and Ely, and proceeded to the place of rendezvous in the plain of Vezelay, on the borders of Burgundy, where a combined French and English array of one hundred thousand men assembled, 11th June, 1190. Having set sail from different ports, Richard and Philip were driven by stress of weather to take refuge in Messina (September 14), where they were detained during the whole winter. Jealousies and disputes soon arose between these two high-spirited and ambitious monarchs, which were cunningly fomented by Tancred who had usurped the Sicilian crown, and dreaded their interference in behalf of the lawful heir. Richard quitted Messina on the 10th of April, 1191, in company with his sister, the queen-dowager of Sicily, and his betrothed wife Berengaria, daughter of Sanchez, king of Navarre. The fleet was dispersed by a storm, and the vessel in which the two princesses had embarked was wrecked on the coast of Cyprus. Isaac, the prince of that island, pillaged the ship and treated the crew and passengers with great severity. But Richard arrived soon after, landed his troops, defeated the Cypriots in two battles, compelled Isaac to surrender at discretion, and threw him into prison. He then married Berengaria, and having caused her to be crowned queen of England, set sail for St. Jean d'Acre, which for upwards of two years had resisted the combined efforts of all the crusaders in Palestine. The arrival of the English and French kings at the head of a gallant army infused new life into the besiegers, and the siege was pressed with so much vigour, that the town surrendered on the 12th of July, 1191. New occasions of discord, however, soon arose between the rival monarchs. The kingdom of Jerusalem was claimed both by Guy de Lusignan, who had been the husband of the late Queen Sibylla, and by the marquis of Montferrat, who had married Isabella, her younger sister. Richard espoused the cause of the former, while Philip declared for the latter. But the French king, unable to brook the superiority of his rival, and jealous of his military glory, quitted the Holy Land and returned home in disgust, leaving, however, ten thousand of his troops behind him under the duke of Burgundy. Undiscouraged by this his desertion, Richard marched towards Jerusalem, defeated Saladin in a great battle after a desperate struggle, reduced Jaffa, Ascalon, and other strongholds on the coast, and even advanced within sight of Jerusalem. But his army was now reduced by disease and the casualties of war, and enfeebled by the climate, fatigue, and want; and the greater part of his auxiliaries having refused to take part in the siege of the capital, Richard was obliged to return to Ascalon. Here he concluded a truce with Saladin for three years on favourable terms, and soon after set sail for Europe on the 11th of October, 1192. He was unfortunately shipwrecked near Aquileia, and attempting to make his way through Germany in the disguise of a pilgrim, he was treacherously arrested by Leopold, duke of Austria, who had himself been a crusader, but had been offended by the treatment he received from the English monarch, and availed himself of this opportunity to gratify his revenge and his avarice. He caused Richard to be thrown into a dungeon and loaded with irons, and then delivered him into the custody of the Emperor Henry VI., in return for a large sum of money. The French king and Richard's brother, the worthless John, basely took advantage of the disaster which had befallen the English king to promote their own dishonourable ends. The former endeavoured to prevail upon the emperor to deliver Richard into his hands, or at least to detain him in perpetual captivity, while John surrendered to Philip the greater part of Normandy, as the price of his investiture with the remainder of the English continental possessions, and endeavoured to seize the kingdom as heir to his brother, of whose death he pretended to have received certain intelligence. The captive monarch was meanwhile treated with great indignity and severity. He was even brought before the diet at Worms, and accused by the emperor of gross crimes and misdemeanours. But his unanswerable and indignant defence made such an impression on the assembled princes that they loudly denounced the base and unjust conduct of Henry. The pope threatened him with excommunication, and at length he consented to release his prisoner on payment of a ransom of one hundred thousand marks of silver. The infamy of this transaction was every way characteristic and worthy of the house which has for ages been notorious for its perfidy and ingratitude. Soon after his liberation Richard set out for England, where he arrived on the 10th of March, 1194. The remainder of his reign was chiefly occupied with a series of petty wars against Philip of France, the exhausted state of his finances fortunately rendering him unable to carry on hostilities on a great scale. In a quarrel with one of his vassals, Vidomar, viscount of Limoges, respecting some treasure discovered on his lands, Richard was mortally wounded while besieging the castle of Chaluze, in the province of Limousin, and expired on the 6th of April, 1199, in the forty-second year of his age and the tenth of his reign. He left no issue, and was succeeded by his brother John, to the exclusion of his nephew Arthur, the lawful heir to the throne. Richard's character was a singular compound of qualities noble and mean. His military talents were of a high order, and his extraordinary courage gained him the appellation of the Lion-hearted. He was open, frank, generous, sincere, and brave, and capable at times of great generosity and liberality. But it must be admitted that he was also rapacious and selfish, obstinate, passionate, revengeful, domineering, ambitious, haughty, and cruel. The incidents of his life resemble the adventures of a knight errant, rather than the actions of a great monarch. He was a ready and powerful speaker, and was fond of literature, especially of provincial poetry. A few of his poetical compositions have been preserved and published in La Tour Ténébresse, 1705.—J. T.
