Chapter IX · FALL AND DEATH OF GEOFFREY.

The movements of Geoffrey during the latter half of 1142 are shrouded in utter darkness. After the surrender of the isle of Ely, we lose sight of him altogether, save in the glimpse afforded us by the Oxford intrigue. It is, however, quite possible that we should assign to the period of the siege of Oxford Castle (September-December, 1142) a charter to Abingdon Abbey which passed at Oxford.[616] For if we deduct from its eight witnesses the two local barons (Walter de Bocland and Hugh de Bolbec), five of the remaining six are found in the Canterbury charter.[617] In that case, Geoffrey, who figures at their head, must have been at Oxford, in Stephen's quarters, at some time in the course of the siege. He would obviously not declare for the Empress till the time was ripe for the scheme, and, in the meanwhile, it might disarm suspicion, and secure his safety in the case of the capture or defeat of the Empress, if he continued outwardly in full allegiance to the king.

It was not till the following year that the crisis at length came. Stephen, at Mid-Lent, had attended a council at London, at which decrees were passed against the general disregard of the rights and privileges of the Church. Her ministers were henceforth to be free from outrage, and her sanctuaries from violation, under penalty of an excommunication which only the pope himself could remove.[618]

At some period in the course of the year (1143) after this council—possibly about the end of September—the king held a court at St. Albans, to which, it would seem, there came the leading nobles of the realm.[619] Among them was the Earl of Essex, still at the height of his power. Of what passed on this occasion we have, from independent quarters, several brief accounts.[620] Of the main fact there is no question. Stephen, acting on that sudden impulse which roused him at times to unwonted vigour, struck at last, and struck home. The mighty earl was seized and bound, and according to the regular practice throughout this internecine warfare, the surrender of the castles on which his strength was based was made the price of his liberty. As with the arrest of the bishops at Oxford in 1139, so was it now with the arrest of the great earl at St. Albans, and so it was again to be at Northampton, with the arrest of the Earl of Chester some three years later. What it was that decided Stephen to seize this moment for thus reasserting his authority, it is not so easy to say. William of Newburgh, who is fullest on the subject, gives us the story, which is found nowhere else, of the earl's outrage on the king more than three years before,[621] and tells us that Stephen had been ever since awaiting an opportunity for revenge.[622] He adds that the height of power to which the earl had attained had filled the king with dread, and hints, I think, obscurely at that great conspiracy of which the earl, as we have seen, was the pivot and the moving spirit.[623] Henry of Huntingdon plainly asserts that his seizure was a necessity for the king, who would otherwise have lost his crown through the King-maker's treacherous schemes.[624] We may, indeed, safely believe that the time had now come when Stephen felt that it must be decided whether he or Geoffrey were master.[625] But, as with the arrest of the bishops at Oxford four years before, so, at this similar crisis, his own feelings and his own jealousy of a power beneath which he chafed were assiduously fostered and encouraged by a faction among the nobles themselves. This is well brought out in the Chronicle of Walden Abbey,[626] and still more so in the Gesta. It is there distinctly asserted that this faction worked upon the king, by reminding him of Geoffrey's unparalleled power, and of his intention to declare for the Empress, urging him to arrest the earl as a traitor, to seize his castles and crush his power, and so to secure safety for himself and peace for his troubled realm.[627] It is added that, Stephen hesitating to take the decisive step, the jealousy of the barons blazed forth suddenly into open strife, taunts and threats being hurled at one another by the earl and his infuriated opponents.[628] On the king endeavouring to allay the tumult, the earl was charged to his face with plotting treason. Called upon to rebut the charge, he did not attempt to do so, but laughed with cynical scorn. The king, outraged beyond endurance, at once ordered his arrest, and his foes rushed upon him.[629]

