CHAPTER VII

JOHN LACKLAND

1215–1216

Dicitur ... “Sine Terra,” quia moriturus nil terrae in pace possedit.

M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 191.

[Sidenote: 1215]

The Pope’s letters evidently did not reach England till after the primate and the bishops had set out for Rome, so that there was no one left to publish the new sentence; and it seems, in fact, never to have been published in England at all. But its existence soon became known there; and when once the barons knew of it, they knew, too, that they must make their choice between unconditional surrender and war to the uttermost with both king and Pope; for there was no one left to act as their mediator with either. They chose war; but they were not ready for war, and the king was. Poitevins, Gascons, Brabantines, Flemings, were flocking to him from over sea.[1097] On October 2 he ordered his brother, Earl William of Salisbury, to visit ten royal castles and select from their garrisons troops for service in the field. On the 4th he committed the superintendence of military affairs in mid-England and the west to Falkes de Bréauté, and issued a general safe-conduct to “all who may wish to return to our fealty and service” through the medium of Falkes or the earl.[1098] He himself had, towards the end of September, advanced as far inland as Malling;[1099] but this seems to have been merely a sort of reconnoitring expedition; his plan evidently was to wait till all his expected reinforcements had arrived from over sea, and then march with them upon London, while William and Falkes did the same with the troops which they could bring up from the west, so as to place the capital between two fires. While his forces were concentrating, those of the barons were scattering; they had no scheme of united action; one party had renewed the siege of Northampton castle, another was engaged in that of Oxford.[1100] At last the leaders in London decided that something must be done to bar John’s way to the capital; and they advanced into Kent as far as Ospring. When they reached it John was at Canterbury; having only a small escort he, on hearing of his enemies’ approach, hurriedly fell back to Dover; they, however, were so scared by a report that he had set out from Canterbury to offer them battle that they beat an equally hasty retreat towards Rochester.[1101] Their great fear was lest he should gain possession of Rochester castle, which he had vainly tried to induce the archbishop to give up to him two months before.[1102] On October 11 Reginald of Cornhill, in whose charge Stephen had left it, suffered it to be occupied by a band of picked knights under William of Aubigny. But the triumph of the intruders was shortlived; two days later the king was at the gates of Rochester.[1103]

“Certes, sire,” said one of John’s Flemish allies as the royal host set out for Rochester, “you make little account of your enemies if you go to fight them with so small a force!” “I know them too well,” answered John; “they are to be nothing accounted of or feared. With fewer men than we have we might safely fight them. Certes, one thing I may tell you truly, I grieve not so much for the evil which the men of my land are doing to me, as that their wickedness should be seen by strangers.”[1104] The king knew what the stranger did not know, that so long as he could keep the Medway between himself and the main body of the barons he was safe. He therefore began his operations by an attempt to destroy the bridge, and thus to cut off the communications between Rochester and London. It seems that he sent a party up the river in boats to fire the bridge from beneath, and that they succeeded in so doing, but that Robert Fitz-Walter, with a picked body of knights and men-at-arms, was guarding the bridge at the time and managed to extinguish the flames and drive off the assailants.[1105] Fitz-Walter, however, appears to have immediately returned to London;[1106] and in a second attack on the bridge John was completely successful; the bridge was destroyed, and the king proceeded to invest the castle[1107] and assault the town.

On his first approach the citizens had manned their walls and “made a great show of defending themselves”; but “when they saw he was preparing to assault them they broke into a rout, left the battlements, and fled on all sides. Then his men entered through the gates, and began to chase them through the town to the bridge so vigorously that they drove all the knights by force into the castle; of whom”--sarcastically adds the Flemish soldier of fortune who tells the tale--“many would gladly have fled to London if they could.”[1108] But they could not, the bridge being now gone. The whole party thus gathered in the castle numbered about ninety-five knights and forty-five men-at-arms.[1109] The castle when given to William of Aubigny and his followers was destitute of provisions; they had had no time to procure any, save what little they could get in the town;[1110] and they saw before them an imminent prospect of starvation. John pressed the siege vigorously; on the day after its commencement he ordered “all the smiths in Canterbury” to devote their whole time, “day and night,” to making pickaxes, which were to be sent to him at Rochester as fast as they were made.[1111] His forces increased daily till they became “such a multitude that they struck fear and horror into all who beheld them.”[1112] They ravaged all over Kent, and wrought havoc in Rochester, stabling their horses in the cathedral and committing every kind of sacrilege in the holy places.[1113]

At all this the barons in London looked on in helpless consternation. They had plighted a solemn oath to William of Aubigny, when he undertook the expedition to Rochester, that if the king besieged him there they would succour him without fail.[1114] A fortnight passed before they made any movement to redeem their promise; then, on October 26, some seven hundred knights[1115] set out under the command of Robert Fitz-Walter; but they got no farther than Dartford. One chronicler says they “retreated before the breath of a very soft south wind as if beaten back by swords”;[1116] another, that they turned back in dismay on hearing how numerous were the forces of the king;[1117] a third, that they were misled on this point by an exaggerated account given them by a Templar sent to meet them for that purpose by John himself.[1118] In any case, they returned to London, and having taken care to provide themselves with ample stores, they sat down to “play at the fatal dice and drink the best wine, according to each man’s taste, and do it is needless to say what besides,”[1119] till S. Andrew’s Day. By that time they expected important reinforcements; and they reckoned that the besieged could hold out till then.[1120]

William of Aubigny and his comrades did hold out, but at desperate odds. Every possible mode of attack--mining, battery, assault--was tried in turn upon the fortress. Five great slinging engines were plied incessantly, day and night, against its walls. The garrison, already short of food, and expecting no mercy from the king if they surrendered, were minded to sell their lives dearly; they fought like heroes; “nor,” says the Barnwell annalist, “does living memory recall any siege so urgently carried on and so manfully resisted.”[1121] A strange contrivance at last shattered the mighty keep. On November 25 John ordered the justiciar to send him with all possible speed “forty bacon-pigs of the fattest, and of those which are least good for eating, to be put to set fire to the stuff that we have got together under the tower.”[1122] Of the results of the blaze thus kindled a token remains to this day, in the round tower which at the south-west angle of the keep contrasts so markedly with the square towers at the other corners, and which replaces the original square one thus destroyed by John. Even after its fall the garrison fought on until their last morsel of food was gone; then at last they surrendered on S. Andrew’s Day.[1123] The king set up a gallows in front of the army and declared he would hang them all; but he yielded to Savaric de Mauléon’s warning that if he hanged brave knights such as these, the barons would surely do the like to any friends of his who might fall into their hands, and that in view of such a prospect no man would remain in his service.[1124] On this he contented himself with sending the knights to prison, leaving the men-at-arms to ransom themselves as best they could, and hanging only a few cross-bowmen.[1125]

Three times since the siege began the barons in London, or some of them, had opened negotiations with the king. On October 17 Richard of Argentan and others had a safe-conduct “to treat with us for peace between ourself and our barons”;[1126] on October 22 Roger de Jarpeville and Robert de Coleville had a safe-conduct till the 27th to treat with the king concerning peace between him and “the barons who may come with the Master of the Temple and the Prior of the Hospital”;[1127] and on November 9 a safe-conduct till the 12th was given to Earl Richard of Clare, Robert Fitz-Walter, Geoffrey de Say, and the mayor and two, three or four citizens of London, that they might go and speak with the bishop of Winchester, the earls of Warenne and Arundel, and Hubert de Burgh, “to treat of peace between ourself and our barons.”[1128] On the side of the barons these overtures were nothing but a cloak for the cowardice and incapacity which kept them from taking any active steps for the relief of their besieged comrades. They were all the while pushing on negotiations for bringing in a foreign power to aid them in their selfish scheme of revolution.

One chronicler asserts that as long ago as the year 1210 some of the barons had contemplated driving John from his throne and setting up as king in his stead a man who, though born on foreign soil and engaged throughout his whole life in the service of foreign powers, had yet a claim to rank as one of themselves, and certainly not as the least distinguished among them--Simon, count of Montfort and titular earl of Leicester.[1129] To modern eyes the cruelties of the war against the Albigenses, in which Simon was the leader of the “crusading” host, have somewhat obscured the nobler aspects of a character which was not without a heroic side. It was indeed by a strange instinct that--if the Dunstable annalist’s tale be true--the chiefs of the English revolutionary party fixed their hopes for a moment on the father of that other Simon de Montfort, at that time still but a boy, who was one day to seal with his blood the work of England’s deliverance which they professed to have at heart, but which in their narrow and short-sighted selfishness they were alike unworthy and incapable of achieving. The instinct was at any rate a loftier one than that which guided them in their choice of a rival to John five years later. The scheme put forth by the group of barons in London in the summer of 1215 for electing a new king “by the common consent of the whole realm” of course came to nothing; the magnates would have none of it, and the northern barons who had separated from the other malcontents before the sealing of the Charter had, as will be seen later, made an independent choice of their own. The mad little faction in London, headed now by Earl Geoffrey de Mandeville, acted by themselves and for themselves alone when they “chose for their lord” the eldest son of the king of France, “begging and praying him that he would come with a mighty arm to pluck them out of the hand of this tyrant.”[1130]

Only one English chronicler gives or even pretends to give any hint of the grounds on which this choice was, either really or nominally, based. In no English writer of the time do we find any indication that the connexion of Louis of France with the reigning royal house of England, through his marriage with John’s sister’s daughter, had, or was supposed to have, anything to do with it. The claim to the English crown which Louis afterwards put forth on this ground seems to have been an idea of purely French origin, which not only had never suggested itself to any English mind, but, when it was suggested, failed to meet with general recognition even among Louis’s partizans in England. The intricate rules of succession, and especially of female succession, which it pre-supposed were as yet, when applied to the Crown at least, completely strange to English statesmen. Moreover, it is by no means clear that the barons who offered the Crown to Louis had any real intention of transferring it to him and his heirs for ever. Roger of Wendover tells us that “after hesitating for some time whom they should choose, they at length agreed upon this, that they would set over themselves Louis, the son of King Philip of France, and raise him up to be king of England. Their reason was that if through the agency of Louis and his father King John could be deprived of the host of foreign soldiers who surrounded him, most of whom were subjects of Louis[1131] or Philip, he, being without support from either side of the sea, would be left alone and unable to fight.”[1132] In other words, they wanted Louis as a tool wherewith to crush John; and to gain him for their tool they offered him the bribe of the crown, thinking that when their immediate purpose should be accomplished it would be time enough to consider whether the annexation of England to France would or would not really profit them better than to break faith with their new lord as they had broken it with their old one.

The first direct overtures of the barons to Louis seem to have been made before the outbreak of hostilities, in September or October 1215;[1133] and these overtures were renewed at some time after the commencement of the siege of Rochester, when the earls of Winchester and Hereford went over with a message from their comrades in London to Louis, that “if he would pack up his clothes and come, they would give him the kingdom and make him their lord.”[1134] These envoys were at once confronted by Philip with a letter which he had just received, purporting to come from the same barons and informing him that his son’s intervention was no longer needed, as peace had been made between them and their own sovereign. The earl of Winchester offered to pledge his head that the letter was forged by John.[1135] The French king accepted this assurance; but he was too wary to commit himself hastily to a scheme so full of perils and difficulties as that which the earls so lightly proposed, and he merely gave it a negative countenance by standing altogether aloof from their negotiations with his son. Louis promised that he would at once send to England as many knights as he could get, and would himself follow them at Easter. He then called his own vassals together at Hesdin, and at the end of November some hundred and forty of his knights with their followers--in all about seven thousand men--landed at the mouth of the Orwell[1136] and made their way to London, “where they were very well received and led a sumptuous life; only they were there in great discomfort because they ran short of wine and had only beer to drink, to which they were not accustomed. Thus they remained all the winter.”[1137]

John spent the winter in other fashion. On November 28--two days before the surrender of Rochester--Tonbridge castle, which belonged to the rebel earl of Clare, had surrendered to Robert de Béthune, one of John’s Flemish allies, and on the same day the castle of Bedford yielded to Falkes de Bréauté. In each case the garrison had sent to their lord for help, and in each case no help had been given them.[1138] John left Rochester on December 6, marched through Essex and Surrey into Hampshire, and thence proceeded to Windsor.[1139] On the 20th he held a council at S. Albans.[1140] Two of his envoys had recently come back from Rome with a papal confirmation of the suspension of Archbishop Stephen.[1141] This was read to the convent assembled in the chapter-house, and committed to them for transmission to all cathedral and conventual churches throughout England. The king then retired with his counsellors into the cloister “to arrange how he might confound the magnates of England who were his enemies, and how he might find pay for the foreigners who were fighting under him.” He decided upon dividing his host into two bodies; one was placed under the command of Earl William of Salisbury, assisted by Falkes de Bréauté, Savaric de Mauléon, William Brewer, and a Brabantine captain known as Walter Buck, with orders to check the irruptions of the barons who were in London; of the other the king himself took the command, “intending to go through the northern provinces of England, and destroy with fire and sword everything that came in his way.”[1142]

That same night {Dec. 20} John, with his division, moved on to Dunstable; before daybreak on the morrow he set out for Northampton, and by Christmas he was at Nottingham.[1143] All along his route he sent out parties in every direction to burn the houses of the hostile barons and seize their cattle and their goods; every obstacle that stood in his path was destroyed; and as if the day were not long enough to satiate his love of destruction, he would send men out at night to fire the hedges and the villages along his line of march, that he might rejoice his eyes with the damage done to his enemies; while the other question which had occupied his deliberations at S. Albans, the remuneration of his followers, was solved with the produce of the rapine in which they were not merely indulged but encouraged. Every human being, of whatever rank, sex or age, who crossed the path of this terrible host was seized, tortured, and put to heavy ransom. The constables of the baronial castles dared not trust to the protection of their walls; at the report of the king’s approach they fled, leaving their fortresses to be occupied by him and his troops.[1144] Thus, “not in the usual manner, but as one on the war-path,” he kept Christmas at Nottingham.[1145] On the following day {Dec. 26} he moved on to Langar, and thence, next morning, {Dec. 27} despatched a notice to the garrison of William of Aubigny’s castle of Belvoir that if they did not surrender at once, their lord should be starved to death. To this threat they yielded.[1146]

[Sidenote: 1215–16]

Meanwhile, the barons in London had made no use of the reinforcements sent to them by Louis. They seem to have despaired of overcoming John by any means short of an invasion headed by Louis in person with the whole forces of the French kingdom at his back. Towards the close of the year Saher de Quincy and Robert Fitz-Walter went on another embassy to Philip and Louis, “urgently imploring the father that he would send his son to reign in England, and the son that he would come thither to be crowned.” How or by whom he was to be crowned, when the only prelate competent to perform the rite was in exile and under suspension, and the rival sovereign was under the direct protection of the Pope, they did not explain. Philip refused to entertain their proposals without further security, and demanded “twenty-four hostages at least, of the noblest of the whole land.” The hostages were sent under the charge of the earls of Gloucester and Hereford. When they arrived, Louis began to prepare eagerly for his expedition; but there were still weighty reasons why, as an English chronicler says, “he himself could not hastily set out to undertake so arduous a matter.” So, “to raise the hopes of the barons and try their fidelity,”[1147] he sent his marshal and some others of his vassals with a second contingent, some three hundred knights and cross-bowmen and a proportionate number of foot soldiers, all of whom, together with the English earls, sailed up the Thames and arrived in London just after Epiphany 1216 {_c._ Jan. 8}; he himself promising on oath that he would be at the coast, ready to cross, “with a great multitude of people,” at latest on the octave of S. Hilary, January 20.[1148]

So, while John was pursuing his northward march, the barons sat still and waited. The southern division of John’s host meanwhile was far from idle. Between Christmas and the middle of January detachments of it overran the whole of Essex, Hertfordshire, Middlesex, Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire, while the main body marched to S. Edmund’s, drove the insurgents who had taken refuge there to seek another shelter in the Isle of Ely, followed them thither, and sacked, burned and ravaged the patrimony of S. Etheldreda as they did every other place to which they came.[1149] Their leaders, before setting out, had charged the constables of Windsor, Hertford and Berkhamsted to keep a watch upon all who went into and out of London, and if possible to stop the supplies of the barons there. This latter charge either proved impossible to execute, or the constables deemed its execution impolitic, and deliberately preferred to let the king’s enemies in London ruin themselves by “lying there like delicate women, anxiously considering what variety of food and drink could be set before them to renew their wearied appetites.”[1150] The advance of Savaric de Mauléon on Colchester, on January 29, perhaps roused them at last, for a report reached him that they were hastening to relieve it, and caused him to retire towards S. Edmunds,[1151] probably to rejoin the other royalist leaders who had been doing the work of destruction at Ely. But the barons, still vainly waiting for their foreign ally who came not, made no further movement; and even when the royalists fired a suburb of London itself, and carried off “plunder of inestimable value,”[1152] no retaliation seems to have been attempted.

