Chronicles of the Crusades/Chapter 1/Sect. 4-9
Sect. 4. Not without the anxious solicitude and amazement of many, a bat was seen, in the middle and bright part of the day, to flutter through the monastery, inconveniently recircling in the same tracks, and especially around the king's throne.
Sect. 5. William de Longchamp, who had been the chancellor of the earl of Poitiers before his accession, when the earl was crowned king, considered his office to have profited as much for the better, as a kingdom is superior to an earldom.
Sect. 6. A circumstance happened on the selfsame day of the coronation in Westminster Abbey, a presage of such portentous omen, as then was hardly allowable to be related even in a whisper. At Complin, the last hour of the day, the first peal that day happened to be rung, neither by any agreement, nor even the ministers of the church themselves being aware of it, till after it was done; for Prime, Tierce, Sext, Nones, and the solemn service of vespers and two masses were celebrated without any ringing of peals.
Sect. 7. Stephen de Marzia,[1] seneschal of Anjou, under the king lately deceased, he great and mighty, singularly fierce, and the master of his lord, being taken and cast into chains, was dragged to Winchester, where being made a gazing-stock to angels and to men, emaciated with woeful hunger, and broken with the weight of his irons, he was constrained to the payment of thirty thousand pounds of money of Anjou, and the promise of fifteen thousand pounds, for his ransom. Ralph de Glanville, jnsticiary of the realm of England and the king's eye, a man not inferior to Stephen, except in manners and riches, being deprived of authority and given into custody, redeemed merely his liberty to go and come for fifteen thousand pounds of silver. And whereas this name, Glanville, had been so great the day before, a name as it were above every name, so that whosoever, to whom it should be given by the Lord, would converse among princes, and would be adored by the people, yet the next morning there remained not one in the land who could be called by this name. That was the ruin of those two, to wit, of Stephen and Ralph, which also it is certain has been the ruin of thousands before them, and which hereafter may ruin others, namely, a suspicion arising from the confidence of their former lord.
Sect. 8. John, the king's brother, who alone of the sons of his mother, queen Eleanor, survived his brother, besides the earldom of Mortain, which, by his father's gift, he had long enjoyed, was so greatly enriched and increased in England by his brother, that both privately and publicly it was affirmed by many that the king had no thoughts of returning to the kingdom, and that his brother, already no less powerful than himself, if he should not restrain his innate temper, would, impelled by the desire of sovereignty, endeavour to drive him vanquished from the realm.
Sect. 9. The time of commencing his journey pressed hard upon King Richard, as he, who had been first of all the princes on this side the Alps in the taking up of the cross, was unwilling to be last in setting out. A king worthy of the name of king, who, in the first year of his reign, left the kingdom of England for Christ, scarcely otherwise than if he had departed never to return. So great was the devotion of the man, so hastily, so quickly and so speedily did he run, yea fly, to avenge the wrongs of Christ. However, whilst he kept the greater matter in his mind, giving himself in some little measure to deliberation for the kingdom, having received power from the pope that he might withdraw the cross from such of his own subjects, as he should desire, for the government of his kingdom, he first appointed Hugh Pudsey, bishop of Durham, to be chief justive of the whole realm, and with design, as is thought by many, further creating him a young earl of Northumberland out of an old bishop, the custody of as many castles as he liked being yielded to him, he diligently cleared from his coffers ten thousand pounds of silver. Geoffrey Fitz Peter, William Briwere, and Hugh Bardulf being permitted to remain at home, the cross being withdrawn from them, the king's treasurer transferred the whole collections of the three as three nuts into the Exchequer. All the sheriffs of the kingdom, on any trivial accusation falling under the king' s displeasure, were deprived of their unlucky power, and scarcely permitted to see his face, even by the mediation of inestimable treasure. Ralph de Glanville, than whom nous of his time was more subtle whilst he was in power, now being reduced to a private person by his prince, was so stupified through grief, that his son-in-law, Ralph de Ardenne, utterly lost, by reason of his careless talk, whatever he had previously acquired by the judgment of his mouth. He too, himself, because he was an old man, and not able to bear fatigue, if he had been willing to give the king that little which remained after the payment of the fine, as a gratuity, would easily have obtained a remission of the peril of the journey. The king received security from the tributary kings of the Welsh and of the Scots, that they would not pass their borders for the annoyance of England during his absence.
- ↑ Stephen de Marzia, otherwise called Stephen de Turonis.