Walter de Coutances - Service To King Richard

Service To King Richard

Shortly after Richard took the throne he sought absolution for his sins in rebelling against his father, from Baldwin of Forde and Coutances. The two archbishop's absolved Richard in a ceremony in Sees. Coutances also invested Richard as Duke of Normandy in a ceremony held in Rouen, before accompanying Richard to England, where he participated in the new king's coronation, on 3 September 1189.

In 1189 Coutances held an ecclesiastical synod which legislated, among other things, that the clergy should not hold secular offices, even though Coutances himself had held and continued to hold such offices. On 9 November 1189 Richard appointed Coutances to a commission tasked with deciding the dispute between Baldwin of Forde and the monks of his cathedral chapter over Baldwin's plan to create a church dedicated to Thomas Becket, the murdered Archbishop of Canterbury, and to staff this church not with monks, but with canons. The monks of Canterbury Cathedral objected to Baldwin's plan, fearing that it was part of a plot to transfer the right of election from the monastic cathedral chapter to the new church's canons. Sitting on the commission with Coutances were Hugh de Puiset the Bishop of Durham, Godfrey de Lucy the Bishop of Winchester, Hubert Walter the Bishop of Salisbury, Peter de Leia the Bishop of St David's, Richard fitzNigel the Bishop-elect of London, William Longchamp the Bishop-elect of Ely and some abbots. The commission travelled to Canterbury, and on 29 November 1189, managed to secure a compromise between the parties, which lasted until Hubert Walter, by then Archbishop of Canterbury, revived the plan. In the compromise, Baldwin agreed to give up the idea of a new monastic foundation around Canterbury and the monks agreed to submit to the archbishop's authority.

When Richard left England in late 1189, the archbishop accompanied him to Normandy and then to Sicily, where Richard began the Third Crusade. In October 1190, Coutances was one of the negotiators between the city of Messina and the crusaders, and later was a guarantor of the peace treaty between Tancred, the King of Sicily and King Richard. The archbishop was also appointed one of the treasurers of the crusading army.

While Richard was still in Sicily, word reached the king of the disputes between William Longchamp, whom Richard had left in England, and John, Richard's younger brother. On 2 April 1191 Richard sent Coutances back from Sicily to England. The archbishop landed in England on 27 June, after a short detour to Rome. Coutances received a release from his crusading vow, and returned to England in the company of Richard's mother, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine. He had a number of royal documents authorizing him to settle the disputes, and on 28 July a settlement was reached that left Longchamp in control, although John still retained sufficient power to make Longchamp's grip on the government somewhat insecure. In September, however, Longchamp imprisoned Richard's bastard half-brother, Geoffrey, Archbishop of York, who was attempting to return to England after having been banished by the king. The imprisonment renewed memories of the murder of Thomas Becket almost 20 years earlier, and Geoffrey was quickly released. Longchamp was brought to a council, headed by Coutances and a number of the clerical and lay lords of England, which took place on 5 October 1191 at Lodden Bridge on the Thames River. Longchamp was deposed and exiled, largely because Coutances had a royal document ordering the magnates to obey Coutances' if the archbishop's advice was resisted by Longchamp, which it had been. Although the medieval chronicler Richard of Devizes accused Coutances of duplicity, and of trying to play both sides against the other, the evidence suggests that Coutances was genuinely trying to solve the dispute in the king's interest. Longchamp fled to Normandy, and he was excommunicated by Coutances.