[Sidenote: 1215]

While the barons slumbered--as a chronicler says--the king was not asleep;[1153] he was wreaking his long-delayed vengeance on the north. The malcontents in the land beyond the Humber had been quicker than their southern comrades to recognize their need of foreign help in their struggle against John, and they had taken a short and easy way of obtaining it for themselves. No sooner had civil war broken out in England in the autumn of 1215 than the young Scottish king, Alexander, who owed his throne and almost his life to the timely help which John had given to his father four years before, marched into Northumberland and laid siege, on October 19, to Norham castle.

[Sidenote: 1215–16]

Three days later the Northumbrian barons did homage to him at Felton. No immediate results, indeed, followed from this new league; the garrison of Norham seem to have been as loyal as their castle was strong; at the end of forty days {Nov. 28} Alexander raised the siege and returned home,[1154] just as John was on the point of receiving the surrender of Rochester; and for more than a month no further movement took place in the north except an obscure rising at York.[1155] When at the opening of 1216 John entered Yorkshire, the terror of his march to Nottingham had gone before him and all thought of resistance was abandoned. He reached Pontefract on January 2; its constable “came there to his mercy.”[1156] He went on to “his city of York,” and “wrought all his will with it.”[1157] On January 7 and 8 he was at Darlington.[1158] The horrors wrought by his troops seem to have equalled, if not surpassed, those which the Scots had been wont to perpetrate in their raids upon Northumbria in their days of savage heathenism before the conversion of Malcolm Canmore.[1159] A few barons “submitted themselves to the mercy of the merciless one”; the rest “fled before his face.”[1160] From Darlington he seems to have advanced on the 8th to Durham; thence he was about to turn southward again, when he learned that Alexander had set fire to Newcastle-on-Tyne. Swearing “by God’s teeth” that he would “run the little sandy fox-cub to his earth,”[1161] John dashed forward to Newcastle; the place was indeed burnt, but Alexander had withdrawn into his own territory,[1162] and on the 11th the English refugees gathered round him in the chapter-house at Melrose and renewed their oath to him on the relics of the saints. John was on their track, burning and ravaging what little there was left to ravage--little enough, for the fugitives had set fire to their own fields and villages that he might get no benefit from them.[1163] On the day of the homage at Melrose John reached Alnwick.[1164] On the 14th he assaulted Berwick; town and castle were taken next day,[1165] and the population butchered, after horrible tortures, by his mercenaries. From Berwick he made, in the following week, a series of raids across the Tweed, and swept the country as far as Dunbar and Haddington, both of which he burned. At last, seeing that the “fox-cub” was not worth a longer chase and that there was more important work to be done elsewhere, he ordered Berwick to be burnt, fired with his own hand--so the Scottish story runs--the house in which he had himself been lodging,[1166] and on January 23 or 24 began to move southward. After stopping two days at Newcastle[1167] and granting a new charter to its citizens,[1168] he made his way slowly back through Yorkshire. When at the end of February he reached Fotheringay,[1169] all the castles in the shire save two were in his power and garrisoned by followers of his own, who were charged to hold the country and continue the work of destruction on the lands of the rebels wherever there was anything left to destroy.[1170] Alexander’s dreams of conquest, the Northumbrian barons’ dream of independence--if subjection to their country’s hereditary foe could be called independence--were alike at an end. Alexander, indeed, made a raid upon Carlisle as soon as John’s back was turned;[1171] but it was a mere raid which led to nothing. Far more significant is the string of safe-conducts which shows how throughout the winter and the spring the terror-stricken English rebels came crowding in to make their peace with John.[1172]

[Sidenote: 1216]

John had now regained the mastery over the whole eastern side of England, from the south coast to the Scottish border,[1173] except a few castles in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. After spending a week in Bedfordshire,[1174] probably to concert measures with Falkes de Bréauté, he marched into East Anglia. On March 12 he was at the gates of Roger Bigod’s castle of Framlingham; it surrendered at once.[1175] Next day he moved on to Ipswich; on the 14th he laid siege to Colchester.[1176] Here the garrison had been reinforced by a detachment of Louis’s Frenchmen, who agreed to surrender on condition that they should be suffered to march out free and their English comrades held to ransom. John, however, broke his promise to the Englishmen and put them in chains. The Frenchmen on reaching London were accused by the barons of having betrayed their comrades by making separate terms for themselves; they were arrested and even threatened with death, but it was finally determined to keep them in custody till Louis should arrive.[1177] On the 25th John proceeded to Hedingham, which belonged to the earl of Oxford, Robert de Vere; three days later it surrendered, and the earl himself “came there to the king’s mercy, and swore that he would thenceforth serve him loyally.” Robert’s oath was soon broken;[1178] but his submission, insincere though it was, indicates that the barons were losing heart. So, too, does an application made at the same time by the earl of Clare and his son for a safe-conduct to and from the king’s court.[1179] A yet more important result of John’s recent campaign was the supply of money which he had acquired by the plunder of his enemies. This enabled him during his stay at Hedingham to satisfy his mercenaries by a general distribution of pay and gifts. Thus secured against the risk of their desertion, he prepared to march upon London.[1180]

[Sidenote: 1215–16]

A third body of troops sent by Louis had arrived in London at the end of February,[1181] and a letter had been received from Louis himself, announcing that “by God’s grace” he would “most certainly” be at Calais ready to cross on Easter Day, April 10.[1182] Encouraged on the one hand by this assurance, on the other the Londoners had been stirred into a mood of dangerous defiance by tidings from Rome. On December 16, 1215, the Pope renewed his condemnation of the barons in such a manner that it could no longer remain what circumstances had made it hitherto, a dead letter. He excommunicated the rebels, this time not merely in general terms, but mentioning thirty-one of them by name; he also placed the city of London under interdict, and he appointed the abbot of Abingdon and two other commissioners to execute this mandate.[1183] It seems to have reached England about the end of February 1216.[1184] The commissioners sent it to all the cathedral and conventual churches for immediate publication, and it was soon published everywhere except in London. There the clergy of S. Paul’s, the barons and the citizens all alike rejected it and appealed against it, declaring that it had been obtained by “false suggestions, and was therefore of no account, more especially as the ordering of lay affairs pertained not to the Pope.”[1185] This last assertion seems ridiculous in the mouths of the barons, who scarce twelve months before had professed pride in having compelled the king to surrender to the Pope the temporal overlordship of England. It was in a spirit of mingled rage at the downfall of the expectations which they had once founded upon that surrender, and revived hope of speedy help from France, that the revolutionists who held the capital met the king’s threat of attack. The citizens opened their gates and arrayed themselves “ready to go forth and fight with him if he should approach within ten leagues of the city.”[1186] Advancing slowly and cautiously, he reached Enfield on the last day of March;[1187] on the following night he seems to have slept at Waltham Abbey, “seven little English leagues from London.”[1188] But he came no nearer. Savaric de Mauléon, venturing on a closer approach, was caught at unawares and barely escaped with heavy loss of men and with a wound of which he all but died; a band of “pirates” who attempted to block the Thames were all either slain, drowned or captured by the Londoners; and evil tidings came from the north how the rebels there had risen anew, laid siege to York, and pressed it so hard that the citizens had been compelled to purchase for a thousand marks a truce till Trinity Sunday.[1189] From Enfield the king passed round by Berkhamsted to Windsor and Reading, and thence went south into Hampshire.[1190]

Of the northern rising we hear no more, but it seems to have proved a failure, for before April 12 three of the chief northern barons, Eustace de Vesci, Robert de Ros and Peter de Brus, offered to return to the king’s service on one condition--that he would allow them to do so without a fine. John’s answer was as politic as it was dignified. “What we desire to have from our barons,” he wrote, “is not so much money as their good and faithful service”; and he sent the three petitioners a safe-conduct to come and speak with him on their own terms.[1191] On the previous day he had given orders that the mayor of York should be “competently provided” out of the lands of the king’s enemies “for his good and faithful service which he did to the king,”[1192] no doubt in the defence of the city during the recent siege. The mayor’s loyalty and the king’s promptitude in rewarding it illustrate a feature of John’s home policy which is traceable through all the vicissitudes of his career: his interest in the towns and the trading classes, and his constant endeavours to cultivate their friendship. All the while that he was harrying the open country, burning villages and plundering castles, he was making careful provision for the furtherance of trade, the security of travelling merchants[1193] and the preservation of foreign commerce from disturbance or interruption. With a French invasion close at hand, he was still issuing safe-conducts to French merchants in London and elsewhere.[1194] For this, indeed, there may have been a political reason; John was anxious to keep on good terms with France in order to counterwork the schemes of the barons in that quarter. He had lately sent an embassy to try whether Philip Augustus could by any means be induced to forbid his son’s proposed expedition.[1195] One of the envoys at least, William the Marshal, was back by Easter,[1196] the day which Louis had fixed for his own departure. That day passed and Louis came not--hindered, it seems, by contrary winds.[1197] About this time John sent a letter to Louis himself, signifying his willingness to amend any injury which Louis might have received at his hands;[1198] and on April 28 he wrote to the guardians of the truce in France proposing that they should hold a meeting with his proctors for the settlement of all disputes which had arisen from infractions of the truce.[1199]

[Sidenote: 1216]

By that time the projected expedition of Louis had assumed an aspect very different from that which it had worn when first suggested by the English barons in the previous autumn. Philip as well as Louis was naturally tempted by what looked like a golden opportunity for annexing England to France; but he was held back by the dread of offending the Pope, who had no sooner heard of the scheme than he despatched a legate, Gualo, with instructions to proceed to France and England for the express purpose of forbidding it. Philip saw that to make his son’s project tolerable in the Pope’s eyes, and therefore safe in those of his own feudataries, he must invent for it some more plausible excuse than the flimsy pretence of election by the excommunicate English barons. He had made out an elaborate case in behalf of Louis and planned his own course of action with characteristic wariness and skill, by the time that Gualo arrived in the spring of 1216. On April 25 the legate was publicly received at Melun[1200] by the French king, to whom he presented the Pope’s letters desiring that Philip would not permit his son to invade England or to molest the English king in any way, but rather that he would protect and assist John as a vassal of the Roman Church. Philip answered at once: “The realm of England never was S. Peter’s patrimony; it is not so now, and never shall be. John was convicted long ago of treason against his brother Richard, and condemned by the judgement of Richard’s court; therefore John was never rightfully king, and had no power to surrender the kingdom. Moreover, if he ever was rightfully king, he afterwards forfeited his right to the crown by the murder of Arthur, for which he was condemned in our court. And in any case no king or prince can give away his realm without the consent of his barons, who are bound to defend it.” This last proposition was loudly applauded by the French magnates. Next day a second meeting took place. Louis, according to a previous arrangement with his father, came in after the rest of the assembly and seated himself by his father’s side, scowling at the legate. Gualo, without appearing to notice his discourtesy, besought him “not to go to England to invade or seize the patrimony of the Roman Church,” and again begged Philip to forbid his doing so. “I have always been devoted and faithful,” answered Philip, “to the Pope and the Roman Church, and by my counsel and help my son will not now attempt aught against them; yet if Louis claims to have any rights in the realm of England, let him be heard, and let justice be done.” On this a knight whom Louis had appointed as his proctor rose and set forth the case thus: “My Lord King, it is well known that John, who is called king of England, was in your court by sentence of his peers condemned to death for treason against his nephew Arthur, whom he had slain with his own hands, and that he was afterwards rejected by the barons of England from reigning over them by reason of the many murders and other enormities which he had committed there; wherefore they began war against him, that they might drive him from the throne without hope of restoration. Moreover, the said king, without the consent of his magnates, made over the realm of England to the Pope and the Roman Church, to receive it back from them for an annual tribute of a thousand marks. Although he could not give the crown of England to any one without consent of the barons, yet he could resign it; and when he resigned it he ceased to be king, and the throne was vacant. Now a vacant throne ought not to be filled save by consent of the barons; wherefore the barons elected the Lord Louis on account of his wife, whose mother, the queen of Castille, was the sole survivor of all the brothers and sisters of the English king.”

With this ingeniously-woven tissue of perverted truths and dressed-up lies it was obviously impossible for Gualo to deal on the spur of the moment. He evaded the point at issue by pointing out that John had taken the cross, and was therefore entitled to be left unmolested till his vow of crusade was fulfilled. Louis’s proctor retorted that John had made war upon Louis both before and after taking the cross, and that Louis was therefore justified in retaliating. Gualo, without further argument, again forbade Louis to invade England, and his father to suffer him to do so, under pain of excommunication. Louis turned to his father: “Sire, although I am your liegeman for the fief which you have given me on this side of the sea, yet concerning the realm of England it appertaineth not to you to decree anything; wherefore I submit me to the judgement of my peers whether you ought to forbid me to prosecute my right, and especially a right concerning which you cannot yourself do me justice. I beseech you therefore not to hinder me, since for my wife’s heritage I will fight, if need be, even unto death.” With these words he left the assembly. Gualo made no remark, but simply asked the king for a safe-conduct to the sea, that he might proceed on his mission to England. “I will gladly give you a safe-conduct through my own domains,” answered Philip; “but should you chance to fall into the hands of any of my son’s men who are guarding the coast, blame me not if evil befall you.” The legate departed in a rage. As soon as he was gone, Louis returned, asked and received his father’s blessing on his enterprize, despatched messengers to Rome to lay his case before the Pope, and himself went to collect his forces at Calais.[1201]

On April 14 John had ordered twenty-one coast towns to send all their ships to the mouth of the Thames.[1202] On the 17th he bade the sheriffs throughout England make a proclamation calling upon all persons who had been in arms against the king to join him within a month after the close of Easter (April 24), on pain of forfeiture for ever.[1203] On the 20th he returned to Windsor; thence he went through Surrey back to Rochester;[1204] on the 25th--the day of the council at Melun--he issued from Canterbury orders to the soldiers then at Rochester to follow him immediately “wheresoever he might be.”[1205] He reached Canterbury that night, Dover on the morrow, and spent the next three weeks flitting up and down along the coast of Kent,[1206] watching for the arrival of both Gualo and Louis, and superintending the gathering of the fleet and the preparation of the coast towns for defence. The Cinque Ports were again pledged, by oaths and hostages, to his service. Yarmouth, Lynn, Dunwich and other sea-ports sent their ships to the muster[1207] at Dover. As soon as it was complete, the king intended to sail with his whole fleet to Calais and block up Louis in the harbour, “for he well knew,” says a contemporary, “that the little vessels which Louis had could not defend themselves against his ships, which were so large; one of his ships was well worth four of those of Louis.” But towards evening on May 18 a storm arose and swept over the fleet as it lay off Dover, and by the morning the ships were so broken and scattered that all hope of bringing them together again was lost.[1208] On the night of the 20th Louis set sail from Calais. Next morning the watchmen on the shore of Thanet saw some of his ships in the distance; they sent word to the king, who was at Canterbury, on the point of setting out to meet the legate, of whose arrival at Romney he had just been apprised. He told the messengers from Thanet that what had been seen were not the enemy’s ships, but some of his own which the storm had driven out to sea. But his words were only spoken to encourage his followers; in his heart he knew that the watchmen were not mistaken. He seems to have ridden only a few miles towards Romney when he met Gualo, clad in his scarlet robes as cardinal, and mounted on a white palfrey, as beseemed the representative of the Pope. King and legate dismounted and embraced. John at once told Gualo that Louis had arrived; Gualo pronounced the invader excommunicate, and rode with John into Canterbury.[1209]

