Richard I, the Crusades, and the Duties of a Medieval King

Introduction: Richard I and the Debate Over His Kingship

King Richard I (reigned 1189–99) has always been a ruler who inspired strong feelings, both among his contemporaries and near-contemporaries and among subsequent historians.^[1] He has been seen as the model of ideal kingship: a truly Christian ruler, a wise monarch, and a great warrior-king, particularly in contrast to his successor King John^[2]; but also as neglectful of his true responsibilities, violent and bigoted — a bad ruler who neglected his realm and his people. Richard's role in the Crusades has always been seen as central to his significance, and indeed there are few rulers so entirely identified with a particular cause as Richard is with the Crusades. He organized and commanded the Third Crusade (1189–92). Writers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw his crusading achievements as proof of his greatness as a king; later historians have tended to see them as distractions from his true responsibilities of governing England.

This essay argues that to criticize Richard for his crusading involvements, and to suggest that the Crusades prevented him from acting as an effective ruler of his dominions (which encompassed far more than merely England), is to misunderstand the role of a Christian king as understood by Richard's own contemporaries.

Richard and the Angevin Empire

Richard, second son of King Henry II, became king in 1189 of the Angevin Empire assembled by his Plantagenet predecessors, and above all by his father. This empire stretched from the Scottish Border to the Pyrenees. As well as England, his lands incorporated much of present-day western France: Normandy, Maine and Anjou, and Aquitaine.^[3] The vast extent of this realm — the dominant political power in the Europe of its time — and the complex demands it placed upon its ruler must be kept in mind when analysing the reign of Richard I. England was a central part of this realm; it was a wealthy, highly organized, well-governed, and prestigious kingdom, but it was only one part of a greater whole.

Richard understood this, and it is a key point in appreciating why the criticism of him as an absentee king (from an English point of view) is mistaken. Richard had been made Duke of Aquitaine in 1172, at the age of fourteen, and thereafter spent most of his life on the continent rather than in England. Even after becoming King of England he retained his awareness that he ruled much more than England, and that his interests, rights, and responsibilities extended far beyond that country's borders. He had himself acted as essentially a continental ruler at the end of Henry II's reign, when he allied with the French king, Philip Augustus, against his own father.^[4] Modern historians — particularly from the nineteenth century onwards — who have regarded Richard as first and last a king of England and have criticized him for spending so much time and effort on affairs beyond England have missed this essential point.^[5]

The Crusading Imperative and Richard's Continental Identity

It was when Richard's sense of belonging to the wider world of Christendom engaged with his status as a continental noble that he became involved in the Crusading movement. In 1187 the great Muslim warrior Saladin defeated the Crusader armies led by Guy of Lusignan and extended his authority over Jerusalem and almost all of Palestine.^[6] Guy was one of Richard's vassals as Duke of Aquitaine, a reflection of the long-standing involvement of knights and nobles from the Angevin lands in the Crusader Kingdoms. The Christian imperative to recover the Holy Land from the hands of the 'infidels' thus coincided with the demands of family, locality, and feudal obligation in drawing Richard into the Crusade. He was one of the first to take the cross in 1187, laying the foundations for his engagement in the Crusade even before he became king in 1189.

The Crusades were therefore not an external imposition on Richard's position as King of England, but a direct result of his responsibilities as overlord of the Angevin Empire. In pursuing the war against the infidel in the East he was doing precisely what contemporaries believed he should be doing, and their approval is clear in the evidence that has come down to us from Richard's own lifetime and immediately afterwards. The thirteenth-century chronicler Roger of Wendover described Richard as not only "the most victorious" of monarchs but also "pious, most merciful, and most wise,"^[7] while his Muslim contemporary Ibn-al-Athir paid tribute to Richard's "courage, shrewdness, energy and patience" and called him "the most remarkable ruler of his times."^[8] One contemporary, a clerk, referred to him in official documents as "Richard the Good."^[9]

Churchmen honored his commitment to the Crusading ideal. In his coronation oath, Richard's first promise had been to protect the Church, and contemporary clergy saw his willingness to go far beyond the usual lip-service of English monarchs to the Crusades as admirable in every way. It is notable that Richard's reign was free of the church-state conflicts that plagued the reigns of his predecessor Henry II and his successor John. His reputation as a Crusader-King, a defender of the Church, and a truly Christian monarch certainly played a role in easing the relationship between Church and State under Richard. That successful relationship was embodied in the figure of Hubert Walter, Archbishop of Canterbury and Chief Justiciar, and thus head of both religious and secular government in England.^[10] Walter was an extremely capable administrator and a far-sighted officer of the state, qualities well displayed in his effective response to the rebellion of Richard's brother John in 1193.^[11] No king who brought figures of such quality to the government of England could be considered to have failed his realm.

Conclusion: An Integrated Kingship

It has been argued throughout that Richard's crusading achievements cannot be separated from his achievements as King of England, and that those historians who have condemned him for favoring endless foreign wars over the business of serving the interests of his kingdom and his subjects at home have failed to understand this. The role of a medieval king was not to sit at a desk surrounded by charters, rolls, tax returns, and other documents of governmental bureaucracy, but to protect the Church, serve the cause of Christ, protect and extend his patrimony by means of fighting and maintaining a readiness to fight, and to pass on his realms in a healthy state to his successor. King Richard I did all these things, and could not have done them had he not identified himself and his reign with the Crusading ideal.

Richard saw all his kingly responsibilities in the context of Europe and the Christian world. England was but one part of his Angevin patrimony, which was itself but one part of Christendom; Christendom was threatened by the rise of Muslim power, and by opposing that power he was defending his patrimony and every part of it, including England. This role required him to be a warrior-king, and as such he achieved greater success than any other English ruler against greater obstacles — organizing and leading the Crusade, dealing with rebellions and the incursions of Philip Augustus's resurgent France into his domains, winning battles and negotiating peaces that shaped the future of Palestine for a century and more after his death. As an administrator he succeeded in making the systems of governance throughout his realms produce the money needed to finance his wars and provide the manpower needed to lead and fight them. He successfully operated the systems of obligation and patronage to underpin the government of his realm. Finally, he positioned England and his other realms at the centre of the European political map, gave them a prominence and a prestige they had not possessed before, and established his own image as the perfect warrior-king of Christendom for his own and subsequent generations. His achievements were those of King of England and of the greatest crusader of his age — but contemporaries saw no conflict between these roles.