Iniit ergo omnis multitudo pactum in domo Dei cum rege, dixitque ad eos
Joiada: Ecce, filius regis regnabit.
1216
On the 19th of October, 1216, King John lay dead in Newark
castle. Nearly half of his realm, including the capital, was
in the hands of a foreign invader who was supported by a
numerous and powerful section of the English baronage as
well as by the citizens of London; and the sole surviving
male representatives of the royal house of England were two
boys, the elder of whom was but nine years old. The King
had been cut off suddenly, at a moment when not one of his
English counsellors was at his side; and the small body of
troops which he had brought with him from the west consisted
almost entirely of foreign mercenaries. It might well have
been expected that these men would, as soon as the “landless
king” was dead, transfer their services to his rival. But John
had possessed that mysterious gift which seems to have
been common to the whole Angevin house, the gift of inspiring
a personal attachment out of all proportion to the merits of
its object. These men, seemingly without any leader to direct
their action, took upon themselves and faithfully and
successfully fulfilled the duty of carrying into effect John’s
last wishes, so far as lay in their power, by conveying his
corpse across England from Newark to Worcester, and calling
on the loyal barons to meet them there for the double
purpose of burying the dead King and concerting offensive
and defensive measures to secure the rights of his heir.[1]
John’s last act had been to commend his eldest son to
the care of the Earl of Pembroke, William the Marshal.
“Sirs”—thus he is said to have addressed the few friends who
stood around his death-bed—“I must die. For God’s sake,
pray the Marshal to forgive me the wrongs that I have done
him. He has always served me loyally, and never requited
me an ill turn for any evil that I have done to him or
said to him. Sirs, for God’s sake Who made the world, pray
him that he will forgive me; and because I trust in his loyalty
more than in that of any other man, I beg you that he may
have my son in his charge, and always keep him and guard
him; for the child will never be able to hold his land through
any one, unless it be through the Marshal.”[2] When the
Marshal, who was at Gloucester, “heard say that the King his
lord was dead, he was grieved thereat.” He set out at once
to meet the funeral train at Worcester; Gualo the Legate,
who no doubt also was somewhere in the west of England,
did the like; and a goodly company of clerks and knights
were present with them at the burial. As soon as it was over,
“the great men”—that is, probably, the Legate and the
Marshal—hurried back to Gloucester, and sent out a summons
to all those barons who held with the King to join them there
without delay. The appeal met with a quick response; a
council was held, and all present unanimously agreed that
they should send for little Henry “and do with him what God
should teach them to be reasonable and right.” The child
had been placed for safety in the castle of Devizes; Sir
Thomas de Sandford was despatched to fetch him thence,
and the Marshal went as far as Malmesbury to meet him.[3]
The heir of England was gifted with more than the ordinary
attractiveness inherent in youth and innocence; he had a
beautiful face, with golden hair, and he was already noted for
a gravity and dignity of speech beyond his years.[4] A
faithful retainer, Ralf of Saint-Samson,[5] was “carrying him
in his arms”—that is, probably, holding him on the horse’s
neck before him—when, in the plain outside Malmesbury,
William the Marshal met the little company coming from
Devizes. The Marshal saluted the future King; “and the
well-trained child said to him, ‘Welcome, Sir! Truly, I
commit myself to God and to you, that for God’s sake you
may take care of me; and may the true God Who takes care
of all good things grant that you may so manage our business
that your wardship of me may be prosperous.’ ‘Fair Sir,’
answered the Marshal, ‘I tell you loyally, as I trust my soul
to God, I will be in good fealty to you, and never forget you,
so long as I have power to do anything.’” The boy burst into
tears, and the bystanders and the Marshal did the like
“for pity.”[6]
Most of the barons of the King’s party were now at
Gloucester, and anxious that the coronation should take place
without delay. One, however, who ranked next to the
Marshal in importance—Ranulf, Earl of Chester—had not yet
arrived, and it was not without some hesitation that the others
ventured to take so important a step in his absence. The
urgency of the case however overcame their scruples and
their fears of Ranulf’s displeasure;[7] and on the eve of S. Simon
and S. Jude {27 Oct.}—ten days after John’s death—a council over
which the Legate presided made the final arrangements for
crowning the King the next morning.[8] At the last moment
a question arose: who was to knight the boy? “Who should do
it,” one of the assembly answered, “save he who, if we were a
thousand here, would still be the highest and worthiest and
bravest of all—he who has already knighted one young king[9]—William
the Marshal? God has given him such grace as
none of us can attain. Let him gird the sword on this child;
so shall he have worthily knighted two kings.” It was done;
and next morning {28 Oct.} the “pretty little knight, clad in his little
royal robes,”[10] was led in solemn procession to the abbey
church. Standing before the high altar, he recited, under the
dictation of the Bishop of Bath,[11] the old traditional coronation
oath: that he would, all the days of his life, maintain the
honour, peace, and reverence due to God, His Church, and
His ordained ministers; that he would render right and justice
to the people committed to him; that he would abolish bad
laws and evil customs, if any such were in the realm, and
would observe good laws and customs and cause them to be
observed by all men. He then did homage to the Holy
Roman Church and the Pope for the realms of England and
Ireland, and swore that so long as he held them, he would
faithfully pay the thousand marks promised by his father to
the Roman see. This homage must have been done to Gualo
as the Pope’s representative. It was followed by the crowning
and anointing which made Henry king. This most
solemn rite was carried out with as much of the customary
ceremonial as circumstances permitted.[12] The Archbishop of
Canterbury, who according to immemorial precedent should
have performed it, was beyond the sea. Gualo alone had, as
Legate, a right to take the Primate’s place on such an occasion;
but it seems that he tactfully declined to do so, and commissioned
a member of the English episcopate to act in his
stead, while he himself undertook the more ordinary duty of
singing the Mass. The very crown was a makeshift, “a sort
of chaplet”[13]—probably an ornament for a woman’s hair, belonging
to the Queen-mother. Under the sanction of the
legatine authority Bishop Peter of Winchester, assisted by the
Bishops of Worcester and Exeter, anointed the child and
placed this improvised crown on his head.[14]
When the service was over Philip d’Aubigné caught up
the tired child in his arms, carried him back to his apartments,
and caused him to be relieved of his heavy robes before proceeding
to the hall where the coronation banquet was spread.[15]
The company at the high table must have been a small one;
besides the Legate, the Queen-mother,[16] and six bishops,[17]
there seem to have been present at the coronation only six
persons of sufficiently high rank to be mentioned by name
in the chronicles of the time; the Earls of Pembroke and
Ferrers, Philip d’Aubigné, John Marshal,[18] William Brewer,
and Savaric de Mauléon.[19] There was however a considerable
gathering of abbots and priors, and “a very great crowd” of
lesser folk.[20] In the midst of the banquet a messenger made
his way into the hall and delivered to the Earl Marshal aloud,
in the hearing of all, an urgent appeal for succour from the
constable of Goodrich castle, besieged on the preceding
afternoon by some partisans of Louis. Goodrich was only
twelve miles distant, and the incident was naturally felt to be
a bad omen.[21] Guided by a common instinct, all the little
company around the King turned, as John had turned many
a time, to William the Marshal as their one hope, and before
they separated for the night they went to him with the same
request which had already been made to him by John
and by little Henry himself: “You have made our
young lord a knight; he owes his crown to you; we all of
us together pray you to take him into your keeping.” “I
cannot,” answered William, “I am old; the task is too heavy
for me. Leave the matter till the Earl of Chester comes.”
With this answer he dismissed them for the night.[22]
Next morning {29 Oct.} Ranulf of Chester arrived, just as they were
all about to do homage, as was usual on the morrow of a
coronation, to the new King. Ranulf did his homage like the
rest, and expressed his approval of all that had been done in
his absence. A meeting was then held “in the King’s hall,”
for the purpose of choosing “a valiant man to guard King
and kingdom.” The Bishop of Winchester—no doubt
according to arrangement made on the preceding night after
the Marshal had withdrawn—called on Alan Basset to speak
first. “By my faith!” spoke Alan, “fair sir, though I look
up hill and down dale, I see no one fitted for this, save the
Marshal or the Earl of Chester.” Again the Marshal protested
that the matter was too hard for him: “I am too
feeble and broken, I have passed fourscore years. Take it
upon you, Sir Earl of Chester, for God’s sake! for it is your
due; and I will be your aid so long as I have strength in life,
and will be under your command loyally to the uttermost of
my power; never shall you command me aught, by word or
by writing, that I will not do as well as I may by God’s helping
grace.” “Out upon it!” cried Chester, “Marshal, this
cannot be. You, who in every way are one of the best
knights in the world—valiant, experienced, wise, and as much
loved as you are feared—you must take it; and I will serve
you and do your behests, without contradiction, in every way
that I can.” Hereupon Gualo called the Earl, the Marshal,
the Bishop of Winchester, and one or two others into an
inner room, where the matter was discussed among them
privately. No conclusion, however, was reached, till at last
the Legate “besought the Marshal for God’s sake, and
required of him that he should undertake the charge for the
remission and pardon of his sins, that he might be fully
absolved of them before God at the Day of Judgement.”
“In God’s Name!” said the Marshal, “if I am saved from
my sins, this charge befits me well; I will take it, however
burdensome it may be.” “Then,” adds his biographer, “the
Legate gave it to him, as was right; and the good Marshal
received the King and the guardianship both together.”[23]
The Marshal’s forethought went beyond that of the others.
Having accepted the charge of the regency, he at once made
a suggestion which shewed that he intended to do the work
of that office thoroughly. “My lords, you see the King is
young and tender; I should not like to lead him about the
country with me. So please you, I would seek out, by your
counsel, a wise man who should keep him somewhere at ease.
This is necessary; I will not drag him about with me. I
shall not be able to stay in one place, but must travel about
and look to the safety of the Marches. Wherefore, I would
have some master provided and chosen for him in your
presence, to whom I can intrust him with security.” “Let
the choice be yours, Sir,” said the Legate, “for we have no
fear but you will choose rightly.” “Then,” answered William,
“since you leave the whole matter to me, I will give him in
charge to a very good master, the Bishop of Winchester, who
has already had the charge of him and has brought him up
carefully and well.” To this all agreed,[24] and it seems to have
been in this way that “by common consent, the care of King
and kingdom was committed to the Legate, the Bishop of
Winchester, and William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke.”[25]
There was no fear of these arrangements being unacceptable
to the rest of the King’s party. Throughout all England
there was but one opinion of William the Marshal; and when
“the folk outside” heard that he had undertaken the governorship
of the King and the realm, “they rejoiced greatly.” But
within the castle, when darkness fell, the old Earl once more
called around him “his sure council”—three faithful friends;
his nephew John Marshal, his squire John of Earley, and
Ralph Musard[26]—with whom he had already had an anxious
consultation on the preceding night, after the first informal
offer of the regency.[27] Now, setting his back against a wall,
he began: “Give me your counsel! for, by my faith, I have
embarked on a wide sea where, cast about as one may, neither
bottom nor shore can be found, and it is a marvel if a man
come safely into port. But may it please God to bear me
up! They have given me this charge, which is like to
miscarry,[28] as you may see and know; and the child has no
possessions, worse luck! and I am an aged man.” He paused,
choked by tears; “and they, who loved him with all their
hearts, wept too for pity.” Recovering himself, he asked
them: “Have you nothing to say to me?” “Yes,” answered
John of Earley. “You have undertaken a business from
which there is no drawing back. But so long as you hold to
it, I tell you that the worst that may come can only bring you
honour. Suppose that all your adherents should join Louis,
and surrender all the castles to him, so that you could find no
shelter anywhere in England;—that you had to quit the
country, and that Louis pursued you till you fled to Ireland;—still
that would be great honour! And if a losing game could
thus turn to your praise, how much greater will be your joy
when you get the better of the adversary, as, please God, you
may! Then all men will say that never man of any race won
such honour upon earth. Is it not worth the winning?”
