CHAPTER III

THE LEGATION OF PANDULF

1219–1221

Car n’a tele gent en nule terre Comme il a dedenz Engleterre De divers corages chascuns; . . . . Si la terre n’est defendue Par l’Apostoire en icest point . . . . Dont ne sai je qui la defende.

_Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 18041–18060.

Ille [Pandulfus] multos bellicos tumultus nondum congelatos auctoritate sibi tradita tempore legationis viriliter comprimebat.

_Flores Historiarum_, a. 1221.

The new Legate was not a stranger to England. His first recorded visit there had taken place in 1211. He was then in subdeacon’s orders, and a member of the household of Pope Innocent III.[519] Of his earlier life nothing is known, except that he was a Roman by birth;[520] but King John seems to have already had some indirect knowledge of him, for it was at John’s request that he and another papal envoy, a brother of the Temple, were appointed by Innocent to go and confer with the King of England for the restoration of peace to the English Church.[521] In the one interview which took place between the commissioners and the King, Pandulf was the spokesman on the papal side; and John found that he had mistaken his man. The subdeacon simply stated the terms which he was instructed to offer to John; a long argument ensued, in which John was worsted; but he still refused to submit, whereupon Pandulf told him to his face, in the presence of all the court, that the Pope meant to subdue him and had already excommunicated him and absolved his subjects from their allegiance, and that the sentence was to take effect from that day forth. “If I had not sent for you, I would make you ride about my realm for a year!” raved the King. “You might as well say you would hang us,” coolly answered Pandulf; “we look for no other reward from you”; and when John tried to frighten him by issuing in his presence orders for the mutilation and execution of sundry prisoners, one of whom was a priest, the only result was that Pandulf went to fetch a candle for the avowed purpose of formally excommunicating then and there any person who should lay hands on this particular victim, and that John, evidently alarmed lest the candle should be used against himself as well as against his officers, hurried after the dauntless subdeacon and surrendered the man to his judgement.[522] Thenceforth Pandulf became the Pope’s special confidant and assistant in all matters relating to England and its King. It was he who in January, 1213, carried to Philip Augustus the Pope’s letter charging Philip with the execution of the sentence of deprivation against John; and it was he alone who shared with the Pope the secret of the negotiations which were then already afoot for rendering Philip’s expedition needless. Four months later he was in England again, receiving, in the Pope’s behalf, first John’s assent to the identical terms which he had refused in 1211, and secondly the King’s homage to the Roman See for the realms of England and Ireland.[523]

After a hurried visit to France, to stop the intended invasion from thence,[524] Pandulf returned to England, and remained there till the beginning of the next year. His position during this time is somewhat difficult to define. His official rank was merely that of “the Pope’s messenger”;[525] he had never held a commission as Legate; and the distinction between the two offices was clearly marked when in September, 1213, an envoy of higher standing in the Curia, Nicolas, Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum, came clothed with the full powers of a Legate _a latere_ to receive a repetition of John’s homage to Rome, and to raise the Interdict as soon as the bishops and clergy should have been compensated for their losses and wrongs. Certain payments made to Pandulf on the King’s behalf seem to indicate that he was the authorized receiver of the earliest instalments of the tribute to Rome.[526] John had already made a friend of the man who had withstood him in 1211; the Pope’s clerk was taken into the counsels of the King; “We have granted to Master Pandulf that a truce be made between ourself and the Welsh,” wrote John to the Marcher barons in July, 1213;[527] and when Pandulf went oversea in January, 1214, he went as “the King’s messenger”[528]--whether to France or to Rome, there is nothing to shew with certainty; but it is probable that he carried some of the tribute money to the Pope. He seems to have been back in England by the end of the year, when the recall of Nicolas of Tusculum left him once more sole representative of the Pope in England, but still without any higher title than before. In the spring of 1215 he and the Bishop of Chichester conjointly were delegated by the Pope to investigate the merits of a project for dissolving the union between the see of Bath and the abbey of Glastonbury.[529] In the preamble to the Great Charter “Master Pandulf, the Pope’s subdeacon and familiar,” stands with the Master of the Temple between the bishops and the lay magnates in the list of the King’s advisers; and he is the last named of the three commissioners (the other two being the Bishop of Winchester and the Abbot of Reading) to whom the Pope addressed his letter ordering that the “disturbers of King and kingdom” should be proclaimed excommunicate by the bishops. If any of these latter failed to obey the order, the commissioners themselves were empowered to suspend the recalcitrant prelates; and thus it fell to the lot of Pandulf and Bishop Peter to proclaim the suspension of Archbishop Stephen.[530]

Some seven or eight weeks before this, Pandulf had been--of course on the King’s recommendation--elected to the bishopric of Norwich;[531] but no steps towards his consecration were taken for more than six years. Shortly after the middle of September, 1215, he seems to have gone to Rome on a mission from John, who wrote to the Pope that “although Master Pandulf is most useful to us in England, inasmuch as he labours faithfully and devotedly for the honour of the Roman Church and of ourself and our whole realm, yet we send him to your Holiness because we can trust no one else to explain the state of ourself and our realm so well as he can do it.”[532] We find no further trace of Pandulf for nearly two years. It is doubtful whether he had returned to England before John’s death; Gualo had been residing there as Legate since May, 1216, and the subdeacon’s presence was therefore no longer necessary for the interests of either Pope or King. In July, 1218, he was at Rome, acting as notary to the Pope.[533] On 12th September Honorius appointed him to the office which Gualo had just resigned;[534] and on 2nd December he was formally welcomed as Legate in S. Paul’s cathedral in London.[535]

Pandulf had well earned his promotion; and the special appropriateness of his appointment as Legate in England was obvious. His qualifications for the post may be summed up in an adaptation of the words in which John had commended him to Honorius: there was no one in the Roman Curia who could be trusted to understand and manage the affairs of John’s heir and of his realm so well as this man whom King and Pope alike had found by experience to be “most useful, faithful, and devoted” to the interests of both. As Legate, Pandulf came to his task in far less difficult circumstances than Gualo had done. Even when he set out from Rome, however, there must have been a general consciousness that the new Legate would ere long have to take upon him another charge, with which his predecessor had never been burdened. The selection of an English noble, instead of the legal representative of the overlord of England, as governor of King and kingdom in 1216 had been occasioned by circumstances which in 1218 had ceased to exist. There was now no invader to expel, no rebellion to subdue, no need for a warrior-regent: and there was also no man among the baronage clearly marked out for the regent’s office as the Marshal had been by his personal qualities and by the universal estimation of his fellow barons. It is only fair to the English magnates to say that there are no indications of rivalry among them for the reversion of the regent’s office; but there can be no doubt that, as the Marshal himself foresaw, the appointment of any one of them as his successor must inevitably have led to jealousy and discord, and that the only person who could safely take the foremost place in the government after him was the representative of the Apostolic See. The matter might indeed not have been settled without difficulty, had its settlement been postponed till after the Marshal’s death. His forethought and his influence averted the danger, and from the day when he transferred the custody of the King to Pandulf at Reading the Legate was recognized as chief among the guardians of little Henry and his realm.

[Sidenote: 1219]

Pandulf’s supremacy, however, was of a different character from that of the Earl Marshal. Theoretically, it was more absolute, for the powers which had appertained respectively to the Marshal and to Gualo were united in his person; he was at once the elected regent of the realm and the representative of its overlord. But practically his rule was less absolute, because he had the good sense to recognize from the outset that the direction of the entire home and foreign policy of England, and of its internal government, was a charge too great for a foreign ecclesiastic to undertake single-handed. He did not assume the title of “ruler of King and kingdom”; and he shared the functions of that office with the Justiciar and the Bishop of Winchester. He took but little part in the routine of administrative business; he is seldom found attesting royal letters; he left such matters to Hubert and Peter. From the very beginning of his regency, however--even before the death of the Marshal--he claimed an exclusive right of supreme control over one department of royal administration: the treasury. This appears from some letters written by him from the west of England to the treasurer Eustace de Fauconberg and the vice-chancellor Ralf de Neville in London, in the spring of the year 1219.[536] Soon after the council at Reading, Pandulf went to reside for some weeks first at Cirencester, and afterwards at the abbey of Lantony at Gloucester. On 30th April he wrote from Cirencester to Eustace and Ralf conjointly: “By our authority as Legate we lay upon you strict injunctions to give all attention and diligence to the business of the Exchequer; to deposit what money you can get in the house of the Temple in London, and to pay nothing of it out to anybody without our special command and licence; and we strictly forbid that the seal be withdrawn from the Exchequer at the bidding of anyone.”[537] At the same time he wrote a separate letter to Ralf, ordering him “not to withdraw from the Exchequer with the seal at anyone’s bidding, because the proceedings of the Exchequer and the advantage of the King would be hindered thereby.”[538] On 10th May he “warned and exhorted” Ralf to “attend faithfully and devotedly to the King’s business, and especially the business of the Exchequer which is at present imminent.”[539] In subsequent letters to Ralf he emphatically reiterated his orders to store up money in the Temple and to let none of it be paid out “without our knowledge and command”; on one occasion giving as a reason that “as you well know, the King is burdened with many debts.”[540] On 16th May he so far relaxed his injunction to Ralf about not quitting the Exchequer as to give him leave “the holy blissful Martyr for to seek,”[541] if he wished it, and if there was nothing that needed to be done at the Exchequer; “but,” he added, “make haste back, and deposit the King’s seal under your own in the Temple till you return”; and on 26th May he again told the vice-chancellor not to leave the Exchequer “at the bidding of any man.”[542]

It is not certain whether the seal referred to in these letters is the King’s great seal or its duplicate the seal of the Exchequer. Nominally, the custody of both these seals appertained to the Chancellor; but since the latter years of Henry II a large part of the Chancellor’s duties, including the keeping of the great seal, had been usually delegated to a vice-chancellor; and the whole of them were left in the capable and trusty hands of Ralf de Neville throughout the greater part of the chancellorship of Richard de Marsh, which lasted from 1214 till 1226.[543] The Exchequer seal was never permitted to leave the precincts of the Exchequer, where it was kept by the Chancellor “through a deputy,”[544] who doubtless might be, but was not necessarily, identical with the vice-chancellor. With the paying of money out of the Exchequer neither Chancellor nor vice-chancellor, as such, had anything to do; this was a part of the business of the treasurer and chamberlains. It seems probable that the vice-chancellor may have been also one of the chamberlains acting at the Exchequer at this time.[545] It is certain that he was in Pandulf’s fullest confidence;[546] and he may thus in a twofold or even threefold capacity--as keeper of the King’s great seal, as the Chancellor’s deputy having the custody of the Exchequer seal, and as chamberlain--have supported Pandulf’s efforts to maintain, as a special prerogative attached to the regent’s office, the right of exclusive control over the Exchequer.[547] That there was some matter under discussion between the Legate, the Justiciar, the treasurer, and the vice-chancellor, is clear from a letter written by Hubert de Burgh on 15th May to Eustace and Ralf in which he says the Legate “sent us word that he will labour altogether by our counsel for God’s honour and the King’s advantage; and we sent him word that if he will acquiesce in your advice, we will acquiesce in his counsel, for God’s honour and the advantage of the King.”[548] The constitution of the Exchequer underwent great changes in the course of the next fifteen years; and some of these changes may have owed their origin to Pandulf, who perhaps made, or attempted to make, some experiments in the re-organization of this department of the government, possibly with a view to checking what he may have regarded as extravagance on the Justiciar’s part in the disposal of the King’s money. Some months later we find him exhorting Hubert also to “take effectual steps concerning the business of the Exchequer”;[549] and four years later one of the charges brought against Hubert was that of having been “a waster of the King’s treasure.”[550] There is, however, no means of ascertaining what really lay behind Pandulf’s mysterious orders to the vice-chancellor. If the matter was one which involved a conflict between the authority of the regent and that of the Justiciar, it was probably compromised, or at least decided by an amicable agreement; it evidently led to no subsequent friction in the council of three which virtually governed England throughout Pandulf’s legation, and in which, while the foremost place belonged by a double right to the Legate-regent, the second belonged by long-established constitutional tradition to the Justiciar.

