Eighth Generation  

50. Earl William FitzRobert-[18097] (Robert de Caen (Earl)⁴¹, Henry I (King)²¹, William I "the Conqueror" (King)¹¹, Robert I "The Magnificent" (Duke)⁶, Richard "the Good" II (Duke)³, Richard I "The Fearless" (Duke)², William I "Longsword" (Duke)¹) was born on 11-23-1116 in Gloycestershire, England and died on 11-23-1183 at age 67.

William married Hawise de Beaumont-[18098] [MRIN:6111] about 1150 in Leicestershire. Hawise was born about 1130 in Leicester, Leicestershire, England and died on 4-24-1183 about age 53.

The child from this marriage was:

+ 57 F    i. Mabel FitzRobert-[18099] was born in 1155 and died in 1188 at age 33.

51. Beatrice de Vaux-[18208] (Rainald (Earl of Cornwall)⁴⁴, Henry I (King)²¹, William I "the Conqueror" (King)¹¹, Robert I "The Magnificent" (Duke)⁶, Richard "the Good" II (Duke)³, Richard I "The Fearless" (Duke)², William I "Longsword" (Duke)¹) was born in 1149 in Stoke, Devonshire, England and died on 3-24-1217 at age 68.

Beatrice married William II de Briwere-[18209] [MRIN:6165] in 1174. William was born in 1145 in Stoke, Devonshire, England and died about 1230 in Devonshire, England about age 85.

The child from this marriage was:

+ 58 F    i. Gracia de Briwere "The Dark"-[18210] was born in 1186 in Stoke, Devonshire, England and died in 1223 at age 37.

52. King Henry II Plantagenet "Curtmantle"-[18085] (Queen Matilda Adelaide of England⁴⁵, Henry I (King)²¹, William I "the Conqueror" (King)¹¹, Robert I "The Magnificent" (Duke)⁶, Richard "the Good" II (Duke)³, Richard I "The Fearless" (Duke)², William I "Longsword" (Duke)¹) was born on 3-5-1133 in Le Mans, Sarthe, France and died on 7-6-1189 in Chinon, Indre-et-Loire, France at age 56.

General Notes: Henry II, "FitzEmpress" or "Curtmantle".
King of England 25 October 1154 to 6 July 1189
Titles: King of England; Duke of Normandy; Duke of Aquitaine, County of Anjou, Touraine and Maine.
Born: Le Mans, Maine, 5 March 1133
Died: Chinon Castle, Anjou, 6 July 1189, aged 56.
Buried: Fontevrault Abbey, France
Married: 18 May 1152 at Bordeaux Cathedral, Gascony, Eleanor (c1122-1204), daughter of William X, Duke of Aquitaine and divorcee' of Louis VII King of France.
8 children.
12 illegitimate children.

Henry of Anjou, Henry Plantagenet, Henry Fitzempress, or Henry Curtmantle (Short Mantle)duke of Normandy (from 1150), count of Anjou (from 1151), duke of Aquitaine (from 1152), and king of England (from 1154), who greatly expanded his Anglo-French domains and strengthened the royal administration in England. His quarrels with Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, and with members of his family (his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine, and such sons as Richard the Lion-Heart and John Lackland) ultimately brought about his defeat.

After receiving a good literary education, part of it in England, Henry became duke of Normandy in 1150 and count of Anjou on the death of his father, Geoffrey Plantagenet, in 1151. Although the claim of his mother, Matilda, daughter of Henry I, to the English crown had been set aside by her cousin, King Stephen, in 1152, Henry advanced his fortunes by marrying the beautiful and talented Eleanor, recently divorced from King Louis VII of France, who brought with her hand the lordship of Aquitaine. Henry invaded England in 1153, and King Stephen agreed to accept him as coadjutor and heir. When Stephen died the following year Henry succeeded without opposition, thus becoming lord of territories stretching from Scotland to the Pyrenees.

The young king lacked visible majesty. Of stocky build, with freckled face, close-cut tawny hair, and gray eyes, he dressed carelessly and grew to be bulky; but his personality commanded attention and drew men to his service. He could be a good companion, with ready repartee in a jostling crowd, but he displayed at times the ungovernable temper of a furious animal and could be heartless and ruthless when necessary. Restless, impetuous, always on the move, regardless of the convenience of others, hewas at ease with scholars, and his administrative decrees were the work of a cool realist. In his long reign of 34 years he spent an aggregate of only 14 in England.

