CHAPTER XIV

A ROYAL WINDFALL

Beauty can be as effective a social or political tool as wealth or breeding, but it must be coupled with another, stronger trait such as determination or ruthlessness. Sanchia had neither Marguerite’s resourcefulness nor Eleanor’s ambition. The queen of England’s campaign to wrest Gascony away from the earl of Cornwall put Sanchia’s position with her new husband on delicate footing. Richard naturally expected his wife to use her relationship with her sister to help further his interests, while Eleanor depended upon her sister to reconcile the earl of Cornwall’s political aspirations with those of the English Crown. It was the sort of balancing act that would have taxed the talents of even the most experienced diplomat, and Sanchia, who had been in England less than five years, was unequal to the task. While doubtless aware of the conflicting expectations of her husband and sister, she had not the skills to resolve the situation to either’s satisfaction. Her inadequacies were a continuing source of frustration and disappointment to Richard, and would later affect their marriage.

Of all the sisters, Sanchia was the only one to have married a man who had been previously married. Richard’s first wife, Isabella Marshal, had been a woman from an extremely important, influential English family whom he had known since childhood. Isabella had grown up with English politics, and had become attuned to the nuances of shifting alliances, the ebb and flow of power. As such, she had been a partner to her husband in the fullest sense of the term, both as a source of emotional strength and as an astute adviser. Her family connections were of enormous strategic value to the earl of Cornwall. Her brothers, leading members of the aristocracy, could be rallied at a moment’s notice to take the earl of Cornwall’s side in any argument, even against his brother the king. Richard had been tied to Isabella by a myriad of shared experiences and a sense of inherited leadership, a vision of the kingdom as it was meant to be. Theirs had been a union so marked by affinity that Richard had taken it for granted.

Now he had married a foreign woman half his age. Sanchia could not be expected to provide the same insights as had Isabella Marshal, and in the beginning Richard did not require this of her. She was an asset to his estate as a particularly impressive castle or a valuable horse would have been. She was stylish and looked well at court functions; she was sweet and impressionable in private. If she was not excessively clever, well, what of it?

Sanchia was pleased when she conceived within a year of her marriage; she hoped that having children of her own would bring her closer to her husband. Already she understood that the difference in their ages and backgrounds was creating a distance between them that Eleanor did not seem to experience with her husband. A family provided a logical way to bridge this gap. When she gave birth to a son in the fall of 1246, it seemed her expectations were rewarded; Richard took it as a good omen, and gave a great feast to celebrate.

But Sanchia’s newborn son died a scant month later, “that worldly joy might not be free from sudden and frequent griefs.” The loss was wrenching. Eleanor was sympathetic, but Eleanor was queen; she could not devote herself to comforting her sister. Sanchia reached out to her husband, but this death was too reminiscent of the deaths of his other children by Isabella. Richard drew away from his wife and instead threw himself into his work, a formula against affliction which would eventually become routine.

The pathos of Sanchia’s position lies in her awareness of her husband’s diminishing affections, and her efforts to carve out a life for herself in the face of his negligence. She went through all the motions of being a great lady. She was present at all the major court functions. When Richard was sent to Paris in 1247 to renegotiate the peace with Louis before the French king went on crusade, she and Richard’s son Henry went, too. She was an accepted member of the English nobility, particularly among the women; she even belonged to a book group. There is a handwritten note attributed to Matthew Paris extant in a copy of the Life of Alban addressed to the countess of Arundel, asking her to return “the book about St Thomas the Martyr and St Edward, which I translated and illustrated, and which the Lady Countess of Cornwall [Sanchia] may keep until Whitsuntide.”

But she was never a political force in England. Eleanor never quarreled with Sanchia, never objected to any of her activities. She was always welcomed into the queen’s circle, even when Sanchia, through Richard, became even richer than her older sister. Eleanor was not the sort of person to share power, so clearly she did not view her sister as a threat. Matthew Paris had been wrong when he prophesized that Richard’s marriage to Sanchia would result in the kingdom’s acquiring two queens.