[Sidenote: 1201–1217]

Hubert de Burgh’s reputation as a statesman had yet to be made; but a career of distinction in more ways than one already lay behind him. His origin is absolutely unknown. The surname of which he and his brothers seem to be the earliest bearers mentioned in history represents, no doubt, the birthplace of one of their ancestors, probably their father;[551] but whether that place was Peterborough, or Brough in Westmorland, or one of the many Burghs and Burys in England or of the almost as numerous “Bourgs” in the continental dominions of the Angevin house, there is nothing to shew. In the early years of John’s reign Hubert’s brother William played some part in the affairs of the Anglo-Norman March in Ireland.[552] {1201–1205} Hubert himself was in 1201 chamberlain to John,[553] and entrusted with the wardenship of the Welsh Marches.[554] At the close of 1202 he was constable of Falaise, and had charge of the captive Arthur of Brittany, whom he saved from John’s cruelty chiefly, it seems, out of regard for the interests of John himself.[555] In 1204 he was constable of Chinon; he held it against the forces of Philip Augustus for twelve months, and when at last--long after the rest of the old Angevin lands were lost--its walls were so shattered that further defence became impossible, he sallied forth at the head of his men, fighting desperately, and was only made prisoner when disabled by a severe wound.[556] On his release he returned to his duties as chamberlain; and he was also sheriff of six counties at various times during the next eight or nine years.[557] Early in 1214 John appointed him seneschal of Poitou,[558] whence he returned in the following April with some troops for the King’s service;[559] shortly afterwards all the King’s subjects from over sea who obeyed his summons to come and help him against the barons were instructed to place themselves under Hubert’s orders.[560] In June Hubert became chief Justiciar of England.[561] For the exercise of the Justiciar’s ordinary functions he had little scope during the next two years; it was as constable of Dover castle that he rendered his most important services to John and to John’s youthful successor. From May, 1216, till August, 1217, he was practically absorbed in one task, the defence of Dover; and although the account of the sea fight on S. Bartholomew’s day given by an historian of the next generation,[562] which ascribes the entire credit of that decisive victory to Hubert alone, is very far from being borne out by contemporary and impartial authorities,[563] he undoubtedly shewed himself on that day as brave and capable on board ship as he had so often proved himself on land. Thus he passed from the military to the political stage of his career supported by the well-earned respect and goodwill of all parties in the realm.

[Sidenote: 1198–1215]

The Bishop of Winchester’s position at the council-table was peculiar. He had no official title and no specific functions in the civil administration of the kingdom; his connexion with the government was a purely personal one. A donjon of fourteenth century construction overlooking a hamlet built on the slope of a hill with a little stream flowing round its foot, some twelve kilometres south of Poitiers, is in all likelihood the successor of a castle from which Peter des Roches and his family derived their surname. In his youth Peter had been a knight in the service of Richard Cœur-de-Lion;[564] and he must have shown great aptitude for the career of a warrior, since, long after his helmet had been replaced by a mitre, he was regarded as “learned in the military art,” and proved himself worthy of his reputation when he acted as “the master counsellor” of the English host on the day of the Fair of Lincoln. When and why he became a clerk there is nothing to shew; but he seems to have done so shortly before or soon after Richard’s death. In June, 1198, he was Richard’s chamberlain;[565] a year later he was a “beloved clerk” of John’s, and treasurer of Poitou.[566] In the favour of Richard’s successor he rose rapidly. On 3rd January, 1202, he was made dean of S. Martin’s at Angers;[567] but his time was spent mostly in England as a clerk in the royal household;[568] and though he still bore the title of treasurer of Poitou at the beginning of 1205,[569] he must have lost the profits of all his continental dignities and offices when the Angevin lands passed into the hands of Philip of France. For these he was indemnified by grants of various ecclesiastical revenues and offices in England;[570] and before February 5th, 1205, he was elected Bishop of Winchester,[571] the see which ranked next to the two archbishoprics in wealth and importance. He of course owed his election to the influence of the King; a part of the chapter had chosen another candidate, against whom Peter had to plead at Rome for confirmation; his pleading was successful, and he was consecrated by Innocent III on 25th September.[572] Peter was the one bishop who remained in England throughout the years of interdict. In 1210, during the King’s absence in Ireland, he joined with the Justiciar Geoffrey FitzPeter and the Earl of Chester in an expedition into Wales which prevented a threatened Welsh invasion.[573] In October, 1213, Geoffrey FitzPeter died; and on 1st February, 1214, John appointed the Bishop of Winchester chief Justiciar of England.[574] The King’s choice of a foreigner for this office is said to have caused much grumbling among the barons,[575] the more so as John was on the eve of quitting the realm for a military expedition to Aquitaine, so that during his absence, which lasted eight months, Peter was practically viceroy of England. One chronicler asserts that Peter “by misusing his power turned the wrath of the barons against the King”;[576] but there is no proof that the country was any worse administered during those eight months than it had been for several years previously, and nothing to indicate that Peter was guilty of personal tyranny or extortion, or, in short, that he did anything worse than carry on the King’s government as he found it. Nor is it by any means clear that he was really disliked or distrusted, except by one section of the baronage--the section whose lofty patriotism and keen sense of nationality were soon to be displayed in their scheme for the annexation of England to France. The substitution of Hubert for Peter as Justiciar at Midsummer, 1215, may have taken place in deference to the King’s other advisers; but there is no evidence that such was the case; nothing is known about the circumstances of Hubert’s appointment; and it is quite possible that Peter may have resigned the justiciarship of his own accord.

[Sidenote: 1216]

From that time forth Peter never held office as a minister of state. He never had done so, save during those sixteen months of his justiciarship in 1214–1215.[577] He had, however, received another token of John’s confidence; he had been entrusted with the education of John’s heir. We have seen that in October, 1216, the Earl Marshal, with the assent of the other loyal barons, bestowed on Peter the important charge of the little King’s person, expressly on the ground that he had already been the child’s “master” and proved himself “a very good” one, who had “brought him up carefully and well.” As Henry was but just nine years old when these words were spoken,[578] we must infer from them that he had been under Peter’s care from a very tender age. Probably John had placed him in the bishop’s household as early as it was possible to do so, somewhat as Henry II had placed his eldest son, when quite a young child, in the household of Thomas the Chancellor.[579] The Marshal and the magnates did only what was natural and right when they replaced their young sovereign under the charge of his former tutor. The commission which Peter received from them, however, involved more than the boy’s education; it expressly included the responsibility for his personal safety. The man to whom was confided a charge so weighty as this obviously needed no official title to vindicate for him a prominent place among the counsellors by whose advice England was to be governed in his royal pupil’s name; and the active and versatile Southerner, experienced and efficient alike in matters of war, of administration, of finance, and of well-nigh every kind of public business, secular and ecclesiastical, was a colleague whose help the official governors of the realm would have been foolish indeed to reject or undervalue on the score of his foreign birth. They and he seem to have worked together without perceptible friction throughout the regency of the Marshal. The sharp words which passed between Peter and the regent shortly before the latter’s death, and Peter’s unseemly behaviour to the younger Marshal and the Legate next day, probably resulted from a misunderstanding on the part of the bishop. He evidently thought that the proposal to appoint a new “guardian of King and Kingdom” and the symbolical delivery of the King into the hands of Pandulf were meant to deprive himself of his precious charge. There was, however, no such intention. Pandulf gave Peter the rebuke which his violence deserved, but immediately replaced Henry under his care.[580]

[Sidenote: 1218–1219]

For the first six months of Pandulf’s regency the chronicles are blank, so far as the internal history of England is concerned. Throughout those months, however, one man was openly setting the government at defiance. In December, 1216, the royal castles of Rockingham and Sauvey, with the important Forest jurisdictions attached to them,[581] had been committed by the Earl Marshal to the custody of William de Fors, the titular Count of Aumale[582] (or “Albemarle,” as it seems to have been commonly called in England), “that he might dwell in them with his men until his own lands, which the King’s enemies had occupied during the war, should be restored to him.”[583] The actual custodian of Sauvey, Geoffrey de Serland, was apparently somewhat unwilling to hand the place over to the young count;[584] and as Geoffrey’s loyalty is unquestioned, his reluctance was probably caused by some doubts either of William’s loyalty, or of his fitness for the charge of such an important post. If so, these doubts were well founded. On 11th February, 1218, William, having received restitution of his own lands, was bidden to deliver up Rockingham and Sauvey to another custodian.[585] This order was not obeyed; and a contemporary writer asserts that the Earl Marshal before his death “greatly repented” of having put these castles into the young count’s hands, “because of the complaints which arose out of the ill-doings of the said count and his officers who dwelt there and wrought serious injuries to the people of the district, both rich and poor.”[586] For some unexplained reason, however, no further steps seem to have been taken in the matter till six months after the Marshal’s death. Then, on 30th November, 1219, a lengthy indictment against Aumale was issued in the form of letters patent to the barons, knights, and freeholders of the five counties--Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Cumberland, Rutland, Leicestershire, and Yorkshire--in which the bulk of his possessions lay. Count William was not only detaining, against the royal will and command, certain lands and castles of the King’s which had been placed in his charge (to wit, Rockingham and Sauvey), but was also fortifying and victualling them in the King’s defiance, although a day had actually been set--“to which he paid no heed”--for him to surrender them to the King in person. He was also holding tournaments; more especially he had lately held and attended one at Brackley, contrary to the King’s express orders, and regardless of a sentence of excommunication passed upon him by the Legate. He was therefore to be avoided as an excommunicate and a rebel; the persons addressed were warned, on pain of condign punishment, not to assist him in fortifying Sauvey, but to be ready to take action against him in whatever way they should be directed by future letters from the King; and the sheriffs of the five counties were ordered to proclaim him excommunicate.[587] Strangely enough, neither in record nor chronicle do we find any further mention of William of Aumale till the following April {1220}, when an order addressed to him for forty bucks to be sent to the King at Westminster shows that he was again recognized as warden of a royal Forest, which can only have been that of Rockingham or Sauvey;[588] and his next appearance is in the middle of June, when he was one of the sureties for King Henry’s fulfilment of a treaty with the King of Scots.[589] He seems to have been absolved on condition of taking the Cross[590] and of surrendering the castles and setting forth on his crusade within a given period. Such an arrangement would serve, for the time being, the purposes of Count and Legate alike. William remained in possession; Pandulf avoided, or at least staved off for a while, the responsibility of taking forcible measures against a man whom the Marshal had apparently deemed it prudent to treat with forbearance.

