1215 Prince Richard, aged six, is fostered to Corfe Castle under Peter de Mauley. Corfe is described in Tales of Mythic Europe (p. 67). His mother has returned to France and remarried.  A tutor is appointed for him. The tutor, Sir Roger d’Acastre, stays with him until 1223 and disappears into history. He may be a servant of a covenant. Richard’s household is his master, two trumpeters, and some washerwomen, at this point. He can speak French and English, and when he’s an adult he reads, and orders books in, Latin.

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.  For reference, in 1220 the Cornish stanneries are farmed for 1000 marks per year. Richard later 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. He doesn’t live there, and it is managed by a steward appointed for him by a Council of Barons, but it gives his people the money to required to maintain his household. The Eye, in Suffolk, may be significant to one of the other covenants in the Order. This period would allow them to put a spy in his retinue.

1223: Richard goes on pilgrimage to Canterbury with Alexander II of Scotland. No definite miracles are recorded as occurring.

1224 de Breaute rebels, and after some setbacks, Hubert de Burgh crushes his army and exiles him, taking effective power in England. During this distraction the truce with France expires and the French take Poitou without any significant resistance. The English retain Bordeaux, Gascony and Bayonne, which send for help. House Tytalus, who loves this sort of thing, orders wine and scours nearby Tribunals for magic items which grant invisibility.

1225: Richard turns 16 and is knighted by his brother. He’s also given the title of High Sheriff of Cornwall. This ends the earlier practice of appointing a new sheriff every few years. A covenant who has suborned the person who actually did the work of the sheriff, despite the churning title, may need to plant their man in Richard’s retinue.

The barons send a relief army to the remaining Norman territories in what is now France. Henry sends his brother Richard as nominal leader, as theoretical Count of Poitou. The effective leader is 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 is sent out to Richard or paid on his behalf. Silver and material are transported by the king’s Great Ship, the Templars, and by merchants in the employ of the Royal Wardrobe. That’s a lot of silver afloat in an area known for supernatural piracy and smuggling.

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 is awkward. Richard tries to marry the daughter of the king of Laon, but Hugh de Burgh prevents it. In 1225 Salisbury dies, and there’s no veteran campaigner to take his place. Player characters who aid the marriage to Laon make it a more substantial kingdom, altering the politics of the Reconquistia.

1226 King Louis VIII takes the cross, and declares war on Raymond, the Count of Toulouse, who is a heretic and an ally of the English. This makes attacking Louis’s lands morally abominable (you can’t invade a crusader’s lands.). This also entangles Louis in the Hermetic power struggles of the Languedoc Tribunal. 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 a truce. Peace treaty negotiations begin, but eventually fail.. This may be because of House Tytalus, because no-one actually wants a war in 1226.

Henry III gets into arguments with many of his earls about the borders of the royal forests. When he claims the forests as larger than before, he excludes humans from certain places, which allows faeries to move closer to farmed lands, and take new forms.

1227 Various nobles switch their allegiance back to France and Richard withdraws his forces. He returns home, and is made Earl of Cornwall. He sets up his headquarters in Launceston, which he begins to remodel.

Hubert de Burgh is in charge of England, is made Earl of Kent, and marries the sister of the King of Scotland She has 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, who coalesce into a a 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 in the middle of the night, He links up with his friend William Marshal/ Young William was holder of much of the Welsh marches, and he took Richard 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 and the army goes home. The forest boundaries change back. Richard gets his mother’s dowry lands, and a few other bits and pieces.

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 two manors 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 his English headquarters for a while. 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. This worries anyone virtually everyone with any sense. He tells the Cinque Ports to assemble a fleet, and eventually tells his people to assemble in Plymouth in October. This is taken as good news by everyone not near the Channel. England’s nobles arrive, but Hubert de Burgh has failed to get a decent fleet together, and so it is all put off until April. Covenants may need to hide their ships, to prevent them being dragooned into service.

1230: Richard is given the Honor of the Eye and 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 so they go home.

1231: Gilbert de Clare, the 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 more, but only one lives to adulthood. Richard 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.

As a wedding gift, Richard’s 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 is, in hindsight, mightily generous.

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. The new Earl of Pembroke (Richard Marshal) and a couple of other Earls defend Hugh from the worst Henry has planned. Richard and Marshal fight Llewelyn in Wales, and win.

1233: Henry takes a manor from one of Richard Marshal’s allies on Christmas in 1232, and this causes an argument. This swells in June 1233 when Henry and Marshal fall out over the dower lands of Henry’s sister, Eleanor. She had been married to Marshal’s older brother, preceding him as Earl of Pembroke. Henry summons the barons to Oxford for a parliament, and takes hostages from prominent families. This goes down about as well as you’d expect. Henry gives the nobility huge bribes, and Richard rejoins the royal side. Marshal doesn’t, and the king besieges him at Usk Castle.

The king doesn’t bring more than a few days of food for his 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. 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 wrecks the king’s forces. He then tries to raise the Marshal lands in Ireland, which leads to his death, and Richard picks up some of the Marshal lands.

