Chapter V: The Young King (2)

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) 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]

[Sidenote: 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) 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]

[Sidenote: 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 1224 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]

[Sidenote: 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] 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] 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, 1224. 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, 1225, 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, 1224, 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 1226--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.

[Sidenote: 1225]

In England itself the only problem which seems to have given serious trouble to the government during these years was the everlasting problem of finance. Gascony had to be supplied, and to supply Gascony the English treasury had to be drained till there was nothing left for the needs of the English State and of the Crown itself. Five days after the re-issue of the Charters in 1225--on 16th February--orders were given for their publication throughout the realm;[1201] the writs concerning the fifteenth had been issued on the previous day. Half of the tax was to be paid into the treasury at Trinity, the other half at Michaelmas. Detailed instructions were given as to the mode of assessment, the incidence of the tax, the manner of collection;[1202] nevertheless, before the end of March the commissioners employed about the matter in one county at least found themselves involved in unexpected difficulties. From the wording of the royal order it appeared (at any rate to them) that the free tenants of bishops and abbots were to be assessed like those of lay lords; but in Kent the Archbishop forbade the assessment of any such tenants except those holding by military service. On 29th March the King sanctioned this limitation. Complaints had also reached him that the commissioners were “compelling poor women who had only a small quantity of thread, or a brooch worth two or three pence, to give a fifteenth”; this practice they were bidden to stop at once, lest the curses of the poor should fall upon the head of the King. On the other hand, he bade them “diligently and efficaciously induce all crusaders” (who as such were legally exempt) “to contribute to this fifteenth, which is appointed for the peace and safety of our land and the common weal and defence of all; and tell them plainly and openly they are to know that as many of them as shall hold back from giving us this fifteenth, they and their heirs will never have any part in the liberties which we have granted to our loyal subjects by our Charters.”[1203] This method of persuasion, however tyrannical it may sound, was perfectly logical. The Charters had avowedly been renewed for a consideration; those who withheld their share of that consideration, although able to pay it, were not entitled to a share in the benefit of the Charters. The irretrievable blunder which the Great Council had committed at Christmas, 1224, in making a bargain with the Crown for a renewal of the Charters, was already bringing forth its fruit.