“By God’s sword!” swore the aged hero, “your counsel is
true and good, and goes so straight to my heart that if all the
world should forsake the King, save myself, know you what I
would do? I would carry him on my shoulders from one
land to another, and never fail him, though I had to beg my
bread.” His friends applauded his resolution, and he, having
now cast aside all misgivings, closed the conference with
characteristic simplicity. “Now let us go to bed; and may
God Who rules over all things give us His counsel and aid, as
He surely does aid those who wish to do right and cleave
unto loyalty.”[29]
He took up his new duties without further hesitation.
Under his direction letters were immediately despatched to all
the sheriffs and wardens of castles throughout England, bidding
them render obedience to the new King;[30] and Gualo called
upon the prelates and the loyal barons to meet the King and
his guardians in a council at Bristol on November 11. When
the council met, it comprised the whole strength of the loyal
party. Only eleven bishops indeed were present; but the
statement made in a royal letter that “all the prelates”[31] of
England were there was practically true nevertheless; for the
two metropolitans were both out of the country, the Bishops
of London, Lincoln, and Salisbury were ill, and the sees of
Durham, Norwich, and Hereford were vacant. The laymen
who attended were the Earls of Pembroke, Chester, Derby (or
Ferrers), and Aumale, the Justiciar Hubert de Burgh, Savaric
de Mauléon, the two William Brewers (father and son), Robert
de Courtenay, Falkes de Bréauté, Reginald de Valtort, Walter
de Lacy, Hugh and Robert de Mortimer, John of Monmouth,
Walter de Beauchamp, Walter and Roger de Clifford, William
Cantelupe, Matthew FitzHerbert, John Marshal, Alan Basset,
Philip d’Aubigné, and John L’Estrange, besides others whose
names are not recorded; and there were also some “other
prelates,”—that is, abbots and priors—and knights.[32] Gualo,
who as representing the overlord of King and kingdom
necessarily acted as president of the council, began by causing
every man present to swear fealty to the King; he then laid
an interdict upon the whole of Wales “because it held with
the barons,” and repeated his excommunication of the rebels
and their allies, with Louis of France at their head.[33]
Next day {12 Nov.} there was issued a provisional Charter, purporting
to be granted by the boy-King “under the guidance of God,
and for the salvation of our soul and of the souls of all our
ancestors and successors, to the honour of God, and the
exaltation of Holy Church, and the amendment of our realm,
by the counsel of our venerable fathers” Gualo and the
other prelates and magnates enumerated. Of course it began
with the declaration which had already been, and was to be
again, so often made, and so often proved but an empty form:
“The English Church shall be free, and have her rights and
liberties entire and undisturbed;” but the recital in the first
article of the Great Charter of John’s grant, made to the
Church before his quarrel with the barons, of one special
liberty—that of free election—was omitted.[34] The clauses
of John’s Charter regulating the reliefs due from tenants-in-chief,[35]
the wardship of heirs under age,[36] the marriage of heirs
and widows,[37] were reproduced with a few very slight alterations,
of which the most significant was an addition to the
clause relating to the custody of estates: that the obligations
laid down as binding on the guardian of a lay fief were to be
binding likewise on the custodian of a vacant ecclesiastical
dignity, and that a wardship of this kind was not to be
bought or sold.[38] The article protecting the King’s debtors and
their sureties against arbitrary distraint;[39] that which protected
free tenants against arbitrary requirement of service
other than what was legally due from their lands;[40] that which
ordered common pleas to be held in a fixed place instead of
following the King;[41] the regulations for taking recognitions
of novel disseisin, mort d’ancester, and darrein presentment;[42]
the clause protecting men of all classes against the infliction
of arbitrary fines for offences;[43] the clauses which forbade the
exaction of contributions for bridge-building from persons or
places not legally bound thereto,[44] and the holding of pleas of
the Crown by sheriffs or other royal bailiffs,[45] the regulations
concerning ward-penny and castle-guard;[46] the royal promises
to seize no timber for building without the owner’s consent,[47]
not to withhold the lands of a convicted felon from his lord
beyond a year and a day,[48] to abolish all weirs except on
the sea-coast,[49] to issue no more writs of praecipe in cases where
a freeman might thereby be deprived of the means of obtaining
justice,[50] to grant writs of inquisition concerning life or
limb freely without payment,[51] to cease from unjust interference
with other men’s rights of wardship in the case of
heirs holding land of a mesne lord by military service and
other land of the Crown by some other tenure;[52] the clause
ordaining equal weights and measures to be used throughout
the realm;[53] that which forbade any man to be sent to the
ordeal on the sole accusation of an officer of the Crown;[54]
the King’s undertaking not to punish or prosecute any man
in any way except by the lawful judgement of his peers and
according to the law of the land,[55] and neither to sell, deny, or
delay, right and justice to any,[56] not to exact unfair reliefs
from escheated baronies,[57] not to summon men to the Forest
Courts from districts outside the Forest jurisdiction and on
pleas unconnected with it;[58] the clause securing the custody
of vacant abbeys to those who were entitled to it as founders,[59]
and that which forbade arrest or imprisonment for manslaughter
on the appeal of any woman other than the wife of
the slain man[60]—were all renewed, as were also the promises
given by John that the Forests made in his reign should be
disafforested and the river enclosures made during the same
period destroyed.[61] Henry pledged himself, as John had
done, to give immediate redress to any Welshmen whom
John had dispossessed of their lands without lawful judgement
of their peers.[62] The article concerning the ancient
liberties and customs of London and other towns was renewed,
with the insertion of a special mention of the Cinque
Ports.[63] That which forbade the King’s constables to seize
any man’s corn or cattle without immediate payment, except
by the owner’s leave, was modified; if the owner belonged to
the township in which the castle stood, payment might be
deferred for three weeks.[64] Another article of the Great
Charter had forbidden all sheriffs and other officers of the
Crown to use any freeman’s horses or carts without the
owner’s consent; they were now permitted to do so on
payment of a sum “anciently fixed”—tenpence a day for a
cart with two horses, fourteenpence a day for a cart with three
horses.[65] The general rule laid down in 1215 that “all
merchants should come and go and dwell and trade in
England, in time of peace, without the imposition of arbitrary
customs” (“maltotes”), was limited by the insertion of a
proviso, “unless they have been publicly forbidden.”[66]
Nineteen articles were entirely omitted. There was no
renewal of the articles forbidding the exaction of interest,
during the minority of a debtor’s heir, on money borrowed from
the Jews or others; nor of the royal promises to institute an
inquiry into the abuses of the Forest law and of the Crown’s
rights over escheated baronies, to remove from all offices in
England certain of John’s foreign adherents, to make
restitution to persons illegally disseised under John, to remit
fines made illegally with him, to reinstate Welshmen
illegally disseised under Henry II. and Richard, and to
appoint no justiciars, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, save those
who knew the law of the realm and were minded to observe
it well.[67] The articles declaring that the ferms of the shires,
wapentakes, and hundreds should be reduced to their old
figures, without increment (except on royal manors);
sanctioning the distribution of the chattels of an intestate
freeman by his next-of-kin under the direction of the Church,
after his debts were paid; and giving leave to all men to go
in and out of England freely, except in time of war,[68] were
also omitted. Above all, there was no renewal of two
provisions of the highest importance: that no scutage or aid
should be imposed except by the common consent of the
realm, unless it were for the King’s ransom, the knighting of
his eldest son, or the marriage of his eldest daughter, and of
“reasonable” amount, and that for the assessment of an aid
or scutage on occasions other than those named, the common
council should be summoned in a certain manner and for a
fixed day, and the matter should proceed according to the
counsel of those who answered the summons.[69] As a natural
consequence of this omission, the article providing that no
mesne lord should henceforth receive permission to take an
aid from his freemen except of reasonable amount and for the
before-named purposes[70] was omitted likewise. The weighty
sixtieth article of the Great Charter, however—“All these
aforesaid customs and liberties which we have granted in our
realm, so far as in us lies, to be kept towards our own men,
all the people of our realm, both clerks and laymen shall
observe, so far as in them lies, towards their men,”—was
retained.[71] The provisions for the return of hostages
and charters, and for a settlement of terms with King
Alexander of Scotland,[72] were of course omitted, being no
longer applicable under the altered political circumstances.
The grounds on which the other omissions and modifications
were made are thus set forth in the clause with which the
Charter concludes, and which replaces the sixty-first clause of
the Great Charter (the clause containing the arrangement
about the twenty-five “over-kings”): “Forasmuch as in the
former charter there were certain chapters which seemed
weighty and doubtful, to wit, concerning the assessment of
scutages and aids, the debts of Jews and others, the liberty
to go in and out of our realm, the forests and foresters, warrens
and warreners, and the customs of the shires, and the river-enclosures
and their keepers: it has pleased the prelates and
magnates that these should be deferred till we shall have
taken counsel more fully; and then we will do to the full,
concerning these and other matters which may require amendment,
whatever things may appertain to the common good
of all and the peace and stability of our self and our realm.”[73]
The seals with which, in place of the non-existent royal
seal, this Charter was confirmed in the King’s name were those
of Gualo the Cardinal Legate and William the Marshal, Earl
of Pembroke, “governor of ourself and our realm.” The form
of the document must have been determined by Gualo and
William conjointly; and it reflects the utmost credit upon the
wisdom, tact, and moderation of both. Their explanation,
given in the clause just quoted, as to the omissions in the new
Charter was reasonable and true. The matters omitted were
such as a provisional government, especially under the existing
circumstances, could not safely deal with. They were all,
more or less, matters of controversy; they were also matters
affecting the relations of the Crown not with the nation as a
whole, but with certain members or sections of the nation;
matters, in a word, as to which it would have been neither
politic nor just to tie the hands of a King who was not yet
capable of acting for himself—above all at a moment when
any surrender of the powers and claims of the Crown might
have deprived him and his counsellors of the already
sufficiently small means which they possessed of carrying on
the war against the invader. Most “grave and doubtful” of
all was the question which had furnished the immediate
pretext, though it was certainly not the sole incentive, for the
rising of the barons against John: the question of scutage. If
the limitations imposed by the twelfth and fourteenth articles
of the Great Charter upon the King’s rights of scutage were
not actually new, they had been obsolete so long as to be
practically an innovation on the established custom of the
realm. This fact was the coign of vantage on which John
had taken his stand when appealing to the Pope against the
barons; and it was on this ground that Innocent had
condemned the Charter. The accession of a child-King was
not the moment for gratuitously surrendering on his part a
claim whose illegality was, to say the least, not proven, and
which the Pope, as overlord of the kingdom, had upheld; and
the postponement of this question enabled Gualo at once to
give the papal sanction to the new Charter. The publication
of the Charter, with that sanction, left no valid excuse for the
continuance of a refusal to recognize the native sovereign.
