Chapter II · THE REGENCY OF WILLIAM THE MARSHAL 1216–1219

He was a verray perfight gentil knight.

1216

The coronation of Henry III had brought England face to face with a problem which was practically new in her history: the problem of a royal minority. In the days before the Norman Conquest, indeed, three English kings had been crowned before they reached the age which for men of lower degree was counted as that of legal majority; and the last of these three, Æthelred the Redeless, had come to his throne at almost the same age as Henry. But these cases were all too remote to furnish precedents for the guidance of the statesmen into whose hands the task of carrying on the government of England was thrown by the death of John. They could not even furnish a precedent for the choice of a regent; and the choice actually made was the result of circumstances which may without exaggeration be called unique. None of the known rules of English law concerning wardship were altogether applicable to the case of the Crown. As the law of England then stood, the wardship of a free tenement held by other than military tenure, and of its infant heir, belonged to the infant’s next-of-kin who was not capable of inheriting the tenement; the wardship of an infant tenant in chivalry, and of his land, belonged to his overlord. If the analogy of the former case were to be followed, the regency would have fallen to the King’s mother, Isabel of Angoulême. Not only, however, was the task, in the circumstances then existing, far too weighty to be laid upon a woman and a foreigner, but it was obviously impossible to treat the crown and realm of England as a mere ordinary socage tenement. Wardship in chivalry, on the other hand, would until little more than three years before Henry’s accession have supplied no analogy at all; for the King and kingdom of England had no overlord upon earth before John’s homage to the Pope in May, 1213. By virtue of that homage England became a fief of the Roman see, and consequently on John’s death the wardship of his youthful heir and his distracted realm vested legally in Pope Honorius III. It might therefore have been expected that the regency would be at once assumed by the Pope’s representative in England, the Legate Gualo. But Gualo was an Italian who had been scarcely fifteen months in the land, and he was a priest. The needs of the time imperatively demanded that the acting head of the state, whose first task must be to drive out an alien invader and bring back rebels to allegiance, should be an Englishman and a warrior; and Gualo’s conduct showed that neither he nor Honorius ever contemplated any other arrangement. In all the transactions connected with the crowning of the new King and the organization of the new government the Legate seems to have purposely kept himself as much as possible in the background, guarding the rights of the Pope and the interests of the Pope’s ward not by direct intervention but rather by his mere presence, and putting forth his official powers only when their exercise was required to confirm, by the Papal sanction given through him, the measures agreed upon by the great men of the land, on whom the actual responsibility of appointing a regent thus devolved. If in undertaking that responsibility they were guided by any precedent or analogy at all, it must have been one drawn from a land far remote from England, but probably better known to many Englishmen in the days of Richard Cœur-de-Lion’s nephew than most of the countries nearer home; a land, too, which for fifty years in the preceding century had been ruled by kings of the same blood as Richard and Henry themselves. The “Assizes of Jerusalem” in which the jurisconsults of Cyprus, towards the end of the thirteenth century, embodied the traditions of law and custom said to be derived from a code originally compiled by the first King of the Latins in Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, and modified by his successors down to Saladin’s capture of the Holy City in 1187, contain an ordinance about minor heirs which runs thus: “If he” (the minor) “is a lord of land”—that is, a sovereign or suzerain lord—“his body and his fortresses ought to be guarded as shall be agreed by the community of his men.”[327] This provision had been acted upon in the case of King Baldwin III, on whose accession, at the age of thirteen, the princes and barons of the realm claimed and exercised the right to elect a regent.[328] What the magnates of Palestine thus did in 1174 the magnates of England did as freely in 1216. Not only did Gualo make no claim to the regency for himself, but he did not even attempt to dictate their choice. If indeed that choice was influenced by any one outside their own circle, that one was the late King. John’s commendation, however, could scarcely have been needed to point out the man for the office.

Yet that man was one who had not only passed the age of three score years and ten,[329] but had passed it without ever having held any office, in court, camp, or administration, of sufficient importance to give scope for the display of any special capacities for generalship or government, or for the acquisition of special knowledge and experience in the conduct of politics or of war. Neither by birth nor by origin was William the Marshal a magnate of the highest rank. The founder of the Marshal family, one Gilbert, who seems to have been either a cadet or a connexion by marriage of the Norman house of Tancarville, was marshal to Henry I; that office became hereditary in his family, and furnished a surname to all his race. The office of the King’s Marshal was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a grand serjeanty and nothing more; the military duties and responsibilities originally involved in it had long since passed into other hands, and the material advantages attached to it seem to have been of small extent and importance; it gave to its holder little more than a position of honour and dignity in the royal household, the right of carrying the sword of state on certain public occasions, and, possibly, a sort of inchoate right to the custody of the royal castle of Marlborough. William was a younger son; at the age of twelve years or thereabouts {c. 1155} he was sent, with a companion and a serving-lad, to seek his fortune abroad, in the household of his father’s cousin William of Tancarville, the chamberlain of Normandy. There he shewed so little promise of distinction that the other young squires declared “William Waste-meat”[330] to be good for nothing but eating, drinking, and sleeping. The chamberlain, however, had a better opinion of his young kinsman. He knighted him at a moment when Henry II and Louis VII were at strife and some partisans of Louis were threatening the Norman Vexin: and Sir William in his first fight—in defence of the castle of Drincourt—proved himself well worthy of his spurs.[331] But immediately afterwards the two Kings made peace; and it was not in war, but in the tournaments which on the Continent (they were as yet unknown in England) furnished at once a school of arms and a means of subsistence for the younger members of the baronial houses in time of peace, that William first made himself a name.[332]

By 1170 William had acquired such a reputation that he was chosen by Henry II not only to be a member of the household of the “young King”—Henry’s eldest son—but was specially appointed to watch over and direct the lad’s military training.[333] Three years later {1173} young Henry himself, when offered knighthood at the hands of some of the noblest and most illustrious among the chivalry of France, declared that he would receive it only from “the best knight that ever was or will be,” and handed his sword to William the Marshal.[334] After nearly twelve years of close companionship {1182} slanderous tongues parted William from the young King, shortly before the latter’s final revolt against his father.[335] The slander was, however, detected and William was recalled[336] in time to watch over his young lord’s death-bed {1183} and receive his dying charge to fulfil in his stead a vow which he had made of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[337] On William’s return to Europe, early in 1187, Henry II took him into his own service as a knight of his household;[338] and thenceforth till the hour of Henry’s death he was the King’s best counsellor and closest friend.[339]

1189

The first act of Henry’s successor was to confirm a grant which Henry had promised to William, of the hand of the greatest heiress in his realm, Isabel de Clare.[340] Her heritage included the English earldom of Pembroke or Striguil, the Norman barony of Longueville, and a fief in Ireland comprising nearly the whole of the ancient kingdom of Leinster. William’s marriage suddenly raised him from the position of a portionless younger son, “without a furrow of land, and with no fortune but his knighthood,” to that of a magnate of high rank, great wealth, and considerable territorial importance, and thus gave him, as a matter of course, a permanent and definite place in the royal council; but he showed no disposition to take a prominent part in politics. As one of the subordinate justiciars appointed by Richard to assist in the government of the realm during the King’s absence on Crusade, he at first supported John against William of Longchamp, and afterwards, when John’s treason was made manifest, supported the new justiciar, Walter of Coutances, against John. After Richard’s return William was almost constantly with him in Normandy, taking his full share in the warfare with Philip Augustus which occupied the last five years of Richard’s life; but his share was that of a devoted follower and a brave knight, not of a great noble holding an independent command. It was only at Cœur-de-Lion’s death {1199} that William the Marshal came to the front of affairs. The dying King had appointed him constable of the castle of Rouen, which contained the ducal treasure; it was he who won for Richard’s chosen successor, John, the support of the Norman primate, and thus largely contributed to secure for John acceptance in Normandy as duke.[341] The FitzGilbert patrimony had come to him in 1194, on the death of his elder brother.[342] The earldom of Pembroke or Striguil, which he had held by courtesy since his marriage with the young countess, was granted to him by formal investiture on John’s coronation day;[343] a few months later the office of Marshal was conferred by royal charter on him and his heirs for ever.[344] Throughout the greater part of John’s reign {1200–1216} he was sheriff of Sussex and Gloucestershire, and he was also an assistant justice and baron of the Exchequer. For some years after John’s accession he seems to have been in almost constant attendance on the King; during the Interdict he resided chiefly on his Irish lands. From 1213 onwards he was again John’s constant companion and his most trusted counsellor; and in that capacity his name stands in the preamble of the Great Charter first among the lay magnates in the list of the persons by whose advice the Charter was granted. Throughout the troubles of the succeeding year he adhered quietly but steadily to the King, whose dying testimony has been quoted already—“He has always served me loyally; in his loyalty, above that of any other man, I put my trust.”