[Sidenote: 1220]

A like forbearance was exercised towards the Justiciar of Ireland, Geoffrey de Marsh. Shortly before the Marshal’s death Geoffrey appears to have announced his intention of going on Crusade; {1219} and the Council seized the opportunity thus afforded them to insist that before he went, he must come to England to perform his homage to the King, and confer with them touching the state of affairs in Ireland. For this purpose they gave him on 23rd April a safe-conduct till All Saints’ day; and they arranged that during his absence from Ireland the Archbishop of Dublin, who had been his colleague in the office of Justiciar during the past twelve months, should take sole charge of the March.[591] The Archbishop was himself anxious to go to England for an interview with the King; and as Geoffrey delayed his departure, he at length wrote and asked permission to do so.[592] His request seems to have crossed with some royal letters issued on 22nd September, ordering that his appointment as chief Justiciar should take effect from Candlemas next, and that by that date Geoffrey should be in England without fail;[593] and this order Geoffrey was just preparing to obey when it was followed by a warm assent to the Archbishop’s proposed visit, which the King’s advisers said “would be most welcome for many reasons.” On this Geoffrey was disposed to make the Archbishop’s impending departure from Ireland a reason for again deferring his own; the Archbishop, however, besought the King not to let him do so, but to bid him “commit the custody of the land, according as the Council may provide, to some other man.”[594] The Archbishop was certainly in England in the summer of 1220; but there is no sign of Geoffrey’s presence there at Candlemas. Summoned again, this time to meet the King and Council at Nottingham on 1st June, he at last came over, but was unavoidably prevented from being at Nottingham on the appointed day, and begged that a later date might be fixed on which he might “lay before the King and council the affairs of the King’s land in Ireland, and”--thus he wrote to his “very dear friend” Hubert de Burgh--“they may be settled by the counsel of yourself and other of the King’s faithful men and of our friends.”[595]

The settlement took the form of a convention between the King and Geoffrey, drawn up at Oxford on 11th August, in presence of the Legate and the Archbishop of Dublin, as well as Peter des Roches, Hubert de Burgh, and other members of the royal council. The Justiciar is in future to answer at the King’s Exchequer in Dublin for escheats, wards, fines, gifts, tallages, reliefs, and aids, from Ireland; and the proceeds of all these, after they have been accounted for at the Exchequer, are to be rendered to the King at his command. Out of the assessed revenue of Ireland, and its “reasonable perquisites” other than those above mentioned, the Justiciar is to maintain the garrisons of the King’s land and castles in Ireland; the garrisons to be such as shall be determined by the advice of Archbishop Henry, Thomas FitzAdam, and Richard de Burgh. The surplus of these revenues and perquisites shall be accounted for at the Dublin Exchequer by the view of these three persons; and clerks of the King, appointed for the purpose, shall keep a counter-roll of all these things. The Justiciar shall appoint as constables of the King’s castles loyal and fit men who shall swear to keep the castles faithfully and safely for the King, so that in case of the Justiciar’s capture, or death, or misconduct, the castles shall be safe; and these constables shall give hostages for their fidelity to the Archbishop of Dublin and the Earl Marshal, and shall also send to the King, through the Archbishop, charters of fealty. The Justiciar gave his two sons as hostages; the Earl Marshal stood pledge for him; and he himself further pledged the whole of his lands, to fall in to the King and the Marshal respectively (he held some of each), in case of his failure to keep faith. He also took an oath to keep all these promises, on pain of being excommunicated by the Archbishop of Dublin in case of breaking them; and as he had left his seal in Ireland for legal purposes there, this writing was at his request sealed with the seals of his brother William and of the Archbishop of Dublin, until he, Geoffrey, could put his own seal to it.[596]

From this document it must be inferred that nothing worse than mismanagement was proved against Geoffrey. His mismanagement however had clearly reached a point at which any sovereign of full age, and in a position to enforce his commands, would have put an end to it by summarily dismissing Geoffrey from his office. But the guardians of Henry III knew that they were not in a position to enforce the dismissal of the Justiciar whom Henry’s father had left in charge of the March in Ireland. Geoffrey was not willing to resign because he was not prepared to render an account of his stewardship. If they issued a direct order for his supersession it was highly probable that he would set them and their order at defiance, and that he would be supported in his defiance by the wardens of the royal castles who owed their appointments to him. Henry could not go, as John had gone, with an armed force at his back, to settle matters in Ireland for himself; nor could anyone in England be sent to do so in his stead. Should force be needed to subdue Geoffrey, the task of subduing him could only be committed to some of the barons of the March; and to commit it to any of these would be to plunge the whole March into a civil war which might result in the complete destruction of the King’s authority there. The case against Geoffrey was clearly not strong enough to justify Pandulf and his colleagues in taking measures which involved such a risk. The course which they took in giving Geoffrey another chance of redeeming his errors, while hedging him round with the strongest moral restraints that could be devised to prevent a repetition of those errors, was at once more politic and more just.

Pandulf’s most congenial sphere of action was diplomacy; and at the outset of his legatine career he was called upon to exercise his diplomatic gifts on a readjustment of the relations between the Kings of England and Scotland. In 1218 Alexander of Scotland--seemingly with the knowledge and assent of the English government--sent to the Pope a copy of the treaty which has been made between his father and John in 1209, and requested that Honorius would by his apostolic authority either confirm or annull it, as should seem to him best. Honorius committed the decision of the matter to Pandulf,[597] who was then on his way to England {Nov.}. Pandulf, after studying the text of the document,[598] {1219} appointed a day for a formal discussion of the questions at issue between the parties, in his presence, at Norham on 2nd August, 1219.[599] Alexander appeared in person; Henry was represented by a proctor. The discussion ended in an agreement that on the morrow of All Souls’ day another meeting should take place before the Legate, wheresoever he might be, “to treat concerning peace between the two Kings; and if peace cannot then be attained, the cause shall be proceeded with according to law.” Where this second meeting was held we know not, nor by what means peace was “then attained”; but it certainly was attained: “We are coming back at once” wrote Pandulf, in the triumph of his successful mediation, to Peter des Roches, “for, as Stephen de Segrave” (King Henry’s proctor) “and Master Robert of Arènes may have told you by word of mouth, our lord the King’s matters with the King of Scotland are by God’s grace now happily settled.”[600]

[Sidenote: 1219]

What these “matters” were is nowhere stated. Later indications, however, point to a probability that all these obscure proceedings resulted in a ratification of the treaty as a whole, but with a modification of one article. William the Lion had given the wardship and marriage of his two daughters, Margaret and Isabel, to John, with fifteen thousand marks which were, seemingly, intended to form their dowries. The only copy of the treaty of Norham which we possess says nothing more on the subject than this; but from other sources we have reason to infer the existence in the original text of a further stipulation, that the elder girl, Margaret, was to become the wife of John’s heir, or if the boy should not live long enough, of the next heir, the baby Richard; and also of a formal surrender, made on the express condition of this marriage, of all the Scot King’s claims upon Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland.[601] When this treaty was made, in August 1209, Henry’s age was one year and ten months; Richard’s was seven months. Margaret of Scotland was fourteen years old at the least.[602] By 1218 Margaret’s brother and Henry’s guardians must all alike have begun to feel that this clause as it stood was doomed to prove impracticable. Henry’s great-grandfather Geoffrey of Anjou had, indeed, at the age of fifteen, married a woman ten years older than himself; and the difference of age between Henry II and Eleanor was probably not much less. But Eleanor was Duchess of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey’s bride was heiress of Normandy and England; while Margaret could bring to her husband nothing beyond her share of the fifteen thousand marks. The guardians of the reigning King of England might fairly expect to have no difficulty in finding for him in due time a matrimonial alliance fraught with greater advantages, personal and political, than were offered by a marriage under these circumstances with a sister of his own vassal; and Henry himself, when old enough to decide, was almost certain to repudiate the engagement so lightly made for him by his father. On the other hand, unless some steps were taken in anticipation of this contingency, Scotland might find that she had given England fifteen thousand marks for nothing: the non-fulfilment of this unlucky clause would invalidate the whole treaty, and might lead to a rupture between the two countries, which both parties desired to avoid. After Henry’s final coming of age in 1227, we are told, he had to give the King of Scots two hundred pounds worth of land for the quit-claim of the three northern counties, “because the former agreements[603] were not observed”--that is, because Henry had not married Margaret.[604] This compensation for his failure to marry her may have been agreed upon between the two Kings when she was betrothed to Hubert de Burgh in 1220 or 1221. Possibly, however, and even more probably, it may have been settled in Pandulf’s presence in November, 1219.

