Chapter V · THE YOUNG KING 1223–1227

Aetatem habet; ipse de se loquatur.

1223

The recognition of Henry’s partial coming of age (if such a phrase may be allowed) in December, 1223, re-introduced into English politics and into the government of England a factor which had been absent from them for seven years, but which until John’s death had always been, and was again to be for many generations, a factor of great, perhaps we should rather say of the very greatest importance: the character and will of the King. Thenceforth neither the Council as a body, nor any member of it, could do any act in the King’s name without consulting him and obtaining his sanction; nor could they, if the King desired anything to be done which lay within the limits of his regal powers as defined in October, 1223, prevent him from doing it, except by persuading him to give up his desire in deference to their advice. The circumstances by which such abnormal authority had become connected with the justiciarship had ceased to exist; that office was once more reduced within its proper limits; and if Hubert now aspired to rule England in Henry’s name, the only way in which he could do so was by acquiring and keeping complete personal ascendency over Henry himself. If, however, the papal mandates which brought about this altered condition of things had really been procured by Peter des Roches, in the hope that when Hubert’s official importance was thus diminished he himself might regain the foremost place in his old pupil’s confidence and become the chief adviser of the Crown in Hubert’s stead, he was doomed to wait a long time for the fulfilment of his hope. Until Henry’s final coming of age and for many years after, so far as the King’s policy was dictated by any one, it was dictated by Hubert de Burgh. But even during the years which were still to elapse before Henry attained his complete majority, Hubert’s dictatorship was very far from absolute. In October, 1223, the King was sixteen years old; he was universally esteemed an intelligent, serious-minded lad; and he had been carefully educated. In later life he did not prove a man of lofty mental capacity or great force of character; but he did prove to possess a will of his own, though it was too often a fitful and a wayward will—precisely the kind of will which may be only too easily influenced, but never entirely directed or controlled, by another person. If Henry’s will, at the opening of his seventeenth year and in the first flush of his newly acquired regal independence, had been so utterly dormant as to move only at Hubert’s impulsion, he would indeed have been a marvellously degenerate descendant of his Angevin and Norman ancestors. For such an unnatural supposition there is no ground whatever. There is every reason to believe that from December, 1223, onwards Henry, within the limits defined in October, and with the assistance of his Council, although relying mainly on the advice of one member of it, actually governed as well as reigned.

On the breaking up of the council in London the Earl of Chester and his party went to Northampton to concert their plans and muster their forces pending the expiration of the “truce” at the octave of S. Hilary. They removed to Leicester on hearing that the King was coming to hold his Christmas court at Northampton.[941] Sumptuous preparations were made for the festival; the majority of the magnates, as well as the Primate and other bishops, rallied round the King, and there came together “so many earls and barons and knights in arms that neither in the days of the King’s father, nor since, was such a festival remembered to have been celebrated in England.”[942] On the day after Christmas {26 Dec.} the Archbishop and his suffragans put on their albs, lighted their candles, and excommunicated all “disturbers of the King, the realm, and the Church, and invaders of ecclesiastical property.”[943] Stephen then sent a message to the discontented barons at Leicester, bidding them come to speak with the King, and warning them that a refusal would place them within the scope of the excommunication just published {26–28 Dec.}. Alarmed by this threat, and conscious of the inferiority of their forces, they obeyed the summons.[944] They were brought into the presence of the King, the Primate, and some of the bishops, and the Pope’s order for the restitution of the King’s property was exhibited to them there. Then the King himself called upon them all to obey it by immediately surrendering the castles and other wardenships which they held for him. For a while they hesitated whether to yield or appeal to the Pope; but another word of warning from the Archbishop decided them, and they agreed to do what was required of them, on condition that the Justiciar and all other holders of royal property should at once do likewise. Stephen answered eagerly, “It is meet that there be such a distribution of castles as shall make all parties equal without scandal.”[945] On this a universal surrender was made in legal form by the delivery of a glove or a hat from every individual both of Chester’s party and of Hubert’s, the two leaders themselves included.[946]

Next day (30th December) new custodians were appointed to twenty-five royal castles. The former castellans thus displaced were thirteen in number. One of them had, before the general surrender, resigned on account of ill-health. Of the remaining twelve, five had been concerned in the recent attempt to oust the Justiciar—Ranulf of Chester, William de Cantelupe, Engelard de Cigogné, Brian de Lisle, and Falkes; the other seven were either neutral, or distinctly of the opposite party—Ralf de Gernon, John Russell, Stephen de Sedgrave, William Brewer, the Bishop of Norwich, the Earl of Salisbury, and the Justiciar himself. Out of the seven royal castles which Hubert had in his charge the only one not transferred to other keeping was the Tower of London, of which the custody was traditionally attached to the justiciarship.[947] On 7th January {1224} orders were given for the transfer of three more castles—Winchester, Porchester, and Southampton, all in the custody of Bishop Peter; and on 2nd February the lands of the young heir to the earldom of Devon, and the castles which formed part of them, were committed to a new warden in place of the boy’s stepfather, Falkes.[948] The actual displacement of castellans consequent on the surrender of 29th December, 1223, seems to have ended here. By that surrender several royal castles which make no appearance in the Rolls at this time must have been, like the others, placed legally in the King’s hands; but he seems to have neither appointed new wardens to them, nor re-committed them to their existing wardens; these latter were simply left in possession, as they had originally been appointed, during the King’s pleasure. Even members of the party opposed to Hubert were in this informal way suffered to retain some of their wardenships; Falkes lost—at that moment—only three of the many royal castles which he held;[949] Gloucester, which though assigned to Hubert by Ralf Musard under compulsion in the autumn of 1223 had never passed actually into Hubert’s custody, was not taken from Ralf till November, 1225.[950] On the other hand, although only five sheriffs were displaced, their displacement involved the transfer of thirteen shires to other hands, and four of the five men were opponents of Hubert; the fifth, John Russell, was merely removed from Somerset to the joint sheriffdom of Leicestershire and Warwickshire, taken from William de Cantelupe. On the same day—30th December, 1223—the Earl of Chester lost the shrievalties of Lancashire, Shropshire, and Staffordshire, and Falkes lost two out of his seven shires; on 18th January {1224} he was deprived of four more, Rutland alone being left to him; and in the interval, on 7th January, Bishop Peter was deprived of the sheriffdom of Hampshire. Considering the recent political alliance between Chester, Cantelupe, and Falkes, and the geographical relation to one another (and also, in the case of Chester’s shires, to his own Palatine county and to the Welsh border) of the shires thus taken from them, their dispossession was a reasonable precaution. Bishop Peter’s deprivation of his sheriffdom and wardenships may have been likewise dictated by prudence or suspicion; but suspicion, if it existed, was veiled beneath an appearance of courtesy; it was not till a week after the letters had been issued for the displacement of the other sheriffs and castellans that he was called upon to hand over Hampshire and its castles to a brother bishop, Richard of Salisbury.

Fifteen of the other twenty-five redistributed castles were committed to prelates {1223}. Bristol was transferred to its diocesan bishop, Jocelyn of Bath, from Bishop Pandulf of Norwich; the other fourteen had been in the charge of laymen. Jocelyn of Bath was also entrusted with one of these castles, Sherborne; eleven were committed to the bishops (in one case the archbishop) of the dioceses in which they respectively stood; the other two—Windsor and Odiham—to Archbishop Stephen.[951] These appointments, all made on 30th December, 1223, were evidently not meant to be of long duration; their object was to give the King and his advisers time for considering more fully how best to dispose of the castles, of which the greater number would meanwhile be in the keeping of guardians whose neutral position afforded the deprived castellans no ground for jealousy or suspicion. The arrangement seems however to have worked so well that very little modification of it was found necessary for several years. Its author was probably the Archbishop of Canterbury. Throughout the proceedings at Northampton he seems to have acted as spokesman on the King’s side; as head of the commission charged with the execution of the papal mandate on which those proceedings were based, he was most likely entrusted by Henry with the conduct of them. Falkes says that immediately after the surrender “the Archbishop, distributing the castles by word of mouth, deprived all the barons alike of their possessions.” The letters patent issued next day were no doubt drawn up according to this verbal distribution; but, as we have seen, the actual results were far less sweeping than the words of Falkes imply. A charge of unfair dealing which is brought by Falkes and by another writer of the time against the King and his advisers on this occasion has met with a more ready acceptance than, perhaps, it deserved. “While,” says Falkes, “the Earl of Chester and his friends made a real bodily restitution of their castles, the Justiciar and his party held theirs as before.”[952] “When the castles were surrendered,” says Ralf of Coggeshall, “the King gave back to Hubert his wardenships, the other castellans being deprived of theirs.”[953] The evidence of the Rolls on this point is unfortunately very meagre and incomplete; they contain scarcely any information about the royal castles during the next eight years and more. We find, however, in the list of castles held by Hubert at his fall in 1232 only four out of the seven which he had held in 1223: the Tower, Dover, Rochester, and Canterbury.[954] The first seems never to have been taken from him.[955] Rochester was re-committed to him on 26th March, 1225,[956] and Dover not much later, perhaps even earlier.[957] The delivery of Canterbury to the Archbishop may never have been enforced; but it is equally possible that Hubert may not have regained the custody of this castle till after Stephen’s death, in 1228.[958] This evidence, though not sufficient to determine precisely how much of truth or of error is contained either in Falkes’s assertion or in Ralf’s, does suffice to show that neither the baron’s version of the matter nor the chronicler’s is altogether exact.