Possibly because Sanchia’s influence was proving to be so ineffective, Henry and Eleanor, who were in debt to the earl of Cornwall themselves, were forced to appease Richard by the customary means of bribery. This was how, in 1247, Richard came to take over the national mint.

By the mid-1240s it had become clear that English money was badly in need of recoinage. The value of the silver penny (the only coin in existence at the time) had been seriously compromised by the practice of “clipping,” a process by which, every time a coin changed hands, its outer rim was shaved off, “so much so that the inner circle was barely left remaining, and the lettered border wholly cut off.” Collect enough shavings from enough coins and an enterprising clipper could accumulate the silver necessary to produce his own pennies; consequently, the procedure had acquired a devoted and enthusiastic following, particularly among “the merchants of the countries adjacent to England, especially the Flemings.” By 1247 the problem was serious enough for Henry to consider a kingdomwide recall of the debased specie, followed by the replacement of the entire English mintage with new coins.

Such an ambitious endeavor was beyond the resources of the crown itself, so Henry turned to Richard, already the wealthiest man in England. In exchange for agreeing to undertake the supervision of the recoinage personally, and supplying an initial loan of ten thousand marks to get the business started, the earl of Cornwall was allowed to write the terms of his own contract with the king. These were: (1) that his loan of ten thousand marks be repaid in new coinage before anyone else received any profit from the deal; (2) that he would exercise complete control over the mint, and that the king himself would have to adhere to his brother’s financial decisions; and (3) that he and Henry would split the profits of this exercise fifty-fifty for the next twelve years.

So, from 1247 to 1259, the inhabitants of England were obliged to bring their old coins for replacement to one of the seventeen mints that Richard had established for this purpose. For every pound of old coins brought in, each citizen lost sixteen-pence value—ten pence to pay the expenses of the recoinage and six pence as a fee to Richard.

Even given that he split this six-pence-per-pound profit with Henry, it was an astounding amount of money for a private citizen to earn. It represented nothing less than a fundamental redistribution of the kingdom’s wealth toward Richard and away from every other inhabitant, on a scale “only matched, in later centuries, by the reforms of Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and William III. Like Elizabeth and William (or rather Sir Isaac Newton, the then Master of the Mint), Richard made a profit. But if the available figures are even approximately reliable, his profit vastly exceeded theirs,” wrote N. Denholm-Young, Richard’s biographer. Twelve years of taking three pence from every pound owned by every man, woman, and child in England (and in 1251 Henry contracted with him to do it in Ireland for twelve years as well) vaulted the earl of Cornwall’s net worth into the realm of the fantastic. Before his appointment as Master of the Mint he had merely been the richest man in England. Afterward, it was just possible that he was the richest private individual in the world.

These activities occupied a great deal of Richard’s time and energy. Sanchia, by default, claimed less and less of his attention. On December 26, 1249, the countess of Cornwall finally presented her husband with a son, Edmund, who lived. But this time the earl did not arrange for a party.

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Reverse of the new penny of 1248.

 

A year later, an event occurred that would have enormous influence on the lives of all four sisters. On December 13, 1250, the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick II, called “the greatest of earthly princes” and “the wonder of the world” by the chroniclers, died unexpectedly of dysentery. “His death was kept secret for some days,” Matthew Paris wrote, “that his enemies might not so soon exult in the circumstance; but on St. Stephen’s Day it was publicly made known and announced to the people.”

His enemies did exult, and none more so than the pope, Innocent IV. There was no one Innocent had hated more than Frederick II. The antipathy between the two men had caused the pope to go to prodigious lengths to eradicate his opponent. Innocent had not only excommunicated the emperor, he had called for and funded a crusade against the empire that had taken badly needed resources away from Louis’s crusade against the Saracens. Not content with raising an army of German mercenaries to assail imperial forces, the pontiff had also intrigued with the emperor’s personal physician to have Frederick poisoned, although the assassination attempt had been unsuccessful. The poison had been discovered in time and given to a condemned prisoner instead, and the doctor responsible had had his eyes gouged out and undergone other, similarly excruciating tortures before finally being killed. Frederick unearthed the source of the plot and vowed vengeance on the Curia, and Innocent, still hiding out in Lyon and noting the severity of the punishment meted out to the doctor, had worried over imperial retaliation. Now, suddenly, providence had intervened and removed the man the pope had labeled “the AntiChrist” as a threat.

