Note l.c — Chapter VII · JOHN LACKLAND 1215–1216

The fullest account of the quarrel of King John and William de Braose is contained in a document printed in Foedera, vol. i. pt. i. pp. 107, 108. This is a letter or manifesto addressed by John, after the fall of De Braose, “to all who may read it,” witnessed by the justiciar (Geoffrey Fitz-Peter), the earls of Salisbury, Winchester, Clare, Hertford, and Ferrars, Robert Fitz-Walter, William Brewer, Hugh de Neville, William d’Aubigny, Adam de Port, Hugh de Gournay, William de Mowbray “and others,” and evidently intended as a public defence of the king’s conduct towards William. Coming from John, and under such circumstances, its truthfulness is necessarily open to suspicion; but it is hardly conceivable that so many witnesses of such rank and character as those enumerated should have set their hands to it if it contained any gross misrepresentations of matters which must have been well known to most of them; one of these witnesses, indeed, the earl of Ferrars, is stated in the letter itself to have been De Braose’s own nephew, and another, Adam de Port, his brother-in-law. The only point on which the letter seems to be at variance with any other contemporary authority is the amount of the debt owed by De Braose to the king at the end of 1207 or beginning of 1208. John says (l.c. p. 107), that William then owed him the whole of the 5000 marks due for the honour of Limerick, and had only paid him one sum of 100 marks for the ferm of the city “which he had held for five years” (strictly speaking, it was, at the utmost, four years and a half). The Pipe Rolls of 1206, 1207, 1208, 1209, and 1210 (8–12 John), however, all state the sum still owed by William for the honour of Limerick as £2865: 6: 8 (= 4298 marks), thus implying that £468, or 702 marks, had been paid before Michaelmas 1206. In the Roll of that year the city of Limerick is not mentioned; but in each of the later Rolls William is said to owe £80 for its tallage, and 100 marks for its ferm for one year (Sweetman, Calendar, vol. i. pp. 46, 55, 58, 68). This does not necessarily imply that the ferm for the other years had not been paid; for the original grant of the custody of the city of Limerick to De Braose in July 1203 and the writ ordering its restoration to him in August 1205 both specify that he is to pay its ferm “to our exchequer in Dublin” (Rot. Chart. p. 107 b; Rot. Claus. vol. i. p. 47). As there are no remaining records of the Dublin Exchequer of so early a date, we cannot certainly know what was or was not paid in there. The strange thing is not that the English Exchequer should claim only one year’s ferm for Limerick, but that it should have any claim at all in the matter. The restoration of the city to De Braose in August 1205 was ordered to be conditional on his finding security, within forty days, for the payment of the arrears of the ferm. That the restoration was actually made, and therefore that he gave the security, is plain; but there is nothing to show that he ever redeemed his pledge, or that he paid the ferm for the succeeding years.