From Scotland the Legate turned to Wales. Throughout the winter of 1219–1220 he was in the west of England, negotiating with Llywelyn for the settlement of a dispute between the Welsh prince and Hugh de Mortimer about certain manors on the Welsh border.[605] On 2nd December Llywelyn was invited, or summoned, to meet the Legate at Worcester to discuss the matter on 7th January, 1220.[606] The King’s letter, however, contained a summons to answer complaints as well as to make them; and it may have been for this reason that Llywelyn was unwilling to obey it. At his request Pandulf postponed the meeting till the octave of Candlemas.[607] {1220} It seems to have had a successful result thus far, that Llywelyn was induced to refrain from open hostilities throughout the spring. On Rogation Monday, 4 May, he met the King, the Legate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester, and the Justiciar, in conference at Shrewsbury,[608] and gave what was understood on the English side as a promise that he would surrender the lands in dispute between himself and Hugh de Mortimer.[609] An attempt was also made to check the perennial strife between the men of the Welsh prince and those of the English Earl in Pembroke, by a truce on the understanding that the Marshal and the other Marcher lords “should be restored to their rights” before 1st August.[610] On the strength of these promises David, Llywelyn’s eldest son by Joan, was formally taken under the King’s protection, and the subject princes of Wales were bidden in the King’s name to be loyal to both Llywelyn and David.[611]

[Sidenote: 1220]

From Shrewsbury King, Legate, and council hastened to London for an important public ceremony. Early in April the Legate and the Primate had received letters from the Pope ordering that Henry “should be a second time raised to the office of king, with due solemnity, according to the custom of the realm; because his first coronation, on account of the disturbed condition of his realm, had been performed less solemnly than was right and fitting, and in another place than that which the usage of the kingdom required.” This, of course, meant that the boy was to be re-crowned at Westminster, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Stephen was delighted, “for he loved the King dearly on account of his innocency.” He and Pandulf agreed that the ceremony should take place on Whit-Sunday, 17th May, and all the prelates and nobles were summoned to be present.[612] On the preceding day the young King himself had another solemn function to perform. Henry came of a family who for two hundred years past had been known as “great builders”; he was a lad of refined, artistic temperament, as well as of a pious disposition; and it seems that he had already undertaken the work which was to be the great architectural glory of his reign, the rebuilding of the abbey church of Westminster. On Whitsun Eve he laid the first stone of the new Lady Chapel.[613] Next morning for the last time a king was crowned in the old church of S. Edward the Confessor. In Pandulf’s presence Henry renewed under the dictation of Archbishop Stephen the oath which he had sworn in Gualo’s presence at Gloucester--to protect the Church of God, and to preserve inviolate the peace of both clergy and people and the good laws of the realm; then the Archbishop placed in his hands the insignia of the regal office, and set upon his head “the crown of the most holy King Edward.” “And this crowning of the King was done with such great peacefulness and splendour, that the oldest men among the nobles of England who were present asserted that they never remembered any of his predecessors being crowned amid such concord and tranquillity.”[614]

[Sidenote: 1205–1208]

Concord and tranquillity did indeed, to all outward seeming, reign at that moment over all the dominions of the English Crown, except the Duchy of Aquitaine. One of the most difficult of the many difficult problems with which the regency had to deal was the problem of how to retain Poitou and Gascony for Henry. The heritage of his grandmother Eleanor had descended to him almost complete. Philip Augustus had never made any attempt to conquer Gascony; he had seized Poitou, but the greater part of it had been regained by John in 1214 and left in his possession by the terms of the truce with which the war between him and Philip had ended. John’s seneschal in Gascony at that time was one of his chamberlains, Geoffrey de Neville[615]; another chamberlain--Hubert de Burgh--soon became seneschal of Poitou.[616] At the end of the year 1214 or the beginning of the next Geoffrey de Neville was succeeded by a baron of Saintonge, Reginald de Pons;[617] in June 1215 Hubert de Burgh became Justiciar of England; before that year closed, the seneschalship of Poitou was united with that of Gascony in the hands of Reginald[618]; and thenceforth the two offices were always granted together and became practically one. Reginald resigned it a few months after John’s death, and was succeeded by Archbishop William of Bordeaux.[619] A year later William gave it up likewise, and in May 1218 Geoffrey de Neville was again sent across the sea to be Seneschal of Poitou and Gascony.[620] Reginald and William had resigned ostensibly for the same reason--because they wanted to go to the Holy Land. Possibly the layman and the prelate may both of them have been glad of an excuse for ridding themselves of an extremely disagreeable office. The loyalty--such as it was--of Poitou and Gascony to the English Crown was of very recent growth; it had sprung up since the expulsion of the Angevins from their other continental dominions. The one persistent political aim of the men of the South was to escape as much as possible from all external control, no matter whence it came. Their land was full of thriving cities and towns, each with a highly developed administrative organization of its own, almost like so many miniature republics; and of high-spirited, hot-tempered barons who were perpetually quarrelling among themselves. Moreover, towns and barons were mutually jealous of one another; and all were alike jealous of any interference with their respective privileges, corporate or individual, on the part of a higher power. They were also all alike shrewd enough to see that their chances of independence were greater under the rule of a sovereign beyond the sea than under the direct rule of the King of France. But they were also, all alike, fully alive to the advantages of their position between two rival overlords; and the possibility of some turn in Aquitanian politics which might furnish a plea, an excuse, or a temptation for French intervention was a danger never absent from the minds of Henry’s counsellors in their dealings with his transmarine dominions.

Besides Poitou and Gascony, the Duchy of Aquitaine included four counties whose rulers owed homage and obedience to the Duke as their suzerain: Angoulême, La Marche, Limoges, and Périgord. Two of these stood, during the early years of the thirteenth century, in relations to each other and to their common overlord which gave them a special importance in the politics of the Duchy. The county of Angoulême was the heritage of Queen Isabel, John’s wife and Henry’s mother. La Marche belonged to Hugh of Lusignan, to whose eldest son Isabel had been betrothed in her infancy, under whose care she had been brought up, and from whose house her own father had literally stolen her, a child scarce twelve years old, {1200} to marry her to the King of England. Between the houses of Lusignan and of Anjou there was already, even at that date, a smouldering feud of some years’ standing, which this outrage, of course, aggravated, but which was allayed for a time in 1214 by John’s promise of little Joan, his eldest daughter by Isabel of Angoulême, as wife to the younger Hugh in her mother’s stead. Joan was then four years old. Her bridegroom--known simply as “Hugh of Lusignan,” his father being Hugh, Count of La Marche--was a young man in the prime of life,[621] gifted with an ample share of the stirring, ambitious, acquisitive spirit which characterized his race. That race was famous alike in legend and in history, and had reached the height of its greatness within the lifetime of the reigning count of La Marche, two of whose brothers had been crowned and anointed Kings.[622] Another brother, Ralf, was in right of his wife count of Eu in Normandy and owner of some lands in England. In 1218 the elder Hugh went to the Crusade; and thus when Geoffrey de Neville took up the government of Poitou and Gascony, the younger Hugh was for practical purposes count of La Marche, and the most important personage in northern Aquitaine. He and Joan were still only betrothed, not married; but she was in his custody, and he was officially treated as “brother” to King Henry; he had claims against the English Crown respecting certain lands which John had promised to him at his betrothal;[623] and when his uncle Ralf of Eu died childless in the spring of 1219, he seems to have also--no doubt on behalf of his father--laid claim to Ralf’s estates, and taken a high-handed method of enforcing his demand, by picking a quarrel with the King’s town of Niort. Geoffrey de Neville tried to mediate, and promised to procure him satisfaction for any complaint that he might have against the town, “but,” writes Geoffrey to the King, “he answered that he would not cease from infesting your land for us or for anybody else.” Geoffrey had now been seneschal for a year, and was confessedly at his wit’s end and eager to be rid of an office in which he foresaw nothing but failure and disgrace. “He”--that is, Hugh--“and others can see how poor we are both in men and money.” “We greatly fear that unless speedy and effectual counsel be taken for the defence of your land, the said Hugh and the magnates will usurp it, and it will pass to the rule of a stranger. And we do you to wit that unless you take strong measures for its defence, we (Geoffrey) intend to set out for Holy Land on Midsummer day, for we will on no account stay here to your and our own damage and disgrace; because the said Hugh has let us know that he will not cease from molesting you until you give up the English lands of the count of Eu. For the love of God, write back quickly what you wish us to do.”[624] Apparently the answer to this letter was an order to remain at his post; and he did so, though complaining bitterly of the impossibility of the task laid upon him. “We have already urged you,” he writes again, “to take some counsel for the defence of your land of Poitou and Gascony, not so much against the King of France as against your own barons, who ravage your land and capture and put to ransom your townsfolk, and behave themselves towards your men in such fashion that it appears, and we believe, they are not well affected to your service. We, by reason of our poverty, cannot defend the land, nor subdue them; and they make no more account of me than if I were a foot-boy. Wherefore we do you to wit that unless you take other counsel without delay, you will soon see us in England. And do not say that the King’s land is lost through us; you are casting it away yourselves for lack of counsel.”[625]

[Sidenote: 1218–1219]

At this juncture a new complication arose. Queen Isabel had in 1218 returned to her own county of Angoulême, received in its capital city the homage of its barons, and taken its government into her own hands.[626] She had some trouble at the outset with Reginald of Pons, the ex-seneschal of Poitou, who seems to have owned some castles in the Angoumois, and for some unexplained reason held them against her, but was soon overcome by her superior forces.[627] A matter of more consequence was her quarrel with Bartholomew of Puy. In the early part of John’s reign Bartholomew had been provost, or mayor, of the city of Angoulême;[628] from July, 1214,[629] if not earlier, he was seneschal of the county for John, and after John’s death for Henry. Isabel was minded to govern for herself; rightly or wrongly, she asserted that Bartholomew was plotting mischief against her with some of the Poitevin barons, especially Ralf de Lusignan the count of Eu, and also with the King of France; she therefore deprived him of his office and all his possessions, and made him give her his two sons as hostages. Bartholomew, apparently, appealed to the English government and the new seneschal of Aquitaine, and fled for shelter to Hugh de Lusignan.[630] Just then {1219} Hugh and the seneschal had suddenly become friends. Geoffrey wanted to go to England, but he was so absolutely penniless that on reaching La Rochelle he found it impossible to proceed any further, or even to leave the city,[631] till a loan of a hundred and sixty marks from some local merchants was negotiated for him by Hugh de Lusignan, who offered himself as surety for its repayment by the English government. This simple but timely stroke of policy made Hugh master of the situation in Aquitaine. The letters in which he and Geoffrey notified the transaction to King and Council were carried to England by Bartholomew of Puy. Geoffrey excused his acceptance of Hugh’s help on the plea that “the trouble in your land is so great that ruin would have followed if I had withdrawn”; Hugh modestly remarked that “your land of Poitou was greatly disturbed, but by God’s grace we have put it into a better state.” Both requested that the money should be given to Bartholomew in the presence of Ralf of Saint-Samson, who accompanied him, and who “knew that these things were true”; and Geoffrey added a warning--“If it be not paid, and if Sir Hugh should be compelled to pay it for me, you will never again find anybody who will make any loan to your order or to you.”[632]

[Sidenote: 1219]