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Inverted shield of Emperor Frederick II, indicating his death.

Innocent IV knew that his papacy was still in jeopardy. Frederick had two adult sons, Conrad and Manfred, both of whom were strong enough to carry on their father’s work. Conrad, who was the eldest and the legitimate heir, lived in Germany. Upon hearing of the emperor’s death he immediately made plans to travel to Sicily to claim his inheritance. It was his eighteen-year-old half-brother, Manfred, Frederick’s illegitimate son by a beloved mistress, who was the real warrior, however. Manfred had been raised at the emperor’s court and had been his father’s favorite. There was likely to be some friction between these two over the imperial succession.

And therein lay Innocent’s opportunity. If, during this transitional period, Innocent could somehow split the empire into two separate kingdoms—Germany and Sicily—by offering the crown of Sicily to a friendly third party, the danger from the emperor’s sons would be eliminated. Someone else just might be willing to go to the trouble and expense of fighting Conrad and Manfred if it meant papal support for a kingship; accordingly, the pope looked around for a suitable candidate.

He turned to Charles of Anjou. Charles and Beatrice, along with Alphonse of Poitiers and his wife, had arrived in Lyon during the summer of 1250, five months before the emperor’s death, with the grievous news of Louis IX’s defeat at the hands of the Egyptians. They had first gone from Acre to Frederick II’s court, where they had begged the emperor to send an army to rescue the king of France, an appeal Frederick had been forced to refuse on the grounds that he needed every last imperial soldier to fight against the pope. Charles and Alphonse had then come to Innocent to try to compel him to make peace with Frederick so that the emperor could use his army in Louis’s defense rather than his own. They threatened to throw the pope out of Lyon if he refused, and only Frederick’s untimely death had saved Innocent from having to relocate to Bordeaux and avail himself of the questionable protection of Henry III.

As a way of mollifying his French hosts, Innocent offered the kingdom of Sicily to Charles of Anjou. All Charles need do was to repay Innocent for expenses already incurred (Innocent had already spent quite a lot of money trying to unseat Frederick and wanted to recoup as much as possible), raise an army of his own, and sail to Rome, where, as an extra inducement, Innocent promised personally to crown him king. From there it would be a simple matter of marching south and engaging imperial troops in battle; a man as fiercely talented as the new count of Provence, the pope felt, should have no difficulty imposing his will on either Conrad or Manfred, depending upon which of the two was in power at the time.

Charles of Anjou was not, in principle, against this offer—in fact, he was rather inclined to accept, but he was prevented by his elder brother’s obstinacy in remaining in the Holy Land. Louis had charged Charles and Alphonse with the task of mustering new troops for a renewed attack on the Egyptians and, as this had been Charles’s excuse for leaving his brother in the first place, he couldn’t simply abandon his obligation to the king of France in favor of a more personally advantageous proposition (however tempting). As long as Louis remained in Egypt, Charles was obligated to at least go through the motions of reviving his eldest brother’s failed crusade, so he regretfully declined Innocent’s offer. Besides, he did not have the money.

Beatrice was likely relieved not to have to support Charles in yet another foreign entanglement so quickly. She had only just returned from a two-year sojourn in the desert, the last few months of which had been harrowing. There was still unrest in Provence, and her mother’s claims to settle. Beatrice knew everyone of importance in the county, and they knew her. She could do much to smooth and legitimize the transition of power away from her mother and toward her husband. And it might be best to address these problems while Louis and Marguerite were still away—Beatrice was aware that her older sister would throw her support with the king behind their mother’s position and against that of Beatrice and Charles.