1224

Some at least of the deprived castellans, however, who had probably hoped for speedy re-instatement, were disappointed at not getting it,[959] and not less disappointed at the failure of the attempt to oust Hubert from the justiciarship. The nobler spirits among the malcontents seem to have fallen back, almost immediately after the surrender at Northampton, upon a more pacific and legitimate expedient for curbing his masterfulness and guarding themselves against the danger of government by “unjust laws.” On the octave of Epiphany, when the court reassembled in London, the King “was requested by the Archbishop of Canterbury and other magnates to confirm the liberties and free customs for which war had been waged against his father.”[960] The King’s quasi-majority afforded an obvious occasion for such a request. The Great Charter had been twice renewed in his name, but at a time when he was too young to understand the responsibilities to which it pledged him. Now that he was recognized as “a man in wisdom and understanding,” personally answerable for “the disposition of his realm,” he might fairly be asked to grant a new confirmation of the Charter, which those who asked for it doubtless hoped would be an end of all strife. It was only natural that on this matter Stephen de Langton should be spokesman; and he spoke urgently, pleading that the King “could not evade doing this, since at the departure of Louis he and all the nobility of the realm with him had sworn that they would all observe, and cause to be observed by all others, the liberties written down aforetime.” William Brewer took upon himself to answer for the King: “The liberties which ye ask for ought rightly not to be observed, because they were extorted by violence.” “William,” exclaimed the Archbishop, “if you loved the King, you would not thus stand in the way of the peace of his realm.” Then, says the chronicler, “the King, seeing the Archbishop moved to anger, said: ‘These liberties we have all sworn, and what we have sworn we are all bound to observe.’”[961]

With a boy’s simplicity the young King had unconsciously passed judgement on the demand which had just been made to him and on the repeated demands for confirmation of the Charters which resound through the history of the next seventy years. He had sworn to maintain the liberties which he was asked to confirm; he was bound by his oath; no amount of repetitions could make that oath any more binding than it was already, and no amount of confirmations could really give any additional security for its observance. But behind the question of confirmation lay, probably, a question of definition. One article, at least, of the Charter as republished in 1217 left a wide field open for contention: the forty-sixth article, which reserved to all the King’s subjects “the liberties and free customs which they formerly had.” This clause had replaced the one in the Charter of 1216 which reserved for future consideration certain important articles in the Great Charter of 1215.[962] It is probable that what Stephen and the magnates with whom he was acting—whoever these may have been—really wanted was a revision of the Charter, to include the substitution of some definite provisions on these reserved points for the vague saving clause of 1217. If so, William Brewer’s attitude must have shewn them that the cleavage of political opinion within the royal Council was too sharp for agreement on the subject to be possible at that moment. For the observance of the Charter as it stood they had the word of the King, and there was no reason to expect that the King would be worse than his word.[963]

Still Chester and his friends persevered in their efforts to undermine the position of the Justiciar; and some of them were equally desirous of undermining that of the Primate. These now despatched two messengers to Rome, ostensibly to report to the Pope on the state of affairs in England. The Archbishop, suspecting mischief, compelled these envoys before they sailed to swear to him and some of his suffragans that they “would attempt nothing prejudicial to the King and the realm”—the actual meaning of the oath being, they were given to understand, that they were not to ask for a legate.[964] This, however, was precisely what they did. Urged one way by their entreaties and another by Stephen’s protests and his assurances that no legatine intervention was needed to preserve peace in the land, Honorius at last decided to send not a legate, but merely commissioners; further tidings from England induced him to abandon even this project.[965] At a council in London on 21st–23rd April,[966] the Archbishop with tears implored the barons to agree together in peace for the public good.[967] Chester and all others who had been at strife with the Justiciar yielded to this appeal; the kiss of peace was given and accepted on both sides, and the King, “willing to forget past injuries,” received into his peace and favour all who had offended against him, “hoping,” as he wrote to the Pope, “to receive from all and singular such effectual counsel and aid as they in their necessities are entitled to expect from us.”[968]

There was urgent need of peace at home; for strife was raging in Ireland, and grave danger was hanging over Poitou. Geoffrey de Marsh had, as we have seen, formally resigned the Justiciarship of the Irish March in October, 1221;[969] but he had contrived to hamper his successor, Archbishop Henry of Dublin, by retaining some at least of the rolls and other records necessary for the Justiciar’s official work in his own hands till July, 1222, if not later still.[970] Some months before this the return of Hugh de Lacy gave token of trouble to come. In John’s reign Hugh had been Earl of Ulster, and his brother Walter Lord of Meath; both had incurred forfeiture and exile in 1214. Walter’s reinstatement had been ordered by John on 6th July, 1215,[971] but Geoffrey de Marsh—who was appointed Justiciar on the same day—never carried out the order; in November, 1221, Archbishop Henry was bidden to do so without further delay.[972] Hugh, driven by the Albigensians from his place of refuge on the Continent, had then recently come under a safe-conduct to England.[973] Thence he seems to have gone into Wales. Some lands which he had held under his brother, and those which formed the dower of his wife, were restored to him on 27th December, 1222.[974] In the spring of 1223 he went to Ireland without the King’s leave.[975] There he stirred up so much mischief that in June the English government, after an ineffectual attempt to induce his brother Walter and the Earls of Chester, Salisbury, and Gloucester to undertake the custody of his lands for five years,[976] deemed it advisable to establish throughout the English dominions in Ireland a new system of provincial government by seneschals who, under the supreme authority of the chief Justiciar, should be “both willing and able to guard against the King’s damage, and manfully make war against his enemies when necessity should arise.”[977] John Marshal, who in February had been sent as assistant justiciar to help the Archbishop,[978] now received the custody of the territories of Cork, Des, and Desmond, with their castles;[979] Richard de Burgh (Hubert’s brother), who already held the honour of Limerick, was named seneschal of Munster and constable of Limerick castle;[980] William de Serland was appointed seneschal of Ulster.[981] Walter de Lacy, who since 1215 had been steadily loyal to the English Crown, was in England; but his men in Ireland gave shelter and support to his rebel brother, under whose command they committed grievous “excesses” on the King’s land, harrying and burning, and slaying or putting to ransom the men of the King.[982] In one of his raids Hugh nearly reached Dublin, and the Justiciar-Archbishop, taken at unawares, was forced to buy of him a truce till next summer.[983] Before it expired, a singular compact was made, in the early spring of 1224, between the King and Walter de Lacy. In consideration, on the one hand, of Walter’s faithful service, and on the other, of his legal responsibility for the misdoings of the men of Meath, it was agreed that the King should hold one of Walter’s English castles and one of his Irish ones—Ludlow and Trim—for two years from Easter (14th April); that Walter should go to Ireland “and fight to the uttermost of his power, with the King’s help, against the men who had done these things”; that when he should have thus won back control over his own lands, the King should hold them for a year and a day, “and after that there shall be done to Walter concerning them whatever the King’s court shall decide.” Meanwhile Walter was to have free use of Trim castle for the purposes of this war against his own men.[984] The trouble which Hugh had stirred up, however, was evidently felt to require, above all things, the presence in Ireland of a military leader, instead of an ecclesiastic, as the chief representative of the Crown. On 23rd April Earl William of Pembroke and Leinster was married to his promised bride, the King’s nine years old sister Eleanor;[985] within a month he sailed for Ireland to enter upon his duties as chief Justiciar in Archbishop Henry’s stead.[986]

A yet graver peril than that which disturbed the King’s “land of Ireland” was that which threatened his “land of Poitou.” The truce with France had just expired on Easter day, 14th April.[987] Ever since the previous October the English government had known, from the lips of Louis himself, that he was only awaiting its expiration to assemble his host for the conquest of Henry’s remaining continental territories; yet to meet his attack they seem to have made no preparation, except a final effort to secure the support of Hugh of Lusignan. On 15th January it was proposed to satisfy the claims of Hugh and Isabel by granting to them, in compensation for Isabel’s lost dower-lands in Normandy, the Stannaries in Devonshire and the revenues of Aylesbury for four years from the ensuing Easter; for the arrears due to Isabel since her second marriage, three thousand pounds of money of Touraine, to be paid within three years from Easter; and for their claim to Niort, one hundred marks annually (“although Niort is not worth that sum a year,” adds her royal son or his minister) to Isabel for life. If the King of France should invade Poitou within the four years, Hugh was to have “a reasonable aid” for the defence of Henry’s land; and in case of Isabel’s death Hugh was to keep for the same period the lands which he already held, except what he had “taken in the King’s service”[988] and the custody of the castle of Mausy, which had been for some time past in dispute between Henry and Hugh, and which Henry reserved to himself.[989] A modified form of these proposals was accepted by Hugh at the end of March. The annual sum promised in compensation for Niort was doubled; the three thousand pounds Tournois for arrears were to be all paid up at Whitsuntide of the current year; there was no express mention of Mausy, but it was conceded that Hugh and his wife, or the survivor of them, should keep for four years from Easter whatever they were seised of on S. Andrew’s day last past; whether this definition would or would not include Mausy does not appear.[990] Hugh was to swear that he would serve the King faithfully; and the Pope was to be requested to enforce, if necessary, the keeping of this agreement.[991] In accordance with it, Hugh was on 8th April asked to seize for Henry, as soon as the truce should be ended, the lands of a certain man “who was with the King of France.”[992] About the same time the sheriffs throughout England seem to have been ordered to seize into the King’s hand all lands held by Normans and Bretons—meaning, probably, such as had lands on both sides of the sea and were by reason of their continental possessions subjects of the French King. To this order, however, it was soon found advisable to make some considerable exceptions.[993] At the eleventh hour Louis suddenly offered to prolong the truce for ten years.[994] On 28th April—a fortnight after Easter—three envoys were sent from England to speak with him about prolonging it for four years.[995] He seems to have given them an audience, in presence of his Council, on 5th May;[996] but the negotiations were unsuccessful. Louis’s proposal had been prompted by a desire to free his hands for another expedition against Toulouse, where the Albigensians were again in the ascendent, and the Pope was anxious for the intervention of the French King.[997] The reason for the English counter-proposal is plain. In a little over four years Henry must needs be acknowledged as of full age in every respect; it was not right that after that time his hands should be tied by an engagement of such importance made while he was still in some sense a minor; if the truce was to be renewed, it must be only until his coming of age. Louis, however, insisted upon ten years or nothing.[998] On 15th May, therefore, Henry by letters patent announced that his truce with France was ended, and bade the chief English seaport towns make their ships ready for service at call, detain all vessels which should enter their harbours, and suffer none which were there to go out without his special leave.[999]