His career may be considered in three aspects: the defense and enlargement of his dominions, the involvement in two lengthy and disastrous personal quarrels, and his lasting administrative and judicial reforms.

His territories are often called the Angevin Empire. This is a misnomer, for Henry's sovereignty rested upon various titles, and there was no institutional or legal bond between different regions. Some, indeed, were under the feudal overlordship of the king of France. By conquest, through diplomacy, and through the marriages of two of his sons, he gained acknowledged possession of what is now the west of France from the northernmost part of Normandy to the Pyrenees, near Carcassonne. During his reign, the dynastic marriages of three daughters gave him political influence in Germany, Castile, and Sicily. His continental dominions brought him into contact with Louis VII of France, the German emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), and, for much of the reign, Pope Alexander III. With Louis the relationship was ambiguous. Henry had taken Louis's former wife and her rich heritage. He subsequently acquired the Vexin in Normandy by the premature marriage of his son Henry to Louis's daughter, and during much of his reign he was attempting to outfight or outwit the French king, who, for his part, gave shelter and comfort to Henry's enemy, Thomas Becket, the archbishop of Canterbury. The feud with Louis implied friendly relations with Germany, where Henry was helped by his mother's first marriage to the emperor Henry V but hindered by Frederick's maintenance of an antipope, the outcome of a disputed papal election in 1159. Louis supported Alexander III, whose case was strong, and Henry became arbiter of European opinion. Though acknowledging Alexander, he continued throughout the Becket controversy to threaten transference of allegiance to Frederick's antipope, thus impeding Alexander's freedom of action.

Early in his reign Henry obtained from Malcolm III of Scotland homage and the restoration of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland, and later in the reign (1174) homage was exacted from William the Lion, Malcolm's brother and successor. In 1157 Henry invaded Wales and received homage, though without conquest. In Ireland, reputedly bestowed upon him by Pope Adrian IV, Henry allowed an expedition of barons from South Wales to establish Anglo-Norman supremacy in Leinster (1169), which the King himself extended in 1171.

His remarkable achievements were impaired, however, by the stresses caused by a dispute with Becket and by discords in his own family.

The quarrel with Becket, Henry's trusted and successful chancellor (1154–62), broke out soon after Becket's election to the archbishopric of Canterbury (May 1162). It led to a complete severance of relations and to the Archbishop's voluntary exile. Besides disrupting the public life of the church, this situation embroiled Henry with Louis VII and Alexander III; and, though it seemingly did little to hamper Henry's activities, the time and service spent in negotiations and embassies was considerable, and the tragic denouement in Becket's murder earned for Henry a good deal of damaging opprobrium.

More dangerous were the domestic quarrels, which thwarted Henry's plans and even endangered his life and which finally brought him down in sorrow and shame.

Throughout his adult life Henry's sexual morality was lax; but his relations with Eleanor, 11 years his senior, were for long tolerably harmonious, and, between 1153 and 1167, she bore him eight children. Of these, the four sons who survived infancy—Henry, Geoffrey, Richard, and John—repaid his genuine affection with resentment toward their father and discord among themselves. None was blameless, but the cause of the quarrels was principally Henry's policy of dividing his dominions among his sons while reserving real authority for himself. In 1170 he crowned his eldest son, Henry, as co-regent with himself; but in fact the young king had no powers and resented his nonentity, and in 1173 he opposed his father's proposal to find territories for the favored John (Lackland) at the expense of Geoffrey. Richard joined the protest of the others and was supported by Eleanor. There was a general revolt of the baronage in England and Normandy, supported by Louis VII in France and William the Lion in Scotland. Henry's prestige was at a low ebb after the murder of Becket and recent taxation, but he reacted energetically, settled matters in Normandy and Brittany, and crossed to England, where fighting had continued for a year. On July 12, 1174, he did public penance at Canterbury. The next day the King of Scots was taken at Alnwick, and three weeks later Henry had suppressed the rebellion in England. His sons were pardoned, but Eleanor was kept in custody until her husband died.

