The King of the Romans

The 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 had been plundered for stone. What was left became the first ‘listed’ building in Britain when the builders of the adjacent railway proved an even more potent threat. 

It was a proper castle; not like the cramped, desperate redoubts of the Marcher Lords or the later efforts, constructed for show long after cannons made the old walls redundant, with stained glass windows and goldfish in the moat, 

Berkhamsted Castle Ruins

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. He was referred to as the King of the Romans. I was intrigued not least because I didn't think Rome ever had a king and, as titles go, it has a ring to it; like The Khan of the Golden Horde or The Lord of the Isles. 

Who was this man? For starters, he was a Plantagenet. Where would history be without them? But the Kings as characters don't often seem 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. 

Sometimes the most appealing characters and stories can be found amongst the medieval detritus of aspirants and failures. Think of Lambert Simnel, Perkin Warbeck or, my favourite, John Deydras, whose claim to the throne of Edward II was that he was not actually the son of Edward I, but a local yokel’s son. He said that a terrified nanny had swapped them when, as a baby, a pig bit off his ear. To his credit, Ed thought it was funny, but 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. Born in 1209, 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' 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.

I will not give you a timeline of events in his life, because I never remember them and assume that you won’t either. Rather, I want to sketch out how he came to acquire all those castles and titles. (He was crowned 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 it spent WW2 covered in tar paper and safely buried in sand).

Charlemagne's Throne 

The story of the castles is relatively straightforward. King Henry's relationship with his 16-year-old brother was turbulent, but he regarded his security and interests as best served by keeping him happy. To that end, he gifted him the Earldom of Cornwall, which came with valuable rights to revenues from the tin trade. Status and money were what counted. (The title, promoted to a Dukedom, remains within the Monarch’s gift to this day. The current incumbent is Prince William, and the tin has been replaced with overpriced biscuits). 

The Earldom came with 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 the 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 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 the Plantagenets. The former controlled the main route into London from the North, and the latter had long been recognised as 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, he substituted for Henry in England when he nipped off in an attempt to regain the Angevin lands in Poitou. From Henry's point of view, after the ever-loyal and tough-as-old-boots 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, who was an ally to be treasured and a father-in-law to be feared. She was older than Richard and brought six kids with her, but produced four more; 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 Richard was at odds with Henry, so he 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.  An aim was 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.  Also, a good crusade might win him brownie points with both the Almighty and his lickspittle Pope, and spare him time in purgatory or even everlasting torment. We shouldn't underestimate the importance of faith in those times!

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, only briefly stopping in France to join one of Henry's campaigns and to catch up on all that hacking and slashing.  

The story goes that at one point Henry's army was outnumbered and cornered. Richard, relying on the reputation he had won on crusade, ditched his armour and walked defenceless through the enemy lines to negotiate a truce. Strange times indeed. 

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. (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 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 and connections. 

At the time, what is now Germany was an array of squabbling mini-nations who found it convenient to have a King as a nominal overlord to provide some semblance of coherence. Because Germany was, in effect, the Holy Roman Empire, the King of the Germans also became the ‘King of the Romans’, although that title was subservient to the Holy Roman Emperor, who was the secular head of all Christendom. (The Pope was the spiritual head). 

Following what was probably the most staggering and expensive case of corruption in medieval history, and with the help of his Sanchia, her sister Queen Eleanor, four of the seven German electors were persuaded 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, who 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, Richard's wallet triumphed, 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. Barons led by Simon de Montfort, the Earl of Leicester, had rebelled and Richard found himself embroiled in defending his brother and the throne. 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. After the Royal side rallied, 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, which, as prisons go, must have been comfortable! 

Simon at Evesham 

Five years later, De Montfort’s sons avenged the death and decapitation 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 actually 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 he 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 Dutch Duke of Falkenburg. 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