Louis meanwhile had landed at Stonor almost alone; the greater part of his fleet did not even come in sight till the next day, Sunday, May 22. John had now hurried to Sandwich; thence he saw with his own eyes the approach of the hostile fleet as it sailed past the mouth of Pegwell Bay. To prevent its reaching the shore was impossible; the only question was whether he should encounter the French host as soon as it had disembarked and stake everything upon a pitched battle. The trumpets were sounded, the troops arrayed; but as he rode up and down along the shore surveying their ranks his heart sank within him.[1210] They were, almost to a man, mercenaries and foreigners, most of them born subjects of the French king; what if, when the fight was at the hottest, they should go over in a body to their fellow-countrymen and their own king’s son? The risk was too grave to be faced; it was better to withdraw than to court an encounter so likely to prove fatal.[1211] Such was the counsel given to John by one of the few Englishmen still at his side, the wisest and truest of them all, William the Marshal.[1212] For a while John hesitated; then, as was his wont in moments of disappointment and distress, he stole away in silence, and had galloped a league on the road to Dover before the greater part of his men knew that he was gone.[1213] Leaving Dover under the charge of Hubert de Burgh, with a strong garrison and ample provisions,[1214] and appointing the earl of Warren warden of the Cinque Ports,[1215] he made his way through Sussex to Winchester, where he remained watching the course of events during the next ten days.[1216]

The first act of Louis after landing his troops was to issue a manifesto to the English clergy, setting forth, in somewhat more blunt terms than he had ventured to use in presence of the legate at Melun, his pretensions to the English Crown, and exhorting those whom he addressed not to be persuaded into thwarting his endeavours “for the good of the English Church and realm” by anything that they might hear from Gualo, whom he represented as having no just grounds for opposition to him, and as having been brought to England “by the suggestions and bribes” of John.[1217] He then, after seizing a few English ships which had put in at Sandwich after the storm, and plundering the town, marched upon Canterbury. The citizens admitted him without resistance;[1218] Gualo fled from his lodgings in S. Augustine’s abbey; the abbot, who was John’s foster-brother, alone refused all submission to the invader.[1219] From Canterbury Louis proceeded to Rochester, where he was joined by his men from London.[1220] The mighty fortress which had cost John a siege of nearly two months surrendered to Louis in less than a week, on Whit Monday, May 30.[1221] Already the forebodings of the king and the Marshal were more than justified; John’s mercenaries were deserting, and not only those barons who had been recently preparing, or pretending to prepare, to return to their allegiance, but even many of those who had hitherto seemed loyal to him, now joined the leaders of the revolution in doing homage to the invader.[1222] On Whitsun Eve (May 28) Gualo had rejoined the king at Winchester,[1223] after issuing a citation to the English bishops and clergy to meet him there “in aid of the king and the kingdom.” On Whit Sunday, in their presence, he excommunicated Louis by name, together with all his followers and adherents, whose lands, as well as the city of London, he laid under interdict.[1224] The sentence was disregarded; on June 2 Louis entered London;[1225] the citizens welcomed him joyously, and the canons of S. Paul’s received him with a procession in their cathedral church.[1226] Next day he received the homage of the barons and citizens, headed respectively by Robert Fitz-Walter and the mayor, William Hardel.[1227] He then swore on the Gospels “that he would restore to all of them their good laws and their lost heritages,” and wrote to the king of Scots and all the English magnates who had not yet joined him “bidding them either come and do him homage, or quit the realm of England without delay.”[1228]

On June 6 Louis started from London[1229] to seek out his rival at Winchester,[1230] but he was already too late; John had quitted Winchester the day before,[1231] leaving it, with its two castles, under the command of Savaric de Mauléon.[1232] Louis’s first day’s march from London brought him to Reigate, which he entered without opposition, the earl of Warren having withdrawn his garrison from the castle. The royal castle of Guildford surrendered on the 8th, Farnham, which belonged to the see of Canterbury, on the 10th.[1233] On the 14th Louis reached Winchester.[1234] Savaric de Mauléon was, it seems, under orders to rejoin the king when he saw the enemy approaching the city and had completed his preparations for its defence. With the idea, doubtless, of checking the entrance of the foe, he, or some of his followers, set fire to the suburb before he left it. Unluckily the flames spread into the city and laid half of it in ashes. Defence became impossible, and the French marched in to take undisputed possession.[1235] John and Savaric had, however, left a strong garrison in the “chief castle”[1236] at the west end of the city; the bishop’s stronghold of Wolvesey too, at the eastern end, was well provided with defenders, among whom was one of the king’s sons, a young squire named Oliver.[1237] For ten days Louis plied his engines against the “chief castle”; then on June 24 Savaric returned with a licence from the king to negotiate for its surrender and that of Wolvesey. The garrisons were suffered to withdraw, and Louis gave the city into the custody of the count of Nevers.[1238]

In the ten days of the siege Louis had gained something besides Winchester. Before the castles surrendered “there came thither to his will” four of “the greatest and most powerful men in England of those who stood by the king”--the earls of Warren, Arundel, Albemarle and Salisbury.[1239] Albemarle was a turncoat whose adhesion was too uncertain to be of much value to either party;[1240] but the other three had hitherto been steadfast in their loyalty, and Salisbury, moreover, was half-brother to the king.[1241] Still the invader did not seem much nearer to the attainment of the crown which he coveted. From Winchester he went to Porchester,[1242] and thence to Odiham; both places surrendered to him, but the latter cost him a week’s siege, though its garrison consisted only of three knights and ten men-at-arms {July 9}, who of course marched out with the honours of war, “amid the great admiration of the French.”[1243] The conflicting claims and mutual jealousies of his French and English followers were already a source of trouble. The office of marshal of the host, held by Adam de Beaumont, who was marshal to Louis in France, was claimed as an hereditary right by Earl William of Pembroke’s eldest son; Louis transferred it to him “as one who durst not do otherwise, for if he gave it him not, he deemed he should lose the hearts of the English.” Young William the Marshal further claimed the castle of Marlborough, which had been voluntarily surrendered to Louis by Hugh de Neville. Louis, however, bestowed it on his own cousin, Robert of Dreux; whereat the young Marshal “was very angry.” The French followers and continental allies of Louis were already weary of an expedition which they doubtless saw would bring them little honour and less gain. The count of Holland had taken the cross and hurried home to prepare for his crusade. Soon afterwards a number of the men of Artois departed to London and thence took ship for their own land; and before they could reach it they had to beat off “the English in their boats” who attacked them at the mouth of the Thames. Louis himself, after an unsuccessful attempt to make terms with the legate, returned to London,[1244] seemingly about the middle of July.

While Louis was in Hampshire, the barons whom he had left in London, with some of his French troops, overran the eastern counties; they sacked some of the towns, ravaged the country, exacted “tenseries” everywhere, and returned “laden with countless booty and spoils.”[1245] Another party, under Gilbert de Gant and Robert de Ropesley, had been charged by Louis to check the excursions whereby the baronial castles in the neighbourhood of Nottingham and Newark were being reduced to ashes, and the baronial lands around them to subjection, by the garrisons of those two royal fortresses. Gilbert and Robert took the city of Lincoln and laid a tax on the whole of Lindsey; but Lincoln castle was too strong for them, so they went on to invade Holland, which they ravaged and likewise placed under tribute. A third body of troops under Robert de Ros, Peter de Brus and Richard de Percy was meanwhile conquering Yorkshire for Louis;[1246] and Alexander of Scotland had again set out “with all his host, except the Scots from whom he took money,” to renew the siege of Carlisle.[1247] This, like all other sieges of that famous fortress, proved a long and wearisome business; Alexander, however, relieved its tediousness by expeditions into the counties of Northumberland and Durham. He had no purpose now of conquering them for himself; his aim was simply to join hands with the other invader. The Scot king was the natural ally of the English king’s adversary.

Thus by the end of July the power of Louis extended from the Channel to the Scottish border, but not without some important breaks. The castles of the bishopric of Durham were still held for John by Hugh de Balliol and Philip de Ulecotes.[1248] The stranger’s hold upon the south coast was precarious in the extreme so long as Dover, the “key of England,” defied him under Hubert de Burgh; and Windsor at once threatened his hold upon London, and barred his way to the Midlands and the West. These were the districts in which John counted upon making good his defence. Throughout June, while Louis was in Hampshire, John was perambulating Wiltshire and Dorset, personally seeing to the fortification and replenishing of the fortresses in those two shires, planning schemes and giving orders for the security of the royal castles in all parts of his realm, and issuing instructions to their custodians how to act in every possible contingency.[1249] Diplomacy went hand in hand with military precautions. Overtures were made to Reginald de Braose, the deadliest of John’s personal foes, and one of those who had most influence on the western border, for his return to allegiance at the price of the restoration of his heritage.[1250] Safe-conducts were offered to “all who might choose to return to the king’s service” through the intervention of certain appointed persons.[1251] A temporary submission to the invader’s demand of “tenserie” was formally sanctioned in special cases where it was clear that resistance would be ineffectual at the moment.[1252] Help was again sought from over sea; on June 2 the town of Bayonne was desired to send its galleys “for the annoyance and confusion of our enemies.”[1253] John’s own movements indicate that he, very naturally, expected Louis to follow up his conquest of Hampshire by an attack on the western shires. It was obviously with this expectation, and with the double purpose of putting the border in a state of defence and securing for himself a refuge at need, that soon after the middle of July he began to advance northward from Sherborne to Bristol, Berkeley, Gloucester, Tewkesbury and Hereford, reaching Leominster on the last day of the month.[1254] He was at the same time negotiating with some of the Welsh chieftains for their aid and support;[1255] and on August 2 he was actually on Welsh soil, at Radnor. That night, however, he was again in England, at Kingsmead; thence he moved on to Clun, Shrewsbury and Whitchurch. On the 11th he turned southward again; he reached Bridgenorth on the 14th, and stayed there till the 16th, when he went back to Worcester for one night; next day he was at Gloucester.[1256] A letter written on the 19th from Berkeley shows that these movements were dictated by the belief that Louis was preparing an attack upon Worcester and Hereford.[1257] This fact illustrates one of the greatest difficulties of medieval warfare, the difficulty of obtaining correct information as to the whereabouts and movements of the adversary. Louis, at the moment when John was thus anxiously looking out for him in the west, had been for nearly four weeks absorbed in the siege of Dover.

According to Matthew Paris, Philip Augustus had taunted his son with not understanding his business as a commander-in-chief, because he was attempting to conquer England without first securing its key.[1258] At any rate Louis, soon after his return to London, perceived that his hold on the country would never be assured till Dover and Windsor were both in his hands. On July 25 he set out for Dover,[1259] and a day or two later the counts of Dreux and Nevers, with some English barons, laid siege to Windsor.[1260] Of this latter party the Flemish soldier-chronicler of the war says, “Long were they there, and little did they gain.”[1261] They in fact sat before the place for nearly two months in vain.[1262] The siege of Dover proved longer still, and for many weeks bade fair to be equally unprofitable. Many of Louis’s followers went back over sea to their homes, “so that the host dwindled marvellously.”[1263] On August 8, however, the town--not the castle--of Carlisle surrendered to Alexander;[1264] and he at once began to move southward for the purpose of joining Louis. Still a whole month elapsed before the junction was effected. On his way the Scot king stopped to besiege Barnard castle, held by Hugh de Balliol for John. The siege appears to have been unsuccessful, and it cost the life of one of the foremost leaders of the baronial party in the north, Eustace de Vesci.[1265] Some of the other northerners were now helping Gilbert de Gant at the siege of Lincoln castle. This time its constable, Dame Nicola de Haye,[1266] bought off her assailants, who thereupon united their forces to those of Alexander.[1267] The combined host seems to have reached Kent about the second week in September.[1268] Louis went to meet Alexander at Canterbury, brought him back to Dover,[1269] and there received his homage for the lands which he held of the English crown.[1270]

Meanwhile John had at last learned the truth as to his adversary’s movements, and was acting on the information. Gathering a numerous host from the garrisons of the western castles, which he now saw to be out of danger, and from his old allies the Welsh,[1271] he marched up on September 2 from Cirencester to Burford, spent the three following days at Oxford, then struck across the Thames to Wallingford, and on the 6th appeared at Reading. From the 8th to the 13th he fixed his quarters at Sonning.[1272] His advance looked as if intended for the relief of Windsor; he did in fact approach so near that castle that its besiegers “thought they were going to have a battle.” His Welshmen “came by night to shoot into the host, and gave them a great fright. They were a long time armed to await the battle, but they did not get it, for the king retired, I know not by what counsel,” says the Flemish chronicler.[1273] John had in truth never intended to attack them; his real “counsel” is given us by the English writers--his aim was the eastern counties, where he purposed to intercept the Scot king on his homeward journey, and to punish the local landholders and owners of castles for their submission to the invader.[1274] The relief of Windsor he probably hoped to effect by other means, if there is any truth in the assertion of some English chroniclers that the count of Nevers was secretly in his pay.[1275] It may have been for the purpose of communicating with Nevers, as well as for that of frightening Nevers’s companions and reconnoitring the district, that the king lingered in Berkshire. On September 15 he suddenly struck northward from Walton-on-Thames to Aylesbury and Bedford; next day he went on to Cambridge.[1276] The immediate consequence was the relief of Windsor; its besiegers were no sooner assured of his departure from their neighbourhood than they struck their tents, set fire to their military engines, and hurried in pursuit of him. They hoped to overtake him at Cambridge; but, warned by his scouts, he escaped in time, on the night of September 17. A dexterous movement southward to Clare and Hedingham threw his pursuers off the track, and another rapid march brought him to Stamford before they reached Cambridge.[1277] They avenged their disappointment by harrying Cambridgeshire--this was the second, if not the third, harrying which that unhappy county had suffered within four months--carried their spoils back to London, and then proceeded to join Louis at the siege of Dover.[1278]