The actual seizure of the earl appears to have been attended by circumstances of which we are only informed from a somewhat unexpected quarter. Mathew Paris, from his connection with St. Albans, has been able to preserve in his Historia Anglorum the local tradition of the event. From this we learn, firstly, that there was a struggle; secondly, that there was a flagrant violation of the right of sanctuary. The struggle, indeed, was so sharp that the Earl of Arundel, whom we know to have been an old opponent of Geoffrey (see p. 323), was rolled over, horse and all, and nearly drowned in "Holywell." The fact that this tussle took place in the open would seem to imply that the whole of this highly dramatic episode took place out of doors.[630] As to the other of these two points, it is clear that there was something discreditable to Stephen, according to the opinion of the time, in his sudden seizure of the earl. William of Newburgh observes that he acted "non quidem honeste et secundum jus gentium, sed pro merito ejus et metu; scilicet, quod expediret quam quod deceret plus attendens." Henry of Huntingdon similarly writes that such a step was "magis secundum retributionem nequitiæ consulis quam secundum jus gentium, magis ex necessitate quam ex honestate."[631] The Chronicle of Walden, also, complains of the circumstances of his arrest;[632] and even the panegyrist of Stephen is anxious to clear his fame by imputing to the barons the suggestion of what he admits to be a questionable act, and claiming for the king the credit of reluctance to adopt their advice.[633]

But there was a more serious charge brought against the king than that of dishonourable behaviour to the earl. He was accused of violating by his conduct the rights of sanctuary of St. Albans, though he had sworn, we are told, not to do so, and had taken part so shortly before in that council of London at which such violations were denounced. The abbot's knights, indeed, went so far as to resist by force of arms this outrage on the Church's rights.[634] It is clearly to the contest thus caused, rather than (as implied by Mathew) to the actual arrest of Geoffrey, that we must assign the struggle in which the Earl of Arundel was unhorsed by Walchelin de Oxeai, for Walchelin was one of the abbey's knights, and was, therefore, fighting in her cause.[635]

Though the friends of the earl interceded on his behalf,[636] the king had no alternative but to complete what he had begun. After what he had done there could be no hope of reconciliation with the earl. Geoffrey was offered the usual choice; either he must surrender his castles, or he must go to the gallows. Taken to London, he was clearly made, according to the practice in these cases, to order his own garrison to surrender to the king. Thus he saw the fortress which he had himself done so much to strengthen, the source of his power and of his pride, pass for ever from his grasp. He had also to surrender, before regaining his freedom, his ancestral Essex strongholds of Pleshy and Saffron Walden.[637]

The earl's impotent rage when he found himself thus overreached is dwelt on by all the chroniclers.[638] The king's move, moreover, had now forced his hand, and the revolt so carefully planned could no longer be delayed, but broke out prematurely at a time when the Empress was not in a position to offer effective co-operation.

We must now return to the doings of Nigel, Bishop of Ely. That prelate had for a year (1142-43) been peacefully occupied in his see. But at the council of 1143 his past conduct had been gravely impugned. Alarmed at the turn affairs were taking, he decided to consult the Empress.[639] He must, I think, have gone by sea, for we find him, on his way at Wareham, the port for reaching her in Wiltshire. Here he was surprised and plundered by a party of the king's men.[640] He succeeded, however, in reaching the Empress, and then returned to Ely. He had now resolved to appeal to the pope in person, a resolve quickened, it may be, by the fact that the legate, who was one of his chief opponents, had gone thither in November (1143). With great difficulty, and after long debate, he prevailed on the monks to let him carry off, from among the remaining treasures of the church, a large amount of those precious objects without the assistance of which, especially in a doubtful cause, it would have been but lost labour to appeal to the heir of the Apostles. As it was Pope Lucius before whom he successfully cleared his character, and as Lucius was not elected till the March of the following year (1144), I have placed his departure for Rome subsequent to that of the legate. He may, of course, have arrived there sooner and applied to Cœlestine without success, but as that pontiff favoured the Empress, this is not probable. Indeed, the wording of the narrative is distinctly opposed to the idea.[641] In any case, my object is to show that the period of his absence abroad harmonizes well with the London Chronicle, which places Geoffrey's revolt about the end of the year. For the bishop had been gone some time when the earl obtained possession of Ely.[642]

Hugh Bigod, the Earl of Norfolk, whose allegiance had ever sat lightly upon him, appears to have eventually become his ally,[643] but for the time we hear only of his brother-in-law, William de Say, as actively embracing his cause.[644] He must, however, have relied on at least the friendly neutrality of his relatives, the Clares and the De Veres, in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, and Essex, as well as on the loyalty of his own vassals. It is possible, from scattered sources, to trace his plan of action, and to reconstruct the outline of what we may term the fenland campaign.

