Wherein, we need to talk about Richard …
Sean Connery as Dick the Dick, in full, wrong-period armour, riding to the rescue of Robin and Marian.
A bunch of Hollywood hooey.
At the siege of Nottingham Castle eyewitness accounts have him clad in light mail and "an iron hat" as full armour was impractical in the Middle East and light mail was what Richard "was used to."
Over here in Norwich, nothing much went on for quite a while with Richard the First away on the failed Third Crusade, sacking, burning and destroying in the name of the Pope, ravaging Cyprus but not quite getting to Jerusalem thanks to Salah-al-Din, brilliant commander of the Islamic armies, known to us as Saladin. At the siege of Acre, Richard, with the typical sub-human viciousness of a religious zealot had 2,700 Muslim men, women and children beheaded within view of Saladin's forces. Lovely …
In 1177, Earl Hugh Bigod breathed his last and Norwich Castle passed to his son, Roger Bigod, who continued to tax the teeth out of the locals. Down at the Cathedral the friars started getting uppity, encroaching on Tombland, but all was relatively peaceful; an edgy calm before a whole shedload of storms.
Richard the First … Not Sean Connery.
Richard the First of England, named the Lionheart by his Norman allies, only spent about six months in England, leaving it in the care of his youngest brother John Lackland (the evil King John of Robin Hood infamy) while Dick jollied off Crusading.
Before he went, however, he refused to honour the enormous loans he had extorted from the Norwich Jews and forced them to wear the Star of David in public, something that happened again in 1930s Germany and we all know how well that turned out.
Lionheart, my fat hairy arse. According to contemporary chroniclers, King Dick the Dick was a vicious bully and an all-round git as well as being an anti-Semitic bigot. At his coronation in Westminster Abbey on July 20th 1189, among those presenting gifts to the new king were Jewish leaders. Richard had his courtiers strip them, whip them and throw them out of the abbey, prompting a murderous pogrom by the London Mob.
Nice chap …
When Richard's forces made it back to England from the Crusades he was not with them. On his way back he had gotten himself captured by Duke Leopold and was locked up in Dürnstein Castle. To pay his ransom, Richard bankrupted the English exchequer.
In the meantime, John Lackland had been plotting to take the throne in Richard's absence but was then in France, sending to England one Adam of St.Edmunds with orders to resist Richard's forces. On the Lionheart's return only Lackland's forces in Nottingham Castle held out.
This was then just a timber palisade and bailey with stone walls only to the upper parts and it took but one day of slaughter, two further days of trebuchet and mangonel bombardment and the hanging of prisoners in sight of the castle walls for the forces to surrender. The de Militari website has as good and detailed an account of the siege as any (https://deremilitari.org/2014/03/the-siege-of-nottingham-castle-in-1194/).
Richard now headed to France to sort out his brother. However, having heard rumour that a hoard of Roman gold had been unearthed in Châlus-Chabrol, he besieged the town to steal it for himself.
While Dick strolled around, setting up his siege lines, he spotted a young boy atop the town walls, armed with a crossbow and a saucepan for a shield (I kid you not), reportedly one Pierre Basile.
King Dick, being the git he was, taunted the boy who, by some fluke, managed to shoot him in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt. This rapidly and happily turned gangrenous and that was the end of the Lionheart.
Richard's personal chroniclers relate that he pardoned the boy and rewarded him for his bravery, but that was not the kind of man he was. Poor little Pierre, for his heroism, was flayed alive, à la Ramsay Bolton and then pulled apart by horses.
Sausage.
Anyhoo, the Lionheart was dead, and a good thing, too, except that now, in 1199, John Lackland became king of England and Duke of Normandy.
Next time: the utterly predictable King Louis joke (again) …
Sources:
Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society
East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part 1: Anglo-Saxon to c.1345: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009
Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976
The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign: Edmund King (ed): 1994
Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: T. A. Heslop: 1994
Stephen and Matilda : The Civil War of 1139 - 1153: Jim Bradbury: 2005
The Norman Connections - Castle: Part 1: Norwich Castle: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2010
Mediæval Norwich: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004
Francis
Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of
Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753
to 1775
The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951
5 comments:
Sheesh! These folks had/have me wondering just what are the criteria for determining what a 'civilized' nation might be. I looked it up and, yep, by god, these folks met all ten. I wonder though about "political organization based on residence rather than kinship". A few of the others seemed kinda sketchy, too. No wonder these folks seem like a bunch of barbarous toads.
We have a Lackland AFB in Texas, named after a general who apparently left no heirs. I just wondered about the history of the family. Did any come to the US. Gen. Lackland was from Virginia.
And Google quickly skipped from the medieval Bigods to Big O Tire Company. The name seems more like an epithet to me - like Dick by-god! Dick.
And this is only one of the reasons I shun organized religion. It's all a scourge, an excuse to steal and rape and flay.
Alas and alack, the descendants of these repulsive shits are now Europe's aristocracy and royals and yes, Speedway, their useless second sons and bastards were shipped to the Colonies where many still hold power.
Petrea, I took the phrase that occurs regularly in these posts from Stephen Fry, who, after a righteous rant about the godbotherers stated simply, "Religion? Arse-Gravy!"
The truth is the truth, regardless of what people want to believe. If they want to believe that people in the sky orchestrate their lives, fine. It's when the patriarchy gets together to prey on these simpletons and organize them into tax-free money and "my pretend person is better than your pretend person" armies that the world gets into trouble. Unfortunately I see no intellectual progress here, only more and more mediæval crusades.
I was re-reading Barbara Tuchman's The March of Folly earlier this year. Depressingly, every word rings truer than ever.
Post a Comment