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Richard became the third Duke of Normandy as a nine year old child on the murder of his father William Longsword.. The French King Louis IV soon took possession of him claiming he was acting as the child’s guardian during his minority and placed him in his castle at Laon. This worried the Norman nobility who saw in the child a person who could unite the Norse and Frankish in the region and maintain their autonomy from the crown.
The King directly controlled little land outside the Isle de France after a series of defeats and with two children of his own it could be seen that with Richard out of the way it would be a quick means of expanding his power.
The story of Richard’s captivity grew into a legend. The child refused to eat and grew feeble which did not worry the French court and they eased their guard over him. One night his faithful squire Osmond de Centeville was seen taking a bundle of straw into the castle stables. In it was hidden Richard and they quickly leapt onto a horse and rode all night to Crecy castle and safety. This story was to be retold in 1854 in a series of stories called the Little Duke by Charlotte Yonge to which Mark Twain was to claim as his inspiration for writing the Prince and the Pauper.
Louis was riled and with Hugh the Great as an ally invaded and took control of Normandy. He took his court to Rouen and one evening during a banquet it is said Bernard the Dane began to sow seeds of division in the mind of Louis by taunting him about how Hugh had the best end of the deal gaining all of Normandy West of the Seine.
The Normans still had close links to the North and when the split between Louis and Hugh came about they were able to regain control of their land with the aid of the Danish King Harold Bluetooth who in 945 fought with Richard and Hugh to defeat and capture Louis.
The Fearless was to move his loyalty firmly to Hugh the Great and cemented this by marrying his daughter Emma, although this was to be a short and childless marriage due to her early death.
Richard also gained a wife from the Danes, Gunnora of Crepon, whom he married in 962 during Bluetooth’s second helpful arrival during the 961 to 965 struggle to fight off King Lothar, the son of Louis.
It was to be a very fruitful marriage with eight children of whom Robert d’Evreux was to become Archbishop of Rouen for nearly fifty years and Emma was to have the doubtful privilege of being married to both Aethelred the Unready and King Canute and mother to two English kings in Harthacnut and Edward the Confessor.
With the eventual defeat of Lothar and his son Louis V a new royal line under Hugh Capet, the son of Hugh the Great, began in 887 with the Fearless being his closest ally. The end of the Carolingian monarchy’s overlordship gave Richard the chance of real independence for the Duchy.
Outside one of the Minster of Fecamp’s doors was a stone chest which was washed by the rain that fell off the church’s roof. Every Saturday evening it was filled with wheat for the poor to come and fill their measures and on his death after a reign of over fifty years Richards last request was that he be buried in the chest ‘there where the foot shall tread and the waters of heaven shall fall’.