Fordham, in Cambridgeshire, on the Suffolk border, appears to have been his base of operations. Here supplies could reach him from Suffolk and North Essex. He was thence enabled to advance to Ely, the bishop being at this time absent at Rome, and his forces being hard pressed by those which Stephen had despatched against them. The earl gladly accepted their appeal to himself for assistance, and was placed by them in possession of the isle, including its key, Aldreth Castle.[645] He soon made a further advance, and, pushing on in the same direction, burst upon Ramsey Abbey on a December[646] morning at daybreak, seized the monks in their beds, drove them forth clad as they were, and turned the abbey into a fortified post.[647]

He was probably led to this step by the confusion then reigning among the brethren. A certain scheming monk, Daniel by name, had induced the abbot to resign in his favour. The resignation was indignantly repudiated by the monks and the tenants of the abbey, but Stephen, bribed by Daniel, had visited Ramsey in person, and installed him by force as abbot only eighteen days before the earl's attack.[648] It is, therefore, quite possible that, as stated in the Walden Chronicle, Daniel may have been privy to this gross outrage. In any case the earl's conduct excited universal indignation.[649] He stabled his horses in the cloisters; he plundered the church of its most sacred treasures; he distributed its manors among his lawless followers, and he then sent them forth to ravage far and wide. In short, in the words of the pious chronicler, he made of the church of God a very den of thieves.[650]

But for the time these same enormities enabled the daring earl at once to increase the number of his followers and to acquire a strategical position unrivalled for his purpose. The soldiers of fortune and mercenary troopers who now swarmed throughout the land flocked in crowds to his standard, and he was soon at the head of a sufficient force to undertake offensive operations.[651] From his advanced post at Ramsey Abbey, he was within striking distance of several important points, while himself comparatively safe from attack. His front and right flank were covered by the meres and fens; his left was to some extent protected by the Ouse and its tributaries, and was further strengthened by a fortified work, erected by his son Ernulf at one of the abbey's manors, Wood Walton.[652] In his rear lay the isle of Ely, with its castles in the hands of his men, and its communications with the Eastern Counties secured by his garrison at Fordham.[653] His positions at Ely and Ramsey were themselves connected by a garrison, on the borders of the two counties, at Benwick.[654]

Thus situated, the earl was enabled to indulge his thirst for vengeance, if not on Stephen himself, at least on his unfortunate subjects. From his fastness in the fenland he raided forth; his course was marked by wild havoc, and he returned laden with plunder.[655]

Cambridge, as being the king's town, underwent at his hands the same fate that Nottingham had suffered in 1140, or Worcester in 1139, at the hands of the Earl of Gloucester.[656] Bursting suddenly on the town, he surprised, seized, and sacked it. As at Worcester, the townsmen had stored in the churches such property as they could; but the earl was hardened to sacrilege: the doors were soon crashing beneath the axes of his eager troopers, and when they had pillaged to their hearts' content, the town was committed to the flames.[657] The whole country round was the scene of similar deeds.[658] The humblest village church was not safe from his attack,[659] but the religious houses, from their own wealth, and from the accumulated treasures which, for safety, were then stored within their walls, offered the most alluring prize. It is only from the snatch of a popular rhyme that we learn incidentally the fact that St. Ives was treated even as the abbey of which it was a daughter-house. In a MS. of the Historia Anglorum there is preserved by Mathew Paris the tradition that the earl and his lawless followers mockingly sang of their wild doings—

It may not have been observed that this jingle refers to St. Benedict of Ramsey and its daughter-house of St. Ives.[661]

Emboldened by success, he extended his ravages, till his deeds could no longer be ignored.[662] Stephen, at length fairly roused, marched in strength against him, determined to suppress the revolt. But the earl, skilfully avoiding an encounter in the open field, took refuge in the depths of the fenland and baffled the efforts of the king. Finding it useless to prolong the chase, Stephen fell back on his usual policy of establishing fortified posts to hem the rebels in. In these he placed garrisons, and so departed.[663]