The Council perceived that the only thing to do with Sir Hugh was to make a friend of him, if possible, by enlisting him as a sort of unofficial colleague to the luckless seneschal. In July Bartholomew of Puy came back, in the character of “the King’s messenger.”[633] He seems to have brought letters from the King and Council to Isabel, directing her to reinstate him in his property. Almost at the same time negotiations were set on foot in the King’s name for a loan of a thousand marks from the mayor and citizens of La Rochelle, and another thousand from those of Bordeaux, “to be used and expended by the hands of our very dear brother, Hugh of Lusignan, in defence of our land, if it should be needful.”[634] The possible danger against which it was thought that defence might be needed was an attack from Louis of France. He had been for some months past in the county of Toulouse, fighting against the Albigensians, and some of Henry’s subjects in Aquitaine feared that the French host, when its work at Toulouse was done, might be used against their sovereign and themselves.[635] These suspicions of Louis were, however, without justification. There is not the least indication that Louis ever thought of using, or allowing his followers to use, the opportunity which certainly lay within his reach for intervening at this time in the troubles of Poitou and Gascony. The truce between France and England, however, was now within nine months of its term;[636] and Pandulf was growing very anxious to secure its prolongation. In September a month’s safe-conduct was given to some envoys from the King of France to come over and discuss this matter.[637] In January, 1220, the Legate wrote urgently from the west of England, where he was detained by his negotiations with Llywelyn, to the Bishop of Winchester and the Justiciar, begging them to send some trusty messenger, “secretly, privately, and without delay,” to ask Philip for a renewal of the truce; he himself drafted for them a letter such as he deemed advisable for the envoy to convey; and he impressed upon his colleagues the importance of taking the matter in hand at once and insisting upon a decisive answer from the French King.[638] Three envoys were accordingly despatched on 26th January;[639] and on 3rd March the truce was renewed for four years from the ensuing Easter.[640]

[Sidenote: 1220]

Hugh of Lusignan meanwhile {1219} had thrown himself at once into his new part, posing as the zealous protector of the interests and loyal executor of the mandates of his little “brother,” even in opposition to the Queen-mother, who complained bitterly to Pandulf of the “maintenance” which Hugh and Geoffrey de Neville, acting under instructions from the royal Council, afforded to Bartholomew of Puy against her.[641] In August, 1219, the countess of Eu went to England, to claim her share of her late husband’s possessions there. As she was a kinswoman of the Earl of Warren and a niece of the Justiciar, a conflict between her claims and those of her husband’s brother bade fair to stir up a good deal of trouble.[642] By the middle of November Bartholomew of Puy seems to have been in England again;[643] and before that time Geoffrey de Neville was there also.[644] Geoffrey appears to have left Poitou and Gascony under the charge of a knight named William Gauler, who presently wrote a pathetic letter to Hubert de Burgh, complaining that he had been left without any revenues save those of the ports, which were only worth fifty pounds, “for all the affairs of the Poitevins and of Bordeaux”; moreover, his friends were telling him that the King had ordered him to be arrested, he knew not why. With strong protestations of loyalty William declared himself ready to settle his accounts, “willingly and truthfully,” with any one whom Hubert might send to Gascony as seneschal, “whether it were the chamberlain or some other man.” “Gascony,” he added, “is in a good condition up to the present; but I greatly fear it will quickly fall back into worse ways unless you send us good counsel and reinforcements.”[645]

[Sidenote: 1219–1220]

Meanwhile the towns were protesting their loyalty, and complaining of one another, and also of the intrigues of the French party and the lawless doings of the local barons.[646] About this last grievance they grew more clamorous than ever in the winter of 1219–1220. “The King’s burghers” of La Rochelle, Niort, and S. Jean d’Angély lived in perpetual terror of the lord of Parthenay, William Larchevêque, who with the lord of Rancon “and with the consent of others whom we will not at present name,” persecuted them “daily and unceasingly.” “He seizes your burghers and holds them to ransom; he carries off their beasts of burden,” wrote the mayor and commune of Niort. “He has put out the eyes of the bearer of this letter, and those of two other men, without any offence or fault of theirs, and though they were not even on his land when he captured them. And all this evil he does to us, so he declares, because of a hundred marks of silver which the late King promised him, and on account of a certain traitor whom you, Sir Hubert de Burgh, hanged when you were our seneschal.” With one voice the towns entreated that an efficient governor might be sent into Poitou {1220 (_March_)}; and they gave it clearly to be understood that they did not want Geoffrey de Neville back again. “Our former governors have been somewhat slack in their dealings with your enemies.” “When Sir Geoffrey was here, he could not protect us; he was not sufficient for these things, nor for other things either. If he were here now, he would be of no use. Send us some one more useful, more competent to manage this country, and to provide for the welfare of its people and uphold the rights and interests of the Crown.”[647]

[Sidenote: 1220]

The task of selection devolved upon Hubert de Burgh. Pandulf, a total stranger to Aquitaine and its affairs, seems to have declined to take any part in the matter beyond promising to ratify Hubert’s choice, on whomsoever it might fall.[648] Hubert was the one man then in England who knew by experience what were the most essential qualifications for the vacant post. Before he could find a man to his mind, however, another sudden change occurred in the political situation. In February or March, 1220, tidings came from Damietta that the count of La Marche was dead;[649] and before the middle of May Isabel of Angoulême wrote a startling announcement to her son. “We do you to wit that the counts of La Marche and Eu[650] being both dead, Sir Hugh de Lusignan was left, as it were, alone and without an heir, and his friends would not allow him to marry our daughter on account of her tender age, but counselled him to make such a marriage that he might speedily have an heir; and it was proposed that he should take a wife in France; which if he should do, all your land in Poitou and Gascony, and ours too, would be lost. We therefore, seeing the great danger that might arise if such a marriage should take place, and getting no support from your counsellors, have taken the said Hugh count of La Marche to be our lord and husband.”[651]

This letter probably reached England shortly before the coronation; on 22nd May Henry wrote to his step-father, expressing his approval of the marriage.[652] At the same time he desired Hugh to escort Joan to La Rochelle and there deliver her to two persons (Ralph Gernon and Joldewin of Douai) who were charged to take care of her till they received further orders from England.[653] A new use for the little girl’s hand had already been devised by the royal Council; they offered it to the young King of Scots. He was invited to meet Henry at York on 10th June;[654] and there, on 15th June, the treaty of marriage was arranged. Henry pledged himself to give Joan to Alexander to be his wife, at the ensuing Michaelmas, “if he could get her”; if he could not, his second sister, Isabel, should be given to Alexander in her stead, within fifteen days of the time appointed. Henry also promised that he would either cause Alexander’s two sisters to be honourably married in England within a year from S. Denys’s day (9th October), or restore them to their brother within a month after that term should have expired.[655] All thought of a marriage between Margaret of Scotland and Henry himself had evidently been given up by mutual consent.

Henry’s doubts whether he could get his eldest sister back in time for her to be married at Michaelmas proved well founded. Queen Isabel, when she announced her own marriage, had assured him that she was ready to let Joan go home as soon as he liked to send for her. At the same time she had requested that her own dower-lands, and a sum of three thousand five hundred marks which she alleged had been bequeathed to her by John, should be handed over to Hugh;[656] and it soon became apparent that she and Hugh intended to hold Joan in pledge till this was done. The English Council, however, were equally determined not to give up the Queen’s dowry until that of Joan, and Joan herself, were safely restored. On 20th June letters were written in Henry’s name to the Pope, asking him to bid the bishops of Saintes and Limoges compel Hugh to restore Joan and her dowry and right the wrongs which he had done to Henry in other matters;[657] and also to the cardinals, requesting that they would bring their influence to bear upon the count of La Marche, who, “regardless of his plighted vow, having taken our mother to wife instead of our sister, now refuses to give our sister back to us, wishing by his detention of her to compel us to buy her back.”[658]

The union of La Marche and Angoulême, instead of making for the peace and safety of Aquitaine as Isabel had pretended, was in fact no sooner accomplished than it made matters worse than ever. Hugh openly threatened the towns and barons who opposed him with a renewal of hostilities, and so great was their terror that “all the bishops, very many of the barons, and other good men of the King’s towns of Bordeaux, Niort, La Rochelle, and S. Jean d’Angély went to him in a body at Angoulême, desiring him that before he made war upon them he should approach the King and the Council with reference to the matters in dispute between him and the King.” The joint efforts of the bishops and of the King’s envoys, who seem to have arrived in the midst of the colloquy, wrung from Hugh a promise to stay his hand for a while.[659] But his promises were worthless; and the complaints of the towns continued to pour in upon Henry’s guardians. To the town of Niort Hugh had granted a truce of seven weeks; “but,” wrote the mayor and commune, “as we had no security except his word, we put it to Sir William Maingo the younger whether he would keep us safe, so far as he and his men were concerned, and maintain the truce. He wrote back to us that if we would render to him one hundred marks a year, which King John had promised him, he would keep us in safety; otherwise we must guard ourselves against him and his men; and he has already done us some injury. We likewise sent letters to Sir William Larchevêque, that he might certify us whether he would keep the truce or not. And he wrote back that he would not keep the truce, but would do us all the evil and damage that he could; and he is oppressing us so that we dare not get our harvest in; and he sets traps for us daily, and so do many others”--Hugh’s own men-at-arms among the number.[660] “When the truce was begun between us and the count of La Marche,” they write again, “the count by one of his knights declared us deprived of all rights within his fiefs”; he and his men were guarding all the roads so that neither corn, nor wine, nor wood, nor any necessaries could be got into the city, “and what is your own property he declares to be of his fee.” Again “with tears” they implored Henry to send them such a governor as should extricate them and all Poitou from these perils.[661]

The men of Bordeaux on the other hand were urgent that Hugh should be appeased. “He has promised,” they wrote, “to maintain and defend the towns, from himself and his, and all other living men, faithfully to the utmost of his power, for your benefit and honour. And since his defence and maintenance is, above that of all others, most useful and necessary to your faithful men of Poitou, and molestation from him is equally perilous and injurious to them, we entreat your royal majesty, by every means we can, to take such counsel that a man of such importance, such a useful defender of your land, and so pious and humble a protector of peace and tranquillity, may not through any other’s fault withdraw from your service; for he has promised that so long as he lives he will, unless you give him cause to do otherwise, remain faithfully in your service against all men living. All these things,” they add, “have been communicated to us by the good men of La Rochelle.”[662] But meanwhile the good men of La Rochelle had learned something of the value of Hugh’s fine promises. Threatened by him with “all the harm that he could do” to them, surrounded by enemies who persecuted them for their loyalty, and without any protector save the Bishop of Saintes, they again pleaded--as did also the men of Bordeaux[663]--for the appointment of an efficient seneschal: “Send us quickly a strong man, who will bring back the barons to allegiance, and with their aid rout the enemies and restore the royal authority.”[664] A rumour that the King was about to make the viscount of Thouars seneschal of Poitou struck panic into Niort. “God forbid it! for the viscount is our mortal foe, and in your father’s time, with the counsel of the King of France, he did us all the evil that he could. As you love your land of Poitou, and us, and your own honour, we beseech you on no account to venture on making him seneschal; moreover, make not anyone from these parts seneschal of Poitou. If you do, they will take your land for their own advantage, as much as they can, as some did in your father’s time. And we and the other faithful men shall have to go out of your land, unless you take diligent care and good counsel in this business. May it therefore please your excellency to send some noble, discreet, wise, and powerful man from the parts of England, to be your seneschal--such a man as will know how to deal with your affairs in Poitou, and be able to hold your land.”[665] Another rumour--this time in England--as to the Council’s intentions with respect to the vacant office drew forth a trenchant protest from Earl William of Salisbury. “I am given to understand,” he writes to Pandulf, “that you, together with the King’s Council, proposed to send the count of Aumale into Poitou to keep the land. And as it seems to me that the count is less obedient than he should be to the King’s commands concerning the things which he holds in England, which are small, I doubt he would be less obedient still if he had the seneschalship and government of Poitou which is a great thing. And therefore I give notice to your holiness that you will in no wise commit the custody of that land to him by my counsel or assent.”[666]