A second rebellion flared up in 1181 with a quarrel between his sons Henry and Richard over the government of Aquitaine, but young Henry died in 1183. In 1184 Richard quarrelled with John, who had been ordered to take Aquitaine off his hands. Matters were eased by the death of Geoffrey (1186), but the King's attempt to find an inheritance for John led to a coalition against him of Richard and the young Philip II Augustus, who had succeeded his father, Louis VII, as king of France. Henry was defeated and forced to give way, and news that John also had joined his enemies hastened the King's death near Tours in 1189.

In striking contrast to the checkered pattern of Henry's wars and schemes, his governance of England displays a careful and successful adaptation of means to a single end—the control of a realm served by the best administration in Europe. This success was obscured for contemporaries and later historians by the varied and often dramatic interest of political and personal events, and not until the 19th century—when the study of the public records began and when legal history was illuminated by the British jurist Frederic William Maitland and his followers—did the administrative genius of Henry and his servants appear in its true light.

At the beginning of his reign Henry found England in disorder, with royal authority ruined by civil war and the violence of feudal magnates. His first task was to crush the unruly elements and restore firm government, using the existing institutions of government, with which the Anglo-Norman monarchy was well provided. Among these was the King's council of barons, with its inner group of ministers who were both judges and accountants and who sat at the Exchequer, into which the taxes and dues of the shires were paid by the King's local representative, the sheriff (shire-reeve). The council contained an unusually able group of men—some of them were great barons, such as Richard de Lucy and Robert de Beaumont, earl of Leicester; others included civil servants, such as Nigel, bishop of Ely, Richard Fitzneale, and his son, Richard of Ilchester. Henry took a personal interest in the technique of the Exchequer, which was described at length for posterity in the celebrated Dialogus de scaccario, whose composition seemed to Maitland “one of the most wonderful things of Henry's wonderful reign.” How far these royal servants were responsible for the innovations of the reign cannot be known, though the development in practice continued steadily, even during the King's long absences abroad.

In the early months of the reign the King, using his energetic and versatile chancellor Becket, beat down the recalcitrant barons and their castles and began to restore order to the country and to the various forms of justice. It was thus, a few years later, that he came into conflict with the bishops, then led by Becket, over the alleged right of clerics to be tried for crime by an ecclesiastical court. A result of this was the celebrated collection of decrees—the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164)—which professed to reassert the ancestral rights of the King over the church in such matters as clerical immunity, appointment of bishops, custody of vacant sees, excommunication, and appeals to Rome. The Archbishop, after an initial compliance, refused to accept these, and they were throughout the controversy, a block to an agreement. The quarrel touched what was to be the King's chief concern—the country's judicial system.

Anglo-Saxon England had two courts of justice—that of the hundred, a division of the shire, for petty offenses, and that of the shire, presided over by the sheriff. The feudal regime introduced by the Normans added courts of the manor and of the honor (a complex of estates). Above all stood the royal right to set up courts for important pleas and to hear, either in person or through his ministers, any appeal. Arrest was a local responsibility, usually hard upon a flagrant crime. A doubt of guilt was settled by ordeal by battle; the accused in the shire underwent tests held to reveal God's judgment. Two developments had come in since William the Conqueror's day: the occasional mission of royal justices into the shires and the occasional use of a jury of local notables as fact finders in cases of land tenure.

Henry's first comprehensive program was the Assize of Clarendon (1166), in which the procedure of criminal justice was established; 12 “lawful” men of every hundred, and four of every village, acting as a “jury of presentment,” were bound to declare on oath whether any local man was a robber or murderer. Trial of those accused was reserved to the King's justices, and prisons for those awaiting trial were to be erected at the King's expense. This provided a system of criminal investigation for the whole country, with a reasonable verdict probable because the firm accusation of the jury entailed exile even if the ordeal acquitted the accused. In feudal courts the trial by battle could be avoided by the establishment of a concord, or fine. This system presupposed regular visits by the King's justices on circuit, and these tours became part of the administration of the country. The justices formed three groups: one on tour, one “on the bench” at Westminster, and one with the King when the court was out of London. Those at Westminster dealt with private pleas and cases sent up from the justices on eyre.

