Kingship, Succession and Ruling England in Richard's Absence
When Henry II died in July 1189, the throne passed to his eldest surviving son Richard. Medieval English kingship was not a job description but a sacred office. The king was crowned and anointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury at Westminster, marking him out as God’s representative on earth. He was expected to keep the peace, defend the kingdom, dispense justice through his courts, and lead his army in war. He was also expected to take the advice of his Curia Regis (the king’s council of great barons and bishops). In return he held immense power: he summoned and dismissed assemblies, granted charters, levied taxes, and could pardon or condemn anyone in his realm.
The Role of the Church
The Church shaped kingship at every level. The coronation rite at Westminster — oath, anointing, crown, sceptre — framed Richard as a sacred figure rather than merely a powerful one. Bishops sat on the king’s council and ran much of his administration; the Archbishop of Canterbury was the second person in the realm. The Church also gave the king a vast pool of literate, trained men. Most senior administrators (justiciars, chancellors, treasurers, sheriffs’ clerks) held Church offices that funded their service to the Crown without costing the royal exchequer a salary. The price of this convenience was that bishops answered to two masters: the king who appointed them and the Pope in Rome.
A medieval English king was expected to keep the peace, dispense justice and defend the kingdom in war. The coronation rite — oath, anointing with holy oil, crowning by the Archbishop of Canterbury — turned a prince into God’s appointed ruler.
Richard’s Claim and Coronation
Richard’s claim to the throne in 1189 was strong but not unchallenged. He was the eldest surviving son of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine; his elder brother Henry the Young King was dead, and so was his younger brother Geoffrey. He had spent the last years of his father’s reign in armed rebellion alongside his brothers, but the deathbed reconciliation at Chinon left him as the obvious heir. The other claimant was Geoffrey’s young son Arthur of Brittany — Richard’s nephew — whose case rested on the rule that a dead son’s line should inherit. The English barons accepted Richard. He was crowned at Westminster on 3 September 1189 in a sumptuous ceremony designed to broadcast continuity and legitimacy across the Angevin world.
Securing power required money. Richard had taken the Cross before his father’s death and intended to leave on crusade within months. To raise funds he sold offices, charters and even castles — he is supposed to have joked that he would sell London if he could find a buyer. Sheriffs purchased their counties; barons purchased confirmations of their lands. He also spent the treasure his father had already gathered through the Saladin Tithe of 1188, set up his administration and sailed for the Holy Land in summer 1190.
Richard’s Character
Contemporaries called Richard ‘Coeur de Lion’ — Lionheart — for his bravery and military skill. He was tall, charismatic, fluent in French and Occitan (his court language as Duke of Aquitaine), and a trained warrior who had been crushing rebellious vassals in Aquitaine since his teens. He was also impatient, hot-tempered, and, by modern standards, almost wholly absent from England: in his ten-year reign he spent only about six months in his English kingdom. To Richard, England was a quarry — a rich source of revenue and recruits for war elsewhere, especially in defence of his far larger French lands. The Angevin Empire stretched from the Scottish border to the Pyrenees, and Richard cared most about its French heartlands.
Many students arrive thinking Richard was a heroic English king and John a villain — the legacy of the Robin Hood story. The reality is more complicated. Richard spent only about six months of his reign in England and drained the country with crusade taxes and his ransom; John, by contrast, was almost continuously present and ran a tight, intrusive administration. The popular contrast is largely a creation of later legend. Modern historians (W.L. Warren onwards) stress that Richard’s reputation rests on his battlefield reputation, not on his record as a ruler of England.
Governing England 1189–99: Hubert Walter
A king who lived abroad needed deputies who could rule in his name. Richard’s first attempt — co-justiciars William de Mandeville and Hugh du Puiset, soon replaced by the unpopular William Longchamp — ended in chaos when his brother John tried to seize control during 1191. Richard was himself a prisoner in Germany through 1193. From captivity he backed Hubert Walter, who was elected Archbishop of Canterbury in May 1193 and made chief justiciar that December. Walter became, in effect, the working head of government. He chaired the Curia Regis, ran the Exchequer, supervised the courts and oversaw the network of sheriffs.
Walter’s greatest achievement was raising the king’s ransom of 100,000 marks (later increased to 150,000) after Richard’s capture in Austria. He levied a tax of one-quarter on income and moveables, took church plate, sequestrated the wool clip of the Cistercian monasteries, and squeezed the Jewish community through extraordinary tallages. He also reformed the administration of justice: itinerant justices toured the shires every few years, hearing pleas of the Crown and standardising the king’s law. The 1194 Articles of Eyre laid down what they should ask. Coroners were introduced in 1194 to record sudden deaths and royal pleas, freeing the sheriffs for revenue work and creating a check on local corruption.
From 1193, Hubert Walter ran England as Archbishop of Canterbury and chief justiciar. He raised Richard’s ransom of 150,000 marks, reformed the eyre system of justice, and created the office of coroner in 1194 to record royal pleas in each county.
Sheriffs, the Exchequer and the Royal Demesne
The shire-by-shire backbone of English government was the sheriff. The sheriff collected royal revenues from the king’s lands, courts, fines and feudal dues, banked them at the twice-yearly Exchequer at Westminster (with copies of the accounts kept on rolls of parchment called pipe rolls), presided over the shire court, and led the county levy in arms. He was a powerful, often resented figure; sheriffs typically bought their counties at a stiff price and made it back over the term of office. The royal demesne — lands held directly by the Crown rather than granted to tenants — provided a substantial income that did not depend on parliamentary or baronial consent.
Several factors held the system together. First, the institutions were already strong: Henry II had built a professional Exchequer, a network of itinerant royal justices, and a chain of sheriffs who reported twice a year. Second, Hubert Walter was an outstanding administrator who could chair the Curia Regis, run finance and supervise the courts simultaneously. Third, Eleanor of Aquitaine acted as senior queen-mother and political fixer. Fourth, John’s 1191–94 attempt to seize power gave the loyal barons a clear enemy and pushed them to defend Richard’s government. Fifth, the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury anchored Richard’s legitimacy even from Westminster. Together these meant that England paid its taxes, raised its ransom and held its peace through a decade of royal absence.
By the end of Richard’s reign in 1199, England was financially exhausted but administratively more sophisticated than when he had started. The Crown had a written record of its revenues, a regular eyre, a coroner system, and a chief minister who had absorbed the daily burden of government. These were the tools that John would inherit — and that he would test to breaking point.