The count of Nevers was immediately sent off again to escort the Scot king safely homeward as far as Cambridge.[1279] Thence Alexander made his way towards Lincoln, which Gilbert de Gant, with a few followers, had continued to occupy after the other barons had abandoned the siege of the castle.[1280] John meanwhile had gone from Stamford to Rockingham; thence, on September 21,[1281] he set out to begin the work for which he had come from the west. The story of that day and the next, as told by Matthew Paris--how the king went first to Oundle and thence to the other manors of the abbey of Peterborough, burning the houses and barns; how he passed on to Crowland and bade Savaric de Mauléon fire the abbey church and the village while he himself stood at a distance to watch the blaze; how Savaric yielded to the monks’ prayer for mercy, and accepted from them, as the price of their escape, a sum of money which he brought back to John, and how the furious king, after overwhelming his too placable lieutenant with abuse, helped with his own hands to fire the harvest-fields, running up and down amid the smoke and the flames till the whole territory of S. Guthlac was a blackened desert[1282]--whether its details be literally exact or not, pictures vividly the mood of the tyrant. It is little wonder that when the tidings of his advance reached Lincoln {Sept. 22}, Gilbert and his men “fled before his face, dreading his presence like lightning.”[1283] They probably fled into the Isle of Axholme, for from Lincoln John went by way of Barton[1284] and Scotter to Stowe, where he stayed three days {Sept. 26–28}, and whence he appears to have sent his mercenaries across the Trent to ravage the Isle with fire and sword. He returned to Lincoln on the 28th, to find that Alexander had spent two or three days there in his absence,[1285] and had slipped past him into Yorkshire. John, however, was less eager for the capture of “the little sandy fox” than for vengeance upon the English rebels. From Lincoln northward to Grimsby, and thence south again to Spalding, the Lincolnshire fields--now, at the beginning of October, all white to harvest[1286]--were given to the flames, and the houses and farm-buildings sacked and destroyed by the terrible host with the king at its head.[1287] On October 9 he appeared before Lynn;[1288] here the townsfolk, like most of their class throughout England, were on his side, and they gave him not only a joyous welcome, but a substantial contribution in money.[1289] He committed the custody of the town and the duty of fortifying it to Savaric de Mauléon,[1290] whom on September 30 he had sent back to Crowland to “seek out and capture the knights and men-at-arms, enemies of the king, who were hiding in secret places” among the fens around the monastery. Savaric had “failed to find those whom he sought”; but he had dragged some fugitives out of sanctuary in the abbey, and brought back a valuable spoil of flocks and herds to his master at Lynn.[1291]

Louis had now been besieging Dover for more than two months, and had made no progress at all. The strength of the castle, the skill and valour of Hubert de Burgh and the hundred and forty knights who, with the usual complement of men-at-arms, constituted its garrison, were more than a match for all his forces. He swore that he would not quit the place till he had hanged every man within its walls;[1292] but even the fall of one of its towers seemed to have brought him no nearer to effecting an entrance.[1293] He could only turn the siege into a blockade, and wait till starvation should accomplish the work in which battery and assault had failed. In the country at large he was distinctly losing ground. Throughout the summer he had been set at nought in Sussex by a young Flemish adventurer called William of Casinghem, who, “scorning to do him homage, gathered together a thousand bowmen, lodged in the wilderness and woods with which that country abounded, and gave the French great trouble all through the time of war, slaying many thousands of them.”[1294] On September 2 John wrote a letter of encouragement to an association extending through Sussex, Kent, Surrey and Hampshire, composed of persons whom he describes as “sworn and confederate together for fealty and service to ourself,” although they had been compelled against their will to swear allegiance to his rival. The “barons”--that is, the citizens--of Hastings, Sandwich, Dover, Hythe, Romney, Winchelsea, Rye, Pevensey, Shoreham and Portsmouth, who had also, under compulsion, taken the oath to Louis, had likewise assured John of their devotion to himself, and were in return assured of his favour; while the men of Seaford had resisted all the pressure put upon them by their lord, Gilbert de Laigle, to forsake their allegiance, and were on September 3 warmly thanked by John for their loyalty.[1295] Soon after the beginning of the siege of Dover Louis was joined from over sea by the count of Perche, and in September or October by Peter of Britanny; the arrival of this last, however, brought no real gain, for as soon as Peter reached England, his brother, Robert of Dreux, returned to France. Louis’s English partizans, too, were falling away. Earl William of Albemarle offered his repentance and his services to John, who of course “forgave him most kindly.”[1296] Of yet greater importance was the return to allegiance of William of Salisbury; it was he who, in conjunction with Falkes de Bréauté, captured or put to flight a body of Louis’s adherents who were besieging Exeter.[1297] At last, however, a gleam of light fell across the gloomy prospects of the French party. Towards the middle of October Hubert de Burgh and his lieutenant, Gerard de Sotinghem, felt that they could not hold out much longer, and asked for a truce, that they might send to John either for succour, or for leave to surrender the castle. The truce was granted, and on the 14th the siege of Dover was suspended.[1298]

The crisis had come; it had, however, really come not on the cliffs of Kent, but on the shores of the Wash. Sumptuously entertained by the burghers of Lynn, John, who--unlike most of his race--was a notorious glutton, feasted till his excesses brought on a violent attack of dysentery[1299] which he himself seems to have recognized as the beginning of the end. One of the latest entries on the Patent Rolls of his reign is probably significant of the remorse awakened in him, for one at least of his many crimes, by the terror of approaching death; on October 10 he granted to Margaret, wife of Walter de Lacy, some land in the royal forest of Acornbury, that she might build thereon a religious house for the souls of her father, mother and brother[1300]--William, Maud and the younger William de Braose. He could not rest; ill as he was, he moved next day {Oct. 11} from Lynn to Wisbeach; and early on the following morning {Oct. 12} he set out again. “Like a swiftly advancing storm,” before which all men fled, he swept northward to the mouth of the Welland, and thence in his impatience set out to cross the Wash without waiting either for the ebb of the tide or for any one who knew the way to guide him across the treacherous soil, covered as it was with brackish water. Suddenly the whole host, while struggling with the waves, felt the ground opening beneath its feet. The king himself and a part of his troops with difficulty reached the further shore; the rest of his followers and the whole of his baggage train, with all his treasure and his lately gathered spoils, men, horses, arms, tents, provisions, “everything in the world that he held most dear, short of his own life,” went down into the quicksand.[1301] When at night he reached Swineshead abbey, rage and grief threw him into a fever, which he aggravated by supping greedily on peaches and new cider.[1302] With great difficulty he made his way on the 14th to Sleaford.[1303] There he was found, probably on the 15th, by the messengers whom Hubert de Burgh had sent from Dover to seek him. Their tidings brought on a fresh access of fever, which bleeding failed to relieve.[1304] Nothing could check his restlessness; that night or next morning {Oct. 15–16} he set out for Newark, and in spite of grievous bodily suffering, he set out on horseback. He had, however, ridden only three or four miles, “panting and groaning,” when increasing sickness compelled him to dismount, and he bade his followers make him a litter in which he might travel more easily. There was no workman to make it, and nothing to make it of; all that his men could do was to cut down with their swords and knives the willows by the roadside, weave them together as best they might, and throw a horse-cloth over them. This litter, without cushions or even straw to relieve its hardness, had for want of carriage-horses to be either slung between some of the high-mettled destriers of the knights, or carried on the shoulders of the men. Its shaking and jolting soon proved intolerable: “This accursed litter has broken all my bones, and well-nigh killed me,” cried the king in an agony of pain and rage. Matthew Paris quotes a French rime concerning the sons of Henry II. which thus foretold their fate: “Henry, the fairest, shall die at Martel; Richard, the Poitevin, shall die in the Limousin; John shall die, a landless king, in a litter.” The prediction was all but fulfilled; John, however, gathered up strength and spirit enough to avoid a literal fulfilment of its closing words, and to ride “on an ambling nag” into Newark.[1305]

For three days {Oct. 16–18}, in the bishop of Lincoln’s castle whose ruins still look down upon the Trent, the king lay dying. The abbot of Croxton, who was skilled in medicine, attended him as his physician,[1306] and also ministered to his soul, for he persuaded him to confess his sins and receive the Holy Communion.[1307] Then the one natural affection traceable in John’s character broke out in anxiety for his two little sons, especially for the elder of them, to whom the crown must devolve. He solemnly declared Henry his heir, made those around him take an oath of fealty to the boy, and sent letters to the sheriffs and the constables of the royal castles, bidding them look to him as their lord.[1308] He had already, on October 15, before leaving Sleaford, dictated a letter entreating for Henry the special protection of the Pope.[1309] He now appointed Peter de Mauley guardian of his younger son Richard, whom he had apparently left under Peter’s charge in Corfe castle. There was but one man in England to whom he could confidently entrust the guardianship of the heir to the throne. “Before he died, he sent word to William the Marshal, the earl of Pembroke, that he placed his eldest son, Henry, in God’s keeping and his, and besought him for God’s sake that he would take thought for Henry’s interest.”[1310]

The abbot of Croxton then asked the king where he wished to be buried. “I commend my body and my soul to God and to S. Wulfstan” was John’s reply.[1311] His last act seems to have been the dictation of the fragmentary document which has come down to us as his will. “Being overtaken,” he says, “by grievous sickness, and thus incapable of making a detailed disposition of all my goods, I commit the ordering and disposing of my will to the fidelity and discretion of my faithful men whose names are written below, without whose counsel, were they at hand, I would not, even if in health, ordain anything; and I ratify and confirm whatsoever they shall faithfully ordain and determine concerning my goods, for the purposes of making satisfaction to God and Holy Church for the wrongs I have done them, sending help to the realm of Jerusalem, furnishing support to my sons for the recovery and defence of their heritage, rewarding those who have served us faithfully, and distributing alms to the poor and to religious houses for the salvation of my soul. And I pray that whosoever shall give them counsel and assistance herein may receive God’s grace and favour; and may he who shall violate the settlement made by them incur the curse and wrath of God Almighty and the Blessed Mary and all the saints. First, then, I desire that my body be buried in the church of the Blessed Mary and S. Wulfstan of Worcester. Now I appoint as ordainers and disposers of my will the following persons:--the lord Gualo, by God’s grace cardinal priest of the title of S. Martin, legate of the Apostolic See; Peter, lord bishop of Winchester; Richard, lord bishop of Chichester; Silvester, lord bishop of Worcester; Brother Aimeric of Ste. Maure; William the Marshal, earl of Pembroke; Ranulf, earl of Chester; William, earl of Ferrars; William Brewer; Walter de Lacy; John of Monmouth; Savaric de Mauléon; Falkes de Bréauté.”[1312] Here, without date, signature or seal, the so-called will breaks off abruptly; evidently the testator had not time to complete it. At midnight {Oct. 18–19} a whirlwind swept over Newark with such violence that the townsfolk thought their houses would fall, and in that hour of elemental disturbance and human terror the king passed away.[1313] A monk named John of Savigny, entering the town at daybreak {Oct. 19}, met the servants of the royal household hurrying out laden with everything of their master’s that they could carry. The corpse--for which they had not left even a decent covering[1314]--had meanwhile been hastily embalmed by the abbot of Croxton; John having, it is said, made a grant of his heart, with ten pounds’ worth of land, to Croxton abbey.[1315] The abbot, too, fled as soon as his work was done and his strange relic secured; it was John of Savigny who, at the request of the constable of Newark, kept the last watch beside the body and offered his mass that morning for the soul of the dead king.[1316] The body was then dressed in such semblance of royal attire as could be procured, and the remnant of John’s soldiers--nearly all foreign mercenaries--formed themselves into a guard for its protection on the journey from Newark to Worcester. The grim funeral train, every man in full armour, passed unhindered across England, and John was buried by Bishop Silvester in Worcester cathedral according to his desire.[1317]

Within this tomb lies buried a monarch’s outward form, Whose inner man’s departure hath stilled war’s raging storm.

Thus may be roughly rendered the opening lines of an epitaph on King John preserved by Roger of Wendover.[1318] The poet’s words are true; John’s death virtually ended the war. From his burial the Marshal, the Legate, and the bishops passed to the crowning of his heir and the publication, in the boy-king’s name, of the Great Charter in a revised form to which Gualo had no hesitation in giving the papal sanction, and which, thus safeguarded, left the revolutionary party no excuse for continuing the struggle. Thenceforth it was idle for Louis and his adherents to pretend that they were fighting for England’s deliverance from bondage; all men could see that they were fighting for her enslavement to a foreign conqueror. The majority of the barons had already become conscious of the blunder, or worse than blunder, which they had committed in calling the stranger to their aid, and were ready now to join in a national movement for his expulsion. His enterprise was doomed to fail when the kingdom ceased to be divided against itself; and the one insuperable obstacle to the healing of its divisions was removed in the person of John. It was John whose very existence had made peace impossible. “Forasmuch as when he came to die he possessed none of his land in peace,” says Matthew Paris, “he is called Lackland.”[1319] John had indeed earned for himself in a new sense the name which his father had given him at his birth; and he had earned it not by blunders in statecraft or errors in strategy, not by weakness or cowardice or sloth, but by the almost superhuman wickedness of a life which, twenty years before its end, a historian of deeper insight than Matthew had characterized in one memorable phrase--“Nature’s enemy, John.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1097] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 331; W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 226.

[1098] _Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 156 b.

[1099] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1100] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 226.

[1101] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 157. The date seems to be either September 20 to 22 or October 5 to 6; see _Itin._ a. 17.

[1102] _Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 181 b.

[1103] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 330, 331. The dates are not quite clear. Roger gives none, but says John laid siege to the castle “on the third day” after the barons entered it; Ralph of Coggeshall, p. 175, says John entered the city on Sunday October 11. But the _Itinerary_ shows that John was on the 11th at Ospring and on the 12th at Gillingham, and he does not date from Rochester till the 13th. I have therefore ventured to suppose that Ralph has given the date of the barons’ arrival by mistake for that of the king’s.

[1104] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 158, 159.

[1105] R. Coggeshall, p. 175.

[1106] See below, p. 250.

[1107] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 226.

[1108] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 159.

[1109] Cf. _ib._ p. 157; W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 226; R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 330; and R. Coggeshall, p. 176.

[1110] R. Wendover, _l.c._

[1111] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 231 b.

[1112] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 331. Cf. _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 160. One party under Hugh de Boves was wrecked in a storm on the Norfolk coast, September 26; their leader was drowned, so were many others, and a large quantity of money also went down; but the survivors made their way to the king in time to join him at Rochester and help in the siege, _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 155, 156; _Chron. Mailros_, a. 1215; R. Coggeshall, pp. 174, 175; R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 332.

[1113] R. Coggeshall, p. 176.

[1114] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 226; R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 333.

[1115] W. Coventry, _l.c._

[1116] R. Wendover, _l.c._

[1117] W. Coventry, _l.c._

[1118] M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 165. It is Matthew alone who gives the name of the leader of the party. His version of the expedition is important, as he--notwithstanding his strong anti-royalist feeling--shows up the cowardice of the barons, and especially of Fitz-Walter, on this occasion, quite as strongly, and is quite as sarcastic upon it, as the royalist Roger of Wendover.

[1119] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 333.

[1120] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 226. R. Coggeshall, p. 177, says that John had contrived to prevent some of the northern barons from joining them by means of forged letters purporting to come from Fitz-Walter and his comrades, telling the Northerners that their help was no longer needed.

[1121] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 227.

[1122] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 334, 335.

[1123] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 163; R. Wend. vol. iii. p. 335.

[1124] R. Wend. vol. iii. p. 336.

[1125] In W. Coventry, _l.c._, John is said to have hanged only one cross-bowman, whom he had had in his service from boyhood. See the names of the knights made prisoners, in R. Wend. vol. iii. pp. 335, 336, _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 241 b, and _Rot. Pat._ p. 161.

[1126] _Rot. Pat._ p. 157.

[1127] _Ib._ p. 157 b.

[1128] _Ib._ p. 158.

[1129] _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1210.

[1130] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 225.

[1131] Louis had inherited the county of Artois from his mother.

[1132] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 359.

[1133] W. Coventry, vol. ii. pp. 225, 226.

[1134] “S’il voloit venir en Engletierre sa cape toursée, il li donroient le règne en boine pais et le feroient seigneur d’eus,” _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 160. Cf. W. Coventry, _l.c._

[1135] R. Coggeshall, pp. 176, 177.

[1136] Cf. _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 160, and R. Coggeshall, p. 176.

[1137] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 160, 161.

