The King of the Romans

Richard: King of the Romans

Berkhamsted Castle has a rich history. It was built on the spot where Edgar Aethling gave up the English throne to the Normans. Thomas Becket (probably) enlarged it, Prince Louis of France besieged it, and the Black Prince owned it. By the 17th c. it was derelict and plundered for stone. What was left became the first ‘listed’ building in Britain when the builders of the adjacent railway proved a more potent threat than any of these. 

It is, or at least was, a proper castle; not like the pokey and desperate redoubts of the Marcher Lords or the later efforts with thin walls and stained glass windows, constructed for show long after cannons made the old walls redundant. 

Berkhamsted Castle Ruins

In reading its history, I noticed that after Louis had been seen off, it passed into the hands of Richard of Cornwall, a character who had popped up in the story of several of my other favourite castles. Here, he was referred to as the King of the Romans. I was intrigued not least because, as far as I knew, Rome didn’t have a king and, as titles go, that has a ring to it, like The Khan of the Golden Horde or The Lord of the Isles. Who was this man?

Richard was a Plantagenet. Where would history be without them? In fact, the Kings as people are often not very interesting; it is their murderous interactions that make the headlines. 

Here is the Plantagenet Coat of Arms. You might notice that the three lions have been copied from the England football team. 

You can find more appealing characters and stories among the aspirants and failures. Think Lambert Simnel, Perkin Warbeck or, my favourite, John Deydras. His claim to the throne was that Edward II was not the son of Edward I  but a local yokel’s son. A terrified nanny had swapped them when, as a baby, a pig bit off his ear. In support of his claim, he observed that he was more regal than Edward. To his credit, Ed thought it was funny. Others didn’t, and after Deydras claimed to have been a victim of a demonic cat, they hanged him. But I am wandering off the point. 

Back to Richard. He was the second son of King John, and brother of King Henry III, the monarch whose incompetence and policies sparked the revolt of barons led by Simon de Montfort. His uncle was Richard the Lionheart, so he took the name. I recount the story of John, Henry, Louis and William the Marshal, the 'Greatest Knight in Christendom' and tough-as-old-boots, here: Link: English and not French.

If you want to make sense of the family, the extract below can be expanded.

The Plantagenets 

Richard was always close to the English throne, but never quite made it. Being crowned King of the Romans and King of the Germans put him first in line to succeed as the Holy Roman Emperor. Again, he never quite made it. What he did become was very, very wealthy and, in the fractious world of Plantagenet-era politics, a very big hitter.

In what follows, I will not give you a timeline, because I never remember them and assume that you won’t either. Rather, I want to sketch out how he came to own all those castles, and how he received those titles, sitting on Charlemagne's throne in Aachen. (It is still there and was subsequently used by Napoleon. I don't doubt Hitler would have sat on it too, but the throne spent WW2 covered in tar paper and safely buried in sand) .

Charlemagne's Throne 

The story of the castles is relatively straightforward. Richard's relationship with his brother King Henry was turbulent, but Henry probably regarded other threats as more pressing, and thought it best to keep his 16-year-old brother happy. 

Even at that age, status and money were what counted, so to that end, he gifted him the Earldom of Cornwall, which came with valuable rights to revenues from the tin trade. The title, promoted to a Dukedom, remains within the Monarch’s gift to this day. The current incumbent is Prince William, following his father, who replaced the tin with overpriced biscuits. 

Alongside the Earldom, he got huge estates and many of my favourite castles. These included what are now the toothy stone stumps at Berkhamsted, the much larger ruins at Wallingford on the Thames and the wherewithal to buy and build on a pile of rubble on the glorious pinnacle at Tintagel. 

Tintagel 

Of the three, he lived at Wallingford, died at Berkhamsted, and the fairy tale castle he built at  Tintagel was a militarily useless vanity project aimed at linking him to King Arthur in the eyes of the credulous Cornish. All are rest were proper castles and are now worth a visit, not so much for what is left of the fortifications themselves, but for the visible connection with understandable medieval paranoia and, at Tintagel, an air of myth and magic. 

Wallingford Castle 

Also in the new Earl's goodie bag were the title of Count of Poitou (which, like so many goodie bag gifts, turned out to be a dud) and castles and estates at Eye, Knaresborough, Restormel, Launceston and Marlborough. All of them now fall into the category of picturesque ruins except Marlborough, where only the mound stands. 

Launceston Castle 

Of all these, Berkhamsted and Wallingford were the most strategically valuable to an insecure monarch and his family. The former controlled the main route from the north into London and the latter the best point for crossing the Thames, an advantage recognised by Richard, who built the first stone bridge there. Parts of it remain. 

Wallingford Bridge

Although Richard was quick to take offence when he felt slighted by Henry, he could be bought, and he had his uses. For instance, when Henry nipped off in an attempt to regain the Angevin lands in Poitou, Richard substituted for him at home. From Henry's point of view, after the ever-loyal William the Marshall died, this was a better bet than entrusting the country to the other bolshie barons.