Henry was now as definitely pledged as Louis to the redress
of all grievances which were really national, and the security
for the fulfilment of the pledge was at least as strong on
Henry’s side as on the side of the stranger.
But the stranger was in the land, with a force of armed
followers of his own, sufficient, if not indeed for its conquest,
at least to keep the footing which he had gained there; and
the men who had called him to their aid were bound to his
cause by engagements from which they could not easily
extricate themselves, even if they wished to do so. When
they heard of Henry’s coronation they were furious, and
many of them took a solemn oath that they would never hold
land of any of John’s heirs. Gualo retorted by interdicting
their lands; and his arguments, pleadings, and threatenings
had a considerable effect not only on the clergy to whom they
were primarily addressed,[74] but also on the lay folk of the
King’s party, whose loyalty was greatly encouraged by hearing
their enemies excommunicated every Sunday and holiday.
This, together with a general feeling that “the sins of the
father should not be visited on the son,” inclined John’s old
adherents to serve the new King even more zealously than
they had served the late one; and they set to work vigorously
at the fortification of their castles in his behalf.[75]
At the moment of John’s death Louis was still, with the
greater part of his forces, encamped, as he had been for three
months, before Dover castle, and was awaiting the results of
a truce which had been made between him and its warden—Hubert
de Burgh—in the early part of October, to enable
Hubert to communicate with John and obtain from him either
succour, or leave to surrender. When fully certified of John’s
death, Louis invited Hubert to a parley and addressed him
thus: “Your lord, King John, is dead; it is useless for you to
hold this castle longer against me, seeing you have no succour;
surrender the castle and come into my fealty, and I will
enrich you with great honours and you shall be great among
my counsellors.” “If my lord be dead,” Hubert is reported
to have answered, “he has sons and daughters who ought to
succeed him; as to surrendering the castle, I would fain
speak with my comrades of the garrison.” These all agreed
that he should refuse, “lest by shamefully surrendering the
place he should incur the mark of treason.”[76] On this Louis
consented to another truce with Hubert till after Easter,[77] and
withdrew to London.[78] The Dover garrison immediately
sallied forth and foraged around till they had stocked the
castle with all necessaries, after burning all the buildings
which Louis had set up round about it;[79] while Hubert was
by this somewhat unexpected release enabled to join the
council at Bristol.
The French party now held, besides London, the chief
strongholds of Surrey and Hampshire—Reigate, Guildford,
Odiham, Farnham, Winchester, Southampton, Porchester;
Marlborough, just within the Wiltshire border, seems to have
been their extreme western outpost. In the Midlands and the
North they held Mountsorel and most of the castles of
Yorkshire. Between these northern fortresses and London,
however, lay a tract of hostile country. The Thames Valley
was blocked by Windsor and Oxford; two of John’s foreign
followers, Engelard d’Athée (or de Cigogné) and Andrew de
Chanceaux, were in command of Windsor; while the castles
of Oxford, Buckingham, Hertford, Bedford, Cambridge, and
Northampton, and the whole of the six shires in which they
stood, were under the charge of the most devoted and energetic,
as well as the most ruthless, of John’s soldiers from over sea,
Falkes de Bréauté. Beyond these lay Nottingham, Newark,
Sleaford, and Lincoln, whose castles were all in the possession of
the royalists.[80] To the east, though the Earls of Essex and
Norfolk were among the partisans of Louis, the castles of
Pleshy, Colchester, Norwich, and Orford were garrisoned
by the troops of the King.[81] In the far north Newcastle-on-Tyne
was held for Henry by Hugh de Baliol,[82] and the
fortresses of the see of Durham by the constables of the
Palatine bishop. The western shires were entirely in the
hands of the Royalists. On the Dorset coast Peter de
Maulay, to whom John on the eve of his last campaign had
entrusted his second boy, Richard, was in command of Corfe,
a fortress which on account of its remote position and great
strength had been chosen for the depository of the greater
part of the royal treasure.[83] The French had apparently no
hold upon the coast anywhere except at Southampton and
Porchester, and at Rye, where the castle was held for Louis
by Geoffrey de Say.[84] Some of the Cinque Ports had indeed
submitted to Louis in 1215, but they had almost immediately
thrown off his yoke, resumed their allegiance to John, and
joined hands with a motley band of adventurers and country
folk who under the leadership of William de Casinghem
occupied the Weald of Kent and were a perpetual danger to the
French troops engaged in the siege of Dover.
That siege Louis seems to have now finally decided to
abandon, probably with the intention of devoting himself
instead to the consolidation of his conquests by the acquisition
of eastern England. On 11th November—the meeting-day
of the Council at Bristol—he appeared before Hertford and
laid siege to the castle. For twenty-five days he plied his
machines against it in vain, its commandant, Walter de
Godardville, a knight of Falkes’s household, making a brave
defence and a great slaughter of the assailants, till the siege
was ended on 6th December[85] by a general truce made between
the Royalist leaders and Louis on the condition that
Hertford and Berkhamsted should be evacuated and surrendered
to the French prince.[86] The constable of Berkhamsted,
however—a German knight named Waleran, who
had long been in John’s service—was unwilling to accept the
truce, and held out against siege and assault till an order
in the King’s name compelled him to surrender on 20th
December.[87] When the truce expired, another was made, the
condition being the evacuation and surrender of the royal
castles of Orford and Norwich;[88] and this second truce seems to
have been followed by a third, purchased probably by the
surrender of Cambridge and either Colchester or Pleshy.
At some date between the middle and the end of January,
1217, Louis called his adherents to a council at Cambridge,
while the King’s guardians brought up their young sovereign
from Gloucestershire to Oxford,[89] and opened negotiations for
a peace, or, failing that, a further prolongation of the truce.
Of peace Louis’s English supporters would not hear; and as
the arrangements for another truce made but slow progress,
Louis laid siege to the castle of Hedingham. Finally,
however, a truce was made, its conditions being apparently
the surrender of Hedingham and Colchester (or, if Colchester
had been surrendered earlier, Pleshy), and perhaps some minor
strongholds, and the continuance of “all things”—castles and
other matters—as they were at that moment until a month
after Easter.[90]
1217
Thus by the beginning of February, 1217, Louis’s mastery
of eastern England was completed, seemingly without a
struggle. At first glance, the action of Henry’s representatives
seems unaccountable; there is, however, reason to think that
it was really part of a scheme for bringing the desultory war
to a crisis. Their aim seems to have been first to induce
Louis to scatter his forces, and then to lure him back to the
coast, hoping that there they might either cut off his retreat, or
compel him to return to his own country.[91] For the accomplishment
of this design it would be necessary to concentrate
their own forces; and this could only be done by withdrawing
the garrisons from such of the royal castles as were least
worth retaining at the moment. These were the castles of
East Anglia and Essex. Unlike the fortresses of the west,
which it was of paramount importance to maintain in a state
of efficiency as a protection against encroachments of the
King’s enemies from the Welsh border, these eastern castles
were practically isolated outposts in a district of which the
greater part was under the enemy’s control. Surrounded as
they were by the territories of powerful barons who supported
Louis, they were not available as bases for concerted action;
and the stores, arms, horses, and men in them could be made far
more useful elsewhere.[92] To the enemy, on the other hand, the
bait would be a tempting one; and the possible consequences
of taking it might well have escaped the penetration of a
more wary general than was Louis of France at this stage of
his career. The possession of these castles placed the whole
of eastern England under his uninterrupted sway, and removed
all serious obstacles, except one, to his communications with
his allies in the north. That one obstacle was the castle of
Lincoln, which under the command of a woman had hitherto
resisted every assailant. Louis appears to have made a
circuit of his new possessions—no doubt placing a garrison in
each of them—and then proceeded to Lincoln, hoping that
his personal presence and the isolation in which she was now
placed might tempt or frighten Dame Nicolaa into a betrayal
of her trust. In this hope he was disappointed. The city
received him, as it had already received his adherents; but
the castle “held out,” for the Dame “kept it very loyally.”
Louis could only return to London and thence send the
castellan of Arras to take up his quarters in Lincoln city, that
he might “hold the country with the help of the Northerners.”[93]
Louis was now anxious to get back to France. According
to one account, his father was again urgently calling him
home;[94] according to another, he was alarmed by letters from
his agents at Rome, telling him that unless he left England
the Pope intended to confirm on Maundy Thursday the
excommunication which had been pronounced on him by
Gualo.[95] When he announced to his English friends in London
his intention of leaving the country they were highly displeased,
and he had to take a solemn oath that he would return before
the expiration of the truce.[96] None of the successive truces
made during this winter seem to have been very scrupulously
kept by either party. On the morrow of the surrender of
Berkhamsted {1216 21 Dec.} Louis had marched upon S. Alban’s and
demanded homage of the abbot, and on its refusal had only
been restrained from burning both abbey and town by the
intervention of Saer de Quincy, whereby the abbot was persuaded
to give him eighty marks for a respite till Candlemas.[97]
A month later {1217 22 Jan.}, at the very time when the King’s Council were
endeavouring to arrange a conference of commissioners from
both sides for the redress of infractions of the first and second
truces and for securing the observance of the truce then
existing,[98] Falkes de Bréauté sacked the same unlucky town
and wrung from the abbot another heavy fine.[99] Louis’s visit
to Lincoln was not an overt act of hostility such as these,
but it was distinctly a violation of the spirit of the conditions
on which the last truce had been made; and the Royalists
may perhaps have considered themselves thereby released
from their own obligation to abide by those conditions.