Both Beatrice and Charles resented Marguerite’s interference in the affairs of the county. Beatrice was aware that Marguerite still hoped to inherit Provence, even though it was supposed to go to a child of Beatrice’s on her death. But children can get sick and die, as Beatrice had discovered when she had returned to Cyprus after leaving Louis and Marguerite at Acre. The son she had left behind with a nurse had not survived. It is possible she blamed Louis and Marguerite for his death—if the crusade had not dragged on in the disastrous fashion it did she might have returned in time to save her son. She still had her daughter, Blanche, of course, but a daughter was not enough to ensure that her older sister did not succeed in reclaiming the county. Perhaps spending time with her husband in the unhurried atmosphere of her native land, where they would not be troubled by Saracen assassins, or Maml alt="image"/>k mercenaries, or all of the other inconveniences associated with a prolonged stay in the Holy Land, might help her to get pregnant again, this time with another son.

Not that it wouldn’t have been nice to be crowned a queen.

 

Undaunted by the count of Provence’s refusal, the pope resumed his search for an acceptable king of Sicily. It did not take him long to settle on a new candidate: Richard of Cornwall.

Richard had probably been Innocent’s first choice all along. In fact, it is possible that the pope, who had been nursing the idea of separating Sicily from the rest of the Holy Roman Empire ever since he had first excommunicated and deposed Frederick II at the Council of Lyon in 1246, had offered the kingdom to Richard even before the emperor died. Richard had made a personal visit to Innocent in April 1250, where, according to Matthew Paris, the earl and the pontiff “held many secret and lengthened conferences between them; and all who witnessed these proceedings wondered at them, and especially at the great and unusual hospitality of the pope.”

There was nothing to wonder at—the pope was a man who appreciated wealth, and Richard made no secret of his immense resources. The earl may not have been a king but he traveled like one. When Richard came to visit Innocent, he was accompanied by Sanchia, her baby Edmund, his son Henry, five earls, three bishops (including the bishop of London and Robert Grosseteste, the bishop of Lincoln), and forty armed knights. “The number of his pompously-equipped retinue and his sumpter-horses was so great, that the citizens, as well as all who had come to the court to transact business, were astonished at the arrival of such a great prince.” Innocent sent all his cardinals but one out into the street to meet their honored guests, and afterward got up from the papal throne to embrace the earl of Cornwall and invite him to dinner.

Innocent offered the kingship of Sicily to Richard with the same provisos he had outlined for Charles. In exchange for the pope’s personally crowning the earl of Cornwall the legitimate king of Sicily, Richard would agree to underwrite all the expenses of the military campaign, including the reimbursement to the papacy of any monies already expended in the cause. After Richard had won the battle and taken over the kingdom he would not try to unite Sicily and Germany as Frederick II had tried to do, but would be content with wealthy Sicily and the pope’s goodwill. Thus “was unraveled the mystery to why the pope had formerly done so much honor to Earl Richard at Lyons, as to treat him as a relative, and took so much pleasure in his company as to excite the astonishment of all.”

But Richard surprised the pontiff and refused. Although he wanted a kingdom, it turned out he did not want that particular one. He wrote a letter politely declining the honor, but privately he laughed at the proposal. Richard, who was neither “brave nor skillful in war,” as Matthew Paris so candidly expressed it, had no intention of raising an army to try to take over a kingdom so far away, whose terrain and customs were unknown to him, and which was guarded by an entrenched, ferocious warrior like Manfred. It was “the same as if any one said to him, ‘I give or sell you the moon, climb up and take it,’” he snorted to his friends.

Sanchia doubtless approved of her husband’s decision. There is nothing in her life to indicate that Sanchia desired to rule as her sisters did; certainly she would not have wanted to endure a battle and live in Sicily. Reports were just filtering back about Marguerite’s ordeal in Egypt. Better the loneliness of neglect than to face the hardships of war.