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The Angevin Power
The Angevin Power; Part 6

The Angevin Power; Part 6

They encouraged trade also. The crusading armies opened new trade routes, or reopened old ones long blocked. Men grew familiar with the more refined civilization of the East, and on their return desired to have Eastern goods and Eastern luxuries in their Western homes. All this led to a new intercourse between East and West, which had results far more solid than the erratic exploits of the Crusaders. But this commercial prosperity affected England little. It centred round the Mediterranean ports, and England, in its northern isolation, lay in those days far from the world's highway.

The choice of Richard as a national hero-king is not a little curious. A hero of a sort he certainly was: he possessed the strength of limb, the skill with his weapons, the reckless courage, which were the chief glories of the knight errant, the ideal of that age. In addition, he was personally popular. He was fond of songs and jests, being himself a fair musician and gifted with a ready wit, as may be seen from his reply to the Pope, who claimed as "his son" a bishop who had been taken prisoner while fighting in a battle. Richard sent the Pope the bishop's coat of mail with the pointed inquiry, "Know now whether this be thy son's coat, or no". He was not haughty unless he was affronted, and though his temper was blazing hot, he forgave as readily as he flew into wrath, and these sudden pardons, these unlooked-for escapes from the lion's jaws, were so unexpected as to win him a character for clemency. He was open and simple, and the ruler who never puzzles his subjects is generally liked. But with all these qualities he was essentially not English; he had very little English blood in him; he took little interest in England, save that her men made good fighters. He only spent ten months in England out of the ten years which he reigned. When he came back from the Crusades he plunged into wars in France, and he met an appropriate death, being mortally wounded by an arrow from the Castle of Chaluz, which he was besieging in order to get from his vassal a treasure which had been discovered there. It is characteristic of him that he forgave on his deathbed Bertrand de Gourdon, the man who fired the shot, and equally characteristic of his time that one of his mercenary captains kept Bertrand in prison till Richard had passed away, and then flayed him alive. But though Richard's connection with England was so flimsy, he has won in romance the same national admiration which has centred in Scotland on a queen who was equally foreign. Richard of England and Mary Queen of Scots were by birth, upbringing, and tastes both French.

The Angevin Power; Part 6

Chronology