tured at Vienna in a mean disguise (December 20th, 1192) and strictly confined in the duke's castle of Dürenstein on the Danube. His mishap was soon known to England, but the regents were for some weeks uncertain of his whereabouts. This is the foundation for the tale of his discovery by the faithful minstrel Blondel, which first occurs in a French romantic chronicle of the next century. Early in 1193 Leopold surrendered his prize, under compulsion, to the emperor Henry VI., who was aggrieved both by the support which the Plantagenets had given to the family of Henry the Lion and also by Richard's recognition of Tancred in Sicily. Although the detention of a crusader was contrary to public law, Richard was compelled to purchase his release by the payment of a heavy ransom and by doing homage to the emperor for England. The ransom demanded was 150,000 marks; though it was never discharged in full, the resources of England were taxed to the utmost for the first instalments; and to this occasion we may trace the beginning of secular taxation levied on movable property.
Richard reappeared in England in March 1194; but his stay lasted only a few weeks, and the remainder of his reign was entirely devoted to his continental interests. He left England to be governed by Hubert Walter (q.v.), and his personal authority was seldom asserted except by demands for new subsidies. The rule of the Plantagenets was still popular in Normandy and Aquitaine; but these provinces were unable or unwilling to pay for their own defence. Though Richard proved himself consistently the superior of Philip in the field, the difficulty of raising and paying forces to resist the French increased year by year. Richard could only stand on the defensive; the keynote of his later policy is given by the building of the famous Château Gaillard at Les Andelys (1196) to protect the lower courses of the Seine against invasion from the side of France. He did not live to see the futility of such bulwarks. In 1199 a claim to treasure-trove embroiled him with the viscount of Limoges. He harried the Limousin and laid siege to the castle of Châlus; while directing an assault he was wounded in the shoulder by a crossbow bolt, and, the wound mortifying from unskilful treatment or his own want of care, he died on the 6th of April 1199. He was buried by his own desire at his father’s feet in the church of Fontevrault. Here his effigy may still be seen.[1] Though contemporary, it does not altogether agree with the portraits on his Great Seal, which give the impression of greater strength and even of cruelty. The Fontevrault bust is no doubt idealized.
The most accomplished and versatile representative of his gifted family, Richard was, in his lifetime and long afterwards, a favourite hero with troubadours and romancers. This was natural, as he belonged to their brotherhood and himself wrote lyrics of no mean quality. But his history shows that he by no means embodied the current ideal of chivalrous excellence. His memory is stained by one act of needless cruelty, the massacre of over two thousand Saracen prisoners at Acre; and his fury, when thwarted or humbled, was ungovernable. A brave soldier, an experienced and astute general, he was never happier than when engaged in war. As a ruler he was equally profuse and rapacious. Not one useful measure can be placed to his credit; and it was by a fortunate accident that he found, in Hubert Walter, an administrator who had the skill to mitigate the consequences of a reckless fiscal policy. Richard's wife was Berengaria, daughter of Sancho VI., king of Navarre, whom he married in Cyprus in May 1191. She was with the king at Acre later in the same year, and during his imprisonment passed her time in Sicily, in Rome and in France. Husband and wife met again in 1195, and the queen long survived the king, residing chiefly at Le Mans. She died soon after 1230. Berengaria founded a Cistercian monastery at Espau.
