, and to be faithful and true to each other to the last. They agreed that each would defend the life and honor of the other on all occasions; that neither would desert the other in the hour of danger; and that, in respect to the dominions that they were respectively to leave behind them, neither would form any designs against the other, but that Philip would cherish and protect the rights of Richard even as he would protect his own city of Paris, and that Richard would do the like by Philip, even as he would protect his own city of Rouen.

It is a curious circ.u.mstance that in this treaty Richard should name Rouen, and not London, as his princ.i.p.al capital. It confirms what is known in many other ways, that the kings of this line, reigning over both Normandy and England, considered Normandy as the chief centre of their power, and England as subordinate. It may be, however, that one reason why Rouen was named in this instance may have been because it was nearer to the dominions of the King of France, and so better known to him.

This treaty was signed in February, and the preparations were now nearly complete for setting forth on the expedition in March, at the appointed time.

CHAPTER VII.

THE EMBARKATION.

1190

The plan of embarking the troops.--The English fleet.--The French forces.--Richard's rules.--The origin of tarring and feathering.--Command of the fleet.--The fleet dispersed by a storm.--A delay in Lisbon.--The rendezvous at Vezelai.--Devastation by the armies.--Richard goes to the East in advance of his fleet.--The rendezvous at Messina.--Joanna.--Richard's visit.--King Richard's excursions.--Ostia.--A quarrel.--Why Richard quarreled with the bishop.--Naples and Vesuvius.--The crypt.--Salerno.--Richard's visit there.--The fleet.--Richard pursuing his journey along the coast of the Mediterranean.--Richard's tyrannical disposition.--Stealing the falcon.--Richard flees to a priory to escape the peasants.