Fifteen years earlier, Richard Cœur-de-Lion had repelled in similar words a charge of treason insinuated against the Marshal: “God’s Feet! I have always held him for the most loyal knight in all my realm. I do not believe he has ever been false.”[345] Three years later, when the death of the aged regent of England was announced at the court of France, the flower of the French chivalry vied with each other in extolling the knightly virtues of their dead enemy, and Philip Augustus spoke the crowning word of praise: “You have well said—but what I say is that he was the most loyal man I ever knew in any place where I have been.”[346] In the epithet unanimously chosen by three men so unlike each other as Richard, John, and Philip, to sum up their opinion of William the Marshal, lies the key to his whole career, and to the peculiar place which he held in the estimation of his contemporaries. What they admired and reverenced in him was not genius but character; the character, as a modern French critic has truly said, of the typical knight without fear and without reproach. One of William’s friends, Aimeric de Ste.-Maure, the Master of the Temple, expressed the general verdict in another way; when he and William were both on their death-beds, he said: “Bury me beside William the Marshal, the Good Knight, who has won that surname by his probity on earth and will carry it with him to Heaven.”[347] To be thus known as pre-eminently “The Good Knight” was to have won the highest title of honour that the medieval world could bestow. The “probity,” or “prowess,” which constituted the essence of the ideal knightly character, was a complex quality, hardly to be expressed by any single word of modern speech; it included valour and skill in arms; and it also included, above all else, what the men of the Middle Ages called “loyalty.” Primarily, to them, loyalty meant the faithful discharge of the obligations legally involved in the relation between vassal and lord; obligations, indeed, often disregarded and violated in practice, but theoretically acknowledged as sacred no less in the days of John Lackland and Philip Augustus than in the days when they inspired one of the noblest outbursts of feeling in the noblest epic of ancient France.[348] This principle of “loyalty” in the medieval sense was the rule by which the Marshal walked, with a rare steadfastness and consistency, throughout his life. The very passages in his career which seem at first glance most difficult to reconcile with modern ideas on the subject are in reality illustrations of the simple and literal way in which he followed his rule, and were thoroughly understood as such by the sovereigns against whom they brought him temporarily into opposition.[349] He never concerned himself with abstract politics; in any given circumstances, his sole concern was to do his own duty to his own lord, whoever that lord might be. He knew neither doubt nor fear. He was, indeed, constitutionally fearless; personal danger of any kind was a thing of which he seems to have remained through life almost as unconscious as when in early childhood, a hostage in the power of Stephen and condemned to be hurled like a stone from a mangonel into the castle which his father was defending for the Empress Maud, he had disarmed the King’s wrath by running up to the deadly engine and begging for a “swing” in it. But his courage never degenerated into rashness; he was never eager to fight (except in a tournament) merely for fighting’s sake, nor willing to countenance violent measures unless they were imperatively called for by necessity or honour. His temper was cool and practical. He was no pioneer of reform or of revolution; he accepted without question the ordinary standards of public opinion in his day.[350] His ideal was strictly the ideal of his own time; an ideal, therefore, which all his contemporaries could understand and appreciate, and which they could see to be fulfilled in his person more completely than in that of any other man then living, at any rate in England. As he was true and just in the fulfilment of his duty as a vassal, so he was true and just in all his dealing. When he was but a landless knight, living by the ransoms of the prisoners and the sale of the horses captured by him in tournaments, men already knew that his word was his bond. His lord the “young King,” Henry II’s son, habitually “spent so much in every place where he went, that when the hour of departure came, he knew not how to get away” from his creditors. “Counts, barons, vavassours” vainly offered to stand surety for the payment of his debts; the shrewd tradesmen would accept no such security; but when the Marshal pledged his word that the accounts should be settled within a month, they exclaimed, “If the Marshal warrant us, we are as good as paid.”[351] Even so Louis of France, when from the treasury of England, exhausted by years of confusion and war, an indemnity was promised him for his losses and expenses in the invasion, suffered this important item in the terms of peace to be left without mention in the written treaty, and trusted for its fulfilment solely to the regent’s plighted word. Jealousy, suspicion, party-spirit, could find no occasion against a character so simple, so unpretending, so honest and straightforward as that of William the Marshal. Thrice in his long life—once by some dastardly comrades who envied the esteem in which he was held by the two Henrys, twice by King John—an attempt was made to cast aspersions on his honour. Each time he met the calumny in the same way; he offered to disprove it by ordeal of battle. Each time his challenge, uttered in the King’s presence and in the midst of the court, was answered by a general silence more significant than words. No man dared encounter William the Marshal in the ordeal, because every man believed it impossible for the “judgement of God” to go against the Good Knight who was without fear because his conscience was without reproach.

In point of fact, the Legate and the magnates at Gloucester in October, 1216,1216 had set up what we now call a regency; but the idea which that word conveys to us was to them so entirely new and strange that they seem to have been at first unable to find a name for it. Immediately after the coronation Earl William the Marshal began to exercise the functions of a regent, and among them that of issuing letters patent and close in the King’s name. In these letters he, at first, sometimes styles himself simply “William Marshal Earl of Pembroke”; but on six occasions he calls himself “Justiciar.”[352] His assumption of this title is puzzling in more ways than one. The chief justiciarship of England was not vacant; it had been given by John in 1215 to Hubert de Burgh, whose fidelity to John and to his heir is as unquestionable as that of the Marshal himself, and was being demonstrated by his defence of Dover against Louis at the very time of the Marshal’s appointment to the regency. In the thirteenth century an office granted, as was that of the Justiciar, by letters patent,[353] to be held during the King’s pleasure, was not vacated by the King’s death, but belonged of right to the grantee until he was superseded by means of a new appointment.[354] Twenty years later Hubert himself declared that he had been Justiciar “without contradiction” ever since his appointment by John;[355] it is clear, therefore, that the Marshal’s assumption of the title was not regarded by Hubert as implying any design of ousting him from his office. There was indeed one precedent, dating from the time of Richard, for the appointment of two chief Justiciars at once. But Earl William’s position was from the outset not that of a Justiciar at all. The Justiciar was the King’s second in command—the foremost minister of the Crown when the sovereign was present, his lieutenant and vicegerent when he was absent from the realm; in either case, his delegate and nothing more. Earl William was not the King’s delegate; he had not been appointed by the King and was not removable at the King’s pleasure; he had been called by the Legate and the magnates to govern the realm during the King’s minority, as guardian of the King himself. He was, in modern phraseology, not Viceroy but Regent. Still, there was just sufficient analogy between his functions and those which, under certain circumstances, appertained to the Justiciar, to suggest his adoption of that title, in a tentative sort of way, until a better one could be devised.[356] In a word, as his office was a novelty and an experiment, so its earliest appellation seems to have been a makeshift. Before the end of November, 1216, that appellation was replaced by a loftier and more comprehensive one—“Governor of the king and of the kingdom.”[357] No attempt seems to have been made at any further definition either of the limits of his powers, or of his relation to the royal Council; there was in fact no means of defining either, nor any authority capable of so doing. In one sense he was above the council; but in another sense he was merely its most important member; its other members acted in subordination to him, but he was not independent of them; they were the King’s councillors, not his; nay, more—it was from them that he had received his authority, and he was thus in some sense responsible to them for his exercise of it. He was also, and above all, in theory at least, responsible to the Legate and, through the Legate, to the Pope.[358] It is thus impossible to determine precisely how much of the credit of the policy which freed England from her invaders and restored peace and order to the distracted country and the ruined administration is due to the Marshal himself, and how much to his colleagues, Gualo, Hubert, Peter des Roches, and the other ministers of the late King. A large share of credit must in any case belong to them for a steady, faithful, and intelligent co-operation without which the Marshal obviously could not have carried on either war or government at all. But it is certain that for two years and a half after the coronation no act was done in the King’s name without the Marshal’s consent; for, except on a very few special occasions, all the royal letters during that period were attested by him and sealed with his seal.[359] It may therefore fairly be said that whatsoever they did in England, he was the doer of it.

