Cornwall: Richard of the Romans – early life

I’ve boiled down enough of the legends from Cornwall to move forward, but need to add in the mundane politics. This brings into focus Richard, the younger brother of King Henry III, who was effectively the ruler of England at various times, and after making himself the richest guy in England, he literally buys the throne of Germany. His presence simplifies mundane politics immensely. For magi, living in Cornwall, he’s an obvious problem. The Guernicus are not going to look away when some random guy turns up from the edge of the Earth with more money than the Pope and makes himself Emperor.

In 1220, the standard starting time for sagas, Richard is eleven, so he grows as the player characters age and come to power. I need a timeline for him for the final product, because he’s clearly a saga arc.

Timeline

1209 (5 January) Born at Winchester and named after his long-dead uncle. He had an older, illegitimate, brother also called Richard, and their histories get mixed up which would be useful for faeries in later centuries.

1212 The family of the king is rumoured dead, but they have fled to Durham and are safe there.

1215 Is fostered to Corfe Castle under Peter de Mauley. A tutor (“master”) is appointed for him (Sir Roger d’Acastre, who stays with him until 1223). His household is his master, two trumpeters, and some washerwomen, at this point.

1220 Henry III is crowned. Richard is bought to London by his guardian. Henry is childless, so Richard is the heir to the throne. Falkes de Breauté and Hugh de Burgh are vying for power in England.

In 1220 the Cornish stanneries are farmed for 1000 marks per year. Richard gets about 2000 pounds of profit from his stanneries a year, if you include the first right to buy tin, then sell it as a profit.

1221 Richard is granted the honour of the Eye, which is a nominal sort of grant. He doesn’t live there, and it is managed by a steward appointed for him by a Council of barons who are effectively running the country. It just gives his people the money to maintain his household

1223: Richard goes on pilgrimage to Canterbury with Alexander II of Scotland..

1224 de Breaute rebels, and after some setbacks, Hubert de Burgh crushes and hangs him, taking effective power in England. During this distraction the truce with France expires and they take Poitou, without any significant resistance. The English retain Bordeaux, Gascony and Bayonne, which send for help.

1225: Richard turns 16 and is knighted by his brother. He’s also given the title of High Sheriff of Cornwall.

The barons raise a special tax, and use it to raise a relief army, which is sent to the remaining Norman territories in what is now France. Henry sends his brother Richard as nominal leader, and names him Count of Poitou, but he never used the title for anything practical. The effective leader was the William Longsword, the Earl of Salisbury, a skilled veteran and the prince’s uncle. The force is small, somewhere between 40 and 70 knights, and later, 500 Welsh footmen. 36 000 pounds was sent out to Richard or paid on his behalf. Sometimes by the king’s Great Ship, sometimes by the Templars, sometimes by merchants in the employ of the Royal Wardrobe.

The force pacifies Gascony, but can’t save Poitou. It’s being led by Hugh de la Marche, who married Richard’s mother after King John died, so that must have been awkward. Richard tries to marry the daughter of the king of Laon, but Hugh de Burgh knocks that on the head. In 1225 Salisbury dies, and there’s no veteran campaigner to take his place.

1226 King Louis VIII takes the cross, and declares war on Raymond, the Count of Toulouse, who is a heretic and an ally of Richard’s. This makes attacking Louis’s lands morally abominable (you can’t invade a crusader’s lands. God hates that). Then in November Louis VIII dies, leaving a 12-year-old boy in theoretical charge of France. . Much of Poitou switches to the English side. Toulouse openly allies with the English, and the French sign truce. Peace treaty negotiations begin, but eventually fail..

Henry III gets into arguments with many of his earls about the borders of the royal forests. I’m putting that pin down to pick it up later.

1227 Various nobles switch their allegiance back to France and Richard withdraws his forces. He returns home, and is made Earl of Cornwall.