Oddly enough, the man finally chosen by Hubert was Philip of Ulecote, who also had given the government some trouble about the restitution of a castle to its rightful owner.[667] When the choice was at last made, in August, some difficulty arose before it could be carried into effect; the sequel suggests that Philip’s state of health may have been the obstacle. “I never felt any confidence,” wrote Pandulf to Hubert on 25th August, “that Philip should go there; though you seemed mighty certain about the matter, rambling over seas and mountains in quest of things that are not to be had.” In a more serious strain he warned the Justiciar that some decision must be made at once. “You must provide for that country, which plainly appears to be perishing through the fault of the King’s Council. The matter has been already shamefully delayed, and I greatly fear lest grave damage should come of it.”[668] In the middle of September Philip of Ulecote was formally appointed seneschal of Poitou,[669] and went across the sea.

Pandulf and Peter des Roches, meanwhile, had enlisted the services of the Dean of Poitiers, who visited England in August, to negotiate with Hugh of La Marche for a truce.[670] A carucage “for our great needs, most urgent debts, and the preservation of our land of Poitou” had been agreed upon in a council at Oxford on 9th August.[671] Negotiations with the communes of La Rochelle and Bordeaux for a loan “for the safe keeping of Poitou and Gascony” were begun in September.[672] These two towns, with Niort and S. Jean d’Angély, had now resolved upon sending representatives to England to lay their complaints before the Council; the Preceptor of the Temple, Gerard Brochard, at their request undertook to accompany these envoys, and begged the Council to give him and them an audience in London in the week after Michaelmas, “to hear the proposals of the count of La Marche, and of others, on all sides.” Gerard, it is clear, was in the confidence of all parties, and he declared positively that if the Council would listen to him, the damsel Joan would be restored to them in honour and freedom; “she would have been delivered to me,” he said, “if I would have stood surety that the King would do to the count what he ought.”[673] Probably Gerard received in London, and thence transmitted to Hugh, a formal assurance that Henry would “do what he ought”--in other words, surrender his mother’s dowry. At the same time the Pope took up the matter; and a letter from him, on 20th September, threatening that if Hugh did not within fifteen days after its receipt deliver Joan, together with the city of Saintes and the Isle of Oléron (which had been pledged to him by John as security for her dowry) to Henry’s appointed representatives, he should be excommunicated and his lands placed under interdict,[674] was followed by Hugh’s submission, so far as the surrender of Joan herself was concerned. In obedience to an order from England issued on 6th October that he should either himself bring Joan to England, or deliver her at La Rochelle to certain persons appointed to receive her there,[675] he set out with the child; but he fell sick at Oléron, where the Dean of Poitiers and the new seneschal of Aquitaine, Philip of Ulecote, had been ordered to meet him. The Dean waited for the seneschal in vain, and at last learned that he was dead.[676] At the beginning of November Hugh, being too ill to proceed, delivered Joan to the commissioners--the Dean and two other envoys--who escorted her to La Rochelle.[677] The term fixed for her marriage was past, but at its expiration, on 13th October, Henry and Alexander had met again at York,[678] and Alexander had evidently consented to wait for her with patience; he waited in fact till the following Midsummer. Her stepfather, when he gave her up to Henry’s commissioners, assured them of his intention to go and perform his homage for La Marche and Angoulême as soon as his health should permit him.[679] Thus for a few months Aquitaine was--comparatively--at peace.

Meanwhile, however, the “concord and tranquillity” in England had not been altogether unbroken. At first glance the Pope’s selection of the spring of 1220 for the re-crowning of the young King appears unaccountable. Since the ceremony had not taken place immediately after the Primate’s return, two years ago, it would have seemed more natural to delay it for seventeen months longer, till the boy should have reached the completion of his fourteenth year, the earliest age which could, on any known principle, be reckoned as that of legal majority. A clue to the purpose for which the matter was hurried on may possibly be found in certain steps which were taken immediately after the coronation. On its morrow (18th May) “the barons who were present swore that they would resign their castles and wardenships at the will of the King, and would render at the Exchequer a faithful account of their ferms; and also that if any rebel should resist the King, and should not make satisfaction within forty days after being excommunicated by the Legate, they would make war upon him at the King’s bidding, that the rebel might be disinherited without the option of a fine.”[680] A week after this, on 26 May, the Pope wrote a letter to Pandulf. He began by expressing his distress at the reports that reached him of his royal ward’s extreme poverty; this, he said, was imputed chiefly to the archbishops, bishops, and other prelates in England, some of whom had usurped the King’s castles, manors, and other domains, and were detaining the same “on the frivolous pretext that they wish to keep them safe till the King should be of age; and so meanwhile the King must be a beggar, while they run riot, against his will, on what belongs to him.” The Pope therefore ordered that they should surrender all such castles and lands to the King, and make restitution of all the proceeds thence derived since the war, and bade Pandulf enforce their compliance with penalties both spiritual and temporal. In a second letter, written two days later, Honorius instructed the Legate not to suffer any man, howsoever faithful or closely attached he might be to the King, to hold in his custody more than two of the King’s castles, on pain of ecclesiastical censure without appeal.[681]

From the days of Henry II, if not from a yet earlier time, the Crown had found it a hard matter to preserve its authority over castles held in private ownership. Such ownership was limited by the King’s right in three ways. The owner was bound to allow his castle to be garrisoned by the King’s own men at the King’s will; to surrender it into the King’s hand if required; and not to make any addition to its fortifications without the King’s licence. Against the enforcement of these royal rights the owners of castles had struggled, with varying success, under Henry II, Richard, and John. The civil war, and the new conditions under which the powers of the Crown had to be exercised during the minority of John’s successor, had intensified their jealousy of all restriction upon their tenure of their fortresses; and a like spirit of independence began to show itself in some of the wardens of the King’s own castles, with regard to the fortresses under their charge. The only important case of this kind, until the latter part of the year 1219, was that of Count William of Aumale. But between August, 1219, and March, 1220, trouble began to threaten in connexion with two royal fortresses of not less consequence than Sauvey and Rockingham, and from two men of far greater political and personal weight than William de Fors.

The combined offices of sheriff of Lincolnshire and warden of Lincoln castle were hereditary in the family of Haye, represented at this time by the old Dame Nicolaa, whose capability, courage, and loyalty had never failed in the service of John and his heir throughout the last twenty years. Three days after the battle of Lincoln {24 May 1217} the city and county had been committed to the boy-King’s uncle, William Longsword Earl of Salisbury, to hold during the King’s pleasure.[682] This grant was probably made with the double purpose of rewarding Longsword for his share in the victory, and relieving Nicolaa of a burden which she had, nearly two years before, declared to be too great for her.[683] Five months later, however, when peace was made, the old lady asked to be reinstated in her hereditary functions. Her request was granted, and on 31st October the Earl was bidden to deliver the castle to her and give her seisin of the sheriffdom without delay; but the latter half of this order seems not to have been enforced;[684] and at the beginning of December the county “with all its appurtenances” was again committed to William to hold during the King’s pleasure.[685] This time, however, the castle did not go with the shrievalty; for from March, 1218, onwards we find the former once more, with the full sanction of the Crown, under the charge of its veteran castellan, Nicolaa.[686] No one seems to have ventured on molesting her till three months after the death of the old Earl Marshal. Then, on 23rd August, 1219, “the sheriff of Lincoln”--no doubt the Earl of Salisbury’s deputy--had to be sharply told that he was to “maintain, protect, and defend the lands, goods, and men of our trusty and well-beloved Nicolaa de Haye within his bailiwick, to cause her no molestation, injury or damage, nor to meddle in any way with her debts to the Crown, or in any matters concerning her, till he received orders to do so”; and next day “all the knights and good men” of the shire were informed that the King had assigned Falkes de Bréauté (who was sheriff of two shires contiguous to Lincolnshire, those of Northampton and Rutland) to Dame Nicolaa as her assistant in the defence of Lincoln castle, “and that they should all efficaciously counsel and assist Falkes in the King’s business which Falkes would explain to them, for the preservation of the peace of the realm.”[687] It seems that Falkes, with three of his knights (and no doubt some attendant men-at-arms), at once took up his abode in the castle and made it his headquarters for the next nine months.[688] From a temporary absence in January, 1220, when he went to meet the King at Northampton, he was recalled by an urgent message from Nicolaa; and a letter from Falkes himself to Hubert de Burgh makes it perfectly clear that the danger against which he was required to protect her was a persistent endeavour of the Earl of Salisbury, as sheriff of the county, to enter the castle. “But,” wrote Falkes, “God helping me, with the force at the Dame’s command I will take good care that he shall not get in.”[689]

William Longsword was a son of Henry II; illegitimate, but always acknowledged and treated as “the King’s brother” by both Richard and John, and by Henry as “our beloved uncle.” Richard had given him the earldom from which he took his title, together with the hand and the great possessions of Ela, heiress of an earlier line of Earls of Salisbury. He had done good service to John until the middle of 1216; then he had joined Louis, but early in 1217 he had returned to the side of little Henry, and had received back all his forfeited estates, to which in August of the same year were added the counties of Somerset and Devon.[690] His attempt to interfere with the rights of a castellan appointed by the King to the command of a royal castle certainly failed, and was probably abandoned without any open strife, for there is no sign of any breach in the friendly relations between the King and his “beloved Uncle William,” to whom the boy seems to have been really attached. But the mere making of such an attempt, by a man of such high rank and so closely connected with the King, was not without grave significance; and it coincided ominously with another incident of graver significance still.

