Richard and John by Frank McLynn

Author:Frank McLynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Da Capo Press

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IT WAS SOME TIME before the backlash from the Lusignans manifested itself, so that John must sometimes have wondered if, against all the odds, he had got away with his latest double-cross. Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose political antennae were always much sharper, knew better. At 78 very tired after her latest political mission - a journey to Spain to fetch her grandchild Blanche of Castile for the marriage with Philip Augustus’s son - she retired to her favourite anchorage, the abbey of Fontevraud in Anjou. Seeing the way the wind was blowing, she identified Aimeri of Thouars as a key player in the dispute between the houses of Angoulême and Lusignan and invited him to Fontevraud. Aimeri’s past was chequered and he was the classical political trimmer: having originally supported John in the spring of 1199, he veered away later in the year into the camp of Arthur and Constance of Britanny, doubtless nudged in that direction by the fact that his brother Guy became Constance’s third husband then, but also virtually propelled thither by John’s inexplicable action in first making him seneschal of Anjou and Touraine and then rescinding the offer.1 In February 1201 Eleanor entertained Aimeri at the abbey, and extracted from him a solemn promise that he would remain faithful to John; Aimeri confirmed the pledge in writing to John, in a letter warning him of looming trouble on the continent.2 John seems to have paid no attention. The Lusignans seem to have been waiting to see if John was prepared to offer any compensation for the affront to their honour, but it was not the new king’s way to be gracious in victory. Even one of his defenders concludes ruefully that John liked ‘to kick a man when he was down’.3 He responded to Eleanor’s warning by sending his officials to take over La Marche, actually turning the knife in the wound.

By feudal law, John should have denounced the Lusignans in his court before proceeding to despoil them, but a regard for legal niceties was never his strong point when his own interests and desires were concerned. The Lusignans therefore appealed over his head to the nominal feudal overlord Philip of France. Philip proceeded cautiously. He was not eager for another war with John at this time, while he was locked in conflict with the papacy over the bigamous marriage to Agnes of Meran, and his inclination was to pour oil on troubled waters. In a would-be solomonic judgement he tried to ‘part the combatants’, on the one hand telling the Lusignans to desist from their siege operations in Poitou, on the other inviting John to a conference and rolling out the red carpet for him.4 He went in person to meet John at the Normandy frontiers, where John had recently arrived from England, flushed with another of his perfidious triumphs. The king of England had just perfected a new financial scam. Having ordered his feudal army (not the mercenaries) to assemble at Portsmouth for a

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