[1138] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 349, 350; _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 161, 162. John had granted the earldom of Clare to Robert de Béthune; _Hist._, _l.c._

[1139] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1140] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 347.

[1141] _Ib._ pp. 344–6.

[1142] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 347. Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 177. Ralf substitutes Gerard of Sotteghem for William Brewer; but in R. Wendover, p. 348, Gerard is named among those who accompanied the king.

[1143] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 348, 350; confirmed by _Itin._ a. 17.

[1144] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 348.

[1145] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 228.

[1146] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 350.

[1147] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 359, 360.

[1148] R. Howden, vol. iv. p. 189, note 4. Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 178, and _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 162. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 360, has confused this second French contingent with the first, which had come in November 1215, and seemingly also with a third. See below, pp. 261, 262.

[1149] Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 349, 358; W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 229, and R. Coggeshall, pp. 177, 178.

[1150] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 349, 352.

[1151] R. Coggeshall, p. 178.

[1152] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 349.

[1153] _Ib._ p. 352.

[1154] _Chron. Mailros_, a. 1216.

[1155] See footnote 1157 below.

[1156] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 163; date from _Itin._ a. 17.

[1157] “Puis s’en ala-il à Wrewic [_var._ Euerwic] sa cité, qui encontre lui s’iert revelée; si en fist toute sa volenté.” _Hist. des Ducs_, _l.c._ John was at York on January 4, _Itin._ a. 17.

[1158] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1159] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 351, 352.

[1160] R. Coggeshall, pp. 178, 179.

[1161] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 163, 164. Cf. M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. pp. 641, 642, and _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 172.

[1162] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 164; for dates see _Itin._ a. 17.

[1163] _Chron. Mailros_, a. 1216.

[1164] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1165] Cf. _ll.cc._ and _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 164.

[1166] _Chron. Mailros_ and _Hist. des Ducs_, _ll.cc._

[1167] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1168] _Rot. Chart._ p. 219.

[1169] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1170] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 352, 353.

[1171] February, _Chron. Mailros_, a. 1216.

[1172] _Rot. Pat._ pp. 162, 162 b, 168, 169.

[1173] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 352.

[1174] February 29–March 8, _Itin._ a. 17.

[1175] Cf. _Itin._ a. 17, and _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 165.

[1176] Cf. _ib._ and R. Coggeshall, p. 179.

[1177] R. Coggeshall, pp. 179, 180; for dates see _Itin._ a. 17. The king’s safe-conduct to the French soldiers (names given) from Colchester to London is dated March 24, _Rot. Pat._ pp. 171 b, 172.

[1178] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 165.

[1179] _Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 172 b.

[1180] R. Coggeshall, p. 180.

[1181] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 360, who, however, has confused this contingent with the former ones.

[1182] _Ib._ p. 363.

[1183] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 354–6.

[1184] R. Coggeshall, p. 179, mentions its arrival just after the death of Geoffrey de Mandeville, which occurred on February 22.

[1185] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 357.

[1186] R. Coggeshall, p. 180.

[1187] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1188] Cf. _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 165, and _Itin._ a. 17.

[1189] R. Coggeshall, p. 180.

[1190] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1191] _Rot. Pat._ p. 176.

[1192] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 260.

[1193] _Rot. Pat._ pp. 170, 170 b, 171.

[1194] _Ib._ p. 172 b.

[1195] R. Coggeshall, pp. 180, 181.

[1196] _Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 175 b.

[1197] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 229.

[1198] _Rot. Pat._ p. 176.

[1199] _Ib._ p. 179.

[1200] See _Revue historique_, vol. xxxii. p. 49, note 2.

[1201] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 364–7. The version of M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. pp. 176, 177, is as M. Petit-Dutaillis says (_Louis VIII._ p. 95, note), obviously nothing but an oratorical amplification.

[1202] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 270.

[1203] _Ib._ p. 270 b.

[1204] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1205] _Rot. Pat._ p. 178 b.

[1206] _Itin._ a. 17.

[1207] R. Coggeshall, p. 181.

[1208] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 167, 168. Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 181.

[1209] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 168, 169. Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 368, and _Ann. Winton._ a. 1216, both of which give the same date for Louis’s arrival. R. Coggeshall, p. 181, gives a date which, though self-contradictory, is, I think, meant for the same--“die sabbati post Ascensionem Domini, scilicet xiiii kalendas Junii.” W. Coventry, p. 229, is quite wrong. John had gone on May 19 (Ascension Day) to Folkestone; on the 20th and 21st he was at Canterbury. _Itin._ a. 17, 18.

[1210] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 169.

[1211] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 368; W. Coventry, vol. ii. pp. 229, 230.

[1212] _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1215.

[1213] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 170. The assertion of William the Breton, _Gesta P. A._ c. 221, that John actually did await the attack of the French, and was driven away by their vigorous onset, certainly is, as M. Petit-Dutaillis says (_Louis VIII._ p. 100), an error. That error is grounded, like the sneering comments of Ralf of Coggeshall (p. 181), the _Ann. Winton._ (a. 1216), and some later writers, on the mistaken idea that John was on the spot when Louis first landed on the 21st.

[1214] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 170.

[1215] _Rot. Pat._ p. 184.

[1216] _Itin._ a. 18.

[1217] Thorne, _Gesta Abb. S. Aug. Cant._ in Twysden, _X Scriptt._ cols. 1868–70. The letter as there given is addressed to the abbot and convent of S. Augustine’s, but it was evidently a manifesto of which copies were sent, or intended to be sent, to all the religious houses of note, probably also to the secular clergy, and perhaps to be distributed among the laity as well. The character of Louis’s “case” as set forth in this letter, and in the arguments of his envoys at Rome (R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 371–8), has been sufficiently exposed by M. Petit-Dutaillis, _Louis VIII._ pp. 75–87.

[1218] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 170, 171; cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 181, and _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1216.

[1219] Thorne, _l.c._ cols. 1864, 1870.

[1220] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 171.

[1221] _Chron. Merton._ in Petit-Dutaillis, _Louis VIII._ p. 514.

[1222] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 230; R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 370.

[1223] _Ann. Winton._ a. 1216.

[1224] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 230. Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 369, 370.

[1225] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 171; W. Coventry, _l.c._; _Liber de Antiq. Legibus_, Appendix, p. 202.

[1226] _Hist. des Ducs_, _l.c._; _Liber de Antiq. Legibus_, _l.c._

[1227] _Chron. Merton._ in Petit-Dutaillis, _Louis VIII._ p. 514. Cf. _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 171, 172; R. Coggeshall, pp. 181, 182, and R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 368, 369.

[1228] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 369.

[1229] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 171, 172.

[1230] R. Coggeshall, p. 182.

[1231] _Itin._ a. 18. This disposes of R. Coggeshall’s story (_l.c._) that John “cognito ejus adventu, draconem suum deposuit et aufugit.”

[1232] _Ann. Winton._ a. 1216.

[1233] _Ann. Waverl._ a. 1216.

[1234] _Ib._ a. 1216. The _Ann. Winton._ a. 1216 give a wrong date.

[1235] Cf. _Ann. Winton._ a. 1216, and _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 173. Whichever version be the correct one, both alike show that Ralf of Coggeshall (_l.c._) is wrong in attributing the fire to John himself.

[1236] “Li grans castiaus le roi,” “le maistre castiel,” _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 173.

[1237] _L.c._

[1238] Cf. _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 174; _Rot. Pat._ p. 188 b, and _Ann. Waverl._ a. 1216.

[1239] _Hist. des Ducs_, _l.c._ Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 182, and W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 231.

[1240] “Qui tamen cito rediit,” W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 231.

[1241] William of Armorica, _Gesta Phil. Aug._ c. 222, says that Salisbury changed sides because “ei certo innotuit relatore” that during his own captivity in France his royal brother had made an attempt on the honour of his wife (the well-known Countess Ela). As, however, we shall see that Salisbury “went back” almost as promptly as Albemarle, and the story seems quite unknown to the English chroniclers, its truth may be doubted, though the mere fact that such a story could be told of John with reference to his own sister-in-law illustrates the character for reckless wickedness which he had earned for himself.

[1242] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 174.

[1243] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 371. Odiham surrendered July 9, _Ann. Waverl._ a. 1216.

[1244] _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 175–7.

[1245] Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 371, 378–81, _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 172, and M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 182.

[1246] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 379.

[1247] _Chron. Mailros_, a. 1216.

[1248] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 379.

[1249] _Rot. Pat._ pp. 184 b, 185 b, 186, 186 b, 187 b, 188, 193–5.

[1250] _Ib._ p. 184. Cf. _ib._ p. 192.

[1251] _Ib._ pp. 185, 187, 187 b, 188 b, 189, 189 b, etc.

[1252] _Ib._ pp. 187, 188.

[1253] _Ib._ p. 185 b.

[1254] _Itin._ a. 18.

[1255] _Rot. Pat._ p. 191 b; _Brut y Tywysogion_, p. 293.

[1256] _Itin._ a. 18.

[1257] _Rot. Pat._ p. 194. Worcester had been surrendered to the younger William Marshal, for Louis, early in July, but was retaken on the 17th by the earl of Chester and Falkes de Bréauté; _Ann. Wigorn._ a. 1215. The castle, according to _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1215, was taken by “the old Marshal” at some unspecified date. (In both the Worcester and the Dunstable Annals the history of 1216 is placed under the year 1215.)

[1258] M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. p. 664.

[1259] _Liber de Antiq. Legibus_, appendix, p. 202; _Ann. Waverl._ a. 1216. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 380, gives a wrong date.

[1260] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 177. Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 182; R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 381, and W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 230.

[1261] _Hist. des Ducs_, _l.c._

[1262] R. Coggeshall, _l.c._

[1263] _Hist. des Ducs_, _l.c._

[1264] _Chron. Mailros_, a. 1216.

[1265] _Ib._; R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 382, 383.

[1266] Widow of John’s old friend Gerard de Camville; see above, p. 31.

[1267] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 230.

[1268] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 179, relates John’s advance to Reading, which took place on September 6 (_Itin._ a. 18), and then goes on “_Puis_ vint li rois d’Escoce,” etc.

[1269] _Ib._

[1270] “Fecit [Alexander] ei [_i.e._ Ludovico] homagium de jure suo, quod de rege Anglorum tenere debuit,” R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 382. “Lendemain fist li rois son houmage à Looys de la tierre de Loonnois,” _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 179. (M. Francisque-Michel and M. Petit-Dutaillis render the last word “Lennox”; does it not rather represent “Lothian”?) The Chronicle of Melrose, a. 1216, says cautiously, “Alexander rex ... humagium fecit dicto Laodowico, ut dicitur.”

[1271] Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 381, and _Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 178, 179.

[1272] _Itin._ a. 18.

[1273] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 179.

[1274] Cf. W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 231, and R. Coggeshall, p. 182.

[1275] Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 382; M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 185; and _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1215.

[1276] _Itin._ a. 18.

[1277] Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 382; R. Coggeshall, p. 183; W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 231; _Itin._ a. 18; and _Rot. Pat._ p. 197 b.

[1278] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 382.

[1279] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 179.

[1280] R. Wendover, _l.c._

[1281] _Itin._ a. 18.

[1282] M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. pp. 189–190. Cf. _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. p. 667. Matthew gives no precise date; but he implies that it was before Michaelmas; and the _Itinerary_ shows that the only possible date is September 21–22, on the way from Rockingham to Lincoln.

[1283] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 382; for date see _Itin._ a. 18.

[1284] _Rot. Claus._ vol. i. p. 289; probably one of several small places so called, on the eastern side of the Trent.

[1285] Cf. W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 231, and _Itin._ a. 18.

[1286] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 381.

[1287] Cf. _ib._, W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 231, and _Itin._ a. 18.

[1288] _Itin._ a. 18.

[1289] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 384.

[1290] R. Coggeshall, p. 183.

[1291] W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 232.

[1292] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 380.

[1293] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 179.

[1294] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 370. The leader’s name comes from _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 181; M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. p. 655, has corrupted it into “Collingham.” See also _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1215. On William de Casinghem’s relations with John see _Rot. Pat._ pp. 185, 186. He figures frequently in the Rolls of the next reign.

[1295] _Rot. Pat._ p. 196.

[1296] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 179.

[1297] _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1215.

[1298] R. Coggeshall, p. 182. Cf. _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 180, and W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 232.

[1299] R. Coggeshall, p. 183. Cf. W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 231.

[1300] _Rot. Pat._ p. 199.

[1301] Cf. R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 384; M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 190; and R. Coggeshall, pp. 183, 184.

[1302] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 385; M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 191. The later legends about the cause of John’s death are not worth notice.

[1303] R. Wendover, _l.c._, says John left Swineshead “summo diluculo.” The _Itinerary_ shows him there on October 12 and 13, and at Sleaford on the 14th and 15th.

[1304] R. Coggeshall, p. 183. Louis had raised the siege of Dover only on the 14th, but the truce must have been arranged and the messengers despatched at least a day or two earlier, or the latter could not possibly have overtaken John at Sleaford. They must in any case have travelled with marvellous rapidity.

[1305] M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. pp. 191, 192. He relates all this as having occurred on the road from Swineshead to Sleaford, where he makes John die; a characteristic piece of confusion, illustrative of Matthew’s careless way of reading the author on whose work his own is based. The itinerary given by Roger of Wendover, vol. iii. p. 385, is perfectly accurate and perfectly clear.

[1306] M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. p. 668.

[1307] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 385. The long account inserted by Matthew Paris in his _Hist. Angl._ (vol. ii. p. 193)--_not_, it is to be observed, in his _Chron. Maj._--of John’s forgiveness of the barons and good advice to his heir is evidently intended for the edification of Henry III. and of posterity, and if it has any foundation at all, it is inserted in a wrong place; for it is put after John’s last Communion, whereas the abbot obviously must have insisted upon John’s declaring himself to be in charity with all men (the barons, by implication at least, included) _before_ he gave him the Sacrament.

[1308] R. Wendover, _l.c._

[1309] Baronius, _Annales_ (ed. Mansi), vol. xx. p. 397.

[1310] _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 180. Cf. _Hist. de G. le Mar._ vv. 15167–88.

[1311] R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 385.

[1312] _Foedera_, vol. i. pt. i. p. 144.

[1313] R. Coggeshall, p. 184. Cf. W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 231, and R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 385.

[1314] R. Coggeshall, _l.c._

[1315] Cf. W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 232; M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ vol. ii. p. 668; and _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 194.

[1316] R. Coggeshall, _l.c._

[1317] R. Wendover, vol. iii. pp. 385, 386.

[1318]

“Hoc in sarcophago sepelitur regis imago, Qui moriens multum sedavit in orbe tumultum.”

R. Wendover, vol. iii. p. 386.

[1319] M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ vol. ii. p. 191.

