The lady was a Spanish
princess named Berengaria. The circumstances of this betrothment were
somewhat extraordinary.

The reader will recollect that he had been betrothed in his earliest
youth to Alice, an infant princess of France. His father had thrown
him in, as it were, as a sort of makeweight, in arranging some
compromise with the King of France for the settlement of a quarrel,
and also to obtain the dower of the young princess for his own use.
This dower consisted of various castles and estates, which were
immediately put into the hands of Henry, Richard's father, and which
he continued to hold as long as he lived, using and enjoying the rents
and revenues from them as his own property. When Richard grew old
enough to claim his bride, Henry, under whose custody and charge she
had been placed, would not give her up to him; and long and serious
quarrels arose between the father and the son on this account, as has
already been related in this volume. The most obvious reason for which
Henry might be supposed unwilling to give up Alice to her affianced
husband, when he became old enough to be married to her, was, that he
wished to retain longer the use of the castles and estates that
constituted her dowry. But, in addition to this, it was surmised by
many that he had actually fallen in love with her himself, and that he
was determined that Richard should not have her at all. Richard
himself believed, or pretended to believe, that this was the case. He
was consequently very angry, and he justified himself in the wars and
rebellions that he raised against his father during the lifetime of
the king by this great wrong which he alleged that his father had done
him. On the other hand, many persons supposed that Richard did not
really wish to marry Alice, and that he only made the fact of his
father's withholding her from him a pretext for his unnatural
hostility, the real ends and aims of which were objects altogether
different.

However this may be, when Henry died, and there was no longer any
thing in the way of his marriage, he showed no desire to consummate
it. Alice's father, too, had died, and Philip, the present King of
France, and Richard's ally, was her brother. Philip called upon
Richard from time to time to complete the marriage, but Richard found
various pretexts for postponing it, and thus the matter stood when the
expedition for the Holy Land set sail from Marseilles.

The next reason why Richard did not n