1216–1217

One thing there was which, it was clearly understood from the outset, could not be done at all during the King’s minority. No grant in perpetuity made by, or in the name of, a person under age was valid by English law. The application of this rule to the case of an infant King seems not to have been expressed till more than two years after Henry’s coronation, but it was effectually secured during that time by an expedient whose simplicity and practicality are eminently characteristic of the Marshal. A grant in perpetuity on the part of the Crown was invalid unless sealed with the King’s seal. No great seal was made for Henry till two years after he was crowned; the seal of the regent served in its stead.[360] On several occasions during the first year of the regency grants were made in the King’s name to hold good “till the fourteenth completed year of our age.”[361] {1216–1217} There was as yet no fixed rule for the determination of a King’s majority; but the reigning King of France, Philip Augustus, had been crowned as his father’s colleague shortly after his fourteenth birthday, and had exercised the functions of royalty from that time forth. This was the origin of the rule which fixed the coming of age of later Kings of France at fourteen years; and Henry’s guardians seem at first to have contemplated taking Philip’s case as a precedent for that of their own boy-sovereign.[362] There was no English precedent to guide them. Nine years later it was asserted that one castellan—Peter de Maulay—had bound himself by an oath to John not to give back the castles of which he had charge till Henry should be of legal age.[363] It is possible that John may have demanded and received such an oath from more than one of the wardens of the royal castles; but evidently neither they, the Marshal, nor any of the council knew what was John’s idea—if he even had one—of what should constitute legal age in the case of his successor; the definition tentatively suggested at the beginning of the reign was clearly not based upon any direction left by him. At the close of 1217 it was abandoned, and its place was taken by a vaguer formula—“till our coming of age.”[364] The question of when that was to be could not become urgent for three years at least; it was therefore wisely put aside for solution at a more convenient season.

1215–1216

Some indications seem to point to another possible restriction on the powers of the king’s guardians, in the shape of a theory that their “pleasure” was not legally equivalent to “the King’s pleasure”; in other words, that appointments made by the late King were not revocable (except for some special reason) during the minority of his successor. There is however no evidence that this theory was ever put into explicit words or formally recognized;[365] and nothing of the kind is needed to account for the fact that the great majority of the Crown officers appointed by John were left undisturbed by the Earl Marshal in their several bailiwicks.[366] Thirteen counties were at John’s death under sheriffs of foreign birth. Falkes de Bréauté was sheriff of Northamptonshire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire; Peter de Maulay of Dorset and Somerset; Savaric de Mauléon of Hampshire; Philip Marc of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire; Engelard de Cigogné (or d’Athée) of Surrey. The two last named were members of a family on which “the Barons” of 1215 had conferred a signal mark of distinction, by making it the subject of a separate article (the fiftieth) in the Great Charter, whereby John was pledged “to remove altogether from their bailiwicks the relations of Gerard of Athée,” several of whom, among them Engelard of Cigogné and Philip Marc, are mentioned by name, “and all their following, so that they may never more hold any bailiwick in England.” The reason for this remarkable enactment was, so far as can be made out from existing evidence, simply this: that when, after a struggle in which Gerard of Athée fought gallantly for his country and his Count,[367] the old Angevin lands were conquered by Philip Augustus, these kinsmen—sprung from a group of little villages between Tours and Loches—instead of settling down under the new ruler of Touraine, crossed the sea to seek employment in the service of their natural-born sovereign and make homes for themselves in his island realm; that he entrusted them with offices of considerable importance as well as (in some cases at least) of considerable pecuniary value, and especially with the command of some of the chief royal castles;[368] that they fulfilled the duties thus entrusted to them with fidelity and efficiency, and that they had under their control a numerous following of dependents who had accompanied or rejoined them from beyond the sea, and who were, like them, faithful soldiers and servants of the King. We need seek no further for the grounds on which the “Barons of the Charter” desired to get rid of Gerard d’Athée and his kindred;[369] nor for the grounds on which the fiftieth article of the Great Charter was omitted in the revised version issued by Gualo and the Marshal in Henry’s name. The only puzzle in the matter is why the baronial party should have singled out the members of this particular family by name[370] to be made victims of their jealousy and fear, and not included the other “alien” officers in the same condemnation (or commendation); for two at least of those others were men who by origin, class, and character differed little from Gerard of Athée and his kinsmen. The third, indeed—Savaric de Mauléon—was a noble by birth, the head of an illustrious family of baronial rank in Poitou, and a man of personal distinction in other pursuits besides that of arms; it is needless to say more of him at present, for, as he returned to his native land shortly after the council at Bristol, the military and administrative offices held by him in England were of necessity transferred to other hands. But Falkes de Bréauté and Peter de Maulay were simply soldiers of fortune from the continental dominions of the house of Anjou.[371] Together with the sheriffdom of Dorset, Peter de Maulay had been entrusted by the late king with the castle of Corfe, and in it not only the royal treasury and some important State prisoners, but also the child Richard who was, after Henry, the next and indeed the only male heir to the Crown. Since John had deemed Peter a fit person to have such a charge as this, the darkest hour of the struggle with the enemies of John’s heir was obviously not the time for removing him from his post. As to Falkes—called by Matthew Paris “the rod of the Lord’s fury”—he was a man after John’s own heart, as ruthless and reckless as John himself; but his fierceness was equalled by his daring valour, his consummate skill in military affairs, and his zeal in the royal cause. A glance at the map of England is enough to shew why John had chosen such a man as this to have charge of the particular group of counties and castles which he placed under the command of Falkes; and the story of the war is enough to justify the wisdom of his choice.[372]

1217

The treaty of Kingston was no sooner concluded than both parties set to work conscientiously to carry its provisions into effect. “Reverted perverts” came crowding in to the King’s allegiance, and as fast as they came their lands were ordered to be restored to them.[373] On 23rd September Louis and Henry joined in summoning Alexander of Scotland to make restitution of the English lands which he had seized during the war.[374] Orders were promptly issued for the delivery of prisoners and the payment of ransoms and other moneys due according to the terms of the treaty.[375] Only two classes of men suffered any real punishment for their share in the war. The one class consisted of men of Norman birth who held or claimed lands in England, and who had taken the side of Louis; concerning these the sheriffs were warned that “no seisin is adjudged to them, till the English shall have recovered their lands in Normandy.”[376] The other class was that of the clergy who had disobeyed the bishops and the Pope by supporting Louis; and their punishment came solely from the Legate. On 27th October he went to London[377] and there meted out condign punishment to the clergy who had set his excommunication at naught. He “went to the church of S. Paul, and caused all the altars and all the chalices to be broken up, and all the vestments to be burnt, and new ones to be put in their place; and he put in new canons; and the old ones who had chanted the service in defiance of him he deprived of all their benefices; and he made the beneficed clergy of the town exchange their parishes for upland ones.”[378] “Some of the clergy he degraded; some he sent, still excommunicate, to the threshold of the Apostles.”[379] Thirteen clerks “who used threatening language to him and his” he put in ward at Westminster.[380] What ultimately became of them we are not told; but on 18th February next year {1218} all clerks under sentence of excommunication for adherence to Louis were, in the king’s name, bidden to leave England before Mid-Lent (22nd March), and warned that if found there after that date, they would be kept in ward “till the king should give further orders concerning them.”[381]