It was scarcely conceivable that Louis would make any attempt upon England before he had secured Poitou; we should therefore naturally have supposed that the ships thus collected were required for the transport of troops to assist Savaric de Mauléon in the defence of that country. The only troops actually sent, however, consisted of about a hundred knights and an unspecified number of men-at-arms[1000] commanded by Richard de Gray and Geoffrey de Neville,[1001] and destined to reinforce the garrison of La Rochelle.[1002] This force appears to have sailed at the end of May or in the first days of June.[1003] It was despatched “by the advice of the magnates of England”[1004]—that is, of the council which had been assembled in London for the reconciliation of Hubert and his opponents. That council then dispersed under orders to meet again at Northampton,[1005] on the octave of Trinity Sunday,[1006] 16th June, “for the purpose”—so Henry himself wrote to the Pope—“of giving us (the King) counsel and rendering us aid for the defence of our land in Poitou.”[1007] The nature of the proposed “aid” cannot be determined with certainty from the King’s words; they might stand either for personal assistance in the field, or monetary aid instead of service, or for both. The question about the obligation of military service beyond sea was still unsettled; and from the expressions used by some writers of the time we should gather that the ostensible purpose for which the barons were summoned to Northampton was merely to concert measures for the preservation of the King’s transmarine dominions.[1008] It is however scarcely credible that if the King and his ministers really desired to consult further with the barons about this most urgent business, the council actually assembled in London should not have been detained there for that purpose, instead of being dismissed for seven weeks and then reassembled elsewhere in the middle of June to discuss a matter which ought in fact to have passed from the stage of consultation to that of action by the middle of May. According to Falkes, on the other hand, the summons was for a muster of the host in arms.[1009] A statement made some years later by Hubert seems to confirm this version of the story,[1010] and we shall see from the sequel that the majority, if not all, of the barons went to Northampton attended by their followers in arms. There is, however, reason to believe that, if not in the mind of the young King himself, at least in that of his chief adviser, Poitou was not the real or at any rate the first destination of the host.

The changes in the custody of royal castles and wardenships ordered early in the year seem to have been effected without serious difficulty or delay, except with regard to one castle,[1011] Plympton. The King claimed the custody of Plympton on the ground that it formed part of the honour of Devon, which had belonged to the late Earl William of Devon, or “of the Isle” (of Wight), as he was sometimes called, father of Baldwin de Rivers, whose widow, Margaret, was the wife of Falkes de Bréauté. Falkes and Margaret had been married during Earl William’s lifetime, in 1215;[1012] but William {1215–1218} was very unwilling to give his daughter-in-law and her new husband seisin of the dower-lands to which she was entitled as Baldwin’s widow, and her claims were still unsettled when he died in September, 1217.[1013] They were settled at last by the regent Earl Marshal, on 30th March, 1218, when “the honour of Plympton, with the castle of Plympton, and all the land which belonged to the Earl of the Isle in Devonshire,” was by royal letter patent granted to Falkes and Margaret “as the same Margaret’s dower.”[1014] On 16th February, 1224, Henry transferred the custody of the Earl’s castles in Hampshire and of all the lands which had been his, “except his lands in Devon and the castle of Plympton,” to Waleran the German.[1015] So far as we know, Falkes complied with this order. On 13th March he was informed by letter patent that the King had committed Plympton castle (“which,” wrote Henry, “was given into your keeping by the elder William Marshal when he was governor of ourself and our realm”) to Walter de Falkenberg, and if Falkes were unwilling to deliver it to Walter, he must come to London at Mid-Lent (21st March), and deliver it there to the King in person.[1016] Falkes seemingly declined to deliver it at all, on the plea—for which, as has been seen, he had an excellent warrant—that he held it not in custody for the Crown, but as part of his wife’s dower. On 21st March the King wrote again, expressing his astonishment that Falkes had not made the expected delivery, and bidding him make it to Walter at once; “for,” wrote the King, “we are certain that that castle is the head of the Earl of Devon’s honour in Devonshire, and for that reason your wife neither can nor ought to have it in dower. If, however, she has less than she ought to have in dower of the land of her former husband, we will make up what is due to her according to the custom of our realm; but if she has more than she should have, we will have it measured according to justice.”[1017] The tone of these letters suggests that the King and his advisers, though determined to carry their point, were conscious of having undertaken a somewhat formidable task in committing themselves to a dispute with Falkes.

Seven men and one woman bearing the surname “de Bréauté” occur in the official records of England under John and Henry III. Four at least of the men were brothers or half brothers, and Avice was their sister.[1018] A little village near Havre must have been the original home of the family, whose first member to appear in history is Falkes. Several chroniclers tell us that he was a native of Normandy.[1019] After his fall his enemies heaped scorn on his origin; he was a “serf” of the King;[1020] patronymic he had none;[1021] and his singular personal appellation was according to one account not a Christian name, but a nickname derived from “the scythe” (faus or fauc in the contemporary speech of his native land) “wherewith he had slain a knight in his father’s meadow in Normandy.”[1022] Another writer seems to have thought that it had been given to him—whether at the font or otherwise—in the spirit of prophecy: “He might well be called after the scythe, that is, after an instrument of wholesale destruction.”[1023] One of the best authorities for the history of John’s reign says that the father of Falkes was a Norman knight.[1024] In all likelihood he was some small landowner whose sons, legitimate and other, left their paternal fields and came to England, like the family of Gerard of Athée, because they preferred to live in exile under their hereditary sovereign rather than in their own land under his conqueror.[1025] Another statement concerning Falkes which lacks confirmation is that he began life as a domestic servant of the King, in the capacity of “door-keeper.”[1026] The word used is an ambiguous one; the writer apparently wished his readers to understand by it a mere menial porter; but it would equally well represent a functionary of higher standing in the royal household, whose proper title was that of usher.[1027] In February, 1207, at any rate, {1207–1214} Falkes was made keeper of something else than the palace doors—the land of Glamorgan and the honour of Wenlock on the Marches of Wales.[1028] When he received this appointment he was a “sergeant,” or man-at-arms, “of the King”;[1029] probably it was on this occasion that John bestowed on him the honour of knighthood.[1030] These wardenships were held by Falkes for seven years, and he was also during part of that time constable of Caermarthen, Cardiff, and Gower.[1031] Within the important military sphere thus assigned to him he was given the fullest freedom of action; his valour, capability, and honesty were all alike trusted implicitly by the King, who employed him also on other business such as the payment of troops and other persons and the transport of money and treasure both in England and abroad.[1032] John, like most of the Angevin counts, was an excellent judge of men, and he had quickly discerned that Falkes, “though little of stature, was very valiant,”[1033] and that moreover he was gifted with a versatile capability and a thoroughness which almost matched those of the Angevin house itself. The writers of the time, while denouncing Falkes as “a rod of the Lord’s fury”[1034] and describing him as a monster of wickedness, unanimously acknowledge that his rise from poverty and obscurity to wealth, rank, and power was due to his conspicuous military talents, his dauntless valour, and the tireless energy and fidelity with which he served his royal master.[1035] In January, 1214 {1214–1216}, on the marriage of the King’s cousin Isabel of Gloucester to the Earl of Essex, Glamorgan passed with the rest of the lands appertaining to her honour of Gloucester into the hands of her husband; and at the same time Caermarthen, Cardiff, and Gower were transferred from the keeping of Falkes to that of the Earl Marshal.[1036] The King however gave Falkes plenty of occupation and compensation elsewhere. Early in 1215 Falkes was acting as a seneschal or steward of the King’s household.[1037] Meanwhile, as constable of Wenlock, he still retained the command of an important district on the Welsh March.[1038] There he gathered round him a picked band of kinsmen and followers who in 1215 and 1216 proved the most efficient and trustworthy section of the troops that fought for the Crown against the barons and the French invader.[1039] It was but natural that his services should be rewarded by the bestowal of large grants of land taken from the King’s enemies. This was the only way in which John could furnish him with means to continue those services, and it was also a most effectual way of securing that those lands should not fall back into the hands of the opposite party. The commission of seven shires in Mid-England to his custody as sheriff was a measure of policy, amply justified by its results in the struggle with Louis after John’s death, when the garrisons under the command of Falkes formed across the realm a chain which Louis never succeeded in breaking.

