Bad opportunity, and lodged an arrow in the neck of the king. surgery and Richard's impatience brought on mortification, and in a few days the king was dead. Death of The personality of Richard the Lion Heart has secured permanent fame. His personal share in the administration of English affairs was Importance slight and unimportant; but the advantage gained by of his Reign. the country from ten years' continuance of the system of Henry II. was most valuable, and its effects were seen in the combinations of parties during the next reign. Richard himself had the power of attracting the personal love of his intimate friends, though his character was not one to secure general respect. In private life he was witty and humorous. When the pope claimed as 'his son' a bishop Richard's men had captured in battle, he sent in reply the bishop's coat of mail, with the request that he would see 'whether it were his son's coat or no.' He was also a man of generous impulses and faithful to his friends, but was wanting in nobility of character and in the higher virtues of statesmanship. His bravery was unquestioned; but even in war his cruelty, selfishness, and vanity deprive him of much of his apparent claim to respect. CHAPTER III JOHN: 1199-1216 (1189, Hadwisa or Avice of Gloucester (divorced); 1200, Isabella of Angoulême. CHIEF CONTEMPORARY PRINCES Born 1167; married John's ill Character leads to the Loss of France, a Quarrel with the Church, and finally his iniquitous Life and Government cause a union of all Classes to extort the Great Charter-A French Prince invited to take the Throne. Question of the Succes In the early days of his reign, Richard had regarded Arthur, the son of Geoffrey, as his heir; but after Arthur had been handed over by the Bretons to Philip, and was being educated at the French court with Philip's son, he seems to have changed his mind, and during his last years he certainly regarded John as his successor, and on his death-bed he made his followers swear to receive his brother as next king. Philip, however, was still in Arthur's favour, and at Richard's death made an effort to secure his succession. sion. When his brother died, John was abroad. His first step was to secure Normandy; but while he was doing so, young Arthur, aided by his mother Constance and the Bretons, secured Anjou, Action of Maine, and Touraine; and for these counties Arthur John. immediately did homage to the French king. Eleanor, however who wished John to succeed, as being more likely than Arthur to keep together all the vast dominions of herself and her husband, showed that even threescore years and ten had not damped her energy. Summoning to her aid Mercadier, the commander of Richard's paid Brabantines, she attacked Anjou, and then cleverly secured Aquitaine for John by compelling Philip to receive her homage for it as duchess in her own right Aquitaine and Normandy being thus secure, John was able to leave his other Continental dominions for the present and secure his position in England. Already he sent over Archbishop Hubert and William Marshall to aid Geoffrey Fitzpeter in his difficult task of keeping the peace. In England there never seems to have been any question of taking Arthur as king. A meeting of the most important barons was held at Northampton, and there, Hubert and William Marshall promising all good things in his name, John was elected king, the uncle of full age being John elected. preferred, according to the old English practice, to the nephew, who was a minor. In May, John came over, and after a solemn admonition was crowned at Westminster by Archbishop Hubert, who carefully stated in his address that John succeeded not by any inherent right, but by the unanimous choice of the realm. His Officers. Geoffrey Fitzpeter remained justiciar, William Marshall kept his office, and Archbishop Hubert showed how completely the ecclesiastical ideas of Archbishop Theobald had passed away by accepting the post of chancellor. Geoffrey Fitzpeter was then made earl of Essex, in succession to William de Mandeville; and William Marshall, to whom Richard had given Strongbow's heiress, Eva, was made earl of Striguil, though he is better known as earl of Pembroke. Arthur In June, John was back on the Continent, where he found the tide completely turned in his favour. Philip had disgusted Arthur and the Bretons by treating his conquests in Normandy and Maine discredited. as his own. The count of Flanders and Otto the emperor were preparing to aid John. The troubles of an interdict, which Philip had brought on himself by putting away his wife Ingeborga of Denmark, and taking instead Agnes of Meran, were impending. Philip, therefore, found peace necessary, and offered favourable terms. John was recognised as lawful ruler of all his brother's dominions; and as a pledge of amity, Louis, Philip's eldest son, married John's niece, Blanche, the daughter of Blanche of England and Alphonzo of Navarre. To fetch the bride, the indefatigable Eleanor at once set out to Spain, and on account of the interdict the marriage was celebrated at Rouen. Character. The character of John is one not easy to draw. He was handsome, well made, and of most insinuating manners; clever enough when he John's chose to exert himself, and neither a bad general nor a bad diplomatist. He also had been well educated, and was well read. All these good qualities, however, only made his complete failure the more signal. His ruin was due to his utter indifference to principle of any kind. Neither truth, nor pity, nor duty stood in the way of his