On Sunday, 29th October, 12171217—a year and a day after his coronation—the young King entered his capital.[382] “He was received with glory, and fealty and homage were done to him,” no doubt by the citizens and by many other “reverted perverts.” During the ensuing week “many discussions were held by the King’s guardians and the leading men of the kingdom concerning the ordering of the realm, the establishment of peace, and the abolition of evil customs.”[383] The outcome of these deliberations was a new issue of the Charter,[384] or what seems to have been meant to be regarded as the issue of a new Charter; for the preamble (which, except for the names, is a copy of the preamble of Magna Charta) ignores all earlier documents. As a matter of fact, however, this Charter is a revised edition of the Charter of 1216, from which it differs only in the following particulars: In the article concerning widows, the amount of legal dowry is, for the first time, defined: it is fixed at a third part of all the husband’s lands, “unless she have been dowered with a less amount at the church door.”[385] The article relating to the judicial eyres and the three recognitions is modified. Recognitions of mort d’ancester and novel disseisin are to be taken in the several shires before justices who are to be sent thither once (instead of four times) a year, and who are to hold the assizes “with the knights of the shires”[386]—not, it seems, as in 1215 and 1216, with four knights specially elected for the purpose; if these assizes cannot be completed on the day fixed, the cases are to be dealt with, not as in 1215 and 1216 by a sufficient number of knights and freeholders who are to remain on the spot for that intent, but by the judges “elsewhere on their eyre,” or if the cases are too difficult they are to be referred to and settled by the judges of the Bench;[387] and the assizes of darrein presentment are to be always held and settled by these last-named judges.[388] In the article regulating the imposition of amercements the king’s villeins are excepted from the safeguard given to the villeins of other lords.[389] The article concerning the requisition of corn or cattle is modified by the extension of the limit of time for payment from twenty-one days to forty.[390] On the other hand, carts belonging to an ecclesiastical person, a knight, or a lady, are henceforth not to be requisitioned at all.[391] The unsupported accusation of a Crown bailiff is henceforth to be insufficient not only for sending a man to the ordeal, but also for compelling him to make compurgation.[392] The King’s promise to take no unfair advantage of his possession of escheats is made still more definite.[393] Of the six matters spoken of in John’s Charter which were expressly mentioned in clause 42 of the Charter of 1216 as being postponed for future consideration—the assessment of scutages and aids, the rights of Jewish and other creditors against the heirs of deceased debtors, liberty of ingress into and egress from the realm, the regulation of forests and warrens, the customs of the shires, and the river-enclosures and their keepers—the fourth was left to be dealt with in a separate Charter of the Forest; to three others as many new articles were devoted. No river-enclosures are henceforth to be kept up save those which were in existence in the time of Henry II.[394] Respecting the “customs of the shires,” the provision in the twenty-fifth chapter of Magna Charta (to which the words on that subject in the closing paragraph of Henry’s first Charter must refer), that all shires and other local jurisdictions except those on the royal domains shall be at their “old ferm” without increment, is not renewed; but in its stead there is a clause regulating the holding of the county courts and the sheriff’s tourn. The shire court is to be held not oftener than once a month, and at longer intervals where such have been customary. No sheriff or his bailiff is to make his tourn in the hundred except twice a year—after Easter and after Michaelmas—and only in the proper and accustomed place. View of frankpledge is to be made at Michaelmas term, in such a manner “that every man shall have the liberties which he used to have in the time of our grandfather King Henry, or which he has since acquired, and so that our peace shall be kept, and the tithing shall be complete as it was wont to be; and the sheriff is to seek no occasions, and is to be content with what the sheriff used to have for holding his view in King Henry’s time.”[395] Concerning the once crucial question which had furnished the original pretext for the rising of the barons against John, the guardians could now venture to reassert the rights of the Crown; and they did so, but in terms carefully chosen so as to avoid all reference to the late troubles: “Scutage shall be taken henceforth as it used to be taken in the time of our grandfather King Henry.”[396] Two other new articles were added, whose connexion with the scutage clause is not difficult to see. The one enacted that henceforth no free man should either give away or sell so much of his land as that the residue should be insufficient to furnish the service due to the lord of the fief;[397] the other forbade that any man should give his land to a religious house for the purpose of receiving it back again to hold of that house, and enacted that if any man were convicted of so doing, his donation should be void, and his land forfeited to the lord.[398] The other omissions were disposed of, for the moment, by a general saving clause: “Reserving to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, Templars, Hospitallers, earls, barons, and all other persons both ecclesiastical and secular, the liberties and free customs which they had before.”[399] Lastly, it was ordained also “by common consent of the whole realm” that all adulterine castles, that is, castles which had been built or rebuilt since the beginning of the war between the late King and his barons, should be immediately destroyed.[400] This Charter has no date. It was, doubtless issued in the early days of November; probably on the 6th, for on that day there was issued a Charter of the Forest which dealt amply with the grievances connected with the abuse of Forest law.[401]

The article concerning scutage was inserted in the Charter for an immediate and important purpose; it was the ratification of a tax which the Council had imposed a few days before the Charters were issued. Of the many problems with which the Marshal and his colleagues had to grapple one of the most urgent and most difficult was that of finance. The confused entries on the Pipe Rolls of John’s later years indicate that the financial administration of the realm had been gradually drifting towards chaos from 1212 onwards; in 1215 chaos was reached, and the machinery of the Exchequer came to a standstill. After Michaelmas, 1214, no session of the Exchequer was held, no accounts were rendered by any of the sheriffs or other bailiffs of the Crown, for more than three years. John had met the expenses of the war partly by payments out of the treasury, partly by means of writs addressed to various fiscal officers throughout the country, directing them to make on his behalf certain payments out of the ferms for which they were accountable at the Exchequer.[402] As, however, “no one”—as a chronicler says—“would pay any money to the King” or his representatives, and as a considerable part of the kingdom was in the possession of the enemy, both of these resources must have been well-nigh exhausted before the death of John, who was in fact reduced at last to sheer plunder to provide for the maintenance of his troops. The Marshal at the outset of his regency seems to have sought help towards providing the sinews of war in the levy of a hidage, carucage, and “aid,” this last word probably representing a tallage from the towns. Of the time and circumstances of their imposition there is no record, but it is most probable that the matter was decided in the council at Bristol immediately after the coronation, in November, 1216.[403] Of course none of these taxes could be collected in the districts which were under the control of Louis or his partisans. In July, 1217, the Pope ordered the prelates to contribute an aid to the King’s necessities.[404] Meanwhile wages, allowances, and other payments were made by means of jewels from the royal treasury, and in cloth of silk, samite, and baldaquin from the royal wardrobe.[405]

At the earliest possible moment an effort was made to revive the working of the Exchequer. Its records were for some time previous to the end of the war in the possession of Louis, and were restored only on the conclusion of peace in the middle of September;[406] the session seems therefore to have been appointed for Martinmas,[407] instead of Michaelmas which was the customary date. Before Martinmas came, however, it was found, apparently, that some of the sheriffs could not get their accounts ready by the appointed day; and ultimately they seem to have been allowed to bring them up at various times from November, 1217, till a fortnight after Easter, 1218.[408] The accounts thus rendered were those for the first half of the seventeenth (fiscal) year of King John, from Michaelmas, 1214, to Easter, 1215; in other words, the last fiscal half-year completed before the outbreak of war between the barons and the King.[409] For the second half of that year, and for the whole of the two succeeding years up to Michaelmas, 1217, no accounts were ever rendered or demanded; the first Pipe Roll of Henry III is the roll of his second year, from Michaelmas, 1217, to Michaelmas, 1218, and it contains no mention of arrears.[410] This arrangement was both practical and equitable. The accounts for 1215–1217 must in many cases, through no fault of the persons responsible for them, have been in a confusion impossible to disentangle; some of the shires had been entirely in the possession of the King’s enemies; to many of the sheriffs and other Crown bailiffs the King must have been really more in debt than they were to him. With a budget thus restricted and a treasury thus exhausted the Marshal had to carry on the King’s government and pay the indemnity which he had promised to Louis.