Geoffrey was now at his worst. Checked in extending his sphere of plunder, he ravaged, with redoubled energy, the isle itself. His tools, disguised as beggars, wandered from door to door, to discover those who were still able to relieve them from their scanty stores. The hapless victims of this stratagem were seized at dead of night, dragged before the earl as a great prize, and exposed in turn to every torture that a devilish ingenuity could devise till the ransom demanded by their captors had been extorted to the uttermost farthing.[664] I cannot but think that the terrible picture of the cruelties which have made this period memorable for ever in our history was painted by the Peterborough chronicler from life, and that these very doings in his own neighbourhood inspired his imperishable words.

Nor was it only the earl that the brethren of Ely had to fear. Stephen, infuriated at the loss of the isle, laid the blame at their bishop's door, and seized all those of their possessions which were not within the earl's grasp. The monks, thus placed "between the devil and the deep sea," were indeed at their wits' end.[665] A very interesting reference to this condition of things is found in a communication from the pope to Archbishop Theobald, stating that Bishop Nigel of Ely has written to complain that he found on his return from Rome that Earl Geoffrey, in his absence, had seized and fortified the isle, and ravaged the possessions of his church within it, while Stephen had done the same for those which lay without it. As it would seem that this document has not been printed, I here append the passage:—

"Venerabilis frater noster N. elyensis episcopus per literas suas nobis significavit quod dum apostolicorum limina et nostram presentiam visitasset, Gaufridus comes de mandeuilla elyensem insulam ubi sedes episcopalis est violenter occupavit et quasdam sibi munitiones in ea parauit. Occupatis autem ab ipso comite interioribus, Stephanus rex omnes ejusdem ecclesie possessiones exteriores occupavit et pro voluntate sua illicite distribuit."[666]

This letter would seem to have been written subsequent to Nigel's return. The bishop, however, had heard while at Rome of these violent proceedings,[667] and had prevailed on Lucius to write to Theobald and his fellow-bishops, complaining—

"Quod a quibusdam parrochianis vestris bona et possessiones elyensis ecclesie, precipue dum ipse ab episcopatu expulsus esset, direpta sunt et occupata et contra justitiam teneantur. Quidam etiam sub nomine tenseriarum villas et homines suos spoliant et injustis operationibus et exaccionibus opprimunt."[668]

But the bishop was not the only sufferer who turned to Rome for help. When Stephen installed the ambitious Daniel as Abbot of Ramsey in person, Walter, the late abbot, had sought "the threshold of the Apostles." Daniel, whether implicated or not in Geoffrey's sacrilegious deeds, found himself virtually deposed when the abbey became a fortress of the earl. Alarmed also for the possible consequence of Walter's appeal to Rome, he resolved to follow his example and betake himself to the pope, trusting to the treasure that he was able to bring.[669] The guileless simplicity of Walter, however, carried the day; he found favour in the eyes of the curia and returned to claim his abbey.[670] But though he had been absent only three months, the scene was changed indeed. That which he had left "the House of God," he found, as we have seen, "a den of thieves." But the "dove" who had pleaded before the papal court could show himself, at need, a lion. Filled, we are told, with the Holy Spirit, he entered, undaunted, the earl's camp, seized a flaming torch, and set fire not only to the tents of his troopers, but also to the outer gate of the abbey, which they had made the barbican of their stronghold. But neither this novel adaptation of the orthodox "tongues of fire," nor yet the more appropriate anathemas which he scattered as freely as the flames, could convert the mailed sinners from the error of their unhallowed ways. Indeed, it was almost a miracle that he escaped actual violence, for the enraged soldiery threatened him with death and brandished their weapons in his face.[671]

In the excited state of the minds of those by whom such sights were witnessed, portents would be looked for, and found, as signs of the wrath of Heaven. Before long it was noised abroad that the very walls of the abbey were sweating blood, as a mark of Divine reprobation on the deeds of its impious garrison.[672] Far and wide the story spread; and men told with bated breath how they had themselves seen and touched the abbey's bleeding walls. Among those attracted by the wondrous sight was Henry, Archdeacon of Huntingdon, who has recorded for all time that he beheld it with his own eyes.[673] And as they spoke to one another of the miracle, in which they saw the finger of God, the starving peasants whispered their hopes that the hour of their deliverance was at hand.