1215–1224

In 1215 John bestowed on Falkes the hand of Margaret de Rivers, a grant which should have carried with it the enjoyment of her dower-lands; but this, as has been seen, Margaret and Falkes did not obtain till March, 1218.[1040] Then the regent also granted to Falkes, to hold “until the King’s coming of age,” the custody of the person of Margaret’s young son by her first husband, and of all the lands and castles which had belonged to the boy’s late grandfather Earl William of Devon and Wight, and to which the boy himself was now heir.[1041] Thus throughout the next six years the extensive possessions of the house of Rivers were in Falkes’s hands; for practical purposes he represented that great house and was, as a contemporary says, “made equal to an Earl.”[1042] The other magnates, some of whom seem to have resented the necessity of admitting even Hubert de Burgh to social equality with themselves, naturally resented still more the intrusion into their ranks of one whom they looked upon as a mere upstart stranger. Moreover he came into collision with more than one of them through his autocratic dealing with the lands held by them in the shires under his command; and the violently abusive language in which, when his fiery temper was roused, he railed at some of the greatest men of the land and at the English nation in general, gave almost as much offence as his more substantial misdoings.[1043] The clergy and religious orders, especially the monks of the great abbey of S. Alban’s—by one of whom later historians, for the most part, have been somewhat unduly influenced in their views of men and things in the reign of John and the early years of Henry—had other reasons for detesting Falkes. Cruelty and rapacity were common, more or less, in all medieval warfare, and the spoiling of churches and monasteries was a form of ill-doing of which neither party in the civil war was altogether guiltless; but in these matters Falkes stood without a peer save John himself. His crowning outrage was committed in 1217, when in the dusk of a January morning he fell suddenly upon S. Alban’s, captured and plundered the town, carried off its inhabitants to prison in his own castles, slew a servant of the abbey at the very door of the church, and by a threat of burning down the whole place wrung from the abbot a ransom of a hundred pounds of silver.[1044] The spoil, however, went to maintain the soldiers who, if they were the fiercest and most ruthless, were also the most daring and the most uniformly successful troops in the service of the young King. They and their leader played, as we have seen, an important part in the battle of Lincoln; and whatever may have been the personal feelings of Henry’s guardians and counsellors towards Falkes, time after time throughout the early years of the minority, when a man of prompt and vigorous action was wanted for some specially awkward or unpleasant piece of work, Falkes was the man on whom they relied, and they never relied on him in vain. It was Falkes who was set to keep the King’s uncle from intruding into a royal castle of which he was not the lawful custodian. It was Falkes whom Hubert de Burgh employed to overawe the riotous citizens of London and to rid him of their dangerous leader. In their hearts, however, Hubert and Falkes were rivals, urged to secret mutual jealousy by a characteristic which, unlike as they were in other respects, was common to them both; when once they had risen to power and authority, neither of them was inclined to brook an equal.[1045] Accordingly, Falkes had joined Chester and the other discontented magnates in their effort to rid themselves of the Justiciar; and when that effort had failed, Justiciar, magnates, and King, having none of them any further use for Falkes, joined hands to rid themselves of him.

1224

Three days after the council of reconciliation in London, had dispersed in April, 1224, a charge of capital crime, said to have been committed eight years previously, was laid before the King against Falkes.[1046] A writ was at once issued, on 26th April, to the sheriff of Bedfordshire bidding him “at every shire-court call Falkes de Bréauté to stand to right concerning the complaint made against him in that county, of a breach of the King’s peace,” and if Falkes did not appear, cause him to be outlawed. On 28th May the sheriff was told to call Falkes at his next shire-court, which was to be on the Monday after the octave of Trinity (17th June), as he had previously done, but the outlawry was to be respited till further orders. Two days later (30th May) this respite was countermanded; if on the appointed Monday Falkes did not answer, the sheriff was bidden to outlaw him at once.[1047] In Whitsun week, 2nd–8th June, certain of the justices in eyre went to hold pleas of novel disseisin at Dunstable.[1048] One of these justices, Henry de Braybroke, had long been at enmity with Falkes’s brother William, and now found an opportunity which he was not slow to use against William and Falkes both at once. He deprived William—such at least is Falkes’s story—of some of his lands and other possessions without trial.[1049] He insisted, seemingly without warrant, on the payment by both the brothers of certain dues and arrears which they owed to the Crown.[1050] Sixteen pleas of forcible disseisin were brought before him against Falkes; in every case Falkes was convicted, and sentenced to pay a heavy fine.[1051]

William de Bréauté was at this time commandant, under his brother Falkes, of the castle of Bedford. After the close of the assizes at Dunstable, on 17th June—the day on which Falkes was to be called for the last time in the Bedford shire-court—Henry de Braybroke, on his way to join the council which had assembled on the previous day at Northampton, was captured by William de Bréauté and carried as a prisoner to Bedford.[1052] Some of his companions who escaped capture spread the tidings abroad; his wife hurried to Northampton and laid her complaint before the King and the Council.[1053] Every one believed that the Bréauté brothers had plotted the outrage between them;[1054] Falkes’s account of the matter is that William had acted half in wantonness, half in vengeance, and wholly without the knowledge of Falkes himself.[1055] Even if this were so, however, Falkes was legally responsible for the action of his sub-castellan and for a prisoner immured in a castle which was under his charge. Where Falkes was, does not appear. He was clearly not at the county court at Bedford; but as soon as the capture of the judge became known, he hurried to the castle.[1056] According to his own account, his purpose was to set the judge at liberty but when he reached the castle prisoner and castellan had both disappeared; William had hidden himself and his captive in the neighbouring Forest of Wabridge {18 June}. Two knights had meanwhile been despatched with a citation to Falkes to appear at Northampton on the morrow (19th June) and answer to the King in person for the seizure of the judge and for “all other matters which should be brought against him.” Falkes hereupon sent, on the 19th, messengers to the Earls of Winchester and Chester, begging that they would endeavour to procure him a day’s respite, on the plea that he must first find his brother {19 June}. They performed their commission, and the King appeared disposed to grant their request; but the enemies of Falkes determined that forcible steps should be taken that very night;[1057] and next morning the whole multitude which had come together at Northampton, King, prelates, barons, knights, and men-at-arms, appeared before the gate of Bedford castle.[1058]

The King summoned the garrison to admit him, and to surrender the castle to the Justiciar. William de Bréauté had now returned with his prisoner—if indeed they had ever really been away—but Falkes had disappeared in his turn. William and his knights refused to obey the King’s summons without instructions from Falkes, “chiefly because they were not bound by homage or fealty to the King,”[1059] and also because Falkes, having taken the Cross,[1060] was by a privilege from the Pope entitled, for himself, his lands, and his men, to exemption from molestation by the secular powers.[1061] This second plea might probably have carried some weight with the spiritual members of the King’s host, had it not been neutralized by the other. Feudal law, as understood on the side of the Channel whence Falkes and his followers had come, recognized liege homage to a mesne lord as a valid ground for disclaiming all duty to a suzerain and even a sovereign; but in England this principle had never been admitted, and was justly held to be—in the words of a modern writer—“the essence of feudal anarchy.” Disregarding an appeal to the Pope with which the garrison wound up their defiance of the King, Archbishop Stephen and the other bishops present acted upon the orders which they had received from Rome in the preceding year for dealing with refractory castellans. They lighted their candles and laid Falkes {20 June}, his liegemen in the castle, and all their aiders and abettors, under sentence of excommunication.[1062] Immediately afterwards the siege was begun.

On that siege the whole energies of the King’s government were concentrated for eight weeks; and before half that time had elapsed Poitou was lost. In May Louis had outbidden Henry for the support of the Lusignans, and received the liege homage of Hugh and of his kinsman Geoffrey, the viscount of Châtelheraut.[1063] On Midsummer day the French King’s host mustered at Tours. He led it first to Montreuil-Bellay; there he met the aged viscount Almeric of Thouars, who for many years had played in Aquitanian politics a part almost more important than that of the Lusignans. With Almeric Louis made a truce for a year. On 3rd July he laid siege to Niort. Savaric de Mauléon was there; seeing that he could not, without succour from over sea, hold the country against Louis, the Lusignans, and Almeric all united, he surrendered Niort on the 5th and withdrew to La Rochelle, after swearing on the Gospels that he would not defend any place except that one beyond All Saints’ day. Louis advanced next to S. Jean d’Angély, which opened its gates to him. He then marched upon La Rochelle. Its garrison, headed by Savaric and reinforced by the men whom he had brought with him from Niort and by the English knights under Richard de Gray and Geoffrey de Neville, sallied forth to give battle, and “slew many of the French,” but were driven back into the city. On the 15th Louis set up his engines before the walls. He also opened negotiations with the civic rulers; and the result was that on 3rd August the place was surrendered. The garrison marched out with the honours of war; the citizens, on the 13th, swore fealty to Louis.[1064] The fall of La Rochelle sealed the fate of Poitou, by cutting off Henry’s remaining partisans there from their last hope of succour from England. Limoges had already joined the winning side; Périgord did the like. The conqueror entered Poitiers without further difficulty, and in September he returned to Paris, leaving a part of his army, under a new seneschal whom he had appointed instead of Savaric, to join Hugh of La Marche in an invasion of Gascony.[1065]

