the spring of 1189 Richard and the French king suddenly appeared before Le Mans.  Henry was driven in headlong flight from the town.  Tradition tells how from a height where he halted to look back on the burning city, so dear to him as his birthplace, the king hurled his curse against God:  “Since Thou hast taken from me the town I loved best, where I was born and bred, and where my father lies buried, I will have my revenge on Thee too—­I will rob Thee of that thing Thou lovest most in me.”  If the words were uttered, they were the frenzied words of a dying man.  Death drew Henry to the home of his race, but Tours fell as he lay at Saumur, and the hunted king was driven to beg mercy from his foes.  They gave him the list of the conspirators against him:  at its head was the name of one, his love for whom had brought with it the ruin that was crushing him, his youngest son, John.  “Now,” he said, as he turned his face to the wall, “let things go as they will—­I care no more for myself or for the world.”  The end was come at last.  Henry was borne to Chinon by the silvery waters of Vienne, and muttering, “Shame, shame on a conquered king,” passed sullenly away.

Chapter IV
the Angevin kings
1189-1204

[Sidenote:  John and Longchamp]

The fall of Henry the Second only showed the strength of the system he had built up on this side the sea.  In the hands of the Justiciar, Ranulf de Glanvill, England remained peaceful through the last stormy months of his reign, and his successor Richard found it undisturbed when he came for his crowning in the autumn of 1189.  Though born at Oxford, Richard had been bred in Aquitaine; he was an utter stranger to his realm, and his visit was simply for the purpose of gathering money for a Crusade.  Sheriffdoms, bishopricks, were sold; even the supremacy over Scotland was bought back again by William the Lion; and it was with the wealth which these measures won that Richard made his way in 1190 to Marseilles and sailed thence to Messina.  Here he found his army and a host under King Philip of France; and the winter was spent in quarrels between the two kings and a strife between Richard and Tancred of Sicily.  In the spring of 1191 his mother Eleanor arrived with ill news from England.  Richard had left the realm under the regency of two bishops, Hugh Puiset of Durham and William Longchamp of Ely; but before quitting France he had entrusted it wholly to the latter, who stood at the head of Church and State as at once Justiciar and Papal Legate.  Longchamp was loyal to the king, but his exactions and scorn of Englishmen roused a fierce hatred among the baronage, and this hatred found a head in John.  While richly gifting his brother with earldoms and lands, Richard had taken oath from him that he would quit England for three years.  But tidings that the Justiciar was striving to secure the succession of Arthur, the child of his elder brother Geoffry and of Constance