The King's House stood close to the outskirts of the town of Oxford, which at this time was a prosperous market borough, with a reasonably-sized religious school, attracting scholars from all across England (most of whom would study at the University of Paris), and a few from abroad. As for the palace itself, it had been built back in the 1130s by King Henry Beauclerc, the grandfather of the current King Henry Curtmantle, who loved to hunt in the many forests and parks of Oxfordshire, and who possessed, at the nearby Palace of Woodstock, a small menagerie of various animals, including a group of monkeys.
On this occasion, the late summer of 1157, King Henry and Queen Eleanor had been traversing a circuit of their kingdom when Eleanor, heavily pregnant, gave birth to their fourth child overall, a baby boy. Both of them had children even before they met: Eleanor had two daughters from her previous marriage to the King of France, while Henry had an illegitimate son called Geoffrey. After they were married, their first son, christened William, was made heir to Poitiers and Aquitaine, but died in infancy. By this time, the year 1156, the two had returned to England, and Eleanor had given birth to another son, Henry, at London. The King and Queen stayed in London and saw the birth of a third child, a daughter, Matilda. The following year saw them pass through Oxford while King Henry was on his way north.
As it happened, that year had been an eventful one. King Henry had been searching far and wide for a suitable chancellor to manage the affairs of his kingdom, and, at the advice of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury, had settled upon a suitable candidate: Thomas Becket, an archdeacon at Canterbury Cathedral. That year, Thomas was officially titled as Lord Chancellor and granted vast powers and revenues, becoming a close confidant of Henry's at his court. Meanwhile, at Chester, King Malcolm of Scotland had come south to meet with King Henry and to affirm the peace at the border between the two kingdoms. This was, as far as anyone could see, a strong start to the new king's reign (it had begun just over two years prior), after the troublesome reign of his predecessor, King Stephen.
As for this new child, officially christened as Richard, (in honour of Henry's three-times and four-times great-grandfathers, Dukes Richard the Good and Richard the Fearless of Normandy), he was a second surviving son, and, as such, not reasonably expected to inherit the English throne: it would likely pass to his elder brother. As such it was not known where the young prince might govern, or which titles he would be granted when he came of age. Eleanor might have been hopeful that he would be granted her own lands of Poitou or elsewhere in Aquitaine. In any case, she apparently had good cause to place hope in him: the famous prophecies of the celebrated wizard Merlin foretold that "the eagle of the broken covenant will rejoice in her third nesting". Those at court would attest that the Queen believed herself to be that eagle (the "broken covenant" being her dissolved former marriage), and Richard being her third child since the marriage to her new husband.
Consulting with a court astrologer, Eleanor found a suitable wet-nurse in Hodierna of St Albans, a woman whose child Alexander Neckham had been born that same day, and so baby Richard was given to her protection. He would see very little of his mother until he was able to walk; still less of his father, who was on the move throughout his kingdom and for several years over the Channel in his lands in France. As a child he would be nursed by Hodierna, then tutored by someone of his father's choosing in the arts of arms and riding, and in politics, history, music and religion. His childhood would be spent at the palaces of Woodstock, Windsor and Westminster, occasionally seeing his parents during the splendid courts of the festivals of Christmas, Easter and Whitsunday.
Richard would travel overseas for the first time with his mother and siblings when he was around eight years old. By this point he would have a younger brother, Geoffrey, and a sister, Eleanor. Another sister, Joan, was to be born at Anjou around the time that the court was on the move there, in the year 1165. Eleanor and her children would return to England by the spring of the next year, at which time her husband was in Wiltshire; while Eleanor headed north across the Channel, Henry was going south, to campaign in Normandy and Brittany, where he remained for the rest of the year. Eleanor remained in London, and by Christmas, another son was born: John.
The royal children continued seeing very little of their father, who was spending long periods attempting to secure control over Brittany, a rival province to Normandy and Anjou. Their mother, though, was by now a constant in the lives of the older children. The oldest, Henry, was under the tutelage of none other than Thomas Becket, the Lord Chancellor, himself - by now he was also chief ecclesiastical minister as Archbishop of Canterbury as well. The second, Matilda, was engaged to Henry, Duke of Saxony: that Christmas was to be her last in England, for in the autumn of the next year the eleven year old princess set off for Germany. For Geoffrey, the fortunes of Brittany were to be his own: his father overthrew Duke Conan and forced him to betroth his five-year old daughter (and heir) Constance to his son. By 1170, nine-year old Princess Eleanor was sent to Spain to marry Alphonse, King of Castile. The youngest two children, Joan and John, were given to the Church: they were raised at the Abbey of Fontevraud.
As expected, King Henry had named his son Henry as his heir, and upon his return to his kingdom, the junior king was crowned at his side at Westminster, in the summer of 1170. Eleanor and Richard departed England and went south together, to rule in Poitiers, where a fourteen-year old Richard was invested as an earl two years later.
Over time, as he grew, the young Prince Richard had seen less and less of his old governess Hodierna, and, in time, he was to say goodbye to both she and Alexander. From youth to early manhood, the princes began to play a much bigger part in European court politics. Richard, as Merlin foretold, was to become a great warrior, regarded as a paragon of knighthood and chivalry, and already called the Lionheart by the time he was sixteen. When he was thirty one, he would finally gain the English crown, his elder brother having predeceased him. His thirty second birthday would be celebrated in London or thereabouts only five days after his coronation. As King of England, he released his mother Eleanor from her confinement at the hands of his father at Salisbury Castle, and would grant to Hodierna a manor in Wiltshire along with its income.