According to the Barnwell annalist, “it was said by some persons that Falkes and his supporters suggested to King Louis that he should invade Poitou; and in order that Louis might do this freely and without fear or danger, he, Falkes, promised to keep King Henry so fully occupied with most urgent business in the middle of his own country that he would leave his transmarine lands destitute of military forces.”[1066] We need hardly go about to demonstrate that Louis needed no “suggestion” from Falkes or any one else for the invasion of Poitou. The whole of this absurd story, avowedly resting only on what “was said by some people,” would be beneath notice, but that its latter part seems to be a distorted and exaggerated report of an assertion which actually was made by Hubert de Burgh and the King. Before the successes of Louis were known in England, Henry wrote to the Pope an account of the circumstances which had, he said, “compelled” him to lay siege to Bedford castle, “neglecting for the present all the other affairs which are pressing upon us in Ireland and in Poitou; which imminent perils,” he added, “we may not unjustly impute to Falkes and his accomplices.”[1067] Fifteen years later Henry imputed the loss of Poitou to Hubert, whom he charged with having sent to that country barrels filled with stones and sand instead of money and treasure, whereby the nobles and townsfolk were so disgusted with the King’s service that they went over to his enemies. Hubert answered that he had never sent any such barrels; that by the advice of the magnates of England over a hundred knights and many men-at-arms had been sent to Poitou, and remained there till, without their assent, the burghers of La Rochelle made terms with the enemy, and thus it was not through negligence on his own part or on that of the knights that La Rochelle was lost; “but,” he added, “it was lost through the excesses of Falkes, who with his people made an insurrection while La Rochelle was besieged.”[1068] Hubert’s defence here is self-contradictory; if La Rochelle was lost not for want of reinforcement but by the wilfulness of its citizens, no “insurrection” in England could have any influence in the matter. Practically, however, Hubert admits that further reinforcements should have been sent, but insinuates that their despatch was made impossible by the conduct of Falkes. Thus did King and Justiciar alike, at different times, seek to cast upon Falkes the responsibility for a failure which lay at their own door. Even had the host gathered at Northampton on 16th June been in truth destined for Poitou, its gathering would have been tardy. But we cannot believe that its nominal destination was anything else than a blind. If it were, the choice of the meeting-place would be inexplicable. No sane commander would, without any necessity, have chosen to muster an army drawn from all parts of the realm, and intended for service beyond the Channel, at Northampton, a town in Mid-England, five days journey from the sea. For a full half of such an army the choice would involve literally double toil and trouble—a long, toilsome march, from Kent and Sussex, Hampshire and Dorset, Devon and Cornwall, up to Northampton and then down again to a place of embarcation on the south coast, to which some of these contingents could have gone direct in half the time, while others must have actually come from its immediate neighbourhood; and all this without any advantage to their fellow-soldiers from the Midlands and the North, or to the King himself, all of whom could just as easily have met them, as had been customary in former reigns, at the port whence they were to sail.[1069] The barons were summoned to Northampton because their help was wanted in the execution of a project predetermined in the royal Council, for the ruin of Falkes de Bréauté.

Such a project was, in itself, not without justification. Falkes seems to have been generally, and deservedly, regarded as a public nuisance; and his extraordinary personality, coupled with the peculiar character of the followers under his control, gave him, even after the loss of all his sheriffdoms and most of his castles, the power to make himself also a public danger, if he were so minded. He was, however, not a whit more of a nuisance and, owing to the events of the past winter, considerably less of a possible danger at the moment when the government first took action against him, than he had been at any time in the past seven or eight years. This was implicitly, though perhaps unconsciously, admitted by Hubert when he said that the “insurrection” which—as he and Henry alike insinuate—left King and Council neither time nor energy nor men to spare for any other object, took place “while La Rochelle was besieged.” Strictly speaking, this is not correct; Henry de Braybroke was captured nearly a month before Louis laid siege to La Rochelle, and, indeed, a week before the French host set out from Tours. But the statement is none the less, or rather all the more, a clear proof that the Justiciar knew of no grounds for charging Falkes with treason or rebellion[1070] earlier than the capture of Braybroke; that is to say, earlier than 17th June, the day after the royal host began to assemble at Northampton. That assembly had been arranged not later than 26th April; its arrangement had been immediately followed by the raking-up of a charge against Falkes concerning a matter which dated from the earliest days of Henry’s reign or even from a time before his accession, and had apparently never been heard of since; this again had been followed by Henry de Braybroke’s rigorous dealing with Falkes and his brother at the Dunstable assizes. All these legal proceedings may in themselves have been perfectly just; but, begun thus suddenly, without (so far as can be seen) any special provocation, and crowded all together at this particular time, they might well have goaded even a man of cooler temper than Falkes to play into his enemies’ hands by committing some outrage which would furnish the government with an occasion for crushing him completely; and to crush him the King and his councillors were evidently already determined, before that outrage was committed. The abstract justice and wisdom of their determination need not be discussed here. As a matter of policy, however, the time for its execution was singularly ill chosen. The moment when a swarm of locusts was known to be on the point of advancing upon Poitou was not the moment for stirring up a hornet’s nest in England. The King paid dearly for his own share—whatever it may have been—in this blunder. Some share in it, and in all likelihood the larger share, must have belonged to Hubert; and for Hubert only one possible excuse can be suggested. As he seems to have underrated the dangers over sea, so he may, at the outset, have underrated the difficulty of the task upon which he was entering in England.[1071] The muster at Northampton may have been designed for a mere military demonstration, in the heart of the lands which had been so long under Falkes’s charge, with the expectation that Falkes would be thereby overawed into making complete submission, somewhat as Count William of Aumale had been overawed in 1220 and 1221, and that the host might, when it had accomplished this preliminary purpose, proceed to the south coast and still reach Poitou before it was too late. Such an expectation would hardly be consistent with the knowledge which Hubert must have possessed of the character and the resources of Falkes. If it was still entertained by any one when in the dawn of 20th June the host set out for Bedford, a very brief experience there must have sufficed to shew that it was utterly hopeless.

In 1215 the constable of Bedford castle, William de Beauchamp, had incurred forfeiture by welcoming the rebel barons within its walls. Falkes had regained it for the King,[1072] and had been rewarded with a grant of its constableship in Beauchamp’s stead.[1073] On its fortification in John’s interest and under John’s orders he had lavished wealth, labour, and skill; he had crowned it with towers and battlements—partly built of the stones of two churches which neither he nor the King scrupled to pull down for that purpose[1074]—encompassed it with walls and outworks and stone-clad ditches and ramparts, stored it with military engines and arms. Its garrison in 1224 consisted of eleven knights and a proportionate number of men-at-arms, all picked men, amply sufficient to defend a fortress which was generally reputed impregnable.[1075] On the other hand, the besiegers were not all as eager about their task as were the King, the Justiciar, and, it seems, most of the bishops. The Earls of Chester and Aumale, the Bishop of Winchester, William de Cantelupe, Brian de Lisle, Peter de Maulay, had obeyed the King’s summons and accompanied him to Bedford with their followers, but made no secret of their lack of sympathy with the object of the expedition; and after a while Bishop Peter and Earl Ranulf, finding themselves excluded from the King’s private counsels, quitted the camp and went each to his own home.[1076] Meanwhile urgent orders were being despatched to all parts of the country for cartloads of ropes, targes, quarrels, pickaxes, tents, victuals, mangonels and other engines of war, and men to work the engines.[1077] The current expenditure which all this involved was so much more than the treasury could meet that the Archbishop of Canterbury and other prelates who were present in the host voluntarily made a grant for the King’s necessities. “Of their mere grace and liberality,” those of them who had a portion of land separate from that of their chapters gave half a mark for every ploughland thus held by them in demesne; those who had not separate portions gave two shillings per ploughland from the demesne lands of their churches; all alike gave two shillings for every ploughland held by their tenants and sub-tenants, and for every hide of land, both demesne and enfeoffed, the personal assistance of two workmen to drag and work the machines.[1078] After the close of the siege letters patent were issued by the King, carefully explaining that this generous aid had been voted by the prelates purely as a matter of grace, and was not to constitute a precedent for any future occasion.[1079]

At the approach of the royal forces Falkes had slipped away into the territories of the Earl of Chester, where the King’s writs did not run. There, according to his own account, he “composed some letters” to the King, asking for a safe-conduct to go to the court and “do whatever the barons and the laws of the land should require of him”; but this messenger on reaching the camp and finding that Falkes had been excommunicated was so afraid of incurring a share in the excommunication that he went away without delivering the letters.[1080] Falkes was said to have told the Bedford garrison that he would succour them within forty days.[1081] As that period drew towards a close the besiegers seem to have realized that the capture of the man was becoming almost more important than, and was likely to prove almost as difficult as, the capture of the castle. A band of men-at-arms was detached from the siege to go in search of him, but came back reporting that he had fled into Wales.[1082] This was the more alarming because neither Llywelyn’s promised amends for the Kinnerley affair nor the trial of the claims and counter-claims arising out of that affair had yet taken place. The settlement which was to have been made at Candlemas had been three or four times postponed; each time that a new date for it was fixed, the King had been too hard pressed with more urgent business to keep his appointment with Llywelyn; it now stood fixed for 28th July.[1083] On 10th July letters were sent out calling upon all the King’s bailiffs and other faithful subjects to help in catching “our enemy Falkes.”[1084] Two days later the sheriffs of Staffordshire and Shropshire were told that Falkes was known to have gone into Wales to form with some of its “mighty men” a league against the King, but, having failed in this, was expected to return secretly to England; and they were bidden to search for him, to order a hue and cry to be raised after him, and not to let it cease till he was captured.[1085] Some three weeks later, as the attainment of that object seemed no nearer, the King addressed a private letter of appeal or remonstrance to the Earl of Chester—who by this time had withdrawn from the host—and also one to Llywelyn of Wales. These letters are lost, but their tenour can be made out from the replies. Henry appealed, seemingly in justification of his own conduct, to Ranulf’s personal knowledge of the circumstances which had led to the siege of Bedford. He declared that, according to reports which he had received, Falkes was plotting against him to the uttermost of his power; and he begged that Ranulf would strive to avert or check any mischief which might be threatening in his neighbourhood, and if nothing of the kind seemed to be impending there, at once return to the camp. Ranulf’s answer was a model of quiet dignity. He did, he said, know the circumstances relating to the siege of Bedford, and so did many other persons. Of Sir Falkes de Bréauté’s reported machinations against the King he knew nothing; he had only seen and observed Sir Falkes bear himself patiently under the King’s anger, as one who desired nothing else than to appease it by his own endeavours and the help of his friends. For his own part Ranulf was (he continued) ready now, as ever, to protect the King’s interests as much as in him lay, and accordingly he had, on receipt of the King’s letter, immediately gone to confer with Llywelyn, and obtained his promise to leave the King’s land in peace for a month from 4th August. Having secured this, he was, agreeably to Henry’s command, coming back to the royal presence as quickly as he could.[1086] To Llywelyn the King related the capture of Henry de Braybroke and the steps taken in consequence of it; and he forbade the Prince to harbour Falkes or his men or to give them aid or counsel. Llywelyn answered by repeating Falkes’s version of the story as it had been told him by Falkes in a flying visit of less than a day’s duration, and refusing to recognize an excommunication against which he declared that Falkes would be justified in defending himself even if it came from the Pope in person.[1087]