However this may be, Louis, seemingly on the point of setting
out from London for the coast, received information that the
castle of Rye had been “taken by subtlety” by the English.[100]
As early as 17th December, 1216, “the brave men of
Ireland who are with their ships on the coasts of Normandy”
had been bidden, and encouraged by the promise of liberal
reward, to come in force to Winchelsea, ready and prepared
to go forth in the King’s service on S. Hilary’s day, or as soon
after as possible.[101] They seem to have obeyed the summons,
and to have been joined by an English fleet, gathered no
doubt from the loyal Cinque Ports, and commanded by the
governor of the Channel Islands, Philip d’Aubigné.[102] {Jan.} A
detachment of Royalists, protected by, if not actually landed
from, these ships, had “by the wise counsel of the Marshal”
now surprised and occupied Rye.[103] Louis at once set out for
the coast; he went, however, not direct to Rye, but to
Winchelsea—still, it seems, intending to sail for France. At
his approach the burghers of Winchelsea broke up all the
mills in their town, and then took to their boats and went to
join Philip d’Aubigné and his fleet off Rye. Louis had no
sooner entered Winchelsea than he found himself caught in
a trap whence there was no way of escape—shut in between
the new garrison of Rye, the ships, and the Weald, where
“Willikin” de Casinghem was still in command of a
dauntless and reckless band of loyalists who broke down
every bridge and blocked every passage in the rear of the
French, and cut off the head of every straggler who came
within their reach.[104]
Louis and his men were soon on the verge of starvation;
there was plenty of corn in the town, but no means
of grinding it save the slow process of rubbing it between
their hands; they could get neither flesh nor fish; their
“best food” consisted of some “large nuts” which they
found in the town. For a while they struggled on, making
occasional truces with the ships’ men, probably for the purpose
of being able to fish without molestation and thus
procure a little food; but the sailors paid little or no regard
to these truces, and even came ashore to shoot at the enemies.[105]
At last Louis sent some messengers who contrived to slip
through the Weald to London for succour. Some of his
knights there set out to rescue their lord; but they dared not
attempt to pass through the Weald, so they went by the high
road through Canterbury to Romney, and thence—as it was
impossible for them to proceed from Romney to Winchelsea
without passing Rye—despatched a message to the governor
of the county of Boulogne asking him to send them all the
ships he could get. He sent, it is said, over two hundred
vessels—probably only small boats—all of which save one
came into port at Dover, and were speedily occupied by the
French knights who hastened thither from Romney; but a
succession of storms kept them waiting a fortnight before
they could sail. Meanwhile Louis and his men had possessed
themselves of several large ships which were lying in the
harbour of Winchelsea; and one of the vessels sent from
Boulogne had, “by the hardihood of the mariners,” contrived
to evade the English fleet and reach the same place, “where it
was very welcome.” In all likelihood the captain of the ship
which achieved this exploit was a man who for many years
past had been known on both sides of the Channel as the
most daring of seamen and the most ruthless of pirates,
Eustace “the Monk”; for it was Eustace who now proposed
to build, on one of the large ships, a “castle” wherewith to
attack the English. This “castle” was “so big that everyone
stared at it with wonder, for it overpassed the sides of the ship
in every direction.” A stone-caster was next set up on another
ship, to hurl stones at the English fleet; Louis had already
set up on the shore for the same purpose two similar
machines, whose missiles went almost across the channel
which separates Winchelsea from Rye; and these did the
English ships considerable damage. But one evening the
English brought up some of their vessels close to the town,
stole away the galley which bore the “castle,” and hewed it
in pieces before the very eyes of the French. Louis laid
the blame of this mishap on the Viscount of Melun, who
apparently was responsible for the watch that night; Melun
bluntly declared the men were so hungry that not four knights
could be found to undertake the watch; Louis retorted that
he would take it himself. Then Eustace de Neville interposed,
saying he would find forty knights to watch with him
as long as Louis pleased. That night he did it, with forty of
his friends, “very honourably”; and next morning the
relieving squadron from Dover came in sight. The English
ships threatened to intercept it; but the first English vessel
which came to close quarters by some accident struck
one of its own consorts and sank it with all its crew,
and amid the confusion resulting from this catastrophe
the French ships made their way safely into the harbour of
Winchelsea.[106]
With these ships Louis, whose force is said to have
now consisted of more than three thousand men, proceeded
to Rye, which the English garrison, seeing they could not
defend it, evacuated.[107] By this time the Marshal[108] and the
other members of the Council were on their way up from the
west of England to a general muster of the Royalist forces at
Dorking. Thence, on 28th February, a letter was despatched
in the King’s name to the townsfolk of Rye, bidding them
take courage, give no hostages to Louis, and make no terms
with him, for they would speedily receive “greater succour
than they could believe possible.” The Bishop of Winchester,
the Marshal, the Earls of Chester, Ferrers, and Aumale,
nearly all the barons of the western March (Walter de Lacy,
Hugh and Roger de Mortimer, Walter and Roger de Clifford,
William de Beauchamp, John of Monmouth, “and others”),
and several other well-known leaders (William de Harcourt,
Engelard de Cigogné, William de Cantelupe, Falkes de
Bréauté, Robert de Vipont, Richard FitzRoy), with a
multitude of knights, men-at-arms, and crossbowmen, and
some loyal Welshmen, were setting out for Rye at once, and
the King himself was about to follow with the Legate and
a crowd of clergy and “crusaders.”[109] But before this letter
was written Louis had made his escape. After appointing
his nephew Enguerrand de Coucy as his representative in
England, with orders to go to London “and not stir thence
upon any account,” and leaving a French garrison in Rye,[110]
he had slipped away to Dover, and thence sailed on 27th or
28th February to France.[111]
The Legate meanwhile had turned the war into a crusade.
He had set the example, which the prelates followed, of
assuming in token of the sacredness of the young King’s
cause the white cross which marked the English warriors in
Holy Land; all loyal subjects were exhorted to do the like;
and those who had already taken the cross with the intention
of joining the host now on its way to Egypt were encouraged
to exchange their intended pilgrimage for the struggle with
the excommunicate enemies at home.[112] Nobles and common
folk alike responded to this appeal, “preferring to have a
king from their own land rather than a foreign one.”[113] All
through the winter the tide had been turning surely though
slowly. As early as the end of November, 1216, William of
Aubigny, the lord of Belvoir, who in the preceding year had
defended Rochester castle for the rebel party with a stubborn
bravery worthy of a better cause, and on its capture had been
sent by John to prison at Corfe, bought his release by a fine
of six thousand marks and homage to the new King; he
was at once intrusted with the castle of Sleaford, “and he
kept it right valiantly.”[114] Two recruits of yet greater
importance joined the Royalist forces a few days after Louis
left England: the younger William Marshal—eldest son of
the regent—and the king’s uncle, William Longsword, Earl
of Salisbury. These two, “who loved each other like
brothers,”[115] seem to have been already contemplating a return
to their natural allegiance in the second week of December,
1216;[116] but their scruples or their fears kept them in the
hostile camp for three months longer. Then, in the first days
of March, the elder Marshal “met them by the way” somewhere
between Shoreham and Knepp.[117] The meeting was
evidently pre-arranged.[118] All three spent the night together
at Knepp; and when the two younger men parted from the
elder one next morning, it was to lead their followers to
Winchester and besiege it for the King.[119] The old Marshal
followed them with another body of troops, and laid siege to
Farnham in the first week of March.[120] By 12th March it was
taken;[121] and so, too, about the same time, was the city of
Winchester and “the lesser castle” there—that is, the Bishop’s
castle, known as Wolvesey.[122] The “tower,” or royal castle,[123]
however, held out against the united forces of the two friends
and the regent, who on leaving Farnham came to their
assistance. At last it was decided that he should continue
the siege,[124] while his son and Longsword led their forces
to Southampton or Odiham,[125] and another party under Philip
d’Aubigné was sent to besiege Porchester.[126] On the last day
of March the younger Marshal laid siege to Marlborough; and
“after great difficulty” he took it.[127] Southampton and Odiham
had now been regained;[128] Chichester was won before 16th
April, and Porchester before 27th April.[129] Meanwhile Falkes
de Bréauté had made a raid on the Isle of Ely and recovered
possession of it for the King.[130] The royal forces were swelling
fast; “converts”—as the rebels who returned to allegiance
are called in the official records—came crowding in;[131] and
after Easter the Marshal, while still blockading the “tower”
of Winchester, felt himself strong enough to despatch the
Earls of Chester, Aumale, and Ferrers, with Robert de
Vipont, Brian de Lisle, William de Cantelupe, and Falkes,
and a number of knights and men-at-arms drawn from the
garrisons of the evacuated royal castles, to form the siege of
the rebel Earl of Winchester’s great fortress of Mountsorel in
Leicestershire.[132]
Tidings of these things reached Louis in France; “and
when he heard them,” says a contemporary, “he was not at all
glad.” About Easter time he had betaken himself to Calais,
but with only a very small following; if he had gone to
France with the hope of gathering forces there, he must have
been disappointed. He had, however, procured a new
machine called a trebuchet, “about which there was much
talk, for at that time few of them had been seen in France.”
With this machine, and a handful of knights—only one
hundred and forty—he at last set sail[133] for England once
more on Saturday, 22nd April.[134] As the French ships drew
near to Dover on the morning of S. George’s day {Sunday, 23 April}, their
occupants saw the huts which had been built to shelter the
besiegers of the castle still standing, empty but intact. At
that very moment, however, King John’s son Oliver and
Willikin of the Weald came down upon the huts and set them
on fire, after slaughtering some of the few men who had been left
to guard them. To attempt a landing at Dover in the face
of an enemy whose numbers and position it was impossible to
distinguish amid the smoke thus raised, and who could so
easily pour down a murderous fire of arrows and other missiles
from the cliffs, would have been to court destruction. Louis
therefore altered his course and made for Sandwich. There
he succeeded in landing,[135] though not without opposition from
some of the local ships.[136] Next day he rode to Dover and
took up his quarters in the priory. There he heard dismal
reports of the losses suffered by his adherents in other parts of
England; so he hurriedly arranged with the constable of the
castle for a further prolongation of the local truce,[137] and
returned to Sandwich. Having now been joined by the Count
of Nevers with a few followers, he dismissed the inferior
portion of his own forces to the ships, which he sent back to
France,[138] but, as the sequel showed, with instructions to return.[139]
Then, after firing the town of Sandwich in vengeance for the
hostility of its mariners,[140] he moved on to Canterbury; next
day (Tuesday, 25th April) he set out for Winchester. At
Malling he was met by Saer de Quincy, Simon de Langton,
and some others of his English partisans. On the morrow
(Wednesday, 26th) he “made a long day’s march, for he
went from Malling to Guildford”; his baggage could not get
beyond Reigate. On this day he was joined by Enguerrand
de Coucy and the greater part of the garrison which he had
left in London. Next day (Thursday, 27th) he reached
Farnham, but only to find it prepared for defence against him,
and to learn that Winchester castle was lost to him,[141] its
castellans having surrendered it before they knew of his
return to England.[142]
No sooner did the Marshal hear that Louis was back than
he gave orders for the immediate razing of all the castles
which had been retaken, except Farnham.[143] It was Farnham
that Louis now turned to attack. The outer bailey was
speedily captured by assault; but the keep, as a foreign
chronicler quaintly says, “heeded it not.”[144] Next day
(Friday, 28th April) Earl Saer of Winchester came to Louis
asking for help to relieve Mountsorel.[145] Its garrison of ten
knights and some men at arms under Henry de Braybroke
had held out manfully for nearly a month, but had now found
it needful to ask their lord, Saer, for succour.[146] After some
consultation Louis, “being unable to get rid of him otherwise,”[147]
sent him to London with orders that some of the
leaders there should supply him with troops and accompany
him to Mountsorel for the twofold purpose of relieving that
fortress and “subduing the whole province” to Louis himself.
Under the joint command of Saer, the count of Perche, Robert
Fitz Walter, and some other barons, a large body of knights
and men-at-arms, some English, some French, and “all
coveting their neighbour’s goods,” as an indignant chronicler
says, set out accordingly from London on Monday, 1st May.[148]
From S. Alban’s, where they halted for the night, the
French mercenaries went about plundering churches, desecrating
cemeteries, and putting “all sorts of people” to torture
and ransom; at the abbey they got nothing but food and
drink, Louis having apparently given it to be understood that
he was “satisfied” with the larger sum which he had recently
extorted from the abbot, and that they must exact nothing
more. A marvellous experience which befell some of the
sacrilegious spoilers at Redburn[149] probably sobered them somewhat,
for they passed through Dunstable “without doing much
harm.”[150] When, a few days later, they reached Mountsorel,
they found that, so far as that castle was concerned, their work
was done. The leaders of the besieging force had had
timely warning from their scouts, and had withdrawn to
Nottingham.[151]
Louis meanwhile had on Saturday, 29th April, marched from
Farnham to Winchester, his rearguard chased by a party of
Royalists from Windsor, who, however, failed to overtake it.