“Our faithful Earl William the Marshal has bound himself to the Lord Louis on our behalf, under no small penalty, to the payment of ten thousand marks, for the boon of peace between Louis and ourself”—such is the official statement made, a year later, in a letter written in Henry’s name to the Pope.[411] This amount was independent of the sums due to Louis, according to the terms of the treaty, from towns and individuals who had made agreement with him on condition of a financial aid or tribute which they had not yet paid; the aggregate of these latter sums appears to have been reckoned at something between five and seven thousand marks.[412] On 23rd September letters patent were issued ordering that these debts should be paid without delay to Louis’s Marshal, William de Beaumont.[413] For the receipt of the indemnity Louis appointed as his attorneys two merchants of S. Omer, Florence (or Florentinus) “the Rich” and his son William. This appointment seems to have been made for the joint convenience of Louis and Henry. Louis apparently wanted six thousand marks sterling paid down, and received them from Florence and William, who themselves supplied the amount on a promise made to them on 23rd September in Henry’s name that half the sum thus advanced should be repaid to them on All Saints’ day and the rest at Candlemas; a part of the first instalment of repayment was to be made in fells and wool; if these were not duly delivered Henry was to pay Florence and William an additional sum of five hundred marks sterling “for the profit of that merchandise.” If the whole debt to the two merchants were not paid at the term appointed, Count Peter of Brittany and Robert of Arène were authorized by the King, the Earl Marshal, and the royal Council to seize and hold on behalf of Louis “any goods belonging to the King and his realm that they could get, to the value of the amount due,” until it was paid.[414] A letter from the Marshal in his own name to the King of France at once illustrates the scrupulous honesty for which he had long been renowned, and shews that he doubted the possibility of fulfilling these promises to Florence. “If,” he writes, “our agreement with Florence be not kept, we desire and grant that you assign all the land which we hold of you to Florence and his son till the whole debt and interest due to them shall be discharged, saving only our service to you for the said lands.”[415] His doubts were justified; eleven months later the debt to Florence and William still amounted to no less than two thousand one hundred and fifty marks.[416] To bring it down to this he had had to borrow more than five hundred marks in the King’s name from various merchants of Ireland, Wales, and England, and several hundred more from other individuals, and to lend nine hundred marks out of his own purse;[417] and the financial straits of the Crown are further illustrated by the fact that the total of wool required for the first instalment of repayment to Florence had had to be made up by seizing several sacks belonging to individual merchants at Northampton fair, one of whom did not receive compensation till the end of November, 1218, while another had to wait for it till the middle of February, 1219.[418] It seems to have been originally proposed that the whole indemnity should be paid by S. Andrew’s day, 1217;[419] but this was manifestly impracticable. The account with Louis was in fact not closed till 1219 at the earliest, for the last five hundred marks needed to wipe out the debt were lent to Henry by Gualo’s successor in the legation, Pandulf.[420]

The very first thing, therefore, to be laid before and sanctioned by the Great Council of the realm when at the end of October, 1217, it was once more gathered round the sovereign in his capital city, was a scheme of taxation for the year. This consisted of a scutage of the ordinary amount—two shillings on the knight’s fee—a tallage, a hidage, and a carucage. These taxes were imposed, as had been the practice in the time of Henry II, in the full council of the barons.[421] The formal imposition of the scutage must have taken place on the very day of Henry’s entry into London, 29th October, or at latest on the following morning. This tax was avowedly destined for the payment of the indemnity.[422] It was obviously for purposes connected with finance that an inquisition concerning the King’s demesne lands had been ordered in September;[423] and on 9th November, commissioners were despatched to assess the tallage on these demesnes, and to make searching inquiries about escheats and about all lands “into which there is no entry except through the sheriffs or bailiffs and without due warrant,”[424] and to seize all such into the King’s hand.[425] At the same time the King’s justiciars in Ireland were directed to lay a “tallage and efficacious aid” upon the cities, towns, and royal demesnes in that country, and to “beg of the Kings of Connaught and Thomond and the other kings in Ireland, and of the barons and knights who held in chief of the King, such an efficient aid that the King should evermore be thankful to them”; and they were further exhorted to send the money thus collected to England with all possible speed.[426]

The first judicial eyre of the new reign seems to have been held very soon after the second issue of the Charter, and to have had for one of its objects the administering of the oath of fealty to the King’s subjects in general. To one district, at least, there went six justices itinerant before whom the knights and other free men swore that they would keep the peace of the Church, the King, and the realm, and would help and defend all persons who were willing to keep it likewise; that they would obey all “reasonable” commands of the King, and uphold the royal rights, and hold the good laws and customs of the realm; that if any man should presume to contravene the same, they would at the bidding of the King and his council come together faithfully in force and amend the matter to the utmost of their power; that “neither for hatred, nor favour, nor fear” would they fail to keep their fealty; that they would do and receive justice according to the reasonable customs and laws of England; that no previous or subsequent oath should hinder their observance of all these things; and that “in all these things they would support the Marshal.”[427]

The various dependencies of the English Crown had next to be secured. Alexander of Scotland had taken advantage of the troubles in England to seize the town and castle of Carlisle. As early as 23rd September, 1217, the Marshal peremptorily demanded restitution of these and of the other lands and the prisoners taken by Alexander during the war; and at the same time he bade the prelates and magnates of the North, if Alexander did not immediately comply with the demand, give the sheriff of Cumberland their “efficient aid and counsel” in forcing him to do so.[428] Alexander seems to have yielded at once. The Marshal had a hold over him; the English honour of Huntingdon, which the Scot Kings had held since 1136 and which they dearly prized, was in the hand of King Henry. On 6th November an escort was ordered to meet Alexander at Berwick on S. Andrew’s day and bring him “to speak with us and do to us what he ought to do.”[429] The meeting seems to have taken place on 17th or 18th December at Northampton;[430] on the 19th Alexander, having done his homage, received seisin of his English lands,[431] and a safe-conduct till Candlemas Day for his journey home.[432]

Far more troublesome and dangerous vassals than the Scot king were the native princes of Wales. In ancient times Wales had been divided into three kingdoms: Gwynedd, answering roughly to the modern counties of Flint, part of Denbigh, Carnarvon, Anglesey, and the western part of Merioneth; Powys, stretching from the mouth of the Dee to the river Wye, and including, besides the southern part of what is now Denbighshire and the eastern part of Merioneth, the present shires of Montgomery and Radnor; and Deheubarth, which included, besides the remaining shires of the modern South Wales, the district of Monmouth as far east as the Wye. These three kingdoms had been separate and independent, although a sort of overlordship or primacy seems to have been recognized as appertaining to the Kings of Gwynedd. By the end of the twelfth century Gwynedd was the only one of these three States which remained purely Welsh in population and government. The whole of Deheubarth and the greater part of Powys were dotted over with Norman castles, every one of which was the capital of a lordship held by a baron of Norman or English race, owning allegiance to no one save the English King.[433] Neither these “marcher lords” nor their sovereign, however, had made any real progress towards conquering the country or its people; they were, so to say, detachments of a feudal host encamped here and there in a foreign land, and surrounded by a native population which still maintained its own customs and laws and recognized no authority except that of its own hereditary chieftains. Between the two peoples there was a bitter racial and national feud; but the relations between the Norman lords marchers and the Welsh princes varied greatly. It was not for the interest of the former to quarrel unnecessarily with their Welsh neighbours at any time; and when they themselves chanced to be in rebellion against their own sovereign—as was the case with some of them, notably with the great house of Breuse in south-eastern Wales, in the latter years of John’s reign—they naturally found it convenient to make alliance with the native rulers of the land. These, on the other hand, were often at feud among themselves, and did not scruple to make use of the marchers’ aid against one another when it suited them, though at other times they were ready to make common cause against the common enemy.

1216

At the opening of Henry’s reign the native element in Wales was very distinctly in the ascendent. The old superiority, or primacy, of Gwynedd had once more become a living thing. Llywelyn ap Iorwerth had been for more than twenty years {1194–1216} extending his power over the southern and eastern principalities. He had in 1206 accepted the hand of John’s elder daughter Joan—the child, seemingly, of John’s early dissolved marriage with Isabel of Gloucester[434]—but throughout the civil war his sympathies were openly and actively with John’s enemies. In 1215 he “and the Welsh princes in general” attacked Caermarthen and destroyed the castle, and also took and destroyed most of the other castles in South Wales.[435] On the other hand, his chief rival, Gwenwynwyn, the prince of southern Powys, offered his service to John; whereupon Llywelyn, with “most of the princes,” marched into Powys and “took possession of Gwenwynwyn’s whole territory to himself” in 1216.[436] At the close of 1215 the Bishop of Hereford had died.[437] He was Giles de Breuse, the head of a family whose patrimony—comprising Radnor, Brecon, and Abergavenny in Wales, besides Totnes and Barnstaple in Devonshire and Bramber in Sussex—had been forfeited to the Crown in 1210 under circumstances which made it well-nigh impossible that confidence should ever be restored between the house of Breuse and King John. Giles had indeed, only a few weeks before his death, fined with the King for restitution of all the lands which had been his father’s;[438] but his next brother, Reginald, on succeeding to his hereditary claims, set himself to prosecute them by making common cause with the King’s enemies in Wales. Llywelyn was now at the height of his triumph, not only in Powys, but also in Deheubarth; in 1216, at Aberdovey, in his presence and obviously under his dictation, South Wales was portioned out between the four rival representatives of its sovereign house, Maelgwn and Rhys “the Hoarse” and their nephews “Young Rhys” and Owen.[439] These latter were cousins to Reginald de Breuse.[440] With Llywelyn Reginald formed a closer connexion by taking one of his daughters to wife.[441] In August, 1216, John visited the Welsh border and sought to win the support of some of the princes, and also of Reginald de Breuse, but it “did not avail him anything.”[442] Evidently they all saw in John’s extremity, and after his death in his successor’s youth and helplessness, their long-desired opportunity for revenge; and we can hardly doubt that it was a combination of Welshmen and followers of Reginald de Breuse who attacked Goodrich on the eve of Henry’s coronation. Gualo’s interdict published a fortnight later shows how clearly it was understood that Wales as a whole “held with the barons.”