Baffled in his attempts to capture Falkes, the King swore “by his father’s soul” that if Bedford castle were taken by force, he would hang every man who was in it. The garrison retorted by bidding his messengers see to it that no one came with any more demands for surrender.[1088] Formidable as was the King’s siege train, its work progressed but slowly. A stone-caster and two mangonels stationed on the east side of the castle hurled stones all day long at the keep; two other mangonels battered at the “old tower” on the west side; two more were gradually making as many breaches in the outer walls, one on the northern and the other on the southern side; a “cat” sheltered the ingoing and outgoing of miners who were digging their way underground to the foundations of the keep; other machines concealed crossbowmen and slingers whose missiles, despatched thus by unseen hands, caught the besieged at unawares; at last two moveable wooden “castles,” towers, or “belfries,” so lofty that their occupants could look down into every part of the castle enclosure, not excepting the keep itself, were constructed and filled, the one with scouts to watch all the doings of the garrison, the other with crossbowmen from whose quarrels, shot down like bolts out of the sky, no man among the besieged was safe for a moment without his armour.[1089] Nevertheless William de Bréauté and his men continued to hurl projectiles at their assailants;[1090] in the eight weeks of the siege the King lost six knights and, it was said, more than two hundred men-at-arms and labourers working the machines.[1091] At length an assault was made upon the barbican; it was taken, and four or five “foreigners”[1092] were slain. A second assault won the outer bailey, where “many were slain,” and the King’s men “came into possession of horses, harness, armour, crossbows, bullocks, live pigs, bacon, and other things innumerable,” besides sheds full of corn and hay which they burned. Next, the miners succeeded in bringing down a part of the wall close to the “old tower”; the King’s men rushed in through the breach, and after a desperate fight in which many of them perished, they gained possession of the inner bailey. The keep still defied them; ten of them who tried to enter it were shut in and kept fast by the garrison.[1093]

Meanwhile Falkes had been tracked by Bishop Alexander of Coventry. Alexander had carried the King’s letter to Earl Ranulf;[1094] the Bishop of Exeter seems to have joined him at Coventry, and there these two prelates heard that Falkes was at a place three miles beyond Chester. They immediately published his excommunication, and then Alexander went to seek him in the hope of bringing him to submission.[1095] To the bishop’s persuasions Falkes replied that he was ready to stand to the King’s command and judgement in all things, on condition that three men whom he believed to be personally hostile to him[1096] should not be present; or he would submit entirely to the King’s judgement and accept his mercy, but on condition that these same three should have no part in discussing the terms of that mercy. He further begged that either he might be released from excommunication by Bishop Alexander, or the whole case might be submitted to the Pope. The first part of the message thus brought back by Alexander to the royal camp was received with jeers; as to the last point, Archbishop Stephen was resolute that no one but himself should absolve the culprit. Alexander and Earl Ranulf went back together to Falkes, and persuaded him to return with them as far as Coventry.[1097] Thither, on 12th August, a safe-conduct was sent to him for himself and the members of his household who were with him, that they might come to Northampton for absolution within the next ten days.[1098]

To Northampton Falkes—seemingly accompanied by Bishop Alexander—came without delay; and thence he sent word to his soldiers of his inability to help them.[1099] On the evening of 14th August the King’s miners kindled a fire underneath the keep of Bedford castle. The garrison, seated at supper, saw the room fill with smoke, and presently found that its walls were cracking. On this they sent forth all the women in their company—among whom was the wife of Falkes—together with Henry de Braybroke and the other prisoners, escorted by some of their own number charged with an offer of surrender. These messengers were put in chains and kept by the King as pledges for the good faith of their comrades, who were suffered to spend the night in the crumbling tower after hoisting the royal standard on its summit. Next morning {15 Aug.} all the survivors of the desperate band were brought before the King.[1100] One of them was the chaplain of the castle; he was handed over to the Archbishop to be judged according to Church law.[1101] Most of the others, knights and men-at-arms, were grievously wounded.[1102] The King remitted them to the bishops for absolution; when they had received it,[1103] he kept his vow; he sent them all to the gallows. For three of them some of the nobles interceded, and though “to save the King’s oath” these three were hanged with the rest, they were cut down immediately, and delivered to the Templars, on condition of joining that Order in Holy Land.[1104]

When these things were done, the Bishop of Carlisle and one of the judges, Martin of Pateshull, were sent to Falkes with the tidings, and with an invitation or citation from the Archbishop to present himself at Bedford for absolution.[1105] He swooned with horror at the unexpected fate of his brother and his friends[1106]—a fate from which he, like them, had hoped that they would be saved by his vow of crusade and their appeal to the Pope. On coming to himself he was at first reluctant to accede to the Archbishop’s summons, being still set on prosecuting his appeal to Rome, and also fearing the personal enmity on the part of Stephen and Hubert of which he believed himself to be the object; at last, however, he consented to go,[1107] but entreated the Bishop of Coventry to accompany and protect him.[1108] Thus escorted, he went to Bedford, fell at the King’s feet and threw himself on his mercy.[1109] Henry committed him to the custody of Bishop Eustace of London till his fate should be judicially determined;[1110] for that purpose a council was appointed to meet in London fifteen days after Michaelmas (14th October). The few followers who accompanied him were then absolved, but it seems to have been deemed more prudent to defer the absolution of Falkes himself till he had surrendered, or at least given security for surrendering, the two castles which he still held—Plympton and Stoke Courcy[1111]—and all his other property,[1112] and also to make it as public as possible, in order that, as the absolution of an excommunicate person was an extremely humiliating ceremony for the penitent, it might serve as a salutary warning to other possible rebels. Accordingly, when Falkes had sworn to submit himself to this humiliation on 25th August in London, a safe-conduct was given him, on 19th August, to go thither for the twofold purpose of receiving absolution and paying into the treasury, as compensation for the damage and losses incurred by the King in the siege of Bedford, the money which he had stored at Westminster.[1113] On the appointed day {25 Aug.}, in presence of a great concourse of people, the Archbishop had him stripped according to the rule of the Church and then gave him absolution.[1114] He then executed a deed whereby he surrendered to the Crown all his possessions of every kind, and consented to fall under excommunication again if his constables at Plympton and Stoke Courcy failed to give up those two castles within a fortnight.[1115]

A woman struck the next blow at the fallen man. Margaret his wife came before the King and the Archbishop and declared that she had never consented to her marriage with him, but had been taken by force in time of war and wedded to him against her will, wherefore she prayed that the marriage might be annulled. A day was set for the Archbishop to pronounce, after due consideration, his judgement on the matter.[1116] Margaret’s story of the marriage may very likely have been true; but her protest was made too late to deserve a hearing. Even in 1215 the widow of Baldwin de Rivers was no mere child, for she was already a mother. If the disturbed state of public affairs and the absence of the Primate prevented her seeking legal redress during the next two years, she could certainly have brought her claim before Stephen at any moment after his return in the spring of 1218. Instead of doing so, she waited till the man whose prosperous fortunes she had shared for nine years, and by whom she had at least one child,[1117] was brought down to the dust, and then she, too, sought to be rid of him. Such an abuse of the laws of marriage as she petitioned for was not likely to be sanctioned by Stephen de Langton, however sternly he might, for the public weal, deem it necessary to deal with her husband. His judgement on her petition is not recorded; but there are clear indications that it was given against her.[1118]

For more than nine weeks Falkes was kept, strictly guarded, in the custody of the Bishop of London. The meeting of the Council which was to decide his fate had been fixed for 14th October, but no decision seems to have been reached till about the 26th.[1119] {Oct.} Moved partly by remonstrances which the Pope had, some months before, addressed both to the King and to the Primate in behalf of Falkes,[1120] partly by their own undeniable knowledge of Falkes’s long and faithful service to the King’s father, the Council unanimously determined that he should be spared in life and limbs, on condition that he would abjure the realm and go over sea on pilgrimage, never to return.[1121] The Primate exacted from him a further promise not to carry his complaints to the Pope.[1122] To these conditions he submitted. On 26th October he received a safe-conduct to go to the coast and remain there till he could get across the sea,[1123] and orders for the manning of the ship which was to carry him were issued to William de Breuse and the Earl of Warren,[1124] the latter of whom was commissioned to see him safely on board. It was reported that when parting from the Earl, Falkes with tears begged him to carry his greetings to “his lord the King,” declaring with a solemn oath that his disturbances of England’s peace had been instigated by “the great men of the land.” Five of his men-at-arms accompanied him to Normandy.[1125] So far was Louis from regarding him as an ally that he was seized by the French King’s bailiffs immediately on landing at Fécamp and brought as a prisoner before Louis himself.[1126] The cross on his shoulder, however, procured his release.[1127] Next Easter (1225)1225 he proceeded to Rome.[1128] On his way across France he met Robert Passelewe,[1129] a man learned in law, who may have put into shape (or at least into Latin) the “Complaint” which—in defiance of his promise to Archbishop Stephen—he presented to the Pope. In August he was captured in Burgundy by a knight called Anselm “de Duime,” whom he had once made prisoner and put to heavy ransom in England. The Pope seems to have procured his release,[1130] on which he returned to France, and dwelt for a year at Troyes; at last he was driven out of the country because he refused to do homage to Louis. Returning to Rome, he once more entreated the Pope to insist that he should be restored at least to the enjoyment of his wife’s society and of the proceeds of her patrimony.[1131] Honorius wrote accordingly, both to the King and to Archbishop Stephen.[1132] Soon afterwards, however, the whole matter was ended by the death of Falkes.[1133] A year later {1226} Henry was trying—with what success we know not—to reclaim from the Master of the Temple in London eleven thousand marks which Falkes on his death-bed was said to have confessed were still in the head house of the Order in England, where he had deposited them for secrecy and safety.[1134]