Equally effective were the “possessory assizes.” In the feudal world, especially in times of turmoil, violent ejections and usurpations were common, with consequent vendettas and violence. Pleas brought to feudal courts could be delayed or altogether frustrated. As a remedy Henry established the possessory writ, an order from the Exchequer, directing the sheriff to convene a sworn local jury at petty assize to establish the fact of dispossession, whereupon the sheriff had to reinstate the defendant pending a subsequent trial at the grand assize to establish the rights of the case. This was the writ of Novel Disseisin (i.e., recent dispossession). This writ was returnable; if the sheriff failed to achieve reinstatement, he had to summon the defendant to appear before the King's justices and himself be present with the writ. A similar writ of Mort d'Ancestor decided whether the ancestor of a plaintiff had in fact possessed the estate, whereas that of Darrein Presentment (i.e., last presentation) decided who in fact had last presented a parson to a particular benefice. All these writs gave rapid and clear verdicts subject to later revision. The fees enriched the treasury, and recourse to the courts both extended the King's control and discouraged irregular self-help. Two other practices developed by Henry became permanent. One was scutage, the commutation of military service for a money payment; the other was the obligation, put on all free men with a property qualification by the Assize of Arms (1181), to possess arms suitable to their station.

The ministers who engaged upon these reforms took a fully professional interest in the business they handled, as may be seen in Fitzneale's writing on the Exchequer and that of the chief justiciar, Ranulf de Glanville, on the laws of England; and many of the expedients adopted by the King may have been suggested by them. In any case, the long-term results were very great. By the multiplication of a class of experts in finance and law Henry did much to establish two great professions, and the location of a permanent court at Westminster and the character of its business settled for England (and for much of the English-speaking world) that common law, not Roman law, would rule the courts and that London, and not an academy, would be its principal nursery. Moreover, Henry's decrees ensured that the judge-and-jury combination would become normal and that the jury would gradually supplant ordeal and battle as being responsible for the verdict. Finally, the increasing use of scutage, and the availability of the royal courts for private suits, were effective agents in molding the feudal monarchy into a monarchical bureaucracy before the appearance of Parliament.

Henry II lived in an age of biographers and letter writers of genius. John of Salisbury, Thomas Becket, Giraldus Cambrensis, Walter Map, Peter of Blois, and others knew him well and left their impressions. All agreed on his outstanding ability and striking personality and also recorded his errors and aspects of his character that appear contradictory, whereas modern historians agree upon the difficulty of reconciling its main features. Without deep religious or moral conviction, Henry nevertheless was respected by three contemporary saints, Aelred of Rievaulx, Gilbert of Sempringham, and Hugh of Lincoln. Normally an approachable and faithful friend and master, he could behave with unreasonable inhumanity. His conduct and aims were always self-centred, but he was neither a tyrant nor an odious egoist. Both as man and ruler he lacked the stamp of greatness that marked Alfred the Great and William the Conqueror. He seemed also to lack wisdom and serenity; and he had no comprehensive view of the country's interest, no ideals of kingship, no sympathetic care for his people. But if his reign is to be judged by its consequences for England, it undoubtedly stands high in importance, and Henry, as its mainspring, appears among the most notable of English kings.

Henry married Eleanore d' Aquitanie-[18087] [MRIN:6105] on 5-18-1152 in Poitiers. Eleanore was born about 1122 in Chateau de Belin, Guinne, France and died on 4-1-1204 in l'Abbaye de Maine et Loire, France about age 82.

General Notes: born c. 1122
died April 1, 1204, Fontevrault, Anjou, Fr.

Also called Eleanor Of Guyenne, French Éléonore, or Aliénor, D'aquitaine, or De Guyennequeen consort of both Louis VII of France (in 1137–52) and Henry II of England (in 1152–1204) and mother of Richard I the Lion-Heart and John of England. She was perhaps the most powerful woman in 12th-century Europe.

Eleanor was the daughter and heiress of William X, duke of Aquitaine and count of Poitiers, who possessed one of the largest domains in France—larger, in fact, than those held by the French king. Upon William's death in 1137 she inherited the Duchy of Aquitaine and in July 1137 married the heir to the French throne, who succeeded his father, Louis VI, the following month. Eleanor became queen of France, a title she held for the next 15 years. Beautiful, capricious, and adored by Louis, Eleanor exerted considerable influence over him, often goading him into undertaking perilous ventures.

