Walter de Coutances - Return To Normandy

Return To Normandy

Coutances returned to Normandy, and in December 1195 attempted to secure compensation for the losses his archdiocese had sustained in the warfare between King Richard and King Phillip. He sought compensation from both kings but obtained no satisfaction, and felt so ill-treated by the kings that he abandoned his see. The English and the French kings had required clergymen to guarantee the January 1196 Treaty of Louviers that the two kings arranged for themselves, with Richard nominating Coutances as his surety, or guarantor that the conditions of the treaty would be fulfilled. Part of the treaty laid out that if the archbishop laid an interdict or excommunicated anyone in the lands of King Philip or any subject of King Richard in the archdiocese of Rouen, then the archiepiscopal manor of Andely should be forfeit to either king until after a special tribunal had determined if the archbishop's punishment was valid.

When Coutances returned to his diocese in July 1196, he found that the king had seized the manor of Andely independently of the treaty provisions, and when the archbishop refused to relinquish it to the king, Richard began to fortify the manor. He also built a castle there, now Château Gaillard. On 7 November 1196, Coutances set off for Rome, to protest the seizure to the pope. Richard sent a royal embassy, and eventually a settlement was reached. The archbishop was ordered to remove the interdict he had placed on the duchy, and in return for the manor received two others and the seaport of Dieppe. The various lands that Coutances' received in exchange for Andely were worth £1,405 a year. This episode marked the end of Coutances' service to the Angevin kings; for the rest of his life the archbishop focused on protecting and guarding the archiepiscopal properties and rights.