Authorities.—The more important of the general chronicles are: the Gesta Henrici Secundi, ascribed to Benedict of Peterborough (Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1867); the Chronica of Roger of Hoveden (Rolls Series, 4 vols., 1868–71); the Chronica of Gervase of Canterbury (Rolls Series, 1879); the Imagines Historiarum of Ralph of Diceto (Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1876); the Historia Rerum Anglicarum of William of Newburgh (in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, &c., Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1884–85); the De rebus gestis Ricardi Primi, of Richard of Devizes (in Chronicles of the Reigns of Stephen, &c., vol. iii., Rolls Series, 1886); the Chronicon Anglicanum of Ralph of Coggeshall (Rolls Series, 1875); the Flores Historiarum of Roger of Wendover (Rolls Series, 3 vols., 1886–89); the Gesta Philippi Augusti of Rigord (Société de l'histoire de France, Paris, 1882) and of Guillaume le Breton (op. cit.). A detailed narrative of Richard's crusade is given in L'Estoire de la guerre sainte, a rhyming French chronicle by the minstrel Ambroise (ed. Gaston Paris, Paris, 1897), and in the Latin prose version known as the Itinerarium O. Peregrinorum et gesta Regis Ricardi; this last, with some valuable historical letters, is printed in W. Stubbs's Chronicles and Memorials of the Reign of Richard I. (Rolls Series, 2 vols., 1864–65). Of modern works the following are useful: W. Stubbs's preface to vols. iii. and iv. of Hoveden; the same author's Constitutional History of England, vol. i. (Oxford, 1897); Miss K. Norgate's England under the Angevin Kings, vol. ii. (London, 1887); Sir J. H. Ramsays Angevin Empire (London, 1903); R. Röhricht's Geschichte des Königreichs Jerusalem (1898); W. B. Stevenson's Crusaders in the East (Cambridge, 1901); A. Cartellieri's Philipp II. August (Leipzig, 1899, &c.). (H. W. C. D.)
RICHARD II. (1367–1400), king of England, younger son
of Edward the Black Prince by Joan "the Fair Maid of Kent,"
was born at Bordeaux on the 6th of January 1367. He was brought to England in 1371, and after his father's death was, on the petition of the Commons in parliament, created prince of Wales on the 20th of November 1376. When Edward III. died, on the 21st of June 1377, Richard became king. Popular opinion had credited John of Gaunt with designs on the throne. This was not justified; nevertheless, the rivalry of the boy-king's uncles added another to the troubles due to the war, the Black Death and the prospect of a long minority. At first the government was conducted by a council appointed by parliament. The council was honest, but the difficulties of the situation were too great. The ill-considered poll-tax of 1381 was the occasion, though not the real cause, of the Peasants' Revolt in that year. The ministers were quite unequal to the crisis, and when Wat Tyler and his followers got possession of London, it was Richard who showed a precocious
tact and confidence in handling it. It was the boy-king who met and temporized with the rebels on the 13th of June at Mile End, and again next day at Smithfield; and he who, with courageous presence of mind, saved the situation when Tyler was killed, by calling on them to take him for their leader. From this time Richard began to assert himself. His chief ministers, appointed by parliament in 1382, were the earl of Arundel and Michael de la Pole. Arundel Richard disliked, and dismissed next year, when he began his personal government. Pole, whom he retained as chancellor and made earl of Suffolk, was a well-chosen adviser. But others, and especially his youthful favourite Robert de Vere, promoted by unheard-of honour to be marquess of Dublin and duke of Ireland, were less worthy. Further, Richard made his own position difficult by lavish extravagance and unseemly outbursts
of temper. He chafed under the restraint of his relatives, and therefore encouraged John of Gaunt in his Spanish enterprise. This gave the less scrupulous Thomas of Gloucester his opportunity. Gloucester, supported by Arundel, attacked his nephew's ministers in the parliament of 1386, and by open
hints at deposition forced, Richard to submit to a council of
control. When Richard, with the aid of his friends and by the advice of subservient judges, planned a reversal of the parliament, Gloucester, at the head of the so-called lords appellant, anticipated him. Richard had been premature and ill-advised. Gloucester had the advantage of posing as the head
of the constitutional party. The king's friends were driven
into exile or executed, and he himself forced to submit to the loss of all real power (May 1388). Richard changed his
- ↑ The remains of Richard, together with those of Henry II. and his queen Eleanor, were removed in the 17th century from their tombs to another part of the church. They were rediscovered in 1910 during the restoration of the abbey undertaken by the French government.