From 1147 to 1149 Eleanor accompanied Louis on the Second Crusade to protect the fragile Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, founded after the First Crusade only 50 years before, from Turkish assault. Eleanor's conduct during this expedition, especially at the court of her uncle Raymond of Poitiers at Antioch, aroused Louis's jealousy and marked the beginning of their estrangement. After their return to France and a short-lived reconciliation, their marriage was annulled in March 1152. According to feudal customs, Eleanor then regained possession of Aquitaine, and two months later she married the grandson of Henry I of England, Henry Plantagenet, count of Anjou and duke of Normandy. In 1154 he became, as Henry II, king of England, with the result that England, Normandy, and the west of France were united under his rule. Eleanor had only two daughters by Louis VII; to her new husband she bore five sons and three daughters. The sons were William, who died at the age of three; Henry; Richard, the Lion-Heart; Geoffrey, duke of Brittany; and John, surnamed Lackland until, having outlived all his brothers, he inherited, in 1199, the crown of England. The daughters were Matilda, who married Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony and Bavaria; Eleanor, who married Alfonso VIII, king of Castile; and Joan, who married successively William II, king of Sicily, and Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. Eleanor would well have deserved to be named the “grandmother of Europe.”

During her childbearing years, she participated actively in the administration of the realm and even more actively in the management of her own domains. She was instrumental in turning the court of Poitiers, then frequented by the most famous troubadours of the time, into a centre of poetry and a model of courtly life and manners. She was the great patron of the two dominant poetic movements of the time: the courtly love tradition, conveyed in the romantic songs of the troubadours, and the historical matière de Bretagne, or “legends of Britanny,” which originated in Celtic traditions and in the Historia regum Britanniae, written by the chronicler Geoffrey of Monmouth some time between 1135 and 1139.

The revolt of her sons against her husband in 1173 put her cultural activities to a brutal end. Since Eleanor, 11 years her husband's senior, had long resented his infidelities, the revolt may have been instigated by her; in any case, she gave her sons considerable military support. The revolt failed, and Eleanor was captured while seeking refuge in the kingdom of her first husband, Louis VII. Her semi-imprisonment in England ended only with the death of Henry II in 1189. On her release, Eleanor played a greater political role than ever before. She actively prepared for Richard's coronation as king, was administrator of the realm during his crusade to the Holy Land, and, after his capture by the Duke of Austria on Richard's return from the east, collected his ransom and went in person to escort him to England. During Richard's absence, she succeeded in keeping his kingdom intact and in thwarting the intrigues of his brother John Lackland and Philip II Augustus, king of France, against him.

In 1199 Richard died without leaving an heir to the throne, and John was crowned king. Eleanor, nearly 80 years old, fearing the disintegration of the Plantagenet domain, crossed the Pyrenees in 1200 in order to fetch her granddaughter Blanche from the court of Castile and marry her to the son of the French king. By this marriage she hoped to insure peace between the Plantagenets of England and the Capetian kings of France. In the same year she helped to defend Anjou and Aquitaine against her grandson Arthur of Brittany, thus securing John's French possessions. In 1202 John was again in her debt for holding Mirebeau against Arthur, until John, coming to her relief, was able to take him prisoner. John's only victories on the Continent, therefore, were due to Eleanor.

She died in 1204 at the monastery at Fontevrault, Anjou, where she had retired after the campaign at Mirebeau. Her contribution to England extended beyond her own lifetime; after the loss of Normandy (1204), it was her own ancestral lands and not the old Norman territories that remained loyal to England. She has been misjudged by many French historians who have noted only her youthful frivolity, ignoring the tenacity, political wisdom, and energy that characterized the years of her maturity. “She was beautiful and just, imposing and modest, humble and elegant”; and, as the nuns of Fontevrault wrote in their necrology: a queen “who surpassed almost all the queens of the world.”

Children from this marriage were:

   59 M    i. William Plantagenet-[18627] .

   60 M    ii. Henry Plantagenet-[18628] .

   61 F    iii. Matilda Plantagenet-[18632] .

   62 F    iv. Eleanor Plantagenet-[18633] .

   63 F    v. Joan Plantagenet-[18634] .

   64 M    vi. King Richard de Aquitaine I "Lionheart"-[18629] was born on 9-8-1157 in Beaumont Palace, Oxford, England, died on 4-6-1199 in Chalus, Aquitaine at age 41, and was buried in Fontevrault Abbey, Anjou.

