Richard was best known in his own day as a crusader,
as he is in literature, owing to the once great popularity
of Walter Scott’s The Talisman. For European affairs
the most important development of the Crusade was
the Treaty of Messina, sealed in 1191. Philip II (Philip
Augustus) of France granted territorial boons to Rich-
ard, but by this agreement Richard recognized Philip’s
suzerainty over the Angevin lands on the Continent.
Shortly after the two kings arrived in the Holy Land,
Philip, a reluctant crusader, fell conveniently ill and
returned home, motivated largely by his hope of taking
advantage of Richard’s absence so as to meddle in the
English lordships in France. Richard conducted himself
brilliantly as soldier and general and entered into Scott’s
legend as a revered and worthy opponent and respected
friend of Saladin.
After helping to settle the political problems of the
Latin kingdom of Jerusalem Richard left for England in
October 1192. However, nature and politics interrupted
the journey; a victim of shipwreck, he then fell into
the hands of the duke of Austria, who delivered him to
Henry, the Holy Roman Emperor. Henry, with the ac-
tive support of Philip of France, kept the Lionheart in
captivity until April 1194, when he was released after
paying a king’s ransom.
Richard had made careful plans for the governance
of England during his absence; his kingdom, of course,
had been accustomed to an absent king ever since the
Norman conquest, owing to the royal policy of ruling
personally over their French lands as over their English
ones. Richard had a smoothly functioning machinery
of government, guided such by able and experienced
administrators as William Longchamp, Hubert Walter,
and Geoffrey Fitz Peter. Every source of revenue was
effi ciently exploited, though at Richard’s death the trea-
sury was empty—unremitting warfare being the most
expensive activity in which a government engages.
Despite the continuing plots of Prince John the
country remained loyal to its king and his ministers.
In Richard’s absence there was less initiation of new
institutions than refinement in administration; the
great inquest of 1194 checked up on the enforcement
of royal judicial, feudal, and fi nancial rights. The role
of what would become known as the gentry expanded
in the administration of justice; while the end was not
foreseen by Richard’s ministers, the ultimate result of
this enlargement of nonnobles’ participation in govern-
ment gave those of less than noble birth a sense that the
government was theirs as well as the king’s.
Until recent decades historians have tended to depre-
cate Richard, as they have Henry V. And yet the popular
opinion of his own day is worth something. Wars were
not viewed from a modern perspective, nor were their
aims to be construed in terms of the goals of modern
war. Richard was highly regarded by his contemporaries;
perhaps they knew better than we what it meant to be
a chivalric hero.
See also Eleanor of Aquitaine; John;
Philip II Augustus; Richard IIFurther Reading
Appleby, John. England without Richard, 1189–1199. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1965.
Bridge, Antony. Richard the Lionheart. London: Grafton, 1989
Gillingham, John. Richard the Lionheart. 2d ed. London: Wei-
denfeld & Nicolson, 1989 [the “select bibliography” and the
chapter notes provide a full bibliography].
Gillingham, John. Richard Coeur de Lion: Kingship, Chivalry and
Wa r in the Twelfth Century. London: Hambledon, 1994.
Landon, Lionel. The Itinerary of King Richard I. Pipe Roll Society- London: Pipe Roll Society, 1935.
Nelson, Janet L., ed. Richard Coeur de Lion in History and Myth.
London: King’s College London, 1992.
Painter, Sidney. “The Third Crusade: Richard Lionhearted and
Philip Augustus.” In A History of the Crusades, gen. ed. Ken-
neth M. Setton. 2d ed. Vol. 2: The Later Crusades, 1189–1311,
ed. Robert Lee Wolff and Harry W. Hazard. Madison: Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, 1969, pp. 45–86.
James W. Alexander
RICHARD II (1367–1399; r. 1377–99)
Born at Bordeaux on 6 January 1367, the second son
of Edward the Black Prince, Prince of Wales (d. 1376).
After Richard succeeded his grandfather Edward III
in 1377, government in his minority was conducted
jointly by his three uncles (especially the eldest, John
of Gaunt), the earls, and leading offi cials of his grand-
father and father.
Richard displayed courage and leadership during the
Peasant Rebellion of 1381 and in the next few years was
encouraged by bosom companions and some offi cials to
assert his will over patronage and policies. His prestige
was enhanced by his childless marriage in 1382 to Anne
of Bohemia (d. 1394), daughter of the late Emperor
Charles IV, and by his fi rst major expedition to Scotland
(1385). But parliaments were concerned about royal
fi nances, and there was growing disquiet, expressed by
some magnates, over failures to check the French in
war and over royal indulgence of court intrigues against
Gaunt. In 1386 Richard, freed from Gaunt’s shadow by
the latters expedition to Castile, alienated public opinion
by the evasion of fi nancial restraints and the failure to
prevent the buildup of an invasion threat from a French
armada in Flanders.
In the autumn parliament of 1386 the Commons,
abetted by the king’s uncle Thomas of Woodstock,
duke of Gloucester, and Thomas Arundel, bishop of
Ely, secured the dismissal from the chancellorship and
the impeachment of a royal favorite, Michael de la Pole,
earl of Suffolk. A commission was appointed with wideRICHARD II