NOTE I

JOHN AND THE DE BRAOSES

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

The story of John’s vengeance on the family of De Braose appears, in slightly varied forms, in almost every chronicle of the period. Ralph of Coggeshall (p. 164), Roger of Wendover (vol. iii. p. 235) and the _Brut y Tywysogion_ (a. 1209) say the victims were “slain in Windsor castle”; the Annals of Dunstable and of Oseney (a. 1210), that they “died in prison,” without specifying where or how. The Barnwell Annalist (W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 202) and the Annals of Margan, Tewkesbury, Waverley, Winchester, and Worcester (a. 1210) say they were starved to death. The _Hist. des Ducs de Normandie_ (pp. 114–115) says they were imprisoned “el castiel del Corf,” with no food save “une garbe d’avoine e i bacon cru,” and describes with gruesome minuteness the attitudes in which, on the eleventh day, they were found dead. Ralph of Coggeshall makes the victims William de Braose’s wife and “sons” (_filii_); Roger of Wendover, his wife, eldest son, and that son’s wife; the _Ann. Winton._, wife and “younger” son; the _Ann. Tewkesb._, wife and “children” (_liberi_); while the _Ann. Dunst._ say: “Cepit [rex] Willelmum de Lacy, et Willelmum de Brause juniorem, et sororem ejus, et Matildem matrem ejus; qui in carcere post modum perierunt.” All the other writers speak only of the wife and one son, whom the _Ann. Osen._ call “Willelmus primogenitus ejus,” and the _Ann. Wigorn._ “haeres.” This latter version is undoubtedly the correct one as to the last point; of De Braose’s three sons, the eldest, William, alone was in John’s power; Giles, the second, was bishop of Hereford and safe beyond the sea, while the third, Reginald, had escaped capture, and lived to recover the greater part of the family heritage. One of the daughters--the wife of Hugh Mortimer--had been taken prisoner with her mother and eldest brother (_Foedera_, vol. i. pt. i. p. 107); but she did not share their fate, for she was set free in 1214 (_Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 122); and Roger of Wendover is certainly wrong about the younger William’s wife, who was still living in July 1220 (_Royal Letters_, ed. Shirley, vol. i. p. 136). The elder William died, an exile in France, about a year after this tragedy (R. Wend. vol. iii. p. 237).

NOTE II

EUSTACE DE VESCI AND ROBERT FITZ-WALTER

Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz-Walter have long figured in history as typical examples of the way in which individual barons were goaded into hatred and vengeance against John by his invasions of their domestic peace, and also as foremost among the “patriots” to whom England is supposed to be indebted for her Great Charter. On both aspects of the lives of these two men--especially of the life of Fitz-Walter, whom Professor Tout has glorified as “the first champion of English liberty”--a few considerations may be offered here.

1. The earliest mention of John’s unsuccessful attempt to entrap the wife of Eustace de Vesci is in an addition made by a chronicler at Furness Abbey, writing c. 1270–1298, to the Stanley chronicler’s continuation of the history of William of Newburgh. This Furness writer (Howlett, _Chron. of Stephen_, etc., vol. ii. p. 521) merely states the bare fact, without any details, in the briefest and simplest way, and without any clue to the date. Walter of Hemingburgh, who was living in 1313, tells the story in an elaborate form which is certainly not impossible, perhaps not even very improbable, although it somewhat resembles a story in Procopius (see _Dic. Nat. Biogr._ “Vesci, Eustace de”). Walter gives it as an illustration of John’s character, of which he inserts a picture--painted in the most frightful colours--between the coming of the Franciscans in 1212 and the rising of the barons in 1215; but he connects the incident directly with the latter event, representing Eustace as inducing those of his fellow-barons whom the king had injured in a similar way to join him in a common effort for vengeance, which widens into the struggle for the Charter (Hemingburgh, vol. i. pp. 247–9). The affair would thus seem to have occurred some years after Eustace’s desertion from the king’s host and flight from England in 1212; a desertion for which, therefore, it cannot serve as an excuse.

2. The legend of Robert Fitz-Walter’s daughter which became famous in prose and verse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is based upon a passage in the Chronicle of Dunmow, printed in _Monasticon_, vol. vi. pt. i. p. 147. This chronicle, written in a monastery of which the Fitz-Walters were patrons, begins with the year 1054, but the MS. (Cott. Cleopatra C. iii.) is of the end of the fifteenth century; it ends at the year 1501. The story is placed in 1216, and is briefly this: John demands Robert’s daughter, the fair maiden Matilda; her father refuses to give her up to him; the civil war breaks out, and the city of London joins the barons; afterwards they are worsted, whereupon the king destroys Robert’s fortress in London--Castle Baynard--and causes Matilda to be poisoned at Robert’s manor of Dunmow. Meanwhile Robert has fled to France. War continues on both sides of the Channel. Presently John goes to France, and has a conference with Philip Augustus; Robert Fitz-Walter displays his prowess in a single combat in presence of both the kings; John admires his valour, they are reconciled, and remain friends from that time forth.

On a tale so monstrous and so nonsensical as this, comment is needless. There is, however, a much earlier and more rational account of the quarrel between John and Fitz-Walter. According to the contemporary _Histoire des Ducs de Normandie_, Robert Fitz-Walter, “qui estoit uns des plus haus homes d’Engletierre et uns des plus poissans” (he was lord of Dunmow in Essex, of Baynard’s Castle in London, and also, by his marriage with an heiress, of large estates in the north), had two daughters, of whom the elder was married to Geoffrey de Mandeville, eldest son of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, chief justiciar of England. “Une fois” when the king was visiting Marlborough, a quarrel for lodgings arose between the servants of this young Geoffrey and those of William Brewer; they came to blows, and Brewer’s chief “sergeant” was slain by the hand of Geoffrey himself. Geoffrey, fearing the wrath of the king, whom he knew to be jealous of his father’s power and wealth, fled to his wife’s father, who went to intercede for him with the king; John, however, “jura les dens Diu que non auroit (merchi), ains le feroit pendre, se il le pooit tenir.” Robert in return swore “Par _Corpus Domini_, non ferés! ains en verriés ii. m. hiaumes laciés en vostre tierre, que chil fust pendus qui ma fille a.” At last John promised a “day” for agreement between himself and Geoffrey at Nottingham, intending to seize him at his coming; but Robert, “ki le roi connissoit à moult gaignart,” came with his son-in-law, and with five hundred knights at his back. The king then proposed another “day,” and the same thing happened a second time. Then John began to plot vengeance upon Robert; he sent secret orders to “ses bourgois de Londres, qui se faisoient apelier baron,” to pull down Castle Baynard; and they, not daring to disobey him, did as they were bid. Robert, knowing very well that they had acted on an order from the king, fled over sea with his wife and children. On reaching the Continent “il fist à entendre par tout que li rois Jehans voloit sa fille aisnée, qui feme estoit Joffroi de Mandeville, avoir à force à amie, et por chou que il ne le vaut soufrir, l’avoit il chacié de sa tierre et tout le sien tolut.” This was the tale which he also told to King Philip of France, at whose court he--after staying some time at Arras--presented himself just as Philip was preparing to invade England. When the invasion had been checked by John’s submission to Pandulf and Pandulf’s prohibition to Philip, Robert went to “Pandoufle le clerc” and to him told another tale: “li dist que il s’estoit partis d’Engletierre por le roi qui escumeniiés estoit, car il ne voloit pas estre en la compaignie des escumeniiés; et por chou li avoit li rois toute sa terre tolue”; wherefore he begged Pandulf, now that the king was excommunicate no longer, to make peace for him and get him back his land, which Pandulf accordingly did (_Hist. des Ducs_, pp. 115–25).

Here, at any rate, it is clear that the date of the quarrel cannot have been later than the spring of 1213; perhaps, as we are not told how long Robert stayed in Flanders before going to France, it might be some months earlier. This agrees with the date assigned to Robert’s flight from England by the Barnwell annalist, Ralph of Coggeshall, and Roger of Wendover, all of whom place it in the latter part of 1212 (see below, p. 292). The cause of the flight, however, still remains doubtful. It will be observed that the writer of the _Histoire des Ducs_, speaking in his own person, makes the quarrel between John and Robert arise out of John’s enmity to Robert’s son-in-law, Geoffrey de Mandeville, and also makes that enmity originate in the king’s jealousy of Geoffrey’s father (the Justiciar), without a word about Geoffrey’s wife; but that he represents Robert Fitz-Walter as having given to different persons two different accounts of the matter, both of which are quite distinct not only from the account given by the writer himself, but also from each other. To the third of these three accounts--the assertion which Robert is said to have made to Pandulf, that he left England because he would not keep company with an excommunicate sovereign--it is hardly possible for any one who has read the story of the years of interdict to attach any weight. Robert’s appeal to Pandulf, moreover, is chronologically out of place; it is represented as having been made after John’s agreement with Pandulf, whereas in reality the restoration of Robert Fitz-Walter, and also of Eustace de Vesci, was one of the conditions of that agreement. The statement which Robert is said to have made “everywhere,” on the other hand, is only too likely to be true, and may well contain the true explanation of John’s designs against the husband of Fitz-Walter’s daughter; while none of the three versions is incompatible with either of the others. Still the fact remains that three different versions are thus given--two on the alleged authority of Robert Fitz-Walter, one on his own authority--by a writer who was strictly contemporary, and who ranks as one of the best, and certainly the most impartial, of our informants on the closing years of John’s reign; and this fact leaves a somewhat sinister impression as to the opinion which that writer, at least, entertained of the truthfulness of the “first champion of English liberty.”

The main facts which can be gathered from other sources as to Robert Fitz-Walter’s relations with the king are these. In 1203 he and Saher de Quincy were jointly charged by John with the defence of the castle of Vaudreuil. They surrendered the place to Philip Augustus under circumstances so exceptionally disgraceful that Philip himself felt constrained to make an example of them as cowards and traitors of too deep a dye to be left unpunished, and flung them into prison at Compiègne, whence they were only released on payment of a heavy ransom (R. Wend. iii. 172; R. Coggeshall, pp. 143, 144). “Ex qua re,” adds Ralf of Coggeshall, “facti sunt in derisum et in opprobrium omni populo utriusque regni, canticum eorum tota die, ac generositatis suae maculaverunt gloriam” (cf. _Hist. des Ducs_, p. 97). Alone, the sovereign whom they had betrayed sought to shield their reputation at the risk of his own. Of course he acted from a motive of self-interest. As neither Robert nor Saher held any lands in Normandy, their money was to Philip more useful than their personal adhesion could have been. But for John the friendship of two barons of such importance in England was worth buying back, and he endeavoured to secure it by treating them with an exaggerated generosity which was evidently designed to impress them by its contrast with Philip’s severity; he issued (July 5, 1203) letters patent declaring that they had surrendered Vaudreuil under a warrant from himself, and ordering that neither they nor its garrison should be made to suffer for their act (_Rot. Pat._ vol. i. p. 31). Fitz-Walter therefore came back in peace to his English possessions. Like Eustace de Vesci, he joined the host which John gathered for a Welsh war in 1212; like Eustace, too, he withdrew from it secretly on learning that John had received a warning of treason in its ranks (_Ann. Waverl._ a. 1212); and like Eustace, again, he did not come when summoned to make his “purgation” with the other barons, but, as has been already seen, fled the country instead (W. Coventry, ii. 207; R. Coggeshall, p. 165; R. Wendover, iii. 240). The Barnwell annalist (W. Coventry, _l.c._) dates the demolition of Castle Baynard, and of Robert’s other castles, after his flight; the Annals of Dunstable place the destruction of Castle Baynard a year earlier, viz. in 1211.

There remains the question: What was the reason for the special mention of Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz-Walter in the terms of reconciliation between the Pope and John? At first glance it seems natural to infer that there must have been some peculiar injustice in John’s outlawry of these two men, to make their restoration a matter for intervention on the part of the Pope. But, as has been seen, all the ascertained facts of the case point the opposite way. If indeed Fitz-Walter’s alleged assertion to Pandulf, that he had fled on account of the king’s excommunication, were true, he would naturally be among the “laicis ad hoc negotium contingentibus” (R. Wendover, iii. 248), while the fact that the rest of these lay sufferers seem to have been all of lower rank might possibly account for his being specially mentioned by name. But it was not true; and with regard to De Vesci no such assertion is mentioned. Nevertheless, it is extremely probable that both Fitz-Walter and De Vesci may have contrived to represent to the Pope or his commissioner the cause of their exile in the way in which Fitz-Walter is described as representing his own case to Pandulf; and neither Pandulf nor Innocent could have at his command the means of knowing what all the evidence now available goes to show--that these two men had fled their country and left their property to fall into the king’s hand, not for conscience’s sake, but because their consciences accused them of treason.

INDEX

Adela of France, 21, 22, 40

Albemarle, earl of, 272, 281

Alençon, John of, 51

Alençon, Robert, count of, 89

Alençon, siege of, 94

Alexander III., Pope, 19

Alexander of Scotland, 162, 258–260, 273, 276, 278, 279

Angers occupied by Bretons, 61, 89; John at, 74, 115, 200

Angoulême, Ademar, count of, 75–77, 87

Angoulême, Isabel of, 76, 77, 89

Anjou, Arthur acknowledged in, 61; John in, 115, 200, 201

Aquitaine, Richard made duke of, 1; proposal to transfer it to John, 8, 9. _See_ Gascony, Poitou

Ardenne, Ralf of, 107

Arques, siege of, 87; surrender, 102

Arthur of Britanny, 36, 57, 58, 61, 71, 85, 86, 90–92

Articles of the Barons, 213–217, 227, 233

Arundel, earl of, 272

Athies, Gerald of, 150

Aubigny, William of, 80, 248, 251

Auvergne ceded to France, 73

Axholme ravaged, 279

Baldwin, archbishop of Canterbury, 20, 26

Balliol, Hugh de, 274, 276

Bangor burnt, 158; bishop of, _see_ Robert

Barham Down, muster on, 177

Barnard Castle, siege of, 276

Barons, English, their attitude after Richard’s death, 64; swear obedience to John, 104; grievances against him, 122–125, 131; refuse foreign service, 186, 189; meet John at Wallingford, 191; refuse to pay scutage, 210; relations with Langton, 211, 212, 218, 219; meeting at S. Edmund’s, 221; demand Henry I.’s charter, _ib._; appeal to the Pope, 225; assemble in arms, 226; their “schedule,” 227; defy the king, 228; besiege Northampton, _ib._; Bedford surrendered to, 229; refuse arbitration, _ib._; win London, _ib._; plunder the Jews, 230; take Exeter, _ib._; evacuate it, 231; besiege the Tower, 232; seize Lincoln, _ib._; break their promise to John, 236; insolence to him, 238; prepare for war, 239; spoil the forests, 241; meet bishops, 242, 243; usurp sheriffdoms, 243; propose to elect a new king, 244; advance against John, 248; retreat, _ib._; attempt relief of Rochester, 250; negotiate with John, 252; offer crown to Louis, 253, 254; northern, do homage to Alexander, 259; of the Irish March, support John, 172, 173; of Poitou betray John, 201

Barri, William de, footnote 600

Beauchamp, William de, 229

Beaufort, John and S. Hugh at, 60

Beaumont, Adam de, 272

Bedford surrendered to the barons, 229

Belvoir surrendered to John, 256

Berwick taken by John, 260

Béthune, Robert de, 230, 255

Bishops, English, their flight, 130; restoration and restitution, 188, 190, 191, 206; claim free election for churches, 192; confer with barons, 242, 243; proclaim excommunication of “disturbers,” 243

Blanche of Castille, 73

Bolton, meeting of John and William the Lion at, 132

Boulogne, Reginald, count of, 68, 70, 107, 108, 185, 202, 203

Bourges ceded to France, 73

Bouvines, battle of, 203

Boves, Hugh de, 202, 203, 241, footnote 1112

Brabant, duke of, 202

Braose, Giles de, bishop of Hereford, footnote 989, 288

Braose, Margaret de, 140, 281

Braose, Maud, wife of William de, 149–152, 155, 156, 288

Braose, Maud de, wife of Griffith ap Rees, 140

Braose, Philip de, 15, 139

Braose, Reginald de, 152, 288

Braose, William de, 139–141, 144–147, 149–151, 155, 156, 287, 288

Braose, William de, the younger, 152, 156, 288

Bréauté, Falkes de, 232, 247, 255, 281, 285

Brewer, William, 222, 255, 285

Brezolles, siege of, 54

Britanny, Alice of, 200

Britanny, Arthur of, _see_ Arthur

Britanny, Constance of, _see_ Constance

Britanny, Eleanor of, 196

Britanny, Geoffrey of, _see_ Geoffrey

Britanny, Peter, count of, _see_ Dreux

Brus, Peter de, 263, 273

Buck, Walter, 255

Burgh, Hubert de, 80, 90, 231, 233, 237, 252, 269, 274, 280, 281

Burgh, William de, 138, 139, 141, 142

Caermarthen, Rees and John at, 25

Cambridgeshire ravaged, 257, 278

Camville, Gerard de, 31, 33, 35

Canterbury, John at, 118; disputed election to see, 119–121; archbishops of, _see_ Baldwin, Hubert, Langton