Richard swaps three of his manors for Tintagel. His interest in Arthuriana infects his nephew, the eventual King Edward I, who makes or finds the Round Table, captures the crown of Arthur  from the Welsh, and rebuilds the tomb of Arthur at Glastonbury.

1235: Richard picks up more land as a birthday present from his brother, for nominal fees, presumably for sorting their sister’s marriage. He’s also allowed to protect the Jews in his Honor at Berkhampstead. He asks the pope if he can divorce Isabella because she’s barren, and he is told that he needs to give the idea up. His son Henry is then born.

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. Richard Marshal is a leader of that opposition, and Richard tries to keep the peace.

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 begins a “demonstration”, which is a rebellion in all but name. The King folds without a battle, and they reconcile by the time their sister Joan, then Queen of Scotland, passes away in 1239. Richard, henceforth, is almost 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: Henry III has a son, Edward, and Richard ceases to be heir presumptive of England 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. He isn’t, however, eventually buried next to her, himself. The crusade sets out from Dover. They go via Paris, renewing the truce, then 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. 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. 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 the 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 takes the title back. 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 bankrolls 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.

1247: Richard finances and supervises the great recoinage in England. This hasn’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 some graft going on 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 sends people to the continent to hire clever silversmiths.

Richard heads across the Channel 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.

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 of silver and coin dies are sent to them, to get them started.  The King sends out inspectors to catch coiners and clippers, and coins not of the king are made illegal: particularly Scottish coins.

1249: Edmund, the son of Richard who, in the real world, inherits his lands and titles, is born. While his father lives, he has his household at Tintagel. Edmund is 14 years younger than his legitimate older brother, Henry, and gets on well with him.

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 just go away. At this stage the king owes Richard at least 10 000 pounds. Richard is elected King of the Romans, which is basically Holy Roman Emperor, in an impromptu auction with the King of Castille.

1257: Crowned King of the Romans. He takes his sons and wife with him to the ceremony. Matthew of Paris swears Richard took 365 000 marks with him to Germany.. Richard gains rights for “his” merchants which mean they do not pay some of the taxes their competitors pay in England.  After this Richard and his sons are sometimes called “…of Almain” which means Germany.

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

1258: The King has been trying to arrange the throne of Sicily for his younger son for some time. The nobles, led by his brother in law, Simon de Monfort, are finally sick of it, and trouble brews. Richard returns from the continent. The King is forced to accept that he must put all of his royal actions before a council of noble advisers for ratification. Richard makes a vow not to oppose the reformers when he returns to England, and he makes peace between the king and noble factions, several  times, until 1263 when he ceases being able to paper over the cracks and violence breaks out.

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.

1264: Henry III goes to France, where King Louis acts as arbiter between the King of England and the English nobles. The king wins his case, and Richard stays at home running the kingdom in his absence. The baronial faction sack one of Richard’s manors, and his palace in Westminster, so Richard gives up on conciliation and joins the royalist side wholeheartedly. The Royal side loses the Battle of Lewes. Richard and his sons are taken prisoner by de Monfort’s baronial forces. They are held in the Tower of London by Eleanor, the wife of de Monfort (and Richard’s sister).

1265: Richard and his sons are moved to Wallingford, which they used to own, but was now held by their enemies. A rescue attempt is made, but the castle’s defenders threaten to kill the captives, including Prince Edward, so the force withdraws. de Montfort then sends Richard and Edmund to his own castle, Kenilworth, because threatening to murder your in-laws is impolite. Prince Edward escapes from his jailers and rejoins his father, so Richard and his sons are put in chains. Edward defeats the barons at Evesham, and kills de Monfort. Royalist forces surround Kenilworth, and Richard’s family are surrendered to them, after taking an oath that they would protect Eleanor de Montfort. They return to Wallingford, which they now own again.

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

1268-9: Richard makes his fourth journey to Germany and marries a third time, to Beatrice von Falkenberg. Edmund gets the Holy Blood relic. Richard returns to England and manages the realm, as the king’s health is in decline. Richard’s sons prepare for Crusade.

1270-1: Richard’s sons arrive in Tunis, discover their uncle, Louis IX is dead, and are ordered to take his remains to France. On the way the pause at Viterbo, in northern Italy, where there is a conclave being held to elect a new Pope. Richard’s sons attend Mass, but meet Guy, and the younger Simon, de Monfort who had fled England after Eversham. Guy, a priest, repeatedly stabs, them mutilates, Henry of Almain, a crusader, in church. In the process a couple of other priests die. Christendom is appalled, and Edmund is ordered to return to England.

1271: Edmund arrives home with his brother’s body. It is interned in Hailes Cathedral, where part of the Holy Blood relic is kept. Henry becomes dangerously ill, Richard is made Protector of the Realm, but late in the year has a stroke and is paralyzed down the right hand side.

1272: Richard and Henry both die this year. Edmund marries Margaret de Clare, and is knighted. He joins the Council that rules England until Edward I returns from the Crusade, and is crowned in 1274.  Edmund then continues in royal service as one of Edward’s lieutenants. He dies without children in 1297 and his fortune is absorbed into the royal coffers.