The Marshal, after demolishing the castle as much as haste
permitted, had evacuated the city, and the few Royalists left
in it fled at the approach of the French. Louis stayed there
five days, to put in train the restoration of the castle. On
4th May—Ascension Day—he left the completion of this
work and the custody of the city to the Count of Nevers, and
set out once more for London.[152] There he heard that the
garrison of Dover had broken their truce, and chased and
slain some of his men who had arrived at Dover after he left
it. He stayed in London two nights and then went on to
Dover, and on the Friday before Whit-Sunday, 12th May, set
up his trebuchet before the castle, while his men built
themselves huts all around in preparation for a renewal of the
siege. Next day (Whitsun Eve) forty of his ships reappeared,
seeking to enter the harbour; but a contrary wind drove them
back to Calais, all except five, which made their way in
together. On Monday, 15th, the other thirty-five came again
from Calais. At the same time there hove in sight some
eighty or more ships “great and small,” among them twenty
“great ships armed and prepared for battle,” coming from
Romney under Philip d’Aubigné and Nicolas Haringot.
The small French transports, not daring to risk a meeting
with these big vessels, fled towards Calais; twenty-seven of
them however had advanced so far that they could not
withdraw in time to avoid an encounter; eight of these were
captured, the sailors and men-at-arms whom they carried were
slain at once, and the knights imprisoned in the holds of the
ships, “where they were uncomfortable enough.” The
victorious English ships then anchored before the castle, thus
effectually cutting off its besiegers from all chance of
reinforcement by sea. Louis vented his rage by sending some
of his men by land to burn Hythe and Romney; the
“Wealdsmen” attacked them, but seemingly without success.[153]
While Louis was in London, the host which had gone to
relieve Mountsorel moved eastward to Lincoln, at the urgent
request of Hugh of Arras, who went in person to beg that
they would all join him and his “Northern” friends at the
siege of Lincoln Castle. He was, he said, almost on the point
of taking it, and its capture would be a great advantage to
the cause of Louis. After some debate the leaders consented,
and the whole force marched to Lincoln and quartered itself
in and around the city.[154] Tidings of this movement reached
the Marshal on the Friday before Whit-Sunday {12 May}—the day on
which Louis set up his trebuchet at Dover—when the council
and the loyal barons were gathered round the King at
Northampton for the approaching festival.[155] Hereupon, says
his biographer, “God, Who supports, maintains, and counsels
all loyal men, put into their hearts a marvellous counsel, of
which came much good and much honour to them. List,
then, the sum of the counsel with which God inspired the
man chosen and renowned and trusted above them all.
‘Hearken,’ spoke William the Marshal, ‘loyal knights and all
ye who are in fealty to the king! For God’s sake hearken
to me, for what I have to say deserves a hearing. This day
we bear the burden of arms to defend our fame, and for
ourselves and our dear ones, our wives and children, and to
keep our land in safety, and to win great honour, and for the
peace of Holy Church, which these men have wronged and
ill-used, and to gain remission and pardon of all our sins.
Take heed then that there be no backsliders amongst us.’”[156]
After this solemn exordium he put the situation clearly
before his audience. Part of the enemies were sieging
Lincoln Castle, but only a part; Louis was elsewhere, and
“those who accompanied him had got themselves foolishly
into a tangle.”[157] Here, then, was an opportunity not to be
lightly thrown away. “For God’s sake, let us stake everything
upon it! Remember that if we gain the victory, we
shall increase our honour, and preserve for ourselves and our
posterity the freedom which these men seek to take from us.
We will keep it. God wills us to defend it! Therefore every
man must bestir himself to the utmost of his power, for the
thing cannot be done else. There must be no gaps in our
armed ranks; our advance upon the foe must be no mere
threat; but we must fall upon them swiftly. God of His
mercy has granted us the hour for vengeance upon those who
are come hither to do us ill; let no man draw back!” The
whole assembly “took heart and hope, strength and hardihood”
from his words, and became eager to go forward at all
costs.[158] So, with the unanimous consent of Gualo and the
other members of the royal council, the Marshal called upon
all loyal castellans and knights to muster at Newark on
Whit-Monday, 15th May.[159] They came gladly, to the number
of four hundred knights, near two hundred and fifty cross-bowmen,
and so many sergeants and horsemen as might well
make up for the small number of knights.[160] The leaders of
the host were the two William Marshals, Bishop Peter of
Winchester (who was “learned in the art of war”), the Earls
of Chester, Ferrers, and Aumale, William d’Aubigny, John
Marshal, William de Cantelupe with his son of the same
name, Falkes de Bréauté, Thomas Basset, Robert de Vipont,
Brian de Lisle, Geoffrey de Lucy, Philip d’Aubigné, “and
others.”[161]
Next day arose a new peril, which recalls one of the
incidents that preceded another battle at Lincoln, seventy-six
years before. “The Normans who were in the host”
went to the younger William Marshal and addressed him
thus: “Fair sir, you were born in Normandy; you ought to
know that it is the right of the Normans to strike the first
blow in every battle. Take heed that we lose not our right.”
Earl Ranulf of Chester, however—like his father in 1141—claimed
the same privilege for himself, and bluntly declared
that unless he were placed in the van, he would not go with
the host, and they should have no help from him. The Earl
Marshal and the other leaders were obliged to pacify him by
granting his demand, on the understanding that the right of the
Normans should not be thereby prejudiced for the future.[162]
Three days were spent at Newark {Tues., 16 May}, as a breathing-time for
men and horses and an opportunity for religious exercises to
prepare the men for their task. On the third morning {Fri., 19 May}, after
Mass, the Legate and clergy again excommunicated Louis
by name, with all his accomplices and abettors, especially
those who were sieging Lincoln castle, “together with the
city of Lincoln and all its contents.” The Legate then gave
plenary absolution to all who, having made a truthful
confession, were about to take part in the expedition.[163] This
done, the whole host flew to horse and arms.[164]
The Legate set out for Nottingham,[165] taking with him the
young King. For the fighting men, the direct route would
have been the Foss Way, which ran in an almost straight line
from Newark to Lincoln. But it ran to the southernmost gate
of the city, below the hill; and their aim was to reach the
western side of the castle on the hill-top without passing
through the city, which was in the hands of the enemy. They
therefore fetched a compass to the northward as far as
Torksey;[166] and there, or at Stow[167] hard by, they spent the
night. On Saturday morning (May 20th), after Mass, they
drew up in full array for their final march upon Lincoln.[168]
Once more the Marshal bade them fight, “for honour or
Paradise,” against the enemies of God and the Church.
“God has given them into our hands; up and at them! The
hour is come!” “And all who heard him bore themselves
joyfully, as if they were going to a tournament.”[169] Chester
led the van; the Marshal and his sons commanded the next
division; Earl William of Salisbury the third, and Bishop
Peter of Winchester the fourth, which consisted of cross-bowmen.[170]
Another body of cross-bowmen—perhaps commanded
by Falkes—seems to have formed an advanced guard
which marched a mile in front of the rest of the host.[171]
The boundaries of medieval Lincoln were determined by
those of the Roman city on the site of which it was built.
They formed, roughly speaking, a parallelogram whose length
from north to south was considerably greater than its width,
and whose northern half stood on the summit of a steep and
rocky hill whence the southern half sloped down almost to
the bank of the river Witham; the whole was divided
longitudinally by the Roman road known as Ermine Street.
The city “above hill” represented the original Roman camp;
to this the part “below hill” had been added in the later days
of the Roman occupation. The wall wherewith, in the
thirteenth century and for many centuries after, the whole
was encompassed, followed in the main the outlines of the
Roman enclosure thus enlarged. The castle, founded by
William the Conqueror and partly reconstructed in the
twelfth century, occupied the south-western angle of the first
Roman city: it was thus enclosed on the north, east, and
south within the later city, from which it was separated by a
wide and deep ditch. This ditch was continued along its
outer or western side; and on this side the walls of castle and
city formed one continuous line, the wall being carried across
the ditch at the north-western and south-western extremities
of the castle enclosure. Immediately north of the ditch at the
former of these two points of junction between the city wall and
the castle wall, stood the West Gate of the city; whether there
was also a gate at the southern junction point is not known.
The castle had two main entrances; one on the east, towards
the city; the other on the west side, towards the open country.
The keep was on the south side. Beyond the western wall
and ditch the plateau formed by the hill-top extended some
little distance; and it was here that King Stephen had
entrenched himself when he besieged the castle in 1141,
leaving the bishop and citizens to watch the other three sides.
The partisans of Louis seem not to have been sufficiently
sure of the citizens to venture on following Stephen’s
example; for they had evidently made no attempt to occupy
the site of his encampment, but had set up all their machines
and concentrated all their forces within the city, directing all
their attacks upon the castle from thence, and taking no steps
to prevent its garrison from communicating through the
western sally-port with their friends outside.
The main road from Torksey and Stow to Lincoln now
enters the city south of the castle; but there is a branch road
connecting it at Burton with an old Roman way which runs
from Kirton-in-Lindsey and enters Lincoln by the West
Gate; and this appears to have been the way taken by the
Royalists. At some distance from the gate they halted,
and the Marshal sent forward his nephew John to open
communications with the garrison.[172] On his way John met
Dame Nicolaa’s lieutenant constable, Geoffrey de Serland,
whom she had despatched from the castle secretly to tell the
leaders of the relieving host how matters stood within, and
that a “little door,” or “postern at the back”—that is, the
small door of the western sally-port, by which no doubt
Geoffrey himself had gone out—was already open to receive
them.[173] With this welcome message John Marshal hastened
back; he was seen and chased by some Frenchmen, but
escaped unharmed.[174] Two of the English barons who were
in the city, Robert Fitz-Walter and Saer de Quincy the Earl
of Winchester, rode out to reconnoitre as soon as the
Royalists’ approach was known. On their return they said:
“These warriors come on in good order, but we are far more
in number than they; let us go out to meet them at the
ascent of the hill, and then we can catch them all like larks
in a cage.” The Count of Perche, however, who was in
command of the French troops, was too cautious to act upon
a report so vague and went out himself with another of the
French leaders, to count the enemies, as he said, “according
to the custom of France.” He was, however, deceived in his
reckoning; for each of the Royalist chieftains had two
banners, one of which led his contingent in the fighting host
while the other was with his baggage, so that the baggage,
forming a separate group in the rear, looked like another
army and was mistaken for such by the two Frenchmen, who
went back doubting what was best to do. They finally
decided to shut the city gates and thus, as they hoped, hold
the city till they should have won the castle[175]; thinking that
the English, with men and horses wearied from a long march,
would not attempt to penetrate within the walls. When this
movement came to the knowledge of the Marshal, he made it
an argument for instant attack. “See, they retire behind
their walls! The victory is ours already, when these men,
ever foremost in tourney, hide themselves at our approach.
Let us do the right, for God wills it!”[176]
It was easy to introduce troops into the castle by the
western sally-port; but it would not be so easy to pass the
whole relieving force through the castle into the city. Bishop
Peter of Winchester, who according to the Marshal’s biographer
“was the master in counselling our people that day,”[177]
seems to have resolved on trying to ascertain for himself where
a direct entrance into the city could be effected. He led his
men up to the castle wall, bade them await him there, and
with a single attendant entered the fortress. He found it
greatly damaged by the long siege, and in such constant peril
from the French mangonels and stone-casters, still actively at
work, that its occupants begged him to withdraw from the
great court into the shelter of the keep. Thence, after
complimenting and encouraging the “good dame,”[178] he
stole out, evidently by the small south door,[179] on a yet more
hazardous reconnoitring expedition into the city, “wishing to
see how it stood.”[180] Looking about him, he caught sight of a
gate “which joined the walls of the city with those of the
castle,” and which was “blocked with stone and cement.”