He had wives, of course. Three of them. The first was Isabel Marshall, loaded in her own right and a daughter of the aforementioned William the Marshall, who was an ally to be treasured and a father-in-law to be feared. She brought six kids with her and produced four more, but by the time the Grim Reaper had done his stuff, only one son survived, Henry of Almain. His name will pop up again. 

William the Marshall

Isabel died in 1240, and he had disagreements with Henry, so Richard decided to take a break and go for a Mediterranean tour alongside Theobald of Navarre as the senior management of the Baron’s crusade. He was a valued partner because he could pay his way, and it had advantages.  He aimed to capitalise on the reputation of the Lionheart and to burnish his family's crusading reputation, which he correctly anticipated might bring him renown in Europe. We shouldn't underestimate the importance of faith in those times and, of course, a good crusade might also win him brownie points with the Almighty and spare him time in purgatory or even everlasting torment. 

Crusading: Shortcut to Heaven

This was arguably the most successful of the crusades in terms of results. Using diplomacy and exploiting local feuds, rather than fighting, they secured Jerusalem, Bethlehem and other biblical territories.  

It does make you wonder whether those battered old knights in rusting armour were actually better at diplomacy than many of those that followed them. And at least Richard managed to avoid all that nasty hacking and slashing and got home safely. 

On his return, he married Sanchia, the daughter of the Count of Provence and sister of his brother King Henry’s wife, Queen Eleanor of Provence. Keep up. This is, after all, the Plantagenets. (Apparently Sanchia spent a lot of time at Wallingford avoiding unwanted presents from her sister, normally scary exotic animals like a bear). 

Sanchia's Seal 

The Plantagenets always had a finger in European political pie, and Richard now put his foot in it too. In the early 1250s, the Pope offered him the rather sparkly Crown of Sicily. Nothing comes free, and, calculating in a way Donald Trump would have recognised, Richard decided the price was extortionate. (Brother Henry wasn’t as tuned into the economics. He secured that crown for his nephew before realising that there were squatters in Sicily and a requirement for a costly invasion). 

Crown of Sicily

The offer underscored Richard’s political heft; he was a man worth having onside, if only for his money. 

At the time, what is now Germany was an array of squabbling mini-nations who found it convenient to have a King to provide some semblance of coherence. And because Germany was, in effect, the Holy Roman Empire, that King also became the ‘King of the Romans’, a title subservient to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was the secular head of all Christendom. 

 With the help of his Sanchia, her sister Queen Eleanor, and massive bribes, they persuaded four of the seven German electors that he would make a smashing ‘King of Germany’. The Electors duly elected him. His supporters were the Archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, the Count Palatine and King Ottokar II of Bohemia. 

Ottokar II of Bohemia

The other candidate was  Alfonso of Castile, supported by the Archbishop of Trier, the Duke of Saxony, the Margrave of Brandenburg and....Ottokar. He had sold his vote to both sides! One result was that Alfonso also claimed and used the titles with gay abandon, although he was never crowned. 

But all in all, it was Richard's wallet that triumphed in what was probably the most outstanding piece of corruption in medieval history, while the electors made a fortune by electing a King who they were fairly certain would stay away and not trouble them. They were correct. Richard enjoyed the prestige but didn’t hang around to enjoy his purchase. 

Germania & the Electors Arms 

This was a high point for Richard. Sanchia died shortly afterwards. At 55, he was getting old, and in England the political dam had broken. He found himself embroiled in defending his brother and the family position against the rebel barons led by Simon de Montfort in the Second Barons’ War. The royal base was another one of my favourite castles, Lewes, and it was there that the embarrassing defeat of his brother Henry in the Battle of Lewes saw Richard unsuccessfully try to avoid being caught by squeezing his heavily armoured frame into a small windmill, much to the amusement of his captors.

Lewes Castle 

By all accounts, Simon wasn’t lovable, but we can love him anyway for giving us Parliaments and whatnot and giving a fig for the rights of the common man. But his luck didn’t last, and it turned out that the common man, as he would in the future, often cared more for the King than the Parliament. He was literally cut to pieces at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. Those pieces (including his testicles) were then sprayed around the country, presumably as a warning to others. Shortly afterwards, Richard was released from incarceration in his home at Wallingford Castle. As prisons go, that must have been comfortable! 

Simon at Evesham 

Five years later, De Montfort’s sons avenged the death of their father by murdering Henry of Almain. Apparently Almain's body was then boiled so that his bones could be brought home to England and London for burial, along with his heart in a golden cup. This ended up on a pillar at London Bridge. It says a lot for Richard’s European reputation that Danté disapproved. You will find Guy de Montfort sunk in boiling blood in the 7th Circle of Hell in his ‘Inferno’. 

Dante's Inferno: 7th Circle 

Richard never really recovered from the loss of his son and heir and suffered a crippling stroke. But between de Montfort’s defeat and Almain’s death, the old dog had married again, now 61, to the beautiful 15-year-old daughter of the Duke of Falkenburg in what are now the Netherlands. Wikipedia reckons that they got on well. You can make your own mind up about that, but she was still around when he died peacefully at Berkhamsted. Thus ended the life of a man who stood on the threshold of becoming King of England and Holy Roman Emperor, but never quite made it. He left us proper castles. 

Richard's Tomb. Westminster Abbey