Early in 12171217 the Earl Marshal wrote in the young King’s name to Reginald de Breuse, urging him to return to his allegiance and promising that if he did so, the whole of his patrimony should be restored to him.[443] Reginald however continued obstinate till the Royalist victory at Lincoln. Then he, like many others, seems to have realized that the tide had turned, and that it was time for him to turn likewise. Before Midsummer he had submitted, and he was soon reinstated in the Irish and English possessions of his father.[444] His Welsh kinsfolk promptly punished his desertion of their party; Rhys and Owen wrested from him “the whole of Builth except the castles”; Llywelyn marched upon Brecknock. Reginald however succeeded in patching up some kind of peace with his father-in-law, who thereupon turned his arms against the Flemings of Pembrokeshire, and compelled {Sept.} them all to promise him tribute and submission.[445]

1217

To Llywelyn, as to King Alexander, the treaty of Kingston was duly notified by Louis.[446] The new Bishop of Hereford and the Bishop of Coventry were, it seems, empowered by the Legate to receive the submission of all the Welsh princes and absolve them from excommunication at Hereford on 18th November; when this was done, Hugh de Mortimer[447] and some other barons were to escort them to Northampton for a meeting with the King.[448] Henry and the Marshal were at Northampton on 17th and 18th December;[449] but evidently the Welsh princes did not come. It may have been to keep guard on the Welsh border that the Marshal took his young sovereign to keep Christmas at Gloucester,[450] and lingered with him in the west of England throughout the first four months of the new year {1218}. In February, 1218, a safe-conduct was issued to Llywelyn that he might come and do homage to the King at Worcester.[451] No date is fixed in the letter, and no record of the homage appears to exist; but there can be no doubt that it was performed at the appointed place on or before 17th March, for on that day, at Worcester, the castles of Cardigan and Caermarthen with the lands appertaining to them were committed by the King and his council to his “beloved brother-in-law Llywelyn, Prince of North Wales,” that he might hold them till the King’s coming of age, maintaining them out of their own revenues, and administering justice within their territories in the King’s name.[452]

1218

Two days before, a safe-conduct had been issued to all the magnates of both North and South Wales to come and do homage at Worcester at the close of Easter (22nd April).[453] It does not appear whether any of them came, except Llywelyn, who seems to have come for a special purpose. Morgan, the lord of Caerleon-upon-Usk, had taken no notice of repeated admonitions from Louis to observe the treaty of Kingston, and had deliberately broken truce by slaying in one day no less than ten Anglo-Normans of gentle birth, and also burning twenty-two churches.[454] The Marshal had put an effectual stop to such proceedings on Morgan’s part; he “fought against Caerleon and took it”[455]—that is, according to his own biographer, his bailiff “called up his men and his friends and besieged Caerleon, and it was taken.” At the “parliament” at Worcester Llywelyn asked that Morgan should, like the other allies of Louis, be formally reinstated in the right to hold his land “according to the terms of the treaty,” that is, as he had held it before the war. The regent, acting on the advice of “his council”—defined as “all those who were in fealty to him”[456]—refused, on the ground of Morgan’s flagrant infraction of the peace; and the “parliament” adjudged Caerleon and its appurtenances to its conqueror.[457] The general homage of Welsh magnates seems to have been postponed from the close of Easter to the morrow of Ascension day, 25th May.[458] On that or the following day, at Woodstock,[459] it at last took place, so far at least as concerned Deheubarth; the Welsh chronicles themselves tell us that “young Rhys went himself, and all the princes, by the advice of Llywelyn, to the court of the king, from South Wales, to do him homage.”[460]

The homage of King Ragnald “of the Isles”—that is, the Isle of Man and the Orkneys—took longer to win, probably because he was geographically more difficult to reach. On 16th January, 1218, he was summoned to come over and do homage “and make amends for the excesses committed by his men against King Henry’s men, both in England and in Ireland,” and a safe-conduct was given him, to last till 30th April,[461] but he did not come; on 1st May another safe-conduct was issued to him, till 1st August,[462] again with no result; and it was not till September, 1219, that he actually came.[463] Neither his personal contumacy nor the piratical “excesses” of his seafaring subjects, however, constituted a real danger to the peace of the realm.

1217

In the Irish dominions of the English Crown the first trouble that arose under the new reign came neither from the barons nor from the people, but from the Justiciar. Geoffrey de Marsh, who had held that office in Ireland since 1215, no sooner heard of the death of King John {1216} than he despatched to Henry, or to his guardians, letters in which he assured his young sovereign of his fidelity, and asked for instructions how to act for the furtherance of his interests in Ireland. He seems to have suggested that the Queen-mother, or the heir-presumptive, little Richard, should be sent thither to represent the Crown.[464] The Marshal sent him in reply a letter in the King’s name, informing him of the coronation and the proceedings of the council of Bristol, and requesting him to receive for Henry the homage of the magnates and the King’s other subjects in Ireland; also promising to send them in return a confirmation of the same liberties which had just been granted to their fellow-subjects in England. The suggestion about the Queen and Richard was politely waived with an assurance that it should be duly considered. Geoffrey was warmly thanked for his past and present loyalty, and entreated to redouble his efforts in behalf of a King whose tender years made him the more in need of his liegemen’s counsel and aid.[465] On 6th February, 1217,1217 a copy of the Charter was sent to Ireland with a letter in the King’s name addressed to all the King’s faithful subjects in Ireland, expressing his desire that as a reward for their fidelity to his father and a motive for its continuance towards himself they and their heirs for ever should, of his grace and gift, enjoy the same liberties which his father and he had granted to the realm of England.[466] The Marshal’s policy was to bind the English March in Ireland as closely as possible to the Crown; he had already issued letters patent forbidding the election of Irishmen to cathedral dignities within the King’s land in Ireland, “because by such elections the peace of that land has frequently been disturbed,” and commanding that when such dignities fell vacant, clerks of the King and other “honest Englishmen useful to us” (the King) “and our realm” should be elected and promoted thereto by the joint counsel of the Archbishop of Dublin and the Justiciar.[467] The Archbishop of Dublin, Henry of London, was at that time in England; but on 16th April, “although,” writes the King to the barons in Ireland, “we feel his presence here is most necessary to us and our realm, and we can hardly do without his counsel,” he was sent to “visit and console” his diocese, and also expressly to assist the Justiciar with his counsel and support in ordering and amending the condition of the King’s Irish territory; while the Justiciar was bidden to “acquiesce in all things” in the counsel of the Archbishop, and to be guided by it in his expenditure of the money received at the Dublin Exchequer, “forasmuch as the King wills that nothing be done without his assent.”[468]

The position of the Justiciar of the Irish March at this time was very much more independent than that of the Chief Justiciar of England. The Justiciar in Ireland seems to have practically had the entire control of the whole machinery of government, administration, and finance, throughout the King’s Irish domains. The revenues due to the Crown, whether derived from demesne lands, or from taxes, or tolls, or from the proceeds of escheats, fines, wardships, reliefs, and the like, seem to have all passed through his hands. The fixed revenue of the Crown lands was assigned to him for the necessary expenses of government and for maintaining the defence of the land and the garrisons of the royal castles, and in remuneration of his own services; the residue he was supposed to pay into the Exchequer in Dublin, for transmission to the King when required. Moreover, it seems to have been he who appointed the wardens of the King’s castles throughout the March.[469] Such a system offered facilities for almost unlimited embezzlement on the part of a dishonest Justiciar, or mismanagement and waste on the part of an incompetent one; while it left to the English government scarcely any means of proving a charge of either dishonesty or incompetence against an officer at once so remote and invested with so much independent authority. It seems clear that the reports, and the results, of Geoffrey’s financial administration which reached England were not satisfactory to the regent, and that the Archbishop of Dublin was really sent not so much to “assist” the Justiciar as to hold him in check and keep a watch on his proceedings. Eight months later Geoffrey had to be reprimanded[470] for not having yet executed a royal order issued on Midsummer day for the restoration of Limerick to Reginald de Breuse[471]; and on 12th February, 1218,1218 a long letter of remonstrance was written to him in the King’s name. He had been bidden to come over and do his homage, and certify the King as to the state of the Crown’s Irish lands; the King is “greatly surprised” that he has not yet come, and again bids him come without fail before Easter next, and bring with him all the money that the King’s subjects and bailiffs in Ireland can be induced to furnish, for the payment of the debt to Louis, and of six hundred marks owed to the Pope, being two years’ arrears of the tribute due to him from Ireland.[472] Whether Geoffrey sent any money does not appear; he certainly did not come over in person; probably, however, he made some excuse which gave the Marshal no grounds for questioning his loyalty, for his homage was left in abeyance till after the Marshal’s death.