This was apparently the West Gate of the city.[181] The reason
for which it had been blocked, whether this was done by the
French or (as is more probable) under orders from Nicolaa[182] at
an earlier period of the war, is not difficult to guess. Lincoln
had more gates than could easily be guarded all at once;[183]
if one of them was rendered impassable, there was one less to
watch and defend. The sequel implies that the “stone and
cement” were not so put together as to form a wall of solid
masonry; probably the door on the inner side of the gateway
had been closed and the obstruction piled up, rather than
built up, on the outer side; if so, it might be cleared away
without its removal being noticed inside the city until the
door was forced open.[184] In all likelihood Peter’s discovery of
this possible entrance had really been made as he passed the
outer side of the gate on his way to the castle, and the purpose
of his daring venture was to learn whether its inner side
was penetrable and unguarded. He found that it was so, and
having made his way back safely to his friends, gave orders
for the gate to be cleared out. His comrades of the host
came to meet him joyously, “every man in the ranks singing
as if the victory were already won”; Peter merrily told them
that when they had gained possession of the city he should
claim the bishop’s house for his own residence, as a reward
for having prepared them a safe way of entry.[185]
Possibly, however, the lay leaders may have been unwilling
to stake the safety of their enterprise solely on the judgement
of their episcopal counsellor; for it seems that while Falkes
de Bréauté, with his own followers and all the cross-bowmen,
was sent into the castle, the main body of the host went round
to the north gate—the Roman “Porta Nova,” “New Port,”
now reduced to a single great arch with a smaller one at its
side, but in the Marshal’s day probably still almost complete
in the pristine strength of its solid Roman masonry, forming
an arched passage flanked by two smaller passages, some
twenty feet long,[186] and closed with heavy doors which the
Royalists set to work to batter in.[187] The French party were
plying their engines vigorously on the castle when suddenly
they saw its walls and towers bristling with cross-bowmen;
and “as in the twinkling of an eye” a shower of quarrels,
aimed with deadly effect at the destriers of the besiegers,
reduced many knights and barons of high rank among them
to the condition of foot soldiers. The sight of their discomfiture
tempted Falkes to make a dash from the eastern gate
of the castle into their midst, with some of his personal
followers; he was, however, quickly surrounded and captured,
but was gallantly rescued by his men.[188] Bishop Peter meanwhile
was protesting to the Marshal against the folly—as he
deemed it—of trying to force an entrance elsewhere than at
the “safe” place where, as he said, there was an opening in
the wall ready for use, yet hidden from and unguarded by the
enemy. “By my head! those men are wrong; they have not
found the right way to get in. I will lead you to it; come
with me.” “By God’s sword! hither, my helmet!” was the
Marshal’s reply.[189] Peter however now held him back and
proposed that before risking a general assault two men from
each “battle” or division of the host should be sent to look
around for ambushes.[190] This was done; but the Marshal was
too impatient to await the result. He at once “put himself
forward on his way,” calling his own men to the onset:
“Forward! Now shall ye see your enemies vanquished in a
few hours; shame to him who longer delays!” Again Peter
tried to check him, begging him to wait till the whole host
could be reunited and the attack made in full force. The
aged warrior would not listen; “swifter than a merlin he
struck spurs into his horse, so that all who were with him
gathered hardihood as they beheld him.” A “valet” called
after him that he was, after all, going without his helmet;
“Stop here while I fetch it,” said the Marshal to his son. In
a moment he was back again, “and when he had thus covered
his head, he was goodly to look upon beyond all the rest—light
in movement as a bird, hawk or eaglet.” “Hungry lion
never rushed on its prey so hotly as the Marshal on his foes”;
at the first onset he dashed three spears’ length into their
midst, cutting his way through them and scattering them on
all sides, while Bishop Peter followed shouting “God help the
Marshal!”[191]
By this time the stubborn attack on the north gate had
succeeded, and all the Royalist forces thus poured in at once
upon the besiegers of the castle,[192] who, although numerically
stronger, were unable to withstand their onset,[193] aided as it was
by the murderous fire which Falkes’s cross-bowmen, from their
vantage-ground on the castle wall, poured down upon the
horses of the French knights, the animals falling “like stuck
pigs” while the riders were captured without possibility of
rescue.[194] The French force is said to have consisted of six
hundred and eleven knights and full a thousand footmen;
it is not quite clear whether this reckoning includes their
English allies.[195] Yet, small as were the numbers engaged on
both sides, the fight lasted from between seven and eight
o’clock in the morning till nearly three in the afternoon.[196] It
was protracted partly by the stubborn persistence of the two
parties, who both alike felt that the destiny of England was
involved in its result, and partly by the impossibility, in the
steep and narrow streets of a city such as Lincoln, of bringing
it to a decisive issue in one general encounter. It thus became
a battle of the old-world epic type, full of separate incidents
and individual encounters; and this peculiar character,
together with the extraordinarily small amount of actual
bloodshed and loss of life that took place in it, probably
suggested the name afterwards given to by the victors—“the
Tournament,” or as the word is commonly but in
this case perhaps less accurately rendered, “Fair of Lincoln.”[197]
The first recorded incident was one of good omen for the
Royalists. Some of them found the enemy’s chief engineer[198]
working a stone-caster which hurled stones against one of the
towers of the castle. Mistaking the new-comers for knights
of his own party, he, all the more eagerly, placed a stone in
his machine, but as he was giving the signal for its discharge
they came up behind him and struck off his head.[199] The
Marshal and the Earl of Salisbury “turned to the right,
leaving a minster on their left,”[200] and came upon a cluster of
enemies, one of whom, Robert of Ropsley, levelled his spear
“to joust,” and struck that of Longsword with such force that
it shivered into fragments; but the Marshal gave him such a
blow between the shoulders that he fell to the ground “and
crawled away to hide himself.” The fight swept onward almost
to the brow of the hill on which the city was set, till on
a level space near the great minster,[201] the French made a
resolute stand under the direction of the Count of Perche.[202]
He was only a youth, of scarce two and twenty years,[203] “handsome,
tall, and noble-looking.”[204] He stood at bay as bravely
as King Stephen had stood in somewhat like circumstances
in the earlier battle of Lincoln; and for a while he and his
men succeeded in checking the progress of the Royalists.
By degrees, however, the French lost ground and began to
fall back down the hill. Perche, with a few of his personal
followers, alone kept his post, and was at last surrounded by
almost the whole force of the English. They called upon
him to surrender, but he refused with an oath, saying he
would never yield to one of a race “who had been traitors to
their king.”[205] Reginald Croc, a knight of Falkes’s household,[206]
then levelled a spear at him and struck him in the eye.
The Marshal, coming up at that moment, seized the bridle of
the count’s horse, “and it seemed right, as the count was the
chief man on the French side.” Perche dropped the bridle,
took his sword in both hands, and struck with it on the
Marshal’s helmet three blows in quick succession, “so mighty
that they dinted it visibly,” and then suddenly fell from his
horse. The Marshal thought he had fainted, “and feared
that he himself should be blamed therefor.” “Dismount
and take off his helmet,” said one of Perche’s men, William of
Montigny, “for it hurts him; but I doubt he will stand up no
more.” Croc’s spear had in fact pierced through the eye to
the brain, and when the helmet was removed the friends and
foes who crowded round saw that the gallant youth was dead.[207]
Perche’s comrades at once rushed down the hill[208] and rejoined
the bulk of the French troops, to whom his heroism and the
concentration of the English around his person had given a
breathing-space of which they had made good use. They
and their English allies had rallied in the lower town, and
now came, in close array, up the hill, hoping to regain
possession of its summit. Meanwhile the young Marshal
had rejoined his father. “Are you hurt?” asked the Earl.
“No, Sir.” “Forward then! This day we will conquer, or
chase them from the field.” Attacked on their right flank by
Chester and his “good folk” before they reached the hill-top,
confronted when they did reach it by the Marshals, and shut
in between the minster and the castle, the French, after another
stubborn fight, were again driven down the slope; and
this time they were chased right out of the city and through
its southern gate, or Stone-Bow,[209] to Wigford Bridge.[210] There
they made a last gallant stand, fighting with such desperate
fury that “if God had spoken by thunder, He would not have
been heard.” Their pursuers were no less daring and impetuous:
William Bloet, the young Marshal’s standard-bearer,
charged into the crowd on the bridge with such vehemence
that he and his horse went sheer over into the river, only,
however, to struggle out again with equal quickness and
gallantry. Gradually the cry of “King’s men! King’s men!”[211]
rose higher above the din. Saer de Quincy and his son
Robert were taken; so was Robert FitzWalter; so were
several other rebel barons;[212] at last the rest turned and fled
across the suburb of Wigford by “the street which goes
straight to the hospital”[213]—in other words, the whole length of
the present High Street—till they reached the outer or furthermost
gate of Lincoln.[214] This gate, known as the Great or
Western Bar-Gate, protected the bridge by which the main
road from Lincoln to the south crossed the great drain called
the Sincil Dyke. Here the fugitives were checked by a
double obstacle. The bar of the gate was so constructed that
the gate closed of itself after every individual who passed in
or out. Just as the foremost of them reached it, a cow
tried to enter, and, the gate falling upon her, stuck fast, so
that egress was altogether impossible till the animal was slain;
and even then, as there was apparently no means of fixing
the gate open, each man as he came up had to dismount and
open it for himself.[215] The unhappy fugitives might, it seems,
have been captured or even slain almost to a man, had their
pursuers so willed it; but many of them were English, and
the ties of blood restrained their kinsmen in the royalist host
from carrying the pursuit to extremity.[216] Notwithstanding
this forbearance, however, a large number of prisoners were
captured.[217] Among these were nearly all the English barons
who had sided with Louis;[218] no less than seven were taken by
John Marshal, and several by Bishop Peter and his men;[219]
forty-six in all are named by contemporary historians;[220] and
the prisoners of knightly rank numbered three hundred,[221]
besides many others of lesser degree. Those who escaped
“stopped neither by night nor by day, in town or house, for
they thought that on every hill-side and in every dale the
bushes were all full of Marshals.”[222] Only three of the “great
men” among the French—Simon of Poissy, Hugh the
castellan of Arras, and Eustace de Merlinghem the constable
of Boulogne—reached London with some two hundred knights.
The foot-soldiers were nearly all slain by the country folk who
came out “with swords and staves” to intercept their flight.[223]
In the actual battle only five men had been slain; on one
side the Count of Perche, two of his knights,[224] and a man-at-arms
whom no one recognized; on the other, Perche’s slayer,
Reginald Croc.[225]
Unhappily, the English sullied their victory by sacking
Lincoln. Not content with seizing the baggage and valuable
goods of the French nobles and the rebel barons, which they
found piled up in waggons in some of the streets, they
“despoiled the whole city, even to the uttermost farthing”;
and on the strength of Gualo’s exhortation to treat the
canons of the cathedral chapter as excommunicate (owing to
their having been throughout the war in opposition to the
King), they plundered every church, breaking open chests and
presses and carrying off plate, jewels, vestments, and money;
the precentor of the cathedral lost eleven thousand marks.
Many women fled from the city with their children and household
goods, and sought to escape in boats, but through their
overcrowding and ignorance of rowing all the little vessels
capsized, the occupants were drowned, and the goods became
the prize of anyone who fished them up from the bottom of
the river.[226] All these things were done after the Marshal had
left the city. As soon as the fight was over he and the other
leaders held a council to consider what they should do next.
