interdict at its seizure, but the king met the interdict with mockery, and intrigued with Rome till the censure was withdrawn.  He was just as defiant of a “rain of blood,” whose fall scared his courtiers.  “Had an angel from heaven bid him abandon his work,” says a cool observer, “he would have answered with a curse.”  The twelve months’ hard work, in fact, by securing the Norman frontier set Richard free to deal his long-planned blow at Philip.  Money only was wanting; for England had at last struck against the continued exactions.  In 1198 Hugh, Bishop of Lincoln, brought nobles and bishops to refuse a new demand for the maintenance of foreign soldiers, and Hubert Walter resigned in despair.  A new justiciar, Geoffry Fitz-Peter, Earl of Essex, extorted some money by a harsh assize of the forests; but the exchequer was soon drained, and Richard listened with more than the greed of his race to rumours that a treasure had been found in the fields of the Limousin.  Twelve knights of gold seated round a golden table were the find, it was said, of the Lord of Chalus.  Treasure-trove at any rate there was, and in the spring of 1199 Richard prowled around the walls.  But the castle held stubbornly out till the king’s greed passed into savage menace.  He would hang all, he swore—­man, woman, the very child at the breast.  In the midst of his threats an arrow from the walls struck him down.  He died as he had lived, owning the wild passion which for seven years past had kept him from confession lest he should be forced to pardon Philip, forgiving with kingly generosity the archer who had shot him.

[Sidenote:  Loss of Normandy]

The Angevin dominion broke to pieces at his death.  John was acknowledged as king in England and Normandy, Aquitaine was secured for him by its duchess, his mother Eleanor; but Anjou, Maine, and Touraine did homage to Arthur, the son of his elder brother Geoffry, the late Duke of Britanny.  The ambition of Philip, who protected his cause, turned the day against Arthur; the Angevins rose against the French garrisons with which the French king practically annexed the country, and in May 1200 a treaty between the two kings left John master of the whole dominion of his house.  But fresh troubles broke out in Poitou; Philip, on John’s refusal to answer the charges of the Poitevin barons at his Court, declared in 1202 his fiefs forfeited; and Arthur, now a boy of fifteen, strove to seize Eleanor in the castle of Mirebeau.  Surprised at its siege by a rapid march of the king, the boy was taken prisoner to Rouen, and murdered there in the spring of 1203, as men believed, by his uncle’s hand.  This brutal outrage at once roused the French provinces in revolt, while Philip sentenced John to forfeiture as a murderer, and marched straight on Normandy.  The ease with which the conquest of the Duchy was effected can only be explained by the utter absence of any popular resistance on the part of the Normans themselves.  Half a century