1218

In England itself every effort was made by the government to carry out loyally the terms of the treaty of Kingston and the provisions of the Charter. On 22nd February the two Charters—the Charter of Liberties and that of the Forest—were sent certainly to one, probably to all of the sheriffs, with instructions to publish them in the shire-courts, and to make all the men of the shire swear to the observance of them, as well as to take an oath of fealty to the King; especial stress was laid on the execution of the last clause in the Charter of Liberties, which enjoined the destruction of adulterine castles.[473] In July the chief Justiciar of the Forest, John Marshal, the regent’s nephew, was despatched on a Forest circuit to make arrangements for deafforestations to be carried out according to the Forest Charter.[474] Such of the prisoners taken during the war, and of their captors, as were dissatisfied with regard to questions of ransom were by public proclamation, made through the sheriffs each in his shire, invited or summoned to shew their complaints on 6th May before the King’s council at Westminster, for the settlement of their respective claims and the composing of their mutual differences.[475]

1217

As a chronicler says, “it was difficult speedily to satisfy the desires of all men, and to allay in a moment the rancour of so many dissidents”; and it was also, after the turmoil of the last few years, difficult for men of the fighting classes to settle down to a life of peace. Some of them “found an outlet for the relics of discord” in tournaments.[476] The real war was no sooner ended {1217} than Englishmen became possessed by a rage for these military exercises, which until the time of King Richard had never been permitted in England, and were everywhere and always discountenanced by the Church. Their revival at a moment when the embers of war were still smouldering was obviously a matter of grave peril, requiring to be dealt with promptly and firmly. It was a curious turn of fate that compelled the Earl Marshal, who had spent his youth and acquired his knightly repute in the lists of France and Flanders, to use his power for the suppression of this mimic warfare in his native land; and the first letter patent in which a tournament was forbidden by him—on 4th October, 1217, little more than a week after the departure of Louis—reveals with characteristic simplicity his reluctance to commit his young sovereign to a condemnation of tournaments in general; “Know ye,” the King is made to say, “that we will and ordain that this tournament be not held, for no other reason than this, that we fear a disturbance of our realm; which may God avert.”[477] Ten months later the young King’s uncle, Earl William of Salisbury, was forbidden to hold a tournament for which he was making preparations at Northampton, “till by God’s help and the counsel of our faithful men, and of yourself” (Salisbury), “the state of peace in our realm shall be made firmer and more secure.”[478] Similar prohibitions occur again and again;[479] but they were ineffectual, by 1220 the condemned practice had become so general that, according to one monastic chronicler, “tourneyers, their aiders and abettors, and those who carried merchandise or victuals to tournaments were ordered to be all together excommunicated every Sunday.”[480]

1218

Other restless spirits seem to have found occupation in persecuting the Jews. In March, 1218, the Jews of Gloucester, Lincoln, Oxford, and Bristol were placed under the special charge of twenty-four citizens in each city, whose names were to be enrolled, and who were to guard the Jews against molestation from any one, “especially from Crusaders”;[481] and it was probably to facilitate the duties of these guardians, by rendering the persons under their charge distinguishable at a glance, that the Jews were all ordered to wear, when out of doors, two white “tablets” of linen or parchment on the front of their upper garment.[482] These ordinances were no doubt called forth by some unrecorded outrages whose origin we may, from the words about “Crusaders,” gather to have been closely connected with a matter which was now beginning to engage more worthily the militant spirits of the time. In November, 1215, a General Council assembled at Rome under Innocent III had decreed a new Crusade, in response to an appeal for succour which the King of the Latins in Holy Land, John de Brienne, had made three years before. Some English barons and knights had taken the Cross, but they had been too much occupied with the troubles in their own land to attempt the fulfilment of their vow till the civil war was ended. Whenever and wherever a Crusade was preached, the ruder and more ignorant among the votaries of the Cross, in their impatience to attack its enemies, were too apt to begin with those who were nearest at hand, and who were also most unpopular on other grounds than religious ones—the Jews. It is, however, highly probable that the general peace of the realm was the more easily preserved during the next year or two because several of the leading barons of both parties in the civil war now took themselves out of the country altogether, and went to sink their differences, for a while at least, in the common cause of Christendom against Islam. The first of the magnates who actually set out, it seems, were two steady loyalists, the Earls of Chester and Ferrers, who with Brian de Lisle, John de Lacy the constable of Chester, William de Harcourt, “and many others,” started at the end of May or beginning of June 1218.[483] Within a few months the Earl of Arundel,[484] Baldwin de Vere, Geoffrey de Lucy, Odonel the son of William d’Aubigny,[485] and the king’s half-brother Oliver,[486] all took the Cross, and so did two of the leaders of the other party—Robert FitzWalter and Saer de Quincy, Earl of Winchester.[487] Saer died {1219} in Holy Land,[488] and so did Baldwin de Vere; Robert FitzWalter came home in broken health,[489] and seems thenceforth to have withdrawn from public life.

1217

Still there remained men of both parties whom it was hard to bring or keep under control. Throughout Henry’s minority his guardians found themselves at intervals in difficulties with certain men who “presumed to keep in their hands, contrary to the King’s prohibition and the will of the owners, castles and lands belonging to some of the bishops and magnates”[490]—and, the chronicler might have added, to the King himself. The earliest case of flagrant insubordination in this respect was that of Robert de Gouy. In 1215 Bishop Hugh of Lincoln had delivered to King John the castles belonging to his see, to be garrisoned for and by the King during his struggle with the rebel barons. One of these castles, Newark, was given in charge by John to Robert de Gouy, on condition of an oath sworn by Robert that in case of John’s death he would surrender the place to no one save the bishop.[491] Two months later John died in that very castle. On 10th June, 1217, Robert was by letters patent ordered to deliver Newark to its rightful owner.[492] It seems to have been anticipated that he might plead his oath to John as binding him to surrender the place only to the bishop in person; Henry de Coleville, a knight holding land under the see of Lincoln, was sent by the bishop to Newark, accredited by letters under the bishop’s seal authorizing him to receive the castle in the bishop’s stead, and also carrying letters from the Legate certifying that he, Gualo, was responsible for the bishop’s detention in London on business of state. Robert, however, refused to deliver Newark to Henry de Coleville, partly, it seems, on the ground of his oath, partly on the plea that the Crown owed him some money. On 23rd June the Council in the King’s name promised that if this latter plea should prove to be just, Robert’s claims should be satisfied, provided that he delivered Newark to Coleville without further delay.[493] This second summons had to be followed up by a third, on 23rd July, insisting that Robert should either at once obey, or come before the King’s Court at Oxford on 5th August, to hear and do what the Council should determine.[494] The Council’s decision appears to have simply confirmed the mandate of 23rd June; on 13th August De Gouy is told that he has made himself liable to a very severe sentence by his contempt of the judgement of the King’s Court in still retaining Newark, but, in consideration of his long service to the late King and the present one, his claim shall be satisfied if he will without fail come and stand to the judgement of the King’s Court concerning the castle on 31st August at Oxford.[495] It was, however, not till 26th October that Robert made a formal surrender of Newark into the hands of the King himself, for the Bishop of Lincoln, and took an oath that within forty days he would clear the place of himself and his men and deliver it bodily to the bishop in person or to whomsoever the bishop should delegate for that purpose; and also that in the meantime he would do no harm or damage to any of the bishop’s men, lands, or goods. The constables of Lincoln and Nottingham (the two nearest royal castles) were bidden to enforce full amends for any infraction of this last promise;[496] a detail which seems to imply that Robert was suspected of being actuated by personal ill-will towards the bishop. Three months passed {1218}, and Newark was still occupied by Robert and his men. Then, on 27th January, 1218, the temporalities of the see of Lincoln were committed—having apparently been placed in the King’s hand by the bishop specially to that intent—to two laymen, and the constables of its castles, Banbury, Sleaford, and Newark, were ordered to resign their respective charges to the new custodians.[497] Again Robert de Gouy disobeyed the royal order; and on 14th March the sheriff of Nottingham (Philip Marc) was bidden to join the Bishop of Lincoln in driving him out of Newark by force.[498] Either their joint attempt failed, or the bishop shrank from this extreme measure; at last, on 4th July, the Earl Marshal took upon himself to subdue the obstinate rebel, and summoned thirty miners from Gloucestershire to meet him at Stamford, where the royal forces were to muster for the siege of Newark.[499] He and the King left London on July 8th; on the 20th they reached Newark, and next day they wrote to the mayor of Lincoln for materials needed for the siege.[500] The Marshal apparently saw no occasion for superintending its conduct in person; on the 23rd he and the King withdrew to Leicester, and by the 26th they were in Oxfordshire.[501] Probably before they left Newark their military demonstration had done its work in frightening Robert sufficiently to make him offer terms, not indeed to the government, but to the Bishop of Lincoln. Some friends of Robert’s made overtures of peace to Hugh; Hugh agreed to pay Robert a hundred pounds for the provisions in the castle, and Robert apparently evacuated it forthwith.[502] On 27th July he made formal surrender of it into the hand of the King in person, at Wallingford, and the King committed it to the custody of the Bishop of Winchester, who was to do with it whatever the Legate should direct.[503] No doubt it was restored to the Bishop of Lincoln. Robert de Gouy was struck dead by lightning at S. Neot’s before the year was out.[504]