Some were for marching on London, some for trying to
dislodge Louis from Dover. As they could not agree, the
Marshal with his usual practical good sense bade them all go
home and place their respective prisoners in safety, and meet
him again, with the Legate, on a day which he named, at
Chertsey,[227] or, according to another account, at Oxford.[228] He
then, without stopping even to eat, hurried with his tidings of
victory to the King and the Legate at Nottingham. Thither,
next morning {Trinity Sunday, 21 May}, came news of another gain to the royal cause;
the garrison of Mountsorel, whose constable, Henry de
Braybroke, had gone with Saer de Quincy to Lincoln, had
fled and left the castle deserted.[229] The Earl of Salisbury
appears to have been sent to secure it for the King; two days
later {23 May} an order was issued to him from Lincoln, in the King’s
name, to deliver it to Earl Ranulf of Chester,[230] who forthwith
razed it to the ground.[231]
On Thursday, 25th May,[232] the news of the Fair of Lincoln
reached Louis in his camp before Dover. He took counsel
with his friends; and they all agreed that he must raise the
siege, concentrate in London, and send to France for reinforcements.
Unwillingly he caused his trebuchet to be taken
down, and prepared to withdraw, but determined to stay over
Sunday 28th, “to see whether he would get any news.” On
the Sunday “it was very clear at sea, and looking towards
Calais they saw many ships with their sails set, whereof they
rejoiced greatly.” Next day {29 May} the ships “came sailing over the
sea right merrily, to the number of full six score.” The
English, when they saw them, hoisted their sails and put to
sea; the French set off in chase, but finding they could not
catch them put about again and made straight for Dover.
The English then put about likewise, overtook the hindermost
ships of the French fleet, and captured eight of them; the rest
got safe into the harbour, and were met by Louis on the
beach. To his great disappointment and rage, however, he
found that, except one large vessel in which were eighteen
knights, they brought nothing but sailors, merchants, and
men-at-arms. Next day {30 May} he sent them all back again, with
two messengers charged with letters to his father. Then
he set fire to “all the ships which were ashore before the
haven,” and betook himself to Canterbury and thence to
London, where he arrived on Thursday, 1st June.[233]
The Royalists meanwhile had advanced by way of Windsor
and Staines to Chertsey;[234] thence they made secret overtures to
some of the leading citizens of London for the surrender of
the city. Tempted on the one hand by the promise of a
confirmation of its liberties “under the King’s seal,” and
terrified on the other hand by the fate of Lincoln, London
was clearly beginning to waver; and Louis, on discovering
these secret negotiations, could only secure himself in the
city by closing all its gates save one and insisting upon a
renewal of homage from the citizens to himself.[235] At the
beginning of June the Archbishop of Tyre, who had come to
Europe to preach a crusade, arrived in England from France,
accompanied by the abbots of Citeaux, Clairvaux, and
Pontigny, and endeavoured to reconcile the contending
parties.[236] Several parleys were held,[237] and a draft treaty was
actually prepared[238] and seems to have been discussed between
four of Louis’s counsellors and four of Henry’s, who met,
accompanied by twenty knights of each party, between
Brentford and Hounslow,[239] on 13th June. But the meeting
proved useless because Louis insisted upon including in the
peace four clerks whose conduct had been, alike in an
ecclesiastical and a political point of view, so outrageous that
the Legate absolutely refused to admit them to any terms
without previously consulting the Pope.[240] The unsuccessful
mediators returned to France at the end of the month.[241]
Meanwhile Falkes de Bréauté had taken Lynn.[242] On 23rd
June the sheriffs were ordered to publish the Charter in their
shires and see that it was put in execution.[243] The King and
his council then withdrew to Gloucester;[244] and it was
probably during their temporary absence from the neighbourhood
of London that Louis sent the Viscount of Melun and
Eustace de Neville on a plundering raid into East Anglia,
whence they returned laden with the spoils of the famous
abbey of S. Edmund.[245]
This raid was evidently a desperate expedient for obtaining
supplies. Cooped up in London, Louis and his men were in
need of everything; and Philip Augustus shewed no
inclination to send them help of any kind.[246] Months before, if
we may believe the Marshal’s biographer, the French King,
when he heard that John was dead, his son crowned, and the
Marshal in charge of the realm, had declared that further
effort was useless. “We shall take nothing in England now;
that brave man’s good sense will defend the land—Louis has
lost it. Mark my words! When the Marshal takes the matter
in hand, we are undone.”[247] As Philip had from the outset
refused to countenance his son’s enterprise openly, so now he
connived at, rather than assisted, the efforts of his daughter-in-law,
Blanche of Castille, to collect money and troops for
Louis.[248] Blanche scoured the country in her husband’s behalf,
pleading his cause so energetically that a contemporary says,
“if those whom she enlisted had all gone to England in arms,
they might have conquered the whole kingdom.”[249] The
force which her efforts finally brought together at Calais
numbered, however, only about a hundred—or at the utmost
three hundred—knights.[250] Several times, while they lay
encamped on the shore, some English ships sailed up to the
harbour and discharged arrows at them; and once, at least, a
great fight took place, in which the English were signally
worsted. Another night the French actually crossed the
Channel and anchored off Dover, intending to sail thence round
to the mouth of the Thames; but in the morning, as they
were about to set forth, a storm overtook them and drove
them back panic-stricken to the coast of Flanders.[251]
On 4th July the King’s guardians issued from Gloucester a
summons for a council to be held at Oxford on the 15th. It
seems not to have actually met till a week later; and on 26th
or 27th July the King and the Marshal returned to Gloucester,
after issuing (22nd July) a summons for another assembly to
be held at Oxford on 6th August.[252] The royal forces were
increasing more and more. Two great nobles had joined
them since Louis’s return to England—the Earl of Warren
before 22nd June, and the Earl of Arundel before 14th July[253]—and
nearly one hundred and fifty rebels submitted between
the end of May and the beginning of August.[254] When the
host re-assembled at Oxford[255] all was ready for the final
struggle. From Oxford they moved to Reading, and thence
to Farnham;[256] there, it seems, the leaders separated, the
Legate and the King going northward again with one part
towards London, while another part under the Earl Marshal
and the justiciar made for the Kentish coast to prepare for its
defence against the expected French fleet.
From Dover the Marshal summoned the men of the
Cinque Ports to arm and assemble their ships at Sandwich.
The aged warrior was eager to go forth in person and
encounter the French at sea, but his men would not suffer
it; he must stay on shore, they said, “for if it chanced that
he were slain or captured, who then would defend the
land?”[257] On S. Bartholomew’s eve {Wed., 23 Aug.} he, with the Earl of
Warren, King John’s elder son Richard,[258] Philip d’Aubigné,
and a host of other “good knights,” lay encamped near
Canterbury. They “slept little,” for they all knew that
the morrow might prove a day almost as momentous as that
of Senlac. At early dawn {24 Aug.} they marched to Sandwich. The
day broke clear and bright, with a “soft and pleasant” wind
which soon brought into view the armament coming from
Calais.[259] It consisted of some eighty vessels of various sizes;[260]
ten of them were large ships of war, fully armed,[261] of which four
were filled with knights and six with men-at-arms; the smaller
vessels carried accoutrements and other goods.[262] Among the
knights were some of the noblest and bravest men of France;[263]
those of highest rank and fame, thirty-six in number, together
with the treasure which Blanche was sending to her husband,
were in the ship of Eustace the Monk, who seems to have been
in command of the whole fleet.[264] The vessels were making for
the mouth of the Thames,[265] and as they swept round Thanet in
close array as if ready for a fight, Eustace’s ship leading,[266] their
number and character could be plainly distinguished by the
Royalists drawn up on the shore, as well as by the sailors
who manned the English ships in Sandwich harbour.[267]
At the eleventh hour the Marshal’s plan of campaign all
but broke down. The English fleet was ready; but it
comprised only eighteen, or at the utmost twenty-two, ships
of any size, with some smaller ones to the number of about
twenty more;[268] and the sight of the enemy’s superior fleet
struck such terror into the sailors that they lost their heads
completely, left their ships with the sails all hoisted, and
took refuge in their little boats.[269] Once more the Marshal
appealed to them as only he could appeal. Again he offered
to go with them; but again his own men forbade it.[270] Then
by a characteristic exhortation he shamed the mariners out
of their fears. “God has given us one victory over the
French on land. Now they are coming again, to claim the
country against Him. But He has power to help the good
on sea as well as on shore,[271] and He will help His own. You
have the advantage in the game; you will conquer the enemies
of God!”[272] The impressionable sailors caught a new spirit
from the landsmen who, fresh from their victory over superior
numbers at Lincoln, were fearless of the risk of another
encounter at similar odds.[273] One ship was quickly filled with
the Marshal’s own followers, under his nephew John;[274]
Richard the King’s son went on board another with a
company of knights;[275] a third was occupied by Earl Warren’s
men, the Earl himself remaining on shore with the Marshal;[276]
Philip d’Aubigné probably commanded a contingent from
the Channel Isles. Hubert de Burgh seems to have joined
the muster by sea, coming from Dover in “a fine ship” of his
own,[277] and to have taken the supreme command.
The skill and energy of the English sailors quickly atoned
for their momentary panic. Though wind and tide were both
against them,[278] they came up in the rear of the French fleet just
as it reached the mouth of the estuary. For a moment the
leading English ship—that of Hubert—seemed about to close
with the enemy; then it suddenly shot forward, as if the
commander’s purpose were not to give battle, but to avoid it.[279]
On seeing this, the French shifted their sails, and with insulting
cries of “La hart! la hart!”—a call with which
huntsmen were wont to urge their hounds after the quarry—turned
round to the attack, their line still headed by the
ship of Eustace the Monk.[280] This was probably the largest
and most formidable vessel of the French fleet; but it was
overloaded; it carried, besides its freight of men and treasure,
some valuable horses for Louis, and a trebuchet; and in
consequence, it lay so deep in the water that the waves
almost overflowed its deck. Sir Richard the King’s son laid
his ship alongside it at once; Earl Warren’s men quickly
brought up their ship on its other side. This latter ship was
only a cog, or fishing vessel; but being light it stood high
above the water, and its occupants were thus able to cast
down potfuls of lime and stones on their adversaries’ heads,
with blinding if not deadly effect.[281] Meanwhile the armed
galleys of the English fleet, few though they were in number,
were doing fatal execution on some of the other French ships,
piercing them with their iron beaks and sinking them. Now,
too, the French had the wind in their teeth, and it carried into
their faces clouds of quicklime thrown up into the air by the
English. Moreover, Philip d’Aubigné had with him a
company of crossbowmen whose arrows wrought havoc
among the enemy.[282] At length a man-at-arms from Guernsey,
Reginald Payne, leaped from the deck of the cog to that of
Eustace’s ship with such an impetus that in alighting he
knocked down a French knight, William des Barres; in
another moment he had prostrated a second foeman of rank
and disabled a third; amid the confusion thus created all
the fighting men on the cog followed him, and Eustace’s
ship was captured with all on board.[283] On seeing this the
remaining French ships took to flight. The victors chased
them all the way back to Calais.[284] Only fifteen vessels—the
largest in the fleet except that of Eustace—reached the
harbour; of the lesser ones many were taken[285] and the rest
sunk.[286] The slaughter was frightful; only thirty-two men, all
of high rank and renown, were retained as prisoners on the
ship which had belonged to Eustace, and even these were
with difficulty saved by the English knights from the fury
of the men-at-arms and sailors whose valour had won that
great prize.[287] On every other captured vessel only a man or
two were left alive; the rest were slain and “flung to the
fishes for food.”[288]
When the fight and the chase were over and the prizes all
towed into Sandwich, one prisoner was missed: Eustace the
Monk. After a long search he was found hiding in the hold
of his ship[289] from the universal hatred of which he knew
himself to be the object, not only as the commander of the
hostile fleet, but still more as a traitor of the deepest dye and
a man of infamous character in every respect. He offered to
give his captors ten thousand marks and to serve King
Henry faithfully if they would grant him his life, “but it could
not be.” One Stephen, a seaman of Winchelsea, who had
sailed with him in earlier days when he was in the service of
King John, flung in his face a recital of all his misdoings on
land and sea, and bade him choose whether to have his head
cut off on the ship’s deck or on the trebuchet. “Neither
alternative was sweet,” says a contemporary writer with grim
sarcasm; “anyway, they cut off his head. That was his
festival day.”[290] The severed head was afterwards stuck on
the point of a spear and carried round the neighbourhood, to
shew the people, who had long lived in terror of the ruthless
freebooter, that he was really dead.[291] The prisoners were sent
to Dover to be put in ward in the castle under the charge of
Hubert;[292] Philip d’Aubigné was despatched to carry news of
the victory to the Legate and the King;[293] the Marshal stayed
to superintend the division of the spoils. There was a large
quantity of valuable things, money, plate, clothes, horses,
arms, harness, provisions of various kinds; the Marshal
contrived to distribute these in such a way that every man
thought his own share better than that of his fellows, and yet
to leave a residue which, with the hearty assent of the sailors,
he devoted to the foundation of a hospital for “God’s poor,”
in honour of the Saint on whose festival day the victory had
been won.[294]
The Fair of Lincoln had, as a contemporary writer
emphatically says, “destroyed the [rebel] barons.”[295] It had
deprived Louis of the bulk of his English allies, and left the
French conquest of England to be accomplished, if accomplished
at all, solely by French hands. Had the French
reinforcements effected a landing and defeated the Royalists
in one battle, such a conquest might still have been possible.
