Kinlight · The British Royal Line

King Richard I The Lion Heart

1157 – 1199 · Generation XII · King of England (r. 1189–1199) · House of Plantagenet

Portrait of King Richard I The Lion Heart

Richard was born on 8 September 1157, probably at Beaumont Palace in Oxford, the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. As a younger son he was not expected to be king, and his mother’s duchy shaped him more than England did. In 1172, at fourteen, he was formally invested as Duke of Aquitaine and Count of Poitou at ceremonies in Poitiers and Limoges. He wrote verse in French and Occitan, and contemporaries remembered him as tall, fair-skinned and red-gold haired.

His training was war, much of it against his own family. In 1173 he joined his brothers Henry and Geoffrey in revolt against their father, with the backing of Louis VII of France, who knighted him. The rising failed, and in September 1174 Richard went to Henry at Poitiers and begged his forgiveness. For the next decade he fought the unruly barons of Aquitaine, and his capture in 1179 of Taillebourg, a fortress thought impregnable, frightened many rebels into submission. When Henry the Young King died in 1183, Richard became heir to England, but he refused to give up Aquitaine to his youngest brother John and drew closer to Philip II of France. By 1187 Gerald of Wales was calling him “this our lion”, though the name Lionheart is first recorded during the crusade. In July 1189 Richard and Philip defeated the old king, who died at Chinon two days later.

Crowned at Westminster Abbey in September 1189, Richard turned at once to the crusade for which he had taken the cross in 1187, the year Saladin captured Jerusalem. He paid for it by emptying the treasury, selling offices and lands, and releasing William the Lion of Scotland from his homage in return for 10,000 marks. On the way east he seized Messina in Sicily and then, in May 1191, conquered Cyprus from its ruler Isaac Komnenos. While there he married Berengaria of Navarre at Limassol on 12 May. At Acre he helped bring the long siege to an end that July, and once Philip II had gone home he was the crusade’s leading commander. After the surrender he had some 2,700 Muslim prisoners put to death. He beat Saladin at Arsuf in September 1191 and again at Jaffa the next summer, and twice brought his army close to Jerusalem, but he never attacked it, reckoning that even if the city fell he could not hold it. The treaty he agreed with Saladin in September 1192 left Jerusalem in Muslim hands but gave Christian pilgrims access to it.

The journey home ended in captivity. Wrecked near Aquileia at the head of the Adriatic, Richard set out overland through central Europe and was seized near Vienna shortly before Christmas 1192 by Leopold V of Austria, whom he had insulted at Acre. Leopold passed him to the Emperor Henry VI, who demanded a ransom of 150,000 marks. Eleanor led the effort to raise it, a levy of a quarter of the value of their property fell on churchmen and laymen alike, and Richard was freed in February 1194. His brother John, who had plotted with Philip in his absence, was forgiven. Richard had himself crowned again at Winchester in March 1194 and then left England for good.

The rest of his reign was a war to recover what Philip had taken in Normandy. Richard built alliances against the French king, won at Fréteval in 1194 and at Gisors in 1198, and raised Château Gaillard above the Seine, a fortress built in about two years and one of the most costly works of its day. In March 1199, while besieging the small castle of Châlus-Chabrol in the Limousin during a revolt, a crossbow bolt hit him in the shoulder. Gangrene set in, and he died on 6 April 1199. According to the chroniclers he pardoned the bowman before he died. His heart was buried at Rouen and his body at Fontevraud Abbey, at his father’s feet. He left no children with Berengaria, and his brother John succeeded him.

Richard spent perhaps six months of his ten-year reign in England. For four centuries he was celebrated as the model of a chivalrous king, but later historians charged him with using England only to pay for his wars. Many modern scholars now regard that judgement as anachronistic, since he ruled lands that stretched far beyond England.

Place in the family

  • King Richard I The Lion Heart was the elder of 2 children of King Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine recorded in this archive.

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One of 26 people of House of Plantagenet (1126–1485) in this archive. The longest-reigning English house, counting its Angevin beginning and the rival Lancaster and York branches that fought the Wars of the Roses.

Line of descent: King William I The Conqueror → King Henry I → Matilda the Empress → King Henry II → King Richard I The Lion Heart.

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Life

  • 1157 — Born
  • 1189 — Richard I becomes King of England upon the death of Henry II
  • 1189 — William Longchamp is appointed Chancellor of England and governs the country during Richard’s absence abroad
  • 1189 — Richard sets out with Philip of France on the Third Crusade to the Holy Land
  • 1191 — Married Berengaria of Navarre
  • 1191 — William Longchamp falls from power and Richard’s brother, John, takes over the government
  • 1191 — Richard captures the city of Acre, Palestine, and defeats Saladin at Arsuuf, near Jaffa
  • 1192 — Richard reaches an agreement with Saladin to guarantee Christians safe pilgrimage to Jerusalem
  • 1192 — On his way back to England from Palestine, Richard is captured and handed over to Henry VI, Emperor of Germany. Henry demands a ransom of 100,000 marks from England for Richard’s release from prison
  • 1194 — The ransom is raised in England. Richard is released from captivity.
  • 1195 — Richard returns to England for a brief period, before leaving to fight in France, never to return to his homeland.
  • 1199 — Died
  • 1199 — Richard is mortally wounded by an arrow from a crossbow in battle at Chalus, in France.

Sources

  1. Richard I of England · Wikipedia
  2. Richard I Coeur de Lion (‘The Lionheart’) (r. 1189–1199) · The Royal Family (royal.uk)
  3. Richard I of England · World History Encyclopedia

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