General Notes: born Sept. 8, 1157, Oxford
died April 6, 1199, Châlus, Duchy of Aquitaine

Richard The Lion-heart, or Lion-hearted, French Richard Coeur De Lionduke of Aquitaine (from 1168) and of Poitiers (from 1172) and king of England, duke of Normandy, and count of Anjou (1189–99). His knightly manner and his prowess in the Third Crusade (1189–92) made him a popular king in his own time as well as the hero of countless romantic legends. He has been viewed less kindly by more recent historians and scholars.

Richard was the third son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and he was given the Duchy of Aquitaine, his mother's inheritance, at the age of 11 and was enthroned as duke at Poitiers in 1172. Richard possessed precocious political and military ability, won fame for his knightly prowess, and quickly learned how to control the turbulent aristocracy of Poitou and Gascony. Like all Henry II's legitimate sons, he had little or no filial piety, foresight, or sense of responsibility. He joined his brothers in the great rebellion (1173–74) against their father, who invaded Aquitaine twice before Richard submitted and received pardon. Thereafter Richard was occupied with suppressing baronial revolts in his own duchy. His harshness infuriated the Gascons, who revolted in 1183 and called in the help of the “Young King” Henry and his brother Geoffrey of Brittany in an effort to drive Richard from his duchy altogether. Alarmed at the threatened disintegration of his empire, Henry II brought the feudal host of his continental lands to Richard's aid, but the younger Henry died suddenly (June 11, 1183) and the uprising collapsed.

Richard was now heir to England, and to Normandy and Anjou (which were regarded as inseparable), and his father wished him to yield Aquitaine to his youngest brother, John. But Richard, a true southerner, would not surrender the duchy in which he had grown up, and even appealed, against Henry II, to the young king of France, Philip II Augustus. In November 1188 he did homage to Philip for all the English holdings on French soil and in 1189 openly joined forces with Philip to drive Henry into abject submission. They chased him from Le Mans to Saumur, forced him to acknowledge Richard as his heir, and at last harried him to his death (July 6, 1189).

Richard received Normandy on July 20 and the English throne on September 30. Richard, unlike Philip, had only one ambition, to lead the crusade prompted by Saladin's capture of Jerusalem in 1187. He had no conception of planning for the future of the English monarchy and put up everything for sale to buy arms for the crusade. Yet he had not become king to preside over the dismemberment of the Angevin empire. He broke with Philip and did not neglect Angevin defenses on the Continent. Open war was averted only because Philip also took the cross. Richard dipped deep into his father's treasure and sold sheriffdoms and other offices. With all this he raised a formidable fleet and an army, and in 1190 he departed for the Holy Land, traveling via Sicily.

Richard found the Sicilians hostile and took Messina by storm (October 4). To prevent the German emperor Henry VI from ruling their country, the Sicilians had elected the native Tancred of Lecce, who had imprisoned the late king's wife, Joan of England (Richard's sister), and denied her possession of her dower. By the Treaty of Messina Richard obtained for Joan her release and her dower, acknowledged Tancred as king of Sicily, declared Arthur of Brittany (Richard's nephew) to be his own heir, and provided for Arthur to marry Tancred's daughter. This treaty infuriated the Germans, who were also taking part in the Third Crusade, and it incited Richard's brother John to treachery and rebellion. Richard joined the other crusaders at Acre on June 8, 1191, having conquered Cyprus on his way there. While at Limassol in Cyprus, Richard married (May 12) Berengaria of Navarre.

Acre fell in July 1191, and on September 7 Richard's brilliant victory at Ars¨f put the crusaders in possession of Joppa. Twice Richard led his forces to within a few miles of Jerusalem. But the recapture of the city, which constituted the chief aim of the Third Crusade, eluded him. There were fierce quarrels among the French, German, and English contingents. Richard insulted Leopold V, duke of Austria, by tearing down his banner and quarreled with Philip Augustus, who returned to France after the fall of Acre. Richard's candidate for the crown of Jerusalem was his vassal Guy de Lusignan, whom he supported against the German candidate, Conrad of Montferrat. It was rumored, unjustly, that Richard connived at Conrad's murder. After a year's unproductive skirmishing, Richard (September 1192) made a truce for three years with Saladin that permitted the crusaders to hold Acre and a thin coastal strip and gave Christian pilgrims free access to the holy places.