But when the tidings of that S. Bartholomew’s day reached
Louis, he at once saw that his cause was lost.[296] While the
Marshal’s division of the English host was in Kent, the other
division, with the Legate and the young King, had encamped
round about London, more closely than the Royalists had yet
approached the capital since Louis’s return. Gualo seems to
have placed Henry with his mother in the safe shelter of
Windsor castle while he himself ventured as near to London
as Kingston; one day, however, a report reached him that
the French were sallying forth to attack him, whereupon he
rode hastily back to Windsor. This French sally may have
been the “very fine raid, wherein the lesser folk won much
gain,” which is said to have been made about this time by the
young Duke of Brittany. Again there was ineffectual talk
of peace. Then the Legate proposed a siege of the city; but
for this the lay leaders deemed their forces insufficient, and
they retired each man to his own quarters. Another
unsuccessful attempt at pacification, made by a Cistercian
monk who was one of the Pope’s penitentiaries, was followed
by a meeting of the Queen-mother and the Count of Nevers,
between Windsor and London; “they spoke amicably, and
parted amicably, but without making peace.” Louis was so
conscious of peril that he removed from the bishop’s house to
the Tower, “to be more in safety.”[297] The news of the battle of
Sandwich reached him late on the evening of Saturday, 26th
August. On Monday, 28th, Robert of Dreux went under a safe-conduct
from the King to speak with the Marshal at Rochester;
next day one of the newly-captured French knights, Robert de
Courtenay, was allowed to go to London to speak with Louis,
Dreux remaining as a hostage in his stead.[298] After consulting
with Courtenay and others, Louis decided to ask for a parley
with William the Marshal in person.[299]
William took counsel with the other Royalists; “and there
were some who spoke rightly bravely, though they had kept
away from the coast in the hour of need.” These men said:
“We do not want to conciliate Louis. The only parley we
want is a siege of London.” But the valiant men who had
been in the fight were wiser; they besought the Marshal to
get the French out of the country “and not to let lack of
money be a hindrance, for they would help him to the utmost
of their power, with their hearts and bodies and possessions.”
He therefore agreed to go and parley with Louis.[300] He took
with him, however, all the Royalists who had accompanied
him into Kent; and the whole English host, thus reunited,
now blockaded the city by land, while on 1st September the
“barons” of the Cinque Ports were bidden to bring all their
ships to the mouth of the Thames for the King’s service,[301]
thus cutting off the capital from all chance of communication
by sea. It was obvious that if Louis did not make terms at
once, he would speedily be starved into unconditional
surrender.[302] He took a course which was not only safer, but
also more honourable both for himself and his adversaries,
when he met the Marshal and the Justiciar in conference
outside London {5 Sept.}. He frankly committed himself into their
hands and those of the Legate, requesting them to dictate
their own terms, on the sole condition that those terms should
be such as would neither dishonour him nor offend his
companions in arms.[303]
The Marshal and the Justiciar returned to Windsor, and
Louis to London. From that night—Tuesday, 5th
September—till Saturday, 9th, he waited in vain for their
expected propositions; then, on the advice of his barons,
he determined to make a sally early next morning and try
to cut his way out. Late on the Saturday night {9 Sept.}, however,
as they were about to separate and make their preparations
for the morrow’s venture, a letter was brought to him from
the Marshal asking for a day’s truce and requesting that
Hugh de Malaunay might be sent to speak with the
Marshal and the council. Both these requests Louis granted.
A parley was then fixed for Tuesday (12th September), and
a prolongation of the truce till Thursday (14th) was guaranteed
by the Queen, the two William Marshals, the Earls of
Salisbury, Warren, and Arundel, and some other magnates.
Malaunay returned on Monday, 11th, and “told Louis what
he had got.”[304] It was evidently something of great importance,
for Louis at once “summoned his whole council, and the
barons of England who held with him, and the citizens, and
asked their advice upon it; and they all approved it.”[305]
What Malaunay had brought was evidently the definite
offer of terms for which Louis had asked. Louis had put
himself—“saving his honour”—into the hands of the King’s
guardians; “therefore,” as a contemporary English historian
says, “they, with whom the whole matter rested, and who
desired above all things to get rid of Louis, sent back to him
a certain form of peace drawn up in writing;[306] to which if he
consented, they would undertake to secure for him and his
adherents a safe departure from England; if not, they would
use their utmost efforts to compass his ruin.”[307] The terms
which they offered seem to have been these: The adherents
and allies of Louis in England, Henry and his adherents,
London and the other towns, were all to have their respective
rights and lands as they had them at the beginning of the
war. (A later clause explained that this provision was not
to apply to clerks, except as regards lay fees held by them.)
Prisoners on both sides, taken since Louis’s coming to
England, to be set free; those taken earlier, to be released
if three persons, to be chosen by Henry’s council from the
council of Louis, should swear that they were Louis’s men
on the day of their capture; for all prisoners, ransoms
already paid to be kept; ransoms now due to be paid;
ransoms not yet due to be remitted; and all disputes to be
settled by the aforesaid three. All English prisoners, and
other English subjects who were in arms against King John,
to give security for their fidelity to Henry, by homage, oaths,
and charters, according to the custom of England. Money
for the payment of which hostages had been given to Louis
was to be paid at once, if the date fixed for the payment had
arrived, and the hostages were to be restored. All cities,
lands, and other property which had been forcibly occupied
in England were to be restored to the King or other owners.
Louis was to send letters to the brothers of Eustace the
Monk bidding them restore to Henry the islands (some of
the Channel Isles) which Eustace had seized; if they failed
to do so, Louis was to distrain the lands which they held of
him; and if they were then still contumacious, they were to be
outside this peace. Louis and Henry were each to send a copy
of the peace to King Alexander of Scotland, and he, if he
wished to be included in it, was to restore all castles, lands,
and prisoners, taken by him during the war. Louis was to
send a copy, on the same conditions, to Llywelyn and the
other Welsh princes. Louis was to quit-claim to all the
barons and men of England all homage, fealty, confederations,
and alliances, and never henceforth to make, on account of
this war, any confederation which might at any time cause
damage to the English King. The barons of England were
to swear to Henry that they would enter into no confederation
or undertaking against him or his heirs, with Louis or with
any other person. Louis was to take his corporal oath, and
his men with him, and such of them as the King’s council
should choose were also to pledge themselves individually by
charters, that they would keep this peace firmly and faithfully;
and Louis was to do his utmost to obtain confirmation
of it from the Pope.[308] All debts now due to Louis were to
be paid.[309]
Well might Louis and his counsellors “all approve” this
draft treaty. Even if it was not—as in all likelihood it was—accompanied
by a verbal intimation of the Marshal’s willingness
to pay Louis an indemnity in money, still the terms
were much less hard than they had expected.[310] The issue of
the next day’s conference was now a foregone conclusion.[311]
The meeting took place in an islet in the Thames, opposite
Kingston.[312] The Royalists drew up on one side of the river,
the French on the other. Louis and his counsellors entered
a boat and were rowed to the island, where they found the
Queen, with the Legate “clad all in scarlet,” the Marshal,
and the other members of the English King’s council, as
well as the King himself.[313] Louis and his men swore on the
Gospels, first of all, that they would stand to the judgement
of the Church and be faithful to Church and Pope from that
day forward.[314] Then they swore to the conditions of peace
already set forth,[315] Louis adding a promise that he would, if
possible, induce his father to restore to Henry his rights
beyond the sea. Henry then laid his hand on the Book, and,
together with the Legate and the Marshal, made oath to
restore to the barons of England and all other men of the
realm all their rights and heritages, with all the liberties
formerly demanded, for which the discord between John and
the barons had arisen.[316] Lastly, an indemnity of (seemingly)
ten thousand marks was promised to Louis, for which the
Earl Marshal made himself personally responsible.[317]
Thus, on Tuesday, September 12th,[318] the peace was made.
The absolution of Louis and his followers was deferred till
next day, because the prelates had not brought their “chapels”
with them,[319] and also because Gualo declared that Louis should
have no absolution unless he would come “barefooted and
shirtless, clothed in a woollen gown”—the proper garb of a
penitent. The Frenchmen however begged hard that their
lord might be suffered to come with his woollen gown hidden
under his robe; and to this Gualo consented.[320] Both parties
returned to their lodgings for the night. Next day {Wed., 13 Sept.} the Legate
and the bishops put on their silken copes and their mitres
and absolved Louis and all his men, except the four clerks
specially reserved for the judgement of the Pope,[321] who were
made to withdraw from the island while the absolution was
taking place. Gualo then sent the Pope’s penitentiary to
London to absolve the citizens and others who had not been
present at the conference.[322] On Thursday, September 14th,
the conclusion of the peace was formally announced in the
King’s name.[323] On Sunday, 17th, the Legate went to Merton
priory, and next day {18 Sept.} the peace was confirmed there, on the
one part by Louis with the Counts of Britanny, Nevers, and
Dreux, and “many others from France,” on the other part by
the Queen with many English bishops, earls, barons, and
knights. On the 22nd Louis came to Merton again, to receive
from the Legate’s penitentiary injunctions about his penance.[324]
After this he was escorted to Dover by the Legate, the
Marshal, and other magnates,[325] and sailed for France on
Michaelmas eve.[326]