The time, indeed, had come. As the now homeless abbot wandered over the abbey's lands, sick at heart, in weariness and want, the sights that met his despairing eyes were enough to make him long for death.[674] Barely a plough remained on all his broad demesnes; all provisions had been carried off; no man tilled the land. Every lord had now his castle, and every castle was a robber's nest.[675] In vain he boldly appealed to Earl Geoffrey himself, warning him to his face that he and his would remain cut off from the communion of Christians till the abbey was restored to its owners. The earl listened with impatience, and gave him a vague promise; but he kept his hold of the abbey.[676] The heart of the spoiler was hardened like that of Pharaoh of old, and not even miracles could move him to part with his precious stronghold.[677]

But if Ramsey had thus suffered, what had been the fate of Ely? A bad harvest, combined with months of systematic plunder, had brought about a famine in the land. For the space of twenty or even thirty miles, neither ox nor plough was to be seen; barely could the smallest bushel of grain he bought for two hundred pence. The people, by hundreds and thousands, were perishing for want of bread, and their corpses lay unburied in the fields, a prey to beasts and to fowls of the air. Not for ages past, as it seemed to the monks, had there been such tribulation upon earth.[678] Nor were the peasants the only sufferers. Might was then right, for all classes, throughout the land;[679] the smaller gentry were themselves seized, and held, by their captors, to ransom. As they heard of distant villages in flames, as they gazed on strings of captives dragged from their ravaged homes, the words of the psalmist were adapted in the mouths of the terrified monks: "They bind the godly with chains, and the nobles with links of iron."[680] In the mad orgie of wickedness neither women nor the aged were spared. Ransom was wrung from the quivering victims by a thousand refinements of torture. In the groans of the sufferers, in the shrieks of the tortured, men beheld the fulfilment of the words of St. John the Apostle, "In those days shall men ... desire to die, and death shall flee from them."[681]

Again we are tempted to ask if we have not in these very scenes the actual original from which was drawn the picture in the English Chronicle, a picture which might thus be literally true of the chronicler's own district, while not necessarily applicable, as the latest research suggests, to the whole of Stephen's realm.

It was now that men "said openly that Christ slept, and His saints." The English chronicler seems to imply, and Henry of Huntingdon distinctly asserts, that the wicked, emboldened by impunity, said so in scornful derision; but William of Newburgh assigns the cry to the sufferings of a despairing people. It is probable enough that both were right, that the people and their oppressors had reversed the parts of Elijah and the priests of Baal. For a time there seemed to rise in vain the cry so quaintly Englished in the paraphrase of John Hopkins:—

But when night is darkest, dawn is nearest,[682] and the end of the oppressor was at hand. It was told in after days how even Nature herself had shown, by a visible sign, her horror of his impious deeds. While marching to the siege of Burwell on a hot summer's day, he halted at the edge of a wood, and lay down for rest in the shade. And lo! the very grass withered away beneath the touch of his unhallowed form![683]

The fortified post which the king's men had now established at Burwell was a standing threat to Fordham, the key of his line of communications. He was therefore compelled to attack it. And there he was destined to die the death of Richard Cœur de Lion. As he reconnoitred the position to select his point of attack, or as, according to others, he was fighting at the head of the troops, he carelessly removed his headpiece and loosened his coat of mail. A humble bowman saw his chance: an arrow whizzed from the fortress, and struck the unguarded head.[684]

There is a conflict of testimony as to the date of the event. Henry of Huntingdon places it in August, while M. Paris (Chron. Maj., ii. 177) makes him die on the 14th of September, and the Walden Chronicle on the 16th. Possibly he was wounded in August and lingered on into September, but, in any case, Henry's date is the most trustworthy.