1224

Having crushed Falkes, King and ministers in the autumn of 1224 at last found leisure for taking measures of defence and defiance against the greater foe beyond the sea. Special bailiffs were appointed for the protection of the coasts.[1135] Reinforcements were sent to the Channel Isles to hold them against a possible attack from France.[1136] The bailiffs of some of the great trading towns were ordered to seize the persons, goods, and chattels of all Normans and other subjects of the French King within their several bailiwicks.[1137] Soon, however, it became apparent that Louis had no present intention of attacking England, but was bent on completing his conquest of Aquitaine, and that Gascony was in imminent danger of falling into his hands like Poitou. The English King’s great difficulty was, as usual, the want of money. Before the host broke up after the siege of Bedford the carucage granted by the prelates had been supplemented by a like grant from the barons;[1138] this was followed by a scutage,[1139] and in November a tallage was laid on the Jews.[1140] But all this was insufficient; and at the Christmas court at Westminster Hubert appealed to all present for “counsel and aid whereby the Crown of England might recover its lost dignities and its ancient rights in the parts beyond the sea,” and added that he “thought this could be done if a fifteenth part of all moveable goods throughout England were given to the King by both clergy and laity.” After some deliberation the whole assembly agreed to adopt this suggestion, “if the King would grant them their long desired liberties”[1141]—that is, if he would re-issue and confirm the Great Charter. The King’s feeling about this matter seems to have remained the same as it had been twelve months before, for it was not till 11th February (1225)1225 that he complied with the required condition; and then he issued both the Charter of Liberties and that of the Forest in a new form. The text of both Charters as he now granted them was the same as in the issue of November, 1217. But in the preamble to each of them he stated, not, as had been done in all former issues (including the original Great Charter of 1215), that the liberties were granted “by the advice of his counsellors,” but that they were granted “of his own free goodwill, to the prelates, magnates, and all the people of England, to be kept in the realm of England for ever”; he put on record the grant of a fifteenth of moveables made to him in return for this “concession and donation” on his part; and he concluded with a solemn promise that neither he nor his heirs would do anything to invalidate or infringe the liberties thus guaranteed, and that any attempt to do so should be null and void. The Primate, eleven bishops, twenty abbots, Hubert as Justiciar, nine earls, and twenty-three barons appended their names as witnesses.[1142]

1225

For many months King and Justiciar were occupied chiefly with schemes, military and diplomatic, for the preservation of what remained of Henry’s continental dominions and the recovery of what had been lost. During the last few months of 12241224 the joint efforts of Hugh of La Marche and the new French seneschal of Poitou to win Gascony for Louis met with considerable success. Several of the chief Gascon towns—St. Emilion, Bazas, La Réole—and many of the nobles, swore fealty to the French King.[1143] The one man who might still have headed an organized effort to stem the tide was Savaric de Mauléon; but Savaric had lost the confidence of the English government, owing to the surrender of La Rochelle. In after days, as has been seen, he was acknowledged by Hubert de Burgh to have been blameless in that matter; but at the time Hubert and Henry were only too ready to lay the blame of it at any door except the one where it was mainly due—their own—and Savaric’s defence of his conduct failed to convince them of his loyalty. The natural result followed: the services which they rejected were transferred to Henry’s rival;[1144] and for several years to come Savaric’s talents and energies—both of which were of a high order—were actively employed in the office of governor of La Rochelle and warden of the seaboard for Louis. The remnant of Henry’s Aquitanian possessions was thus left without a governor or head of any kind. Gascony, however, could not be irretrievably lost so long as the great merchant sea-port of the South, Bordeaux, remained loyal; and the citizens of Bordeaux, whose commercial and political interests were closely bound up with those of England, stedfastly resisted all Hugh of Lusignan’s endeavours to cajole or frighten them into submission. Their obstinate refusal to make even a truce with him compelled him to retire into his own county in October, 1224, when one of Henry’s agents in Gascony reported their jubilant boast that they “would soon confound all the King’s enemies, if only they had money”; “and,” he added, “I believe they would, if they had with them the King himself or his brother Richard. Wherefore I counsel that if money be sent to them, Richard be sent likewise, with some good man to control the expenditure of the money.”[1145]

This counsel was followed. The feast of the Epiphany, 1225, was Richard’s sixteenth birthday. On Candlemas day he was knighted by his royal brother.[1146] A fortnight later {13 Feb.} Henry granted him the Earldom of Cornwall “with all that pertained to the King in that county, to support himself in the King’s service, during the King’s pleasure”;[1147] and also, it seems, the title of Count of Poitou, by which Richard was thenceforth called.[1148] Ever since the beginning of January a fleet had been gathering to convoy the young Count over sea;[1149] and on Palm Sunday, 23rd March, he sailed from Portsmouth with a small force of knights, and accompanied by his uncle Earl William of Salisbury, Philip d’Aubigné,[1150] and some other chosen counsellors, all of whom were, together with Richard himself, commissioned by the King to undertake the “defence of Poitou and Gascony.”[1151] They were warmly welcomed at Bordeaux; and by the beginning of May the King’s authority was fairly well re-established throughout Gascony, except at Bergerac and La Réole, whose citadels were garrisoned by Louis.[1152]

The Pope was anxious for peace between the two Kings, because he wanted Louis to devote himself to the suppression of the Albigensian disorders in the county of Toulouse and its dependencies. A legate, Cardinal Romanus, went to France to confer with Louis on these matters, and between the end of May and the middle of October three embassies were sent from England at his request to treat with Louis for peace or a truce.[1153] On the English side these negotiations seem to have been undertaken without any real desire to bring them to a successful issue; but they served the double purpose of conciliating the Pope and gaining time to prepare for a more vigorous prosecution of the war. Meanwhile Henry was seeking to form alliances which might help to weaken the power of France. At the close of the previous year it was believed in England that Louis had on foot a project for marrying his daughter to the young King of the Romans, Henry, son of the Emperor Frederic II. This the English King endeavoured to foil by despatching to Germany an embassy charged with proposals for two marriages, one between his sister Isabel and the Emperor’s heir, the other between himself and a daughter of the Duke of Austria. The negotiations dragged on for some months,[1154] but came to nothing; neither, however, did the French scheme, if such a scheme had ever really existed, for at the end of 1225 Henry of Germany wedded Margaret of Austria. Ten years later Isabel of England was to become the third wife of his father the Emperor.[1155] In the middle of August Henry of England secretly made overtures to the deadliest enemy of both France and Rome—Count Raymond of Toulouse[1156]—and a draft treaty of offensive and defensive alliance against Louis was sent from England and its terms sworn to in Henry’s name by the envoys who carried it to Raymond.[1157] With another great southern house, that of Auvergne and Clermont, whose loyalty to France was generally doubtful, Count Richard and his counsellors made a “confederation” which Henry ratified on 12th October, the same day on which he bade his brother and uncle make a truce with France, and himself despatched an embassy thither.[1158]

A month later, the surrender of La Réole completed the re-establishment of Henry’s power in Gascony.[1159] On this Earl William of Salisbury, whose health was failing, set out by his royal nephew’s desire for England. The ship in which he sailed was tossed about in the Bay of Biscay “many nights and days,” till he despaired of life and flung his jewels, money, and fine clothes into the sea, “that as he came naked into this world, so he might, stripped of all earthly honour, enter into the eternal country”; and his companions followed his example. At last they sighted the Isle of Rhé, landed there by means of their boats, and found shelter in an abbey. But two men-at-arms in the service of Savaric de Mauléon, who was keeping vigilant watch on the Poitevin coast in the interest of Louis, recognized the Earl and warned him that he would be captured unless he left the Isle at once. He gave the men twenty pounds, took to the ship again, and was in perils in the sea for three weeks longer before he reached the English coast, seemingly just after Christmas.[1160] {1225–1226} In England he had been so completely given up for lost that Hubert de Burgh had planned to secure the hand and the estates of Countess Ela for a nephew of his own, Raymond by name, and had actually persuaded the King to consent to the marriage. Henry, however, made his consent conditional on that of Ela herself; and when the Justiciar sent his nephew to her “in noble knightly array,” the wife of Longsword indignantly told him that she had lately had news from her husband stating that he was safe and well, but even if he were dead, she would in no wise accept him (the suitor) for her spouse, inasmuch as the nobility of her birth forbade such a thing. “Go,” she added, “and seek a match elsewhere; you will find by experience that you have come here in vain.”[1161] William, when he reached home and heard this story {1226}, went to the King at Marlborough and after being received by him “with great joy,” laid before him a grave complaint against the Justiciar for having sent “some low-born fellow” to insult the Countess; and he added that unless the King made the Justiciar render him full satisfaction, he would seek vengeance for such an outrage himself, in a way which would cause a grave disturbance of the realm. The Justiciar, well knowing that Earl William would have no difficulty in executing his threat, at once made a humble apology and “recovered the Earl’s favour by large gifts of valuable horses and other things.”[1162] The whole story is a curious illustration of the social relations between Hubert and the great nobles of the land; for there is no sign of any previous friction between Hubert and Longsword in political affairs; and between the Earl and his royal nephew there seems to have existed a genuine personal attachment. The meeting at Marlborough was their last; Earl William died at Salisbury on 7th March.[1163]

1226

The practical direction of affairs in Gascony and the guardianship of its nominal ruler, young Richard, thus devolved entirely upon Philip d’Aubigné. He was quite equal to his task, and was moreover well supported by the English government; for Henry and Hubert had at last learned that Gascony could not be preserved, much less Poitou recovered, without constant supplies of money, arms, and men {1225 Aug.}; and these they continued to pour into Bordeaux for Richard[1164] {1226 Feb.–May}—not without considerable difficulty and risk, for Savaric and his men were continually cruising about, on the watch to intercept English vessels, and doing their utmost to make all transit between England and Aquitaine dangerous and sometimes almost impracticable.[1165] In January, 1226, Henry for a moment at least contemplated going in person to join his brother.[1166] The King was at that moment just recovering from an illness which for a time had endangered his life;[1167] this fact, coinciding with Earl William’s return and recital of his experiences at sea, may have made Hubert and the other councillors urge the postponement of a project involving so serious a risk; for the ship which had been prepared for the King soon afterwards sailed without him.[1168] At the end of the month Louis of France took the Cross as leader of the expedition against Toulouse.[1169] Again the Legate Romanus pleaded with Henry for a truce, and on 22nd March an envoy was despatched from England to confer with him about the matter; but the terms in which this mission was announced shew plainly that the young King and his counsellors were not disposed to enter upon any negotiations with Louis.[1170] They were in fact planning to make an attempt at the recovery of Poitou as soon as Louis should be too busy with his crusade to give any help or support to his Poitevin adherents.