John's first Divorce of will. His passions required to be gratified at all costs; being a bad man himself, he judged others by his own standard, and was incapable of appealing to anything higher. Even these bad traits, however, might not have sufficed to ruin him had it not been that on the Continent he had to deal with Philip Augustus, an abler man than had sat on the throne of France for years; and in England he had to meet for the first time since the Conquest a people who, having realised what good government meant, were determined not to allow the wickedness or weakness of the sovereign to be a cause of the reappearance of disorder. act of infatuation was to divorce his wife Hadwisa or Avice of Gloucester, to whom he had been married since 1189. Avice. She was the granddaughter of Robert of Gloucester, and therefore John's third cousin; but the marriage had been celebrated under a papal dispensation. It had, however, from the first been protested against by Archbishop Baldwin, and John, probably by a lie, now persuaded three Aquitanian bishops to annul it. On this her lands should, of course, have been restored to her, as had been done in the case of John's mother Eleanor; but John gave the county of Gloucester only to the husband of Avice's elder sister, and kept the rest himself. Avice had a crowd of relations who were equally offended by the insult to herself, and exasperated by the loss of her lands; so the whole Gloucester connection was now turned against John. As though this were not enough, John then proceeded to marry Isabella of Angoulême, the affianced bride of Hugh the Brown, son of the count of La with IsaMarche, and nephew of Guy of Lusignan. The marriage was made by the consent of the bride's father, and apparently of the bride herself; but the whole family of Lusignan were furious. As they were the most powerful and turbulent of the barons of Poitou, their wrath was no slight matter; and John immediately made things worse by seizing the castle of another member of the family. In 1202 the barons of Poitou, with the Lusignans at their head, appealed to Philip; and the French king, having now arranged his matrimonial difficulties by taking back his former wife, at once took up their cause. John was summoned to answer for his conduct before the French court, and, as he did not appear, was condemned in default to forfeit all lands held under the crown of France. The legality of this sentence was extremely doubtful; but Philip at once summoned the aid of Arthur and invaded Normandy, while Arthur laid siege to his grandmother Eleanor, whom the Poitevin troubles had drawn from her retirement at Fontevraud, in the castle of Mirebeau. Eleanor's danger roused John to momentary Marriage bella of Angoulême. Quarrel with the Barons of Poitou. exertion, and he surprised Arthur just when on the point of success, and carried him off prisoner. This success gave John the better of the game; but, having imprisoned his nephew first at Falaise and then at Rouen, it is certain that he was wicked and foolish enough to compass Death of his death, though how or when is not certainly known. Arthur. As soon as Arthur's death was known, Philip invaded Normandy, and the Norman towns fell fast before him. So long, however, as Château Gaillard held out Rouen was safe, and its siege was the Invasion of crisis of the war. The defence was intrusted to Roger de Normandy. Lacy, and the stand he made gave ample time to John, if he had used it well, to bring an overwhelming army to its relief. But for some reason or another John's abilities failed him at the crisis. A night attack on the besiegers planned by him, but carried out by the earl of Pembroke, failed, owing to the boats of the expedition being behind time. Then the king sank into aimless despondency, wandered hither and thither without object or result, and finally left Normandy Château Gaillard captured. Death of to its fate. After holding out from August 1203 to March 1204, Roger de Lacy was compelled to capitulate; but the length of time gained and the difficulties of the besiegers amply demonstrated both the judgment and the skill of its founder and architect. A month later Eleanor died, and with her deEleanor of parted John's last hold on the loyalty of his Continental subjects. After Château Gaillard had fallen, Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, and Maine soon fell into Philip's hands; and before the Loss of summer of 1204 was out, nothing but the Channel Islands Normandy. remained to the English king of the hereditary territories of William the Conqueror and Geoffrey of Anjou. Guienne. The loss of Normandy marks a very important epoch in the history of the English baronage. Up to this date, many of the greatest of them, Influence of such as the earls of Chester, held lands on both sides of the this loss. Channel. Now they were forced to choose between the two. Generally speaking, one son took the French lands and another the English; but, whatever arrangement was made, divided interest became a thing of the past. Henceforward, the English barons, though they still spoke French, regarded themselves as Englishmen, and looked on English interests as their own; and thus the Anglicising of the Normans, which had been begun by the wars between Duke Robert and his brothers, was carried a step further by the loss of Normandy. Any physical distinction between the English and Normans had long been lost. William the Conqueror had established a special fine to be levied on a hundred when any Norman was murdered within its bounds; |