The monks of Ramsey gloried in the fact that their oppressor had received his fatal wound as he stood on ground which their abbey owned, as a manifest proof that his fate was incurred by the wrong he had done to their patron saint.[685] At Waltham Abbey, with equal pride, it was recorded that he who had refused to atone for the wrong he had done to its holy cross received his wound in the self-same hour in which its aid was invoked against the oppressor of its shrine.[686] But all were agreed that such a death was a direct answer to the prayer of the oppressed, a signal act of Divine vengeance on one who had sinned against God and man.[687]

For the wound was fatal. The earl, like Richard in after days, made light of it at first.[688] Retiring, it would seem, through Fordham, along the Thetford road, he reached Mildenhall in Suffolk, and there he remained, to die. The monks of his own foundation believed, and perhaps with truth, that when face to face with death, he displayed heartfelt penitence, prayed earnestly that his sins might he forgiven, and made such atonement to God and man as his last moments could afford. But there was none to give him the absolution he craved; indeed, after the action which the Church had taken the year before, it is doubtful if any one but the pope could absolve so great a sinner.[689]

In the mean time the Abbot of Ramsey heard the startling news, and saw that his chance had come. The earl might be willing to save his soul at the cost of restoring the abbey. To Mildenhall he flew in all haste, but only to find that the earl had already lost consciousness. There awaited him, however, the fruit of his oppressor's tardy repentance in the form of instructions from the earl to his son to surrender Ramsey Abbey. Armed with these, the abbot departed as speedily as he had come.[690]

The tragic end of the great earl must have filled the thoughts of men with a strange awe and horror. That one who had rivalled, but a year ago, the king himself in power, should meet an inglorious death at the hands of a wretched churl, that he who had defied the thunders of the Church should fall as if by a bolt from heaven, were facts which, in the highly wrought state of the minds of men at the time, were indeed signs and wonders.[691] But even more tragic than his death was the fate which awaited his corpse. Unshriven, he had passed away laden with the curses of the Church. His soul was lost for ever; and his body no man might bury.[692] As the earl was drawing his last breath there came upon the scene some Knights Templar, who flung over him the garb of their order so that he might at least die with the red cross upon his breast.[693] Then, proud in the privileges of their order, they carried the remains to London, to their "Old Temple" in Holborn. There the earl's corpse was enclosed in a leaden coffin, which was hung, say some, on a gnarled fruit tree, that it might not contaminate the earth, or was hurled, according to others, into a pit without the churchyard.[694] So it remained, for nearly twenty years, exposed to the gibes of the Londoners, the earl's "deadly foes." But with the characteristic faithfulness of a monastic house to its founder, the monks of Walden clung to the hope that the ban of the Church might yet be removed, and the bones of the great earl be suffered to rest among them. According to their chronicle, Prior William, who had obtained his post from Geoffrey's hands, rested not till he had wrung his absolution from Pope Alexander III.[695] (1159-1181). But the Ramsey Chronicle, which appears to be a virtually contemporary record, assigns the eventual removal of the ban to Geoffrey's son and namesake, and to the atonement which he made to Ramsey Abbey on his father's behalf.[696] The latter story is most precise, but both may well be true. For, although the Ramsey chronicler would more especially insist on the fact that St. Benedict had to be appeased before the earl could be absolved, the absolution itself would be given not by the abbot, but by the pope. The grant to Ramsey would be merely a condition of the absolution itself being granted. The nature of the grant is known to us not only from the chronicle, but also from the primate's charter confirming this final settlement.[697] As this confirmation is dated at Windsor, April 6, 1163, we thus, roughly, obtain the date of the earl's Christian burial.[698]

The Prior of Walden had gained his end, and he now hastened to the Temple to claim his patron's remains. But his hopes were cruelly frustrated at the very moment of success. Just as the body of the then earl (1163) was destined to be coveted at his death (1166) by two rival houses, so now the remains of his father were a prize which the indignant Templars would never thus surrender. Warned of the prior's coming, they instantly seized the coffin, and buried it at once in their new graveyard, where, around the nameless resting-place of the great champion of anarchy, there was destined to rise, in later days, the home of English law.[699]