1218

As the second year of little Henry’s reign drew to a close, his guardians seem to have felt it time to make arrangements for securing that the validity of acts done and orders issued in his name should no longer be dependent on any individual, even though that individual were the Governor of King and Kingdom or the Legate. It is probable that a change in the legation was known to be impending,[505] and also that the physical strength of the aged Marshal was beginning to give way under the strain of his great labours and responsibilities, when the making of a new royal seal was entrusted to a goldsmith named Walter “of the Hithe.” The seal was of silver, of the weight of five marks.[506] It was first used on 3rd or 4th November, 1218, to authenticate an ordinance specially designed to guard against a possible misuse of it during the King’s minority. Letters patent were issued warning all men that no grant in perpetuity was to be sealed with it till the King’s coming of age, and that any such grant found thus sealed should be null and void.[507] It was probably on the same occasion that the Bishop of Winchester, the Chancellor, the Justiciar, and “the King’s common council” made oath in the Legate’s presence that they would “keep and hold the King in seisin of all the lands which were in the hand of his father, King John, on the day when war was first begun between him and his barons of England, and that nothing should be done in the way of granting or alienating any land so that it should be ceded to any man in perpetuity so long as the King was under age.”[508] The letter patent concerning the use of the seal was attested by the Legate, the Archbishops Stephen of Canterbury—who had returned from Rome in May[509]—and Walter of York, the Justiciar, and a number of other prelates and nobles.[510] Its attestation must have been almost the last of Gualo’s public acts in England. His work there was done, and well done; he wished to resign his office; and the Pope, who had other work for him elsewhere, had accepted his resignation. In the last week of November he set out on his homeward journey.[511] A few days later a new Legate came to take his place.[512]

1219

At Candlemas, 1219, the Marshal fell sick. The court was then in London; but he seems to have been absent from it for a few days when he was taken ill, for his biographer says he “rode to London in pain.”[513] There, with his wife, he lodged in the Tower—still, despite increasing illness, attending to the duties of his office—till the middle of March, when, feeling that the end was drawing near, he sent for his son and his men and “spoke comfortable words to them, as he well knew how.” By the advice of “several who loved him heartily,” he made his will, deliberately and carefully. Then he asked his son and Henry FitzGerold to carry him to his manor of Caversham, “for he thought he could bear his sickness more easily in his own house, and if he were to die, it were better that he should be at home than elsewhere.” They carried him thither in a boat, his wife accompanying him in another boat.[514] The court seems to have immediately removed from London to Reading, probably as the most convenient place where the Council could all assemble within such a distance of Caversham as enabled them to keep in constant communication with him.[515] To the King and the Council at Reading he sent a message, asking that they would all come to speak with him; and they came. “Simply they sat around him” while he spoke to the King: “Fair sweet sir, in presence of these barons I wish to tell you that when your father died and you were crowned, it was arranged that you should be given into my charge, and so you were, that I should defend your land, which is not easy to hold. I have served you, I can truly say, loyally and to the uttermost of my power; and I would serve you yet, if it pleased God to enable me; but every one can see it is not His Will that I should abide longer in this world. Wherefore it is fitting, so please you, that our baronage choose some one who shall guard you and the realm in such a way, if he can, as to please both God and men. And may God grant you to have such a master as may be to our honour!” Up rose the Bishop of Winchester and spoke: “Hearken now! Marshal, the land was given you to hold and the realm to maintain, I grant it; but the King was given to me.” “Out upon you!” said the Marshal, “Lord Bishop, that saying is wrong; you should have held your peace. You were never concerned in this matter. The time is not very long since you and the good Earl of Chester besought me with tears that I would be guardian and master of the King and the kingdom both together; your memory is short, meseems; and the Legate was at great pains about the matter, and begged and commanded me, till from you all, together with him, I received the King and the kingdom. And when I had received the King, it was well seen and heard, I assure you, that I gave the King into your hand, for he could not go travelling about; therefore I gave him to you to take care of him.” Here, seized with sudden pain, he turned to the Legate: “Go now, and take the King with you; and to-morrow, if you please, be good enough to return. I will take counsel with my son and my people, and provide some one to undertake the business; and may God guide our counsels aright!”

Next morning he called his son, his wife, his nephew John, and his most trusted advisers, and told them his project: that the King “should be committed to God and the Pope, and to the Legate.” “For in no land are the folk of so many different minds as in England; and if I committed him to one, the others, you may be sure, would be envious.” “If the land be not defended by the Pope at the present juncture, then I know not who should defend it.” To this they all agreed. So when the King, the Legate and the great men came again, “the Marshal raised himself on his side, and called the King, and took him by the hand, and said to the Legate: ‘Sir, I have thought long and carefully about what we spoke of yesterday. I will commit my lord here into the Hand of God, and into the hand of the Pope, and into yours, you being here in the Pope’s stead.’ Then he said to the King: ‘Sir, I pray the Lord God that, if I have ever done anything that pleased Him, He may grant you to be a brave and good man; and if you should go astray in the footsteps of any evil ancestor and become like to such, then I pray God, the Son of Mary, that He give you not long life, but grant you to die at once.’ ‘Amen,’ answered the King.” Another attack of pain seems to have compelled the Marshal again hurriedly to dismiss the assembly: but he at once sent his eldest son after them, that he might formally deliver the King, “in the sight of the baronage,” to the Legate, in order that no man should be able to say this thing was done in a corner. The young Marshal fulfilled his commission; taking the King by the hand, “in the sight of all he offered him to the Legate. But the Bishop of Winchester sprang up and took the child by the head. ‘Let be, my Lord Bishop!’ said the young Marshal, ‘concern yourself not with this matter; I wish it to be seen that I fulfill all my father’s command.’” The Legate rose up to receive the King, and sternly rebuked Peter.[516]

The old Marshal, feeling, as he said “delivered from a great burden,” lingered for some weeks longer, and died on 14th May, conscious to the last, in the act of making the sign of the cross.[517] Earls, barons, bishops, abbots, joined the funeral train as it passed from Caversham to London; and with every imaginable token of honour and reverence from clerks and laymen alike, the Marshal was laid to rest, as he had desired, in the church of the Knights of the Temple; Archbishop Stephen of Canterbury taking the chief part in the burial service and paying the last honours to the man whom he too, as he stood by the open grave, declared to have been “the best knight of all the world that has lived in our time.”[518]

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