The French host was summoned to meet at Bourges on 17th May.[1171] The chief English seaports were bidden to send all their ships to Portsmouth so as to be there on 30th May ready to go forth “on the King’s service.”[1172] But Henry’s project met with an unexpected check. Louis had made it a condition of his Albigensian crusade that the Pope should forbid Henry, on pain of excommunication, to molest him or his realm in any way while he was thus engaged;[1173] and this, on 27th April, Honorius did.[1174] When his letter reached England, the King called his counsellors together and asked them what they advised him to do in the face of this prohibition. They were all of one mind that his cherished scheme must be deferred “till it should be seen what would become of the French King, who had undertaken such a difficult work and costly enterprise.” Henry’s anxiety about his brother was presently allayed by the arrival of letters from Richard giving a good report of his successes. “Moreover there was then among the King’s counsellors one Master William surnamed Pierepunt, skilled in astronomy, who constantly affirmed before the King that if the King of France proceeded with the expedition which he had begun, he would either never return alive, or suffer a great loss and overthrow. The King therefore, cheered by hearing these things, acquiesced in the counsel of his friends.”[1175] On 23rd June the fleet was dismissed,[1176] and so far as Poitou was concerned, fighting and negotiation were alike at a standstill for the next four months.

In Henry’s insular dominions the political storms of 1224 had been succeeded by a period of calm. The Welsh and Irish Marches were both of them in a most unusual state of tranquillity. Henry’s long promised and oft deferred conference with Llywelyn about the amends due for the Welsh raid of January, 1223, seems to have taken place at last at the end of September, 1224,[1177]1224 and—strangely enough—resulted in Llywelyn’s receiving seisin of Kinnerley.[1178] Another conference, probably for the settlement of matters in dispute between Llywelyn and the Marshal and between Llywelyn and Hugh de Mortimer, was planned and postponed several times within the next eighteen months, and seems not to have taken place till 27th August, 1226.[1179]1226 On that day, at Shrewsbury, Hugh de Mortimer “and others” again, in the King’s presence, demanded of Llywelyn the restoration of the lands which he had taken from them. Llywelyn asked the King for another day, and Henry gave him one at Whitchurch on 25th October.[1180] The result does not appear, unless it is indicated in a statement of the Dunstable annalist that “in the same year (1226) agreement was made between Llywelyn and William the Marshal and the Earl of Chester.”[1181] But from the fact that throughout the years 1225–1227 the Welsh chroniclers make no boast, and the English ones no complaint, of any infraction of the peace on the part of Llywelyn or his men, we may safely conclude that the English successes in 1223 had had something more than a merely transitory effect.[1182] The Earl Marshal had landed at Waterford as chief Justiciar in Ireland on 19th June, 12241224. At the beginning of August he sent home to the King an encouraging report of the state of affairs in the March.[1183] In October his hands were strengthened for the work which he had been specially sent to do—the subjugation of Hugh de Lacy—by the appointment of his cousin John Marshal as bailiff of Ulster.[1184] One by one Hugh’s strongholds were captured; at last, in spring, 12251225, Hugh himself surrendered, and was sent by the Earl to England as a prisoner to beg for the King’s mercy and pardon. Henry at first would have nothing to do with him; but the Marshal, coming over soon afterwards, pleaded for him, and, apparently, suggested a temporary settlement which was carried into effect[1185] in May. Two hundred marks, to be paid in instalments, beginning from the Easter last past, were granted to Hugh from the royal treasury for his support during the current year.[1186] Walter de Lacy was given seisin of “all his lands in Ireland and England which the King had seized on occasion of the war with Hugh,” the Marshal being one of his sureties for the payment of the fine.[1187] Twelve months later the custody of all Hugh’s lands in Ireland was committed to Walter to hold for three years, unless within that period Hugh should by the King’s grace obtain their restoration to himself.[1188] Six weeks after this, on Midsummer eve, at Winchester, the Earl Marshal resigned the Justiciarship of Ireland into the hands of the King, and the King at once committed it to Geoffrey de Marsh.[1189] The transfer was to be made on 1st August; Geoffrey was to receive a yearly salary of five hundred and eighty pounds at the Dublin Exchequer so long as he remained Justiciar; and his present appointment was not to be made an occasion for requiring of him any account relating to his former tenure of the same office.[1190] Since his removal from that office Geoffrey had—except about his papers—given no trouble; in August, 12241224, his loyal attitude had been warmly commended by the Marshal,[1191] and in November of the same year, when the Marshal’s presence was temporarily required in England, the responsibility for the peace of the March during his absence had been entrusted to Geoffrey;[1192] but it was probably not the Marshal’s influence that procured his re-appointment. The first letter which the King addressed to him as Justiciar in 12261226—on 30th June, when the actual transfer of the justiciarship had not yet taken place—was an order to summon the King of Connaught to surrender his land (forfeited, according to Henry’s account, by its late King’s failure to render due service to John), and in default, to take it by force and give seisin of it to Richard de Burgh,[1193] who was already seneschal of Limerick and Munster, and was brother to the chief Justiciar of England. Geoffrey, when after a visit to England he had re-entered upon his duties as Justiciar, declared that “all the King’s castles in Ireland were fortified against the King, except Limerick, which was in the custody of Richard de Burgh, who assiduously and constantly assisted him (Geoffrey) in bringing the King’s affairs to good success.”[1194] In Geoffrey’s re-appointment at this time we may surely see the hand of Richard’s brother Hubert.

The Marshal appears to have resigned of his own accord, giving as a reason that he had vowed a pilgrimage to S. Andrew’s; and it was with the declared intention of fulfilling his vow immediately that he parted from the King at Winchester at Midsummer. He had, however, got no further north than Coventry when he heard that his pilgrimage was being represented to the King as a cloak for some evil design; whereupon he at once wrote to Henry that he had given up his project and resolved to go straight back to Ireland. Henry, on 10th July, warmly protested that he had no suspicions of his brother-in-law, but looked upon him as a trusty and loyal counsellor and friend. “But,” he added, “if you really intend to give up your journey and cross over to Ireland, we bid you first come to us and surrender our castles of Caermarthen and Cardigan; or, if you cannot possibly come, send us a man of yours with power to do so. We are going towards York on business, and propose thence to return to the marches of Wales.”[1195] This surrender was duly made before 18th August, when the King committed Caermarthen and Cardigan to Henry of Audley, by a letter-patent in which he expressly declared that the Marshal was to be quit for the whole of the time during which these two castles had been in his keeping and in that of his father before him.[1196] Probably the brothers-in-law had at their midsummer meeting agreed upon this transfer, and also upon another arrangement which was put into legal form a few days later. On 22nd August the castle of Caerleon, “of which the King demanded seisin,”[1197] was committed to him by the Earl Marshal “saving his own right and his inheritance” therein; and on the 26th the King “committed the castle to the Marshal, to hold for four years from the ensuing Michaelmas day.” At the end of the four years the Marshal was to deliver the castle to the King, “saving his own right”; and the King, within a month after he had received it, was to “cause the Earl to have judgement of his peers of such right and seisin as he had on the day when this convention was made at Hereford, and of any other right which he might be able in the meanwhile to search out”; such right not to be prejudiced by the present convention. If the Earl’s peers should adjudge seisin to him, he was to have it without delay, “saving the rights of each party”; and the judgement was not to be delayed beyond the appointed term. Finally, “through this convention the King’s anger—if he had any—against the Earl and his men shall be left behind.”[1198] On the day after this convention was made public, it was announced that the Marshal “had set out for Ireland in the King’s service.”[1199] This was shortly after Geoffrey de Marsh had been complaining that when he called upon the barons of the March to renew their homage to the King, those of Leinster failed to respond, and one of them, Theobald Butler, flatly refused to recognize the new Justiciar’s authority without instructions from the Earl Marshal.[1200] We can scarcely help suspecting that all these things were connected; that the Marshal’s successes in Wales and Ireland, and his marriage with the King’s sister, had aroused the jealousy of the De Burghs, and that Geoffrey was an instrument in their hands. If so, they were playing a game which might have proved dangerous both to themselves and to their sovereign, had it not been for the dignified moderation and stedfast loyalty of the Earl. However this may be, Geoffrey de Marsh remained Justiciar in Ireland till he resigned the office of his own accord in February, 1228.