[Sidenote: 1220]

The castle of Marlborough, like that of Lincoln, belonged to the Crown. When it fell into the hands of Louis in 1216 the younger William Marshal, then in arms on Louis’s side, claimed it as his by right. The chronicler who records this claim mentions also a claim put forth by William to act as Marshal for Louis in England;[691] possibly he may have claimed the wardenship of Marlborough castle as appertaining to the Marshalcy. The two offices may have been granted together to his grandfather John FitzGilbert, who was certainly Marshal under Henry I, and commandant at Marlborough after that King’s death. In 1175–1176 a part of the fine due to the Crown from the heirs of John FitzGilbert for entering upon their patrimony was remitted in reimbursement for repairs done to Marlborough castle.[692] At the coronation of Richard John FitzGilbert’s two elder surviving sons, John and William, shared between them the functions of Marshal, but the hereditary character of that office was not explicitly determined till ten years later. During the greater part of those ten years Marlborough was not a royal fortress; Richard had given it to his own brother John. John’s accession as King restored it to its old status; but no reference to its wardenship occurs in the charter whereby John granted the Marshalcy to William and his heirs for ever; and the great Earl never was, nor, so far as we can see, claimed to be custodian of Marlborough castle during John’s lifetime.[693] He certainly was so, however, from November, 1217, until his death, and his eldest son succeeded him in this wardenship.[694] In March, 1220, Hubert de Burgh informed Pandulf that Marlborough castle was being fortified--evidently without instructions from the Crown. Pandulf bade him despatch without delay “the most stringent letters from the King that could be drawn up,” ordering the Marshal to stop the work at once, and strictly forbidding all persons engaged in it, on pain of their bodies, goods, “and even their inheritance,” to do anything towards fortifying the castle without a special licence and order from the King.[695] No further letters on the subject appear to be extant; the information which Hubert had forwarded to Pandulf may have proved to be incorrect, or the Marshal may have given some satisfactory explanation. There is, however, an indication elsewhere that he took upon himself to exercise over the tenants of the castle of Marlborough more arbitrary authority than he was entitled to assume as custodian of that fortress for the King.[696] Moreover, there was another matter about which trouble with him must have been felt to be impending.

[Sidenote: 1217]

Immediately after the younger Marshal’s return to allegiance, in March, 1217, there had been granted to him, to hold during the King’s pleasure, the English lands of Earl David of Huntingdon.[697] The most important part of these lands was the honour of Huntingdon, which the Scot Kings had inherited from the English wife of King David of Scotland, which William the Lion had subenfeoffed to his brother David, and which, with the estates held by David direct of the English Crown, had now become forfeit to its English overlord because David and the reigning King of Scots--his nephew Alexander--had espoused the cause of Louis. A few months later they both submitted to Henry; Alexander, having performed his homage in December, was granted seisin of “the lands held of him in England by Earl David”;[698] and in the following March orders were issued for complete restitution to David himself of all his English possessions.[699] He seems to have regained them all except one castle: Fotheringay. In June, 1219, he died, leaving an heir under age. His fief being an English one, the right to its custody fell not to its immediate overlord the King of Scots, but to its lord paramount the King of England; in Henry’s name it was committed, during his pleasure, to the charge of three knights, and an order was issued that they should receive full seisin of “the manor of Fotheringay” from the constable of the castle[700]--that is, the younger Marshal (now Earl William the second of Pembroke and Striguil), or his lieutenant there. In October the custody of the honour was transferred to the King of Scots.[701] But twelve months later {1220} Fotheringay castle was still in the hands of the Earl Marshal; not because either Henry or Alexander had authorized him to retain it, but because he was, for some reason or other, unwilling to give it up, and to make him do so against his will was, as things then stood, practically impossible. He was the eldest son of the late regent. He was the most intimate friend of the Earl of Salisbury. On him, as Earl of Striguil, the security of the Welsh March chiefly depended; as heir of his mother, Isabel of Leinster, he was the mightiest baron of the English March in Ireland; and as heir to the lands which had belonged to his parents in Normandy, he could at any moment put himself in touch with Philip of France. In private life he seems to have been a man of high character; and since his return to allegiance, with his friend Salisbury, in 1217, he had, like Salisbury, acted as a valiant, useful, and faithful adherent of the King. If the Council had shrunk from taking extreme measures against Aumale, much less could they proceed to extremities with Salisbury and the Marshal. Yet the example set by these two men was certain to lead to further mischief unless some steps were taken to prevent it.

[Sidenote: 1220]

The Earl Marshal was certainly, the Earl of Salisbury and the count of Aumale were almost certainly, included among the nobles who were present at the coronation and who next day took the oath which has been mentioned already.[702] The coronation, the oath, the Pope’s letters, taken all together, suggest that in the spring of 1220 the Council had invoked the Pope’s assistance to enhance the authority of the Crown for the special purpose of strengthening the hands of its guardians in an effort to deal with the whole question of the English castles. It is, however, very difficult to guess what, or who, can have prompted the instructions issued to the Legate by the Pope on 26th and 28th May. The information on which the letter of 26th May purports to be written is shown by the records to be erroneous. No castle belonging to the King was in the custody of either of the archbishops; only three were in the custody of any other prelate. Those three were Porchester, Winchester, and Southampton, held by Peter des Roches together with the sheriffdom of the county in which they stood. There is also no indication that either Peter or any other prelate had ever attempted, or even been (in England) accused or suspected of attempting, to usurp castles or lands belonging to the Crown, or made difficulties about restoring any such lands which may have been temporarily entrusted to him for safe keeping during the war. The second letter is equally unaccountable; for while the enforcement of the order that no man should hold more than two royal castles at once would have deprived Peter of one such wardenship, it would have deprived Hubert de Burgh of four;[703] and it would have further involved a wholesale rearrangement not only of the wardenships, but also of the sheriffdoms, throughout south-eastern England and also in the Midlands, where a still greater number of royal castles were in the hands of Falkes de Bréauté as sheriff of seven shires. It is therefore not surprising that no use was made of these two papal mandates. As no mention of them occurs in the chronicles of the time, it is most probable that they were never published; Honorius may have sent with them private instructions authorizing Pandulf to publish or suppress them at his own discretion. By the time they reached England the King’s guardians were feeling their way in more wary fashion towards the end which they had in view.

The King’s journey to meet Alexander of Scotland furnished an opportunity for a royal progress through some of the castles which lay between London and York. “The King with his tutors,” says the Barnwell annalist, “perambulated his realm, to know whether those whom his father had made custodians of fortresses in England were minded to give up those fortresses quietly to himself as their lord.”[704] From York he went by way of Pontefract to Nottingham, thence to Leicester, and thence to Northampton. When he reached Rockingham, however, on 25th or 26th June,[705] the castle gates were shut against him.[706] William of Aumale had only ten days before been chosen as one of the King’s sureties for the treaty with Scotland.[707] He had clearly left the court since then; but he was not in Rockingham castle, though he was evidently known to be not far away, for two messengers who were immediately despatched to him with another royal command for the surrender of Rockingham and Sauvey were ordered to be back at the hour of prime next morning.[708] They seem to have returned with a request from Aumale for a safe-conduct to the court. Meanwhile a military force under Falkes, which had accompanied or followed the King from Northampton to Rockingham, invested the castle,[709] with the ready assistance of the people of the shire, who seem to have found Aumale a very overbearing and troublesome neighbour. On Sunday, 28th, the garrison “seeing that they were in a strait and had not power to resist, ignominiously went out and left free entrance to the King.”[710] A safe-conduct until prime on that Sunday morning had been issued to Aumale the day before;[711] he had used it, and had made formal surrender of both Rockingham and Sauvey into the King’s hand.[712] Next day a notice was issued in the King’s name, stating that Count William had resigned the custody of these two castles “of his own free will.” The King, on his side, quit-claimed to the count the ferm received by him from the manors and other royal demesnes, and the issues of the Forests, attached to the castles, from the time when the castles were given him in custody to the day on which he resigned them, and also undertook to obtain from the Legate permission for the count to postpone the fulfilment of “his vow.”[713]

The letters patent setting forth this agreement were issued on the joint motion of the Justiciar and the Bishop of Winchester; Pandulf was evidently absent from the court. There can be no doubt that Aumale’s vow here referred to was a vow of Crusade, enjoined by Pandulf as the condition of the count’s release from excommunication at the close of the preceding year; and we may see in it a reason for the extreme generosity with which the count was treated. A government whose head was a papal Legate might make a military demonstration, but could hardly use real force against a man who wore the Cross. There is, moreover, some probability that the Council, or some member of it, may have entertained a project of letting Count William commute his vow for an undertaking which might well be deemed a penance quite as severe as a crusade--the seneschalship of Poitou and Gascony. A report to that effect certainly reached the Earl of Salisbury at some date between December, 1219, and the end of June, 1220.[714] The report may have been false; but it is quite possible that the project may have really existed, and by no means clear that it deserved the scorn heaped upon it by the King’s uncle. The appointment of William de Fors as governor of Aquitaine would be an excellent expedient for getting him peaceably out of England; and though troublesome there, he was not without qualifications for the vacant post over sea. As the son of a Poitevin father he would be quicker to understand the character of the people, and perhaps more acceptable to some of them, than a man of pure English blood; at the same time, his stake in the country was too small[715] to involve him in personal rivalry with the Aquitanian barons; while as a great English noble he would be readily welcomed by the towns. In the weeks between the coronation and the treaty with Scotland the thoughts of Hubert de Burgh, “roaming over seas and mountains” in search of a governor for Aquitaine and at the same time haunted by the problem of the English castles, may well have turned--or may have been turned by Pandulf or Peter--to a possibility of ending the weary search and winning the resignation of Aumale’s English wardenships at one stroke; and the agreement with Aumale on S. Peter’s day may have been made on the basis of some previous negotiations whose completion the march on Rockingham was intended merely to precipitate. In the face of Longsword’s protest, however, the project of sending Aumale to Poitou, if ever seriously entertained, must have been abandoned; and we may see in its abandonment the reason why Aumale did not receive the licence which he desired for a further postponement of his crusade. Pandulf seems to have offered him instead the option of redeeming his vow altogether, doubtless in the usual way, by a payment of money; but Aumale neither paid nor went.[716]

The 29th of the ensuing December would be the fiftieth anniversary of the martyrdom of S. Thomas of Canterbury. For nearly two years Archbishop Stephen had been preparing to celebrate this jubilee by a translation of the martyr’s relics from their lowly resting-place in the crypt of his cathedral church to a chapel behind the high altar, where a magnificent shrine had been made ready to contain them. The actual anniversary was anticipated by nearly six months, and the translation took place on 7th July, amid an immense concourse of clergy and laity not only from all parts of England, but from lands beyond the sea. A temporary guest-house, on such a scale that an annalist of the time calls it a “palace” and declares that he does “not believe its like had been seen since the days of Solomon,” was erected by the Archbishop for his guests, and therein rich and poor, home-born and strangers, were entertained with a sumptuous hospitality which the same writer likens to the banquets of Ahasuerus.[717] “The barons of England,” also, “did an act of great courtesy; for they caused proclamation to be made, a great while before the holy body was to be removed, that no Englishman should lodge in the town, because they wished that those who came from other countries should find lodging there”; they themselves took up their quarters--camping out in the fields, it seems--outside the walls, all except the Earl Marshal, who lodged in the city that he might take care of the strangers and see that they came to no harm.[718] Over twenty prelates attended, including, besides the Legate, an Archbishop from Hungary, and the Archbishop of Reims with three of his suffragans.[719] With graceful tact Pandulf and Stephen concurred in giving to the French Primate the foremost place in the religious services of the occasion; it was he who, at their joint request, on the eve of the translation dedicated the altar before the shrine and sang the first vespers of the festival, and who also sang the high Mass on the great day itself.[720] Among the lay visitors from over sea were the widow of Cœur-de-Lion, the Count of Dreux, and many French nobles.[721] King Henry was of course present;[722] and all England shared in the glory of the most famous of English saints.

