King Richard the Lionheart and the London Riots

King Richard the Lionheart was famous for his crusading spirit. He took with him to the Holy Land many young warriors and one of these was William Fitz Osbert. This man Fitz Osbert came from a good family had some legal training, yet he had dreadful character defects. He was constantly after money, plaguing his own brother also called Richard. Eventually Fitz Osbert, on his return from the Crusades, became the focus of immense public dissatisfaction when King Richard the Lionheart was captured and held to ransom and English folk had to pay a colossal sum in silver to obtain his release.

By the year 1196, Fitz Osbert had committed murdered twice and had through rabblerousing invective, galvanised the whole of London and most of the Home Counties into a riotous revolution which threatened to overthrow the state. Since King Richard was out of the country building castles in France, this left Archbishop of Canterbury Hubert Walter to find a way to capture Fitz Osbert.

This book details the revolutionary treachery of Fitz Osbert, the guile of Archbishop Walter and the uncaring attitude of the king for his own country and innocent people. In the end, miracles were seen, and the poor wanted Fitz Osbert made a saint, but was he so holy or was he a psychopathic narcissist with a pathological hatred for almost everyone apart from himself? He had set himself up in the role of Jesus Christ and even Moses but met the most terrible end. How are the mighty fallen!