Richard the First, King of England
RICHARD “ Coeur de Lion,” so celebrated as a soldier of the cross, was b. in 1157, ascended the throne in 1189, and d. in 1199, having been slain by an arrow from the castle of Chalons, which he had invested.
His consort, by whom he had no issue, was Berengaria, the lovely daughter of Sancho, the Wise, King of Navarre.
The Royal House of Navarre derived in the female line from Aznar, first Sovereign Count of Arragon on the deliverance of that country from the Moorish yoke, and became the parent stem, from which issued the Kings of Arragon, Castile and Leon.
Sancho, the Wise, m. Beatrice, dau. of Alphonso, King of Castile, and had three children, viz.
i. SANCHO, the Strong, celebrated by the Provençal poets, for his gallant exploits against the Moors. He d.s.p.
ii. BERENGARIA, consort of RICHARD Coeur de Lion.
iii. BLANCHE, who m. the Troubadour Prince, Thibaut, Count of Champaigne, and d. leaving a son,
THIBAUT, Count of Champaigne, who became heir of his uncle, Sancho, the Strong, and of his aunt, Berengaria, and was eventually King of Navarre.
After the death of Richard, Berengaria fixed her residence at Mans, in the Orleannois, and passed her latter years in honourable retirement within the walls of the stately Abbey of L’Espan, which she had founded. “From early youth to her grave,” (we quote the elegant historian of England’s Queens) “Berengaria manifested devoted love for Richard; uncomplaining when deserted by him, forgiving when he returned, and faithful to his memory unto death, the royal Berengaria, Queen of England, though never in England, little deserves to be forgotten, by any admirer of feminine and conjugal virtue.”