Early in August a great council was held at Oxford, mainly, it seems, for purposes of finance. A carucage of two shillings for every plough “as it was yoked on the morrow of S. John the Baptist last year, the fourth of our reign,” was granted to the King by the lay magnates “for his great needs, and for the preservation of his land of Poitou.” The collection of this impost was entrusted in every shire to the sheriff and two lawful men who were to be chosen “by the will and counsel of the whole shire, in full shire-court”; and it was to be paid into the Temple in London by 30th September.[723] The prelates made a similar grant on behalf of themselves and all the clergy, secular and regular, and their tenants; these contributions were to be paid direct to the Crown without the intervention of the sheriffs or other lay agents. On this point some confusion arose, and amended instructions were sent to the sheriffs on 7th September.[724] Another difficulty thwarted the endeavours of the sheriff of Yorkshire--Geoffrey de Neville--to collect the “gift” in his shire; at the shire-court held for that purpose on 14th September none of the magnates appeared, and their bailiffs all alike declared that “their lords knew nothing about the matter, the magnates of those parts having never been asked for it by the King either by word of mouth or by his letters.” Some of them suggested that if the King himself spoke to the magnates when he came to York (to meet the King of Scots on 13th October), the payments would probably be made without further trouble. Geoffrey reported the matter to the King’s Council, and asked whether he should take forcible measures to compel payment.[725] There is some reason to think that he did so, or tried to do so, and that some of the Yorkshire barons retaliated at the beginning of the next year by capturing him and keeping him prisoner for a time.[726] Unluckily we have no record showing how the dispute was settled; but it is clear that from Yorkshire, at least, the carucage cannot have been paid in by the morrow of Michaelmas. The same day was fixed for the returns of an inquest which the sheriffs were, at the time when the first letters about the carucage were issued (9th August), ordered to make into the extent and value of the royal demesnes and escheats in the several shires.[727] No doubt these returns were required for fiscal purposes. The agreement between the King and Geoffrey de Marsh, made in the same council at Oxford,[728] was followed on 18th September by a demand for an aid from Ireland.[729] With all this the Crown was still deep in debt, to the Pope, to Louis, to Queen Berengaria, to the Legate;[730] it was in fact only by means of frequent loans from Pandulf that its current expenses could be met at all.[731]

Two other matters came up for settlement at the Michaelmas session of the barons of the Exchequer and the justices at Westminster. One of these was a complaint of the Earl Marshal against the Prince of Wales. Llywelyn’s promise, or alleged promise, that the wrongs done by him to the Earl and the other Marcher-lords should be righted by Lammas Day[732] was not fulfilled; indeed, the truce made in May on the strength of that promise seems to have been broken as soon as Llywelyn returned from Shrewsbury to his own country. He asserted that the men of Pembroke refused to confirm the truce, called in help from Ireland against him, and harassed the Welsh to such a degree that at last he was obliged to bid his nephews and his other followers withdraw from the borders of Pembrokeshire to a safer place.[733] The Marshal, on the other hand, declared that the Welsh Prince “in no wise kept the terms of the peace, but brought the King’s dignity into contempt, spurning his own promises and acting quite contrary to them.” The Marshal complained to the King at Oxford, and was promised satisfaction--so far as the King could give it--in London on the morrow of S. Michael.[734] On 21st August the sheriffs of Gloucester, Hereford, and Worcestershire were ordered to be in readiness to help, with all the forces of those three shires, whichever of the King’s liegemen they should find to be the object of an attack for which Llywelyn was reported to be collecting his forces.[735] It was, however, not against any place on the border, but against “the Flemings of Rhos and Pembroke” that Llywelyn, with “most of the princes of Wales” and “a vast army,” marched on 29th August. He took by assault and burned the castles of Arberth and Gwys, burned the town of Haverford “to the castle-gate”; “and thus he went round Rhos and Deugleddyv in five days, making vast slaughter of the people of the country. And after making a truce with the Flemings until the kalends of May, he returned back happy and joyful.”[736] The terms of this truce were humiliating in the extreme; the men of Pembroke promised that they would give Llywelyn a hundred pounds, that they would not restore the castles which he had destroyed, and that they would give him a portion of the Earl’s land “to keep as on behalf of the King.” All these conditions, however, were to be subject to confirmation by the King. They seem to have been in fact extorted by means of a false representation on Llywelyn’s part that his invasion of the Earl’s lands was sanctioned and supported by the authority of the English Crown.[737] For the honour of that authority itself, no less than for his own sake, the Marshal besought the King and his Council to quash the truce, disavow all complicity in Llywelyn’s raid, and give judgement in favour of himself, at the time previously appointed, on his former complaint against the Welsh prince.[738] The judgement was probably given accordingly; on 5th October the Welsh invasion of Pembroke was disavowed by the King, the truce quashed,[739] compensation claimed from Llywelyn for the Marshal and the other Marcher-barons whom he had injured,[740] and two commissioners despatched to receive from him a surrender of all lands occupied by the Welsh in England and the Marches.[741]

In all probability, it was as a kind of security for the settlement of this Welsh business that the Earl Marshal had persisted throughout the summer in retaining Fotheringay castle. An urgent order for its surrender was despatched three days {18 June} after the treaty of York was signed;[742] the restitution of this castle, and of Earl David’s other lands, being one of the conditions of the treaty. On 11th September the Marshal was by another royal letter reminded of this fact, and commanded, on his fealty and his oath to the King, to hand over the said castle and lands to Alexander without further excuse or delay, “knowing for certain that unless you give it up, all our business about the marriage will come to nought.”[743] Hereupon the Marshal wrote to the Justiciar that he would do his best to promote the advantage of the King and his sister, and would on the morrow of Michaelmas answer fully to the Council concerning Fotheringay, and be ready to obey them “in all things that he could and ought”; at the same time declaring his intention to abstain for the present from vengeance on Llywelyn, rather than disobey the King and the Legate, “unless indeed,” he added significantly, “it should--which I do not believe--afterwards appear that they will not grant me justice.”[744] The Welsh quarrel being decided in his favour, he seems to have consented to give up Fotheringay not indeed to King Alexander, but to King Henry; for it was to a representative of the latter that he was bidden to deliver it on 11th October.[745] This was two days before the Kings met again at York.[746] It was probably agreed there that Fotheringay should, to facilitate its recovery from the Marshal, be temporarily placed in Henry’s hand and entrusted to the English Justiciar.[747] Hubert’s marriage with Alexander’s sister Margaret may have been already arranged, and Alexander may have contemplated giving him the custody of the honour of Huntingdon during the minority of its heir.[748] It seems, however, that not till 23rd or 24th November did the Marshal actually deliver up the castle, to one Gregory de la Tour, who was appointed to have the charge of it,[749] probably as deputy for Hubert. The troubles of the English government in connexion with it were not ended even then.

The count of Aumale had surrendered his wardenships; but he still kept possession of one castle which by a legal decision of the King’s Court, given four years before, belonged to another man. This was Bytham, in Lincolnshire. Originally a part of the honour of Holderness, it had been alienated by the first husband of Aumale’s mother, and was thus at the time of the war the property of one William de Coleville. This man joined the rebels, and thereupon his lands were occupied by the count of Aumale, to whom they were no doubt granted by John. On Coleville’s return to allegiance in 1217 orders were issued for their restoration; but two successive letters from the King to the count failed to procure this,[750] and in November Aumale was summoned to answer before the King’s Court at Westminster for his retention of Bytham.[751] The Court adjudged the castle to Coleville;[752] but somehow Aumale retained possession of it, seemingly without further question, possibly therefore by private agreement with the rival owner.[753] In the night of 26th December, 1220, Aumale slipped away without leave from the Christmas gathering of the court at Oxford, and rode to Bytham.[754] There he collected in a few days a force of armed men, and began to harry the neighbouring townships, carrying off the corn to store it in Bytham castle, and capturing men whom he imprisoned there and tortured till they purchased their release. While the terrified country-folk sought safety for their goods in the churchyards and their persons in the churches,[755] he attempted to surprise the castles of Newark, Sleaford, and Kimbolton, but at each of them met with an ignominious repulse.[756] It seems that the King’s Council on hearing of these outrages summoned Aumale to answer for them at Westminster, and that he made a pretence of intending to obey, and received a safe-conduct for that purpose.[757] Instead of doing so, however, he suddenly marched to Fotheringay. The responsible warden of Fotheringay at that moment appears to have been Hubert de Burgh.[758] But Hubert was in London with the King, and Fotheringay was garrisoned by a mere handful of knights and men-at-arms. Aumale and his followers set fire to the gate, scaled the walls, slew two of the garrison, and captured the rest.[759] The count then returned to Bytham and continued his depredations.[760] One writer of the time says that he even had the impudence to send letters to the mayors of the cities of England, telling them that he had granted to all merchants “his peace, and licence to go freely to and fro between his castles for the exercise of their business,” “as if he alone were master in the realm.”[761]

[Sidenote: 1221]

The seizure of Fotheringay probably became known in London late on January 22nd, or very early next morning. It seems that a great meeting of the royal Council had been convened for the 25th, but was held immediately on receipt of the tidings, in S. Paul’s Cathedral.[762] William of Aumale and all his helpers and abettors were excommunicated by the Legate, the Archbishop of York, and seven (or ten) bishops of the southern province (its primate was at Rome), the Earls of Chester and Salisbury likewise holding lighted candles which they threw on the floor when the sentence was pronounced.[763] The grounds of the excommunication were fourfold: first, Aumale’s refusal either to fulfill or to redeem his vow of crusade; second, his contempt of the “judgement of the realm” which had adjudged Bytham to William de Coleville; third, his seizure of “a castle of his lord the King” (Fotheringay) by treachery and without previous “defiance