RICHARD II. (surnamed of Bordeaux), King of England, was the son of Edward the Black Prince, and was born at Bordeaux on the 3d of April, 1366. By the death of his grandfather Edward III. in 1377, the youthful Richard succeeded to the throne, and was crowned on the 16th July of the same year. Being a minor at the time of his accession, the government was administered by a council of twelve, from which the king's uncles, the dukes of Lancaster, York, and Gloucester, happened to be excluded. By these three the royal guardianship was disputed, and their quarrels dissipated the finances of the kingdom already wasted by the conflicts of the preceding reign. Heavy pecuniary exactions levied from the people were also the result of continued war with France, which was prosecuted in Brittany under the conduct of the earl of Buckingham, and these exactions eventuated in the crisis made memorable by Wat Tyler's insurrection. Other causes contributed to such an issue. The aristocracy, aware of waning power, and striving energetically to retain what it yet possessed; the middle classes, represented by the newly established house of commons, growing every year in the consciousness of authority and influence; and the lower orders, whose position in many cases was still little better than that of bond slaves, but nevertheless now beginning to feel some throes of a vague desire for larger social and political freedom—in all these lay a threefold element of restlessness and convulsion. The imposition of fresh taxes at last evoked the slumbering explosive forces, and the arbitrary manner in which they were levied gave rise in 1381 to the revolt headed by Wat Tyler, who gathered round him the disaffected men of Essex, their loyalty having been already shaken by the harangues of John Ball, a priest of Kent. The outbreak assumed formidable proportions. A hundred thousand rebels marched to London, but order was restored by the fall of their leader and the professions of the young monarch, who on this occasion evinced a promptitude and decision very unlike the weakness that marked his character in after years. The amnesty and charter he promised were, however, soon conveniently forgotten, and the condition of the people became even more wretched than before. In 1384 Richard transferred his war with France to Scotland, yet relinquished it abruptly in the following year, as he discovered that there was no reasonable hope of effecting the submission of the latter country. On his return from his Scottish expedition he aimed at absolute sovereignty, a project sufficiently irrational in the present temper of his subjects. Favourites influenced alike the monarch and oppressed the people, and discontent, strife, and tumult were prevalent throughout the realm. The time was favourable for the ambitious designs of the crafty Henry, duke of Lancaster, who, during Richard's absence in Ireland, whither he had gone to suppress a revolt, quitted his exile in France, and landing on the coast of Yorkshire marched thence to London. Richard, deserted by his army and surrendered into Henry's hands by the earl of Northumberland, was obliged, on the 29th September, 1399, to renounce the crown, which the parliament thereafter conferred on the duke of Lancaster. The dethroned sovereign perished shortly afterwards in Pontefract castle, where he had been imprisoned—in all probability the victim of assassination, although the exact mode of his death is uncertain.—J. J.
RICHARD III., King of England, and the last monarch of the Plantagenet dynasty, was the youngest son of Richard, duke