Carlisle attacked by Alexander, 260; siege of, 273

Carrick, Duncan, lord of, 152

Carrickfergus, siege of, 152

Casamario, abbot of, 94, 100

Casinghem, William of, 280

Castles in John’s lands, 26, 27; disputes between John and Longchamp about, 31–35; royal, John’s designs on, 39, 41; the barons’, demanded by John, 80

Cathal Carrach O’Conor, king of Connaught, 139

Cathal Crovderg O’Conor, king of Connaught, 139, 142

Châlus, siege of, 56

Charter of Henry I., 211, 219–221; the Great, 233–236; quashed by the Pope, 246

Château-Gaillard, 55, 94; siege of, 95; attempted relief, 96, 97; fall, 100

Châteauroux, siege of, 20, 21

Chester, muster at, 158

Chester, Ralf, earl of, 50, 58, 65, 285

Chichester, bishop of, _see_ Richard

Chinon surrendered to Philip Augustus, 113

Cinque Ports, their relations with John, 132, 163, 280

Cistercians, their quarrel with John, 73; claim exemption from interdict, 129; John’s spoliations of, 160, 171

Clare, Isabel de, 29, 148

Clare, Richard de, earl of Striguil, 12

Clare, Richard, earl of, 65, 252, 255, 261

Clergy, John’s dealings with, 128, 129, 136, 187, 207

Cogan, Miles, 13–16

Cogan, Richard, 16, 138

Colchester, siege of, 261

“Commune” of 1205, 104

“Commune” of London, 39

Connaught, civil war in, 139; kings of, _see_ Cathal, Roderic

Constance of Britanny, 5, 9, 58, 61, 71, 85

Corfe, Peter of Pontefract imprisoned at, 170

Cork, city, constables of, 15, 16; “English” driven out of, 138; county, 153; kingdom, 14, 15. _See_ Desmond

Cornhill, Reginald of, 248

Counties in Ireland, the earliest, 153

Courcy, John de, 13, 16, 19, 137–139, 143, 152

Coventry, bishop of, _see_ Nonant

Crowland burnt by John, 278

Croxton, abbot of, 283–285

Culvertage, 176

Cumin, John, archbishop of Dublin, 17, 18

Curson, Robert, 204

Cuthred MacWilliam, 162, 163

Desmond, 14, 15; fiefs in, 138. _See_ Cork

Dover, siege of, 280; raised, 281

Dreux, Robert, count of, 200

Dreux, Robert of, the younger, 273, 276, 281

Dreux, Peter of, count of Britanny, 200, 241, 280

Driencourt seized by John, 78

Dublin, held by Henry II., 12; John’s charter to, 138; John in, 152, 153; archbishops of, _see_ Cumin, O’Toole

Durand, 160, 162

Durham, bishops of, _see_ Philip, Puiset

Eleanor of Aquitaine, queen of England, 1, 30, 41, 43, 63, 69, 73, 86, 103

Ely sacked, 258

England, condition of, under John, 212–217

Erlée, John d’, footnote 238, footnote 256

Escheats, inquiry concerning, 163

Essex harried, 257; earls of, _see_ Mandeville, Fitz-Peter

Eu, count of, _see_ Lusignan

Evreux, John at, 53; burnt by Philip, 55; county of, 73

Ewell, John does homage to the Pope at, 180

Exeter taken by the barons, 230; evacuated, 231; besieged, 281

Falaise, siege of, 102

Felton, homage of barons to Alexander at, 259

Ferrars, William, Earl, 50, 65, 150, 179, 285

Fitz-Audeline, William, 13, 14

Fitz-Henry, Meiler, 13, 138, 141–149

Fitz-Herbert, Herbert, 14

Fitz-Herbert, William, 14

Fitz-Payne, Ralf, 148

Fitz-Peter, Geoffrey, earl of Essex and justiciar, 62, 64, 65, 128, 194

Fitz-Stephen, Robert, 14–16

Fitz-Walter, Robert, 169, 171, 187, 219, 228, 239, 249, 250, 252, 257, 270, 289–293

Flanders, Baldwin, count of, 68

Flanders, Ferrand, count of, 185, 196, 203

Fleet, the English, 104, 176, 178, 193, 267

Fontevraud, John at, 59, 60

Forest law, hardships of, 213

Framlingham castle surrenders to John, 261

France, king of, _see_ Philip

Franceis, William, 8

Frederic, king of Sicily, 174, 175

Fréteval, battle of, 54

Furnes, Thomas of, 61

Galloway, Alan of, 168

Gant, Gilbert de, 273, 276, 278, 279

Gascony, John in, 74, 114; adheres to him, 103

Geoffrey, duke of Britanny, 2, 9, 10, 20

Geoffrey, bishop-elect of Lincoln, 8; chancellor, 20; archbishop of York, 36–38, 46, 126, 127

Gerald of Wales, his picture of Geoffrey and John, 10, 11

Glanville, Ranulf de, 8

Gloucester, Isabel of, 7, 25, 26, 75, 196

Gloucester, William, earl of, 6

Gournay, Hugh of, 96

Graçay ceded to France, 73

Gray, Walter de, 193

Grey, John de, bishop of Norwich, 119, 120, 130; justiciar in Ireland, 149, 151, footnote 793, 194

Griffith, prince of South Wales, 135, 140

Gualo, cardinal and legate, 264–268, 270, 285

Gwenwynwyn, prince of Powys, 135

Hardel, William, mayor of London, 270

Haye, Nicola de, footnote 140, 276

Hedingham, siege of, 261

Henry I., charter of, 211, 219–221

Henry II., king of England, 1–3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11–17, 19–24

Henry VI., emperor, 49, 164

Henry, son of Henry II., 1–3, 5, 6, 8

Henry, son of King John, footnote 575, 283, 284

Heraclius, patriarch of Jerusalem, 11, 12

Hereford, bishop of, _see_ Braose

Hertfordshire harried, 257

Holland, Ada, countess of, footnote 740

Holland, William, count of, footnote 740, 202, 273

Howels, Hugh of, 99

Hubert Walter, bishop of Salisbury, 46; archbishop of Canterbury, 50, 62, 64, 65, 83, 105, 107, 110, 113

Hugh, S., bishop of Lincoln, 38, 59–61, 78

Huntingdon, David, earl of, 25, 50, 65, 67

Huntingdonshire ravaged, 257

Ingebiorg, wife of Philip Augustus, 72

Innocent III., Pope, attitude towards John’s divorce, 75; sends arbitrators to Philip and John, 94; quashes elections to Canterbury, 120; consecrates Langton, 127; lays England under interdict, _ib._; negotiations with John, 129; crowns Otto, 166; excommunicates him, _ib._; bids Philip depose John, 175; order for elections to churches, 192; mediates between John and Philip, 204; John and the barons appeal to, 225; his answers, _ib._, 226; excommunicates “disturbers of king and kingdom,” 242; quashes the Charter, 246; excommunicates rebels by name, 262; interdicts London, _ib._; forbids Louis’s expedition, 264

Interdict in England, 127; Cistercians claim exemption from, 129; raised, 207; London under, 262, 270

Ireland, lordship of, granted by Henry II. to John, 17; extent of English dominions in, 12; John in, 17–19; John’s lordship of, 28; succession of justiciars in, footnote 595; John’s second visit to, 152, 153; counties in, 153. _See_ March

Isabel of Angoulême, _see_ Angoulême

Isabel of Gloucester, _see_ Gloucester

Issoudun ceded to France, 73

Jerusalem, kingdom of, 11

Jews, persecuted by John, 137; plundered by the barons, 230

Joan, daughter of John and Isabel, 198

Joan, daughter of John and wife of Llywelyn, 135, 158, 169

John Lackland born, 1; his surname, 2; alleged grant of Mortain to, 3; betrothed to Alice of Maurienne, 4, 5; provision for him in 1174, 6; betrothed to Isabel of Gloucester, 7; named lord of Ireland, _ib._; his early years, _ib._, 8; compared with Geoffrey, 10; character, _ib._, 11; offered crown of Jerusalem, 11, 12; knighted, 12; receives homage for Irish fiefs, 14; visits Ireland, 17–19; project for his crowning, 19; his first campaign, 20, 21; proposal to marry him to Adela, 21, 22; with Henry at Le Mans, 22; leaves him, _ib._, 23; count of Mortain, 24, 25; marriage, 25; dealings with Wales, _ib._, 26; his lands interdicted, 26; their extent, 26–28; his household, 28, 29; despoils William the Marshal, 29; oath of absence from England, 30; returns, _ib._; rivalry with Longchamp, 31–38; recognised as heir to the Crown, 39; league with Philip Augustus, 40; dealings with Longchamp and Puiset, 41, 42; with the justiciars, 43, 44; goes to Normandy, 44; treaty with Philip, 45; rebellion, 45, 46; Richard’s opinion of, 47; intrigues with Philip, 49; cited for trial, 50, 51; reconciled with Richard, 52; his lands confiscated, _ib._; recovers Evreux for Richard, 53; helps Richard against Philip, 53–55; ratifies exchange of Andely, 55; accused by Philip to Richard, _ib._; leaves Richard, 56; designated as his heir, _ib._; William of Newburgh’s character of, 58; goes to Britanny, 59; acknowledged by Angevin barons, _ib._; relations with S. Hugh, 59–61; goes to Normandy, 61; crowned duke, 62; regains Le Mans, 63; goes to England, _ib._; crowned, _ib._, 65, 66; dealings with Scotland, 66, 67; goes to Normandy, 68; truce with Philip, _ib._; alliance with Flanders, _ib._; French barons do homage to, 69, 70; agreement with William des Roches, 70; joined by Arthur and Constance, 71; returns to Normandy, 72; truce with Philip, _ib._; goes to Aquitaine, _ib._; meets Philip, _ib._; goes to England, 73; quarrels with the Cistercians, _ib._; treaty with Philip, _ib._; does him homage, 74; goes to the south, _ib._; his divorce, 75; second marriage, 77; returns to England, _ib._; receives homage of William the Lion, 78; quarrel with the Lusignans, _ib._, 79; with English earls, 80; takes money from the host, _ib._; returns to Normandy, 81; visits Paris, _ib._; appeals the Poitevin barons of treason, _ib._; treaty with Navarre, 83; cited for trial, _ib._; fails to appear, 84; summons Arthur, 85; relieves Mirebeau, 86; returns to Normandy, 87; burns Tours, _ib._; keeps Christmas at Caen, 89; visits Alençon, _ib._; designs against Arthur, 90; indifference to Philip’s successes, 93; complains of Philip to the Pope, 94; besieges Alençon, _ib._; his building at Château-Gaillard, 95; nicknamed “Softsword,” 96; plan to relieve Château-Gaillard, _ib._, 97; conversation with the Marshal, 98; returns to England, 99; letter to Roger de Lacy, _ib._; summons the host, 102; preparations for defence, 104, 105; secret negotiations with Philip, 105–107; relations with Archbishop Hubert, 104, 107; with the Marshal, 106, 107, 109, 110; meets the host at Porchester, 107, 108; dismisses it, 111; claims fines from it, 112; remark on Hubert Walter’s death, 113; goes to Aquitaine, 114; besieges Montauban, _ib._; regains Angers, 115; truce with Philip, 116; intrigues with Canterbury chapter, 118–121; financial difficulties, 122, 123; sells charters to towns, 124; loans to barons, _ib._, 125; scheme for taxing clergy, 125; demands a thirteenth of moveables, 126; refuses election of Langton, 127; confiscates Church property, 128; negotiates with Rome, 129; his triumph, 130–132; dealings with Scotland, 132–134; with Wales, 135, 136; excommunicated, 136; cruelties to the clergy, _ib._; to the Jews, 137; dealings with Ireland, 139–154; with the Braoses, 139–141, 149–151, 155, 156, 287, 288; expeditions to Wales, 158, 159; negotiates with Langton, 159; cuts down his woods, _ib._; extorts money from monks, 160; meets Pandulf, 161, 162; knights Alexander of Scotland, 162; helps William the Lion, 163; orders inquests into services, etc., _ib._; seizes men of Cinque Ports, _ib._; alliance with Otto, 164–166; league against France, 166, 167; prepares to go to Gascony, 167; to Wales, 169; hangs Welsh hostages, _ib._; returns to London, _ib._; interview with Peter of Pontefract, 170; demands hostages from the barons, 171; and a quit-claim from the clergy, 172; relations with barons in Ireland, _ib._, 173; renews negotiations with Rome, 174; preparations for defence of England, 176–178; offers terms to Innocent, 178; agreement with Pandulf, 179; homage to the Pope, 180; alleged embassy to Morocco, footnote 806; league with Flanders, 185, 186; receives Langton, 187; his expedition checked, 188, 189; schemes of vengeance, 189; homage to legate, 190; conference with barons and bishops, 191; orders elections to churches, 192, 193; truce with the Welsh, 193; comment on Geoffrey Fitz-Peter’s death, 194; summons “men of the shire” to council, 195; receives homage of count of Flanders, 196; goes to Poitou, _ib._; success in Aquitaine, 197; negotiations with the Lusignans, 197–199; victory at Nantes, 200; wins Angers, _ib._; betrayed at La Roche-au-Moine, 201, 202; his continental allies, 202; their defeat, 203; summons forces from England, _ib._; truce with Philip, 204, 205; returns to England, 206; demands quit-claim from clergy, 207; grants free election to churches, 209; dispute with barons about scutage, 210, 211; England’s grievances under, 212–217; relations with Langton, 218, 222, 223; discussions with barons about Charter, 220–222; demands oath of allegiance, 223; sends for troops from Poitou, 224; appeals to Rome, 225; takes the cross, 226; negotiates with barons, 227; rejects their schedule, _ib._, 228; preparations for war, 228; grants election of mayor to London, _ib._, 229; proposes arbitration, 229; garrisons Rochester, 231; his desperate condition, 232; grants the Charter, 232–234; behaviour afterwards, 237; sickness, _ib._; insulted by barons, 238; dealings with the Irish March, 240; seeks help over sea, 241; refuses to meet barons, _ib._; sails to Sandwich, 243; appeals to the Pope, 246; besieges Rochester, 248–251; divides his host, 255; march to the north, 256; ravages of his troops, _ib._, 257–259; takes Berwick, 260; raids on Scotland, _ib._; reconquers Yorkshire, _ib._; marches on the eastern counties, 261; threatens London, 263; negotiations with northern barons, _ib._; relations with towns, _ib._; encourages commerce, 264; sends embassy to France, _ib._; writes to Louis, _ib._; prepares for defence against him, 267; meets Gualo, 268; goes to Sandwich, _ib._; retires, 269; plans of defence, 274, 275; relieves Windsor, 277; burns Crowland, 278; ravages Lincolnshire, 279; goes to Lynn, _ib._; seaports loyal to, 280; sickness, 281; losses in crossing the Wash, 282; last days, 282–284; will, 284, 285; death, 285; epitaph, 286; relations with Eustace de Vesci, 289, 293; with Robert Fitz-Walter, 289–293