Richard sailed home by way of the Adriatic, because of French hostility, and a storm drove his ship ashore near Venice. Because of the enmity of Duke Leopold he disguised himself, but he was discovered at Vienna in December 1192 and imprisoned in the Duke's castle at Dürnstein on the Danube. Later, he was handed over to Henry VI, who kept him at various imperial castles. It was around Richard's captivity in a castle, whose identity was at first unknown in England, that the famous romance of Blondel was woven in the 13th century.

Under the threat of being handed over to Philip II, Richard agreed to the harsh terms imposed by Henry VI: a colossal ransom of 150,000 marks and the surrender of his kingdom to the Emperor on condition that he receive it back as a fief. The raising of the ransom money was one of the most remarkable fiscal measures of the 12th century and gives striking proof of the prosperity of England. A very high proportion of the ransom was paid, and meanwhile (February 1194) Richard was released.

He returned at once to England and was crowned for the second time on April 17, fearing that the independence of his kingship had been compromised. Within a month he went to Normandy, never to return. His last five years were spent in warfare against Philip II, interspersed with occasional truces. The King left England in the capable hands of Hubert Walter, justiciar and archbishop of Canterbury. It was Richard's impetuosity that brought him to his death at the early age of 42. The Vicomte of Limoges refused to hand over a hoard of gold unearthed by a local peasant. Richard laid siege to his castle of Châlus and in an unlucky moment was wounded. He died in 1199. He was buried in the abbey church of Fontevrault, where Henry II and Queen Eleanor are also buried, and his effigy is still preserved there.

Richard was a thoroughgoing Angevin, irresponsible and hot-tempered, possessed of tremendous energy, and capable of great cruelty. He was more accomplished than most of his family, a soldier of consummate ability, a skillful politician, and capable of inspiring loyal service. He was a lyric poet of considerable power and the hero of troubadours. In striking contrast with his father and with King John, he was, there seems no doubt, a homosexual. He had no children by Queen Berengaria, with whom his relations seem to have been merely formal.

Richard married Berengaria Sancho-[18086] [MRIN:6390] on 5-12-1191 in Limassol, Cyprus. Berengaria was born c1163 and died after 1230.

   65 M    vii. Duke Geoffrey Plantagenet de Brittany-[18630] was born on 9-23-1158 and died in 8-1186 in Paris, France at age 27.

General Notes: born Sept. 23, 1158
died Aug. 19?, 1186, Paris [France]

also called Geoffrey Plantagenet, French Geoffroi Plantagenet duke of Brittany and earl of Richmond, the fourth, but third surviving, son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine.

In 1166, in furtherance of his father's policy of extending and consolidating Angevin power in France, Geoffrey was betrothed to Constance, daughter and heir of Conan IV, Duke of Brittany. At the same time, Duke Conan was forced to surrender to Henry II for Geoffrey's use the whole duchy of Brittany except the county of Guingamp. Geoffrey received the homage of the Breton nobles in 1169, and in 1173 he joined the rebellion against Henry II led by his eldest brother, Henry, the “Young King,” and supported by the rulers of France, Scotland, and Flanders. He submitted to his father at Michaelmas, 1174, and was sent back to Brittany, where he proceeded to recover lost ducal estates and subdue rebellious barons. He and Constance were married in 1181.

From then until his death he fought against both his brother Richard the Lion-Heart and his father (toward whom he behaved atrociously), largely for possession of Anjou. In 1185 he issued an “assize” at Rennes regularizing the succession to military fiefs in Brittany. He died at Paris, either of illness or in a tournament, leaving a daughter, Eleanor, and a posthumous son, Arthur I.

+ 66 M    viii. King John Plantagenet "Lackland"-[18631] was born on 12-24-1167 in Beaumont Palace, Oxford, England and died on 10-19-1216 in Newark Castle, Nottinghamshire, England at age 48.

Henry next married Ida Plantagenet-[18081] [MRIN:6104] in 1176. Ida was born in 1154 in Norfolk, England.