Hubert de Burgh is basically in charge of the kingdom, and in this year he’s made Earl of Kent and marries the sister of the King of Scotland, who had been at King John’s court for many years, presumably to be married to one of the princes. de Burgh has annoyed a lot of people, by this point, creating a rival faction led by the Earl of Chester.

After Richard has had Cornwall for a few weeks, he and Henry have an argument about possession of of eight Cornish demesne manors. Richard offers to have the lawyers sort it out, and Henry’s legal adviser suggests imprisoning Richard. Richard hears there’s a plot afoot and rides off to Reading in the middle of the night,

He then goes to Marlborough to link up with his friend William Marshal. Marshal was the son of a war hero (the reason you call a guy leading an army a Marshal is because of his dad. Also, they invented the title of Regent just for him).  Young William was holder of much of the Welsh marches, and he took his friend to the Earl of Chester, who held most of northern England. Five other Earls also raise their banners, and they get an army together at Stamford.

They send some demands, and Henry’s advisers buckle. Henry hands out the bribes thick and fast, and the army goes home. You remember those forest boundaries? They change back. Richard gets his mother’s dowry lands, the county of Brittany, and the lands of the Count of Boulogne. That sounds like a lot, but in effect he only got the bits which were in Britain, which means for example that the “lands of the County of Brittany” is a group of about eight manors in (the honor of St Valery.)

Richard’s income is about 1000 pounds a year after this settlement. He lives at Launceston in Cornwall most of the time, but he also now has Islesworth and Beckley, each just outside London, to live in when going to court. Berkhampstead, which is part of his mother’s dowry lands, is taken off him and given to Hugh de Burgh’s nephew, so bygones are not bygones.

1229: Richard gets Wallingford under the king’s pleasure, and probably gets back Berkhampstead. Wallingford is kind of his English HQ for a while. It’s technically his English “castle”. I suppose. Henry sends out a letter to his nobles suggesting they get ready to go with him on a campaign to an unnamed place, at an unnamed time. He tells the Cinque Ports to assemble a fleet, and eventually tells his people to assemble in Plymouth in October. When everyone arrives, Hubert de Burgh has failed to get a decent fleet together, and so it is all put off until April.

1230: Richard is given the Honor of the Eye ands a 1000 marks, to get him behind a war in Brittany. Henry and 450 knights sail to France. They achieve little of significance, and both Henry and Richard catch some sort of camp fever in September and come home.

Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, dies. His widow is William Marshal’s sister, Isabella. Three months later she marries Richard, which annoys Henry, because she’s a valuable heiress. Isabella has six children already. Eventually she and Richard have four, but only one lives to adulthood. He gets a fair swathe of Irish land, and the Broase lands, perhaps as part of the marriage deal. De Burgh then takes the Broase lands from him. and tries to take his Irish castles.

1231: Richard marries, and as a wedding gift, his lands in Cornwall, Wallingford and the Eye are changed from being held at the King;s pleasure to being held at fee. They are now his. This removes a lot of the friction from his relationship with his brother. At this point he also gets the stanneries of Cornwall. He’s given Cornwall and the stanneries for five fees, which seems mightily generous.

1233: A rebellion by the barons again.

1235: Richard asks the pope if he can divorce Isabella, and he is told that he needs to give the idea up. Then his son Henry is born (he reaches adulthood, but is murdered in 1271).

1238: Richard’s abortive rebellion, called the “demonstration”.

1239: Henry III has a son, and Richard ceases to be heir presumptive of England.

1232: Henry III takes the justiciarship from Hugh de Burgh. Peter de Riveaux becomes effective chief minister. He’s in charge of the exchequer, which means he has the realm’s money in his control. His relative, Peter de Roches, is one of his allies, and will be important later.  Richard, Pembroke and a couple of other Earls defend Hugh from the worst Henry has planned.

Richard and Pembroke fight Llewelyn in Wales, and win.

1233: Henry takes a manor from one of Richard Marshall’s allies on Christmas in 1232, and this causes an argument. This swells in June 1233 when Henry and Richard Marshall fall out over the dower lands of Henry’s sister, Eleanor. She had been married to Richard Marshall’s older brother, preceding him as Earl of Pembroke. Henry wanted to look after her lands. Henry summons the barons to Oxford for a parliament, and took hostages from prominent families. This went down about as well as you’d expect, and they boycotted a few parliaments. Henry gives them huge bribes, and Richard rejoins the royal side. The Marshall doesn’t, and the king besieges him at Usk Castle, where he makes a fool of himself.

The king doesn’t bring more than a few days of food for him men, so he can’t maintain the siege. He sends some bishops to the marshal, asking him to save the king embarrassment by surrendering Usk, on the understanding the king will hand the castle back after 15 days, and make other concessions. The marshal allows this, but when Henry doesn’t give the castle back for a few months, he allies with the Welsh, and with Hugh de Burgh who has escaped a royal prison, and just wrecks the king’s forces. He then tries to raise the Marshal lands in Ireland, which leads to his death, and Richard of Cornwall picks up some of the Marshal lands.

1234: The barons force the king to dismiss the Potevins, his wife’s relatives, from his council, but Richard grabbed some of their stuff, because one of them had burned down one of his manors in a previous war. Richard, and six other earls, are told they aren’t allowed to have tourneys, because they allow men to bring their military retinues together and scheme. Richard helps arrange the marriage of his sister to Frederick II, the Holy Roman Emperor.

1235: Richard picks up more land as a birthday present from his brother, for nominal fees, presumably for sorting out that marriage thing. He’s also allowed to protect the Jews in his Honor at Berkhampstead.

1236: Richard of Cornwall takes the Cross, but the Pope orders him not to actually go on crusade until a special license is sent. He doesn’t actually leave until 1240, which gives him a lot of time to prepare. The king marries Eleanor of Provence, and her uncle becomes the centre of a faction of the queen’s family, which annoys the barons no end.

1237: Richard negotiates extensions of peace with the Welsh and Scots.

1238: Eleanor, the sister of the King, marries Simon de Monfort without the permission of the baronage. Richard kicks up a rebellion, but the King folds without a battle, and they reconcile by the time their sister Joan, then Queen of Scotland, passed away in 1239. Richard is then pretty much always on Henry’s team. Baldwin, Emperor of Constantinople, visits England this year, and Richard finds out the lay of the land in the East, for his Crusade.

1239:

The Pope gives Richard carte blanche for success of his Crusade, including the general protection given to the lands of all crusaders. Richard sends 6 000 marks to the Templars in Paris in preparation. He and the other barons going on Crusade meet at Northampton and swear they will not go to Italy or Greece, which is perhaps because the Pope strongly suggested they go to Constantinople.

1240: Isabella dies, but Richard will not allow her to be buried by her first husband.

The crusade sets out from Dover. The source document gives then names of the major crusaders on page 41, so that’s where it is if I need it. They go via Paris, renewing the truce, through the Rhone. At Vienne the locals offer to buy his boats, and when Richard refuses, they steal them. He goes by land to Arles, and then the people give him his boats back at Beaucaire. He leaves Marseilles, after another bishop tries to get him to go home, and lands in Acre. Dates on page 42 of source. The Templars and Hospitallers are allied with competing Muslim factions, and Richard ignores them both, to help the Duke of Burgundy rebuild Ascalon.

1241: Richard ratifies a truce with the Sultan of Egypt, and French prisoners are released. He sets off home, and drops in on Frederick II on the way home. Louis IX of France declares his son Alphonse Count of Poitou. The territory is still controlled by Henry and Richard’s stepfather.

1242: Richard arrives at Dover, and travels to London, which has been decorated for his arrival. He brings with him the French prisoner knights, and kits them out. Henry surprises him with a plan to break the truce with the French and invade Gascony and Poitou. He needs money, so he calls a parliament. They tell him that it’s a stupid idea and refuse to give him money. Henry gets his money from Ireland, the Church and the Jews. Then he offers four good manors to Richard, and tells him that if he breaks the truce, Richard is free to go home.

The army has 150 knights and 20 000 marks, but France’s army cuts them off from their supplies. They are about to have a battle, but Richard takes off his armour, and walks across the bridge that separates the two armies with only a pilgrim’s staff. He manages a day’s truce, due to the presence of some of the French knights he’d saved in the Holy Land. The brothers hightail it, and their allies desert them.

1243: Henry spends most of this year tooling about pointlessly in Gascony. He makes Richard Count of Gascony, then changes his mind and calls it off. Richard argues with Henry, and is allowed to go home. Matthew Paris’s book says Henry tries to have Richard imprisoned on his way home, but that doesn’t work and he lands in Scilly in October. On the way he almost has a shipwreck, and he does the abbey for miracle deal, eventually building Hailes as his payoff. At about this stage,

Richard marries the Queen’s sister, Sanchia. She has only a little marriage portion, and there’s no political advantage, so he must have just wanted to. Her potion is 2 000 pounds in money and 1 000 marks per year.

Richard gives up calling himself Count of Poitou, and hands his lands in Gascony and Ireland off to the Crown. He gets better legal rights to his lands in England in exchange.

1244: Richard arranges an extension of the truce with Scotland. The king is broke and the barons force a council of advisers on him.Richard substantially bankroll his brother with loans.

1246: The King tries to stand up against the Pope regarding taxes of the Church. Richard opposes him, because the Pope is still letting him collect 1000 pounds a year to defray the expenses of his crusade. He renews this explicitly in 1246.

1247: Financed and supervised the great recoinage in England. This hadn’t been done since 1180, and Richard gets half the profits, and new coins for his old ones on a one-for-one basis. He arranges to mine the Mint for fifteen years. He also has the right to all related contracts, so there’s probably some graft going down there. He then extends this to the Welsh and Irish mints too. Instead of minting in London, he sets up 12 regional mints, and sends out dies from London. The mints at London and Bedford are operating by the end of 1247.

Richard heads to Normandy to parley with King Louis over Normandy. It doesn’t work, but he helps set up a shrine to Saint Edmund in Pontigny, and is granted a miraculous cure for a serious, if ill-defined, illness.

Richard sends people to the continent to hire people clever with silver.

1248: The mint at Winchester starts operating around New Year. The London mint tests the new coins and sets the king’s rate of farm (sixpence to the pound, with an added  10 pence to the moneyers). If you have pure silver, you can have it assayed and pay only the farm. If you have it assayed and it’s more impure than the new coins, you pay a sixpence penalty).

Norwich, Exeter, Lincoln and Northampton mints start operation. A thousand pounds and dies are sent to them, to get them started. (Security, raiding or copying the dies?) THe king sends out inspectors to catch coiners and clippers, and coins not of the king are made illegal: particularly Scottish coins.

1250: The Bristol Mint closes.

1252: Richard’s profit from the Mint and Exchange is 5 513 pounds for this year.

1254: The Irish Mint closes and sends the dies back to London.

Richard is Regent of England and calls the first full assembly of the knights of the shires. Richard sends his men around England to fine people making their own coins, or changing coins. Richard keeps half the fines. London pays his people 600 pounds to go away. At this stage the king owes him at least 10 000 pounds.

Elected King of the Romans, which is basically Holy Roman Emperor.

1257: Crowned King of the Romans. Richard has rights for “his” merchants which mean they do not pay some of the taxes their competitors pay in England.

Matthew of Paris swears Richard took 365 000 marks with him to Germany.

Richard is in Germany, so Henry tries his hand at this minting business, making a gold penny in Chester, worth 20 silver pennies, later 24.

1259: The Treaty of Paris: England and France finally stop beating on each other.

1261: Richard’s great coinage ends. He’s made about 20 000 pounds out of the business. At least 800 000 pounds of silver pennies have been manufactured, although much of that comes from melting down older coins.

1266: The Hamburg and Lubeck merchants get a Hanse in England.

1272: Death.