John of Alençon, 51

Justice, abuse of, 213, 215

Kahanger, William de, footnote 129

Knight-service, inquiry concerning, 163

Lacy, Hugh de, 12, 14, 16, 17, 19

Lacy, Hugh de, the younger, 143, 144, 148, 152, 154

Lacy, Roger de, 34, 35, 65, 71, 80, 95

Lacy, Walter de, 140, 141, 143, 144, footnote 660, 149, 151, 152, 154, 240, 285

Laigle, Gilbert de, 280

La Marche, county of, 76, 79

La Marche, count of, _see_ Lusignan

Langton, Stephen, elected archbishop of Canterbury, 121; consecrated, 127; John’s negotiations with, footnote 549, 159; goes to Rome, 175; to England, 186, 187; absolves John, 187; presides at council in London, 189; stops John’s vengeance on the barons, _ib._, 190; agreement with John about elections, 193; negotiations with the Welsh, 194; threatens appeal against the legate, 208; relations with the barons, 211, 212, 218, 219, 222; with John, 222, 223; mediates between them, 227; allows John to garrison Rochester, 231; his share in the Charter, 234; custody of the Tower given to, 239; Rochester castle restored to, _ib._; goes to Rome, 244; suspended, _ib._; suspension confirmed, 255

La Roche-au-Moine, siege of, 201

La Rochelle reinforced by John, 112, 113; John lands at, 114

Leicester, Robert, earl of, 25, 100

Leinster granted to Earl Richard de Clare, 12; to William the Marshal, 149

Le Mans, Henry II. and John at, 22; Arthur and Philip at, 61; regained by John, 63

Leominster burnt, 150

Limerick, city, struggles of Irish and Normans for, 13, 15; won by the “English,” 138; William de Burgh custodian of, _ib._; transferred to De Braose, 141; resumed by the Crown, 144; restored to De Braose, 145

Limerick, kingdom of, 14, 15

Limerick, honour of, granted to William de Braose, 139, 140; confiscated, 154

Limoges, Guy, viscount of, 76, 87

Lincoln, William of Scotland does homage at, 78; taken by barons, 232, 273; castle besieged, 31, 276; bishop of, _see_ Hugh

Lincolnshire ravaged by barons, 273; by John, 279

Llywelyn ap Jorwerth, prince of North Wales, 135, 157–159, 167

Loches surrendered to Philip Augustus, 113

London supports John against Longchamp, 39; election of mayor granted to, 228, 229; joins the barons, 229; suburbs fired, 258; interdicted, 262, 270; welcomes Louis, 270; councils in, 42, 100, 103, 125, 189, 190, 206, 211; mayor of, _see_ Hardel

Longchamp, William of, bishop of Ely and chancellor, 30–44

Los, count of, footnote 740

Louis, son of Philip Augustus, his marriage, 73; designs on England, 175, 176; besieges Montcontour, 199; challenges John at La-Roche-au-Moine, 201; invited by English barons, 253, 254; sends them help, 255, 257, 261, 262; his claims to the Crown, 264–266; goes to England, 268; his manifesto, 269; advance to London, 270; excommunicated, _ib._; takes Winchester, 271; joined by magnates, 272; disputes among his followers, _ib._, 273; returns to London, 273; besieges Dover, 276, 280; joined by Alexander, 276; raises the siege, 281

“Lou Pescaire,” 88, 96

Louvain, duke of, 202

Lucius III., Pope, 19

Lusignan, Almeric of, 76

Lusignan, Geoffrey of, 76, 199

Lusignan, Guy of, 76

Lusignan, Hugh of, count of La Marche, 76, 77, 79, 199

Lusignan, Hugh of, the younger, 76, 199

Lusignan, Ralf of, count of Eu, 77–79

Lusignan family, 81–82, 86, 87, 197–199

Lynn, John at, 279, 281

MacCarthy, Dermot, king of Desmond, 15

Maelgwyn, prince of South Wales, 135

Maine overrun by Philip, 61; Arthur acknowledged in, _ib._

_Maltôte_, 205

Mandeville, Geoffrey de, earl of Essex, 196, 238, 253, footnote 1184, 290

Mandeville, William de, earl of Essex, 20, 22

Mantes, council at, 94

March, the English, in Ireland, 142; its organization, 153–155; John’s later dealings with, 240

Marlborough, John married at, 25; fealty sworn to John at, 132; castle, conflicting claims to, 272

Marsh, Geoffrey, 240

Marsh, Richard, 241

Marshal, John, footnote 128

Marshal, William, earl of Pembroke, his marriage, 29; despoiled by John, _ib._; joins John against Longchamp, 38; policy on Richard’s death, 56–58; goes to England, 62, 64; belted earl, 65; sent to Normandy, 80; to France, 93, 100; agreement with Philip, 101; relations with John, 98, 106, 107, 109–111; goes to Ireland, 146; intrigues of Meiler and John against him, 146–148; Leinster regranted to, 149; shelters the De Braoses, 151; meets John at Dublin, 155; recalled to England, footnote 793; negotiates between John and the barons, 227, 229, 232; embassy to France, 264; dissuades John from fighting Louis, 269; named guardian to Henry III., 284; executor of John’s will, 285

Marshal, William, the younger, 272, 273

Mauclerc, William, footnote 807, 225

Mauléon, Savaric de, 86, footnote 482, 224, 251, 255, 258, 263, 271, 278, 279, 285

Mauley, Peter de, 284

Maurienne, 4, 5

Mausé, Porteclin de, 197

Meath granted to Hugh de Lacy, 12; to Walter de Lacy, 149; confiscated, 154; restored, _ib._, 240

Melrose, homage of barons to Alexander at, 259

Melun, council at, 265

Mercadier, 54, 63

Mervant, siege of, 199

Middlesex harried, 257

Milécu, siege of, 197

Mirebeau, siege of, 86

Monmouth, John of, 285

Montauban, siege of, 114

Montcontour, siege of, 199

Montfort, Simon de, 174, 252

Moreve, 103

Mortain, Henry’s alleged grant of, to John, 3; granted to John by Richard, 24, 25

Mortimer, William of, 99

Moveables, taxation of, 124, 126

Mowbray, William de, 65

Munster, North and South, 14

Navarre, Sancho VII., king of, 83

Nevers, count of, 272, 276–278

Neville, Hugh de, 272

Newark, John at, 283–285

Newcastle burnt by Scots, 259

Nicolas of Tusculum, cardinal legate, 190–192, 206–208

Nonant, Hugh of, bishop of Coventry, 37, 50, 51

Norham, conference at, 132; siege of, 258, 259

Normandy submits to Philip Augustus, 102

Northampton, meeting of John and Pandulf at, 160, 161; rising of townsfolk, 232; castle, siege of, 228, 229, 248

“Northerners,” 226, 239

Norwich, bishops of, _see_ Grey, Pandulf

Nottingham, council at, 50; muster at, 169; castle betrayed to John, 31; siege of, 50

Novel disseisin, inquiry concerning assizes of, 163

O’Brien, Donell, king of Thomond, 18

Oliver, son of King John, 271

O’Toole, S. Laurence, archbishop of Dublin, 17

Otto of Saxony, 164–166, 175, 202, 203

Oxford, John born at, 1; councils at, 42, 104, 126, 195; meeting of barons and bishops at, 242; siege of, 248

Oxford, earl of, _see_ Vere

Pandulf, cardinal and legate, 160–162, 179, 180, 184, 208, 233, 244, 245

Paris, John at, 81

“Pelu,” Count, 202

Pembroke, earl of, _see_ Marshal

Perche, count of, 280

Percy, Richard de, 273

Peter of Capua, cardinal, 72

Peter of Pontefract or Wakefield, 170, 184

Petit, William, footnote 595

Philip Augustus, king of France, his dealings with Henry and Richard, 20, 21; league with John, 40, 45; treaty with Richard, 47, 48; intrigues with John, 49; besieges Verneuil, 51; withdraws, 53; defeated at Fréteval, 54; attacks Normandy, _ib._, 55; truce with Richard, 55; accuses John to Richard, _ib._; overruns Maine, 61; receives Arthur’s homage, _ib._; meetings with John, 68; his demands, _ib._, 69; receives Eleanor’s homage for Poitou, 69; seizes Conches, 70; razes Ballon, _ib._; truce with John, 72; treaty with him, 73; receives John’s homage, 74; renews treaty with John, 81; cites him for trial, 83; attacks Normandy, 84; dealings with Arthur, 85; besieges Arques, 87; burns Tours, _ib._; takes Saumur, Conches, etc., 93; appeals to the Pope, 94; refuses the Pope’s arbitration, _ib._; agreement with John’s envoys, 101; wins Normandy, _ib._, 102; wins Poitou, 103; wins Loches and Chinon, 113; marches against John, 116; truce with him, _ib._, 117; treaty with Philip of Suabia, 164; league against, 166, 167; alliance with Frederic of Sicily, 175; plans for conquest of England, _ib._, 176; checked by Pandulf, 179; attacks Flanders, 185; marches against John, 198; victory at Bouvines, 203; truce with John, 205; dealings with English barons, 254, 257; attitude towards Louis’s expedition, 264–267

Philip, bishop of Durham, 66, 67

Philip of Suabia, 164, 166

Pippard, Peter, footnote 595

Planes, Roger de, footnote 129, 39, footnote 595

Plough-tax, 73

Poer, Robert le, 14

Poitou, its feudal position, 69; attacked by the Lusignans, 79; submits to Philip Augustus, 103; John in, 114

Pommeraye, Jocelyn de la, 14

Popes, _see_ Alexander, Innocent, Lucius, Urban

Porchester, muster at, 186

Port, Adam de, 150

“Port Alaschert,” 115

Portsmouth, musters at, 107, 113

Préaux, Peter des, 89, 99, 101, 102

Presentation, inquiry concerning rights of, 163

Puiset, Hugh of, bishop of Durham, 42, 46

Quincy, Saher de, earl of Winchester, 254, 257, 292

Radepont, sieges of, 85, 97, 98

Raymond the Fat, 13, 16, 138

Reading, meeting of king and bishops at, 191

Rees ap Griffith, prince of South Wales, 25, 26

Reginald, sub-prior of Canterbury, 119, 120

Richard, duke of Aquitaine, 1, 9; king of England, 24, 25, 44, 47–56, 164

Richard, son of King John and Isabel, footnote 575, 284

Richard, son of King John, 196

Richard, bishop of Chichester, 285

Richard of London, constable of Cork, 15

Ridel, Stephen, footnote 129

Robert, bishop of Bangor, 158

Roche, Emeric de, 197

Roches, Peter des, bishop of Winchester, 130, 157, 196, 212, 244, 285

Roches, William des, 70, 86, 88, 201

Rochester castle garrisoned by the king, 231; restored to Langton, 239; surrendered to barons, 248; besieged by John, 248–251

Roderic O’Connor, king of Connaught, 12, 139

Ropesley, Robert de, 273

Ros, Robert de, 263, 273

Rouen, John proclaimed duke at, 62; surrendered to Philip, 102; archbishop of, _see_ Walter

Runnimead, 233

S. Albans, councils at, 188, 215, 255

S. Edmund’s, meeting of barons at, 221

S. Edmund’s, Adam of, 50

Ste. Maure, Aimeric of, 285

Salisbury, bishop of, _see_ Hubert

Salisbury, Ela, countess of, footnote 1241

Salisbury, William Longsword, earl of, 112, 179, 185, 186, 202, 203, 229, 230, 247, 255, 272, 281

Sandwich, John at, 268

Saumur taken by Philip Augustus, 93

Savigny, John of, 285

Scotland, kings of, _see_ Alexander, William

Scutages under Richard, 122; under John, 73, 101, 123, 125, 210

Sheriffs, their maladministration, 213–215; in Ireland, 153

Silvester, bishop of Worcester, 285

Soissons, council at, 175

Sotinghem, Gerard de, 281

Staines, tournament at, 239; meeting of bishops and barons at, 243

Stamford, barons assemble at, 226

Stonor, Louis lands at, 268

Taxes under Richard, 122; under John, 73, 123–126

“Tenseries,” 273, 274

Teyson, Geoffrey, 197

Thomond, 14, 15

Thouars, truce made at, 116

Thouars, Almeric, viscount of, 71, 79, 80, 113, 115, 117, 201, 204

Thouars, Guy of, 102, 116

Tickhill castle betrayed to John, 31; siege of, 46, 50

Tonbridge castle, 255

Toulouse, Raymond, count of, 166, 196

Tours burnt by John, 87

Tower of London besieged by barons, 232; dispute for its custody, 238

Towns, John sells charters to, 124

Turnham, Robert of, 59

Ulecotes, Philip de, 274

Ulster granted to John de Courcy, 13; forfeited, 143; granted to Hugh de Lacy, 144; confiscated again, 154

Urban III., Pope, 19

Valognes, Hamo de, footnote 595

Vasseville, Reginald de, 35

Vaudreuil, siege of, 54; betrayed to Philip, 292

Venneval, William de, 33, 35

Vere, Robert de, earl of Oxford, 261

Verneuil besieged by Philip Augustus, 51; relieved, 53; surrendered, 102

Vesci, Eustace de, 169, 171, 187, 219, 225, 263, 276, 289

Vexin ceded to France, 73

Vouvant, siege of, 199

Wales, struggles for supremacy in, 135; princes of, _see_ Gwenwynwyn, Griffith, Llywelyn, Maelgwyn, Rees

Wallingford, meeting of John and barons at, 191; castle betrayed to John, 42

Walter, archbishop of Rouen, 32, 38, 57, 62

Walter, Hubert, _see_ Hubert

Walter, Theobald, 29, 30, 50

Warren, earl of, 179, 272

Warwick, earl of, 65

Waterford held by Henry II., 12, 14; county of, 153

Wells, Hugh of, 106

Wexford held by Henry II., 12, 14

Whitchurch, muster at, 158

William the Lion, king of Scots, 36, 66, 73, 78, 132–134, 162, 169

Winchester, meetings of John and Longchamp at, 31, 32; John absolved at, 187; burnt, 271; taken by Louis, _ib._; bishop of, _see_ Roches

Winchester, earl of, _see_ Quincy

Windsor, council at, 42; castle betrayed to John, _ib._; sieges of, 46, 276, 277

Woodstock, homage of Welsh princes to John at, 136

Worcester, Philip of, 17

Worcester, John buried at, 285

Wrotham, William de, 193

York, John at, 124; rising at, 259; siege of, 263; mayor of, _ib._; archbishop of, _see_ Geoffrey

THE END

_Printed by_ R. & R. CLARK LIMITED, _Edinburgh_.

Transcriber’s Note

An errata slip was included in this book. It reads (footnote numbers have been added in square brackets):

ERRATA

P. 57, note 1 [238], _for_ “the writer, John d’Erlée,” _read_ “John of Earley (_d’Erlée_), on whose relation to the _Histoire_ in its present form see M. Meyer’s introduction, vol. iii. pp. ii.–xiv.”

P. 62, note 6 [256], _for_ “John d’Erlée, the Marshal’s biographer, asserts (_Hist. de G. le Mar._, vv. 11909–16) that he himself,” _read_ “The writer of the _Hist. de G. le Mar._ asserts, vv. 11909–16, that John of Earley.”

P. 70, note 6 [293], _for_ “John d’Erlée, _Hist. de G. le Mar._,” _read_ “The writer of the _Hist. de G. le Mar._”

P. 77, ll. 7 and 8 from foot, _for_ “on or about August 26” _read_ “on August 24”; and same page, note 6 [330], _for_ “_Itin._ a. 2, and _Rot. Chart._ p. 75,” _read_ “_Memorials of S. Edmund’s_, vol. ii. p. 8.”

P. 89, note 5 [396], ll. 11 and 13, and p. 106, note 3 [464], _for_ “D’Erlée” _read_ “the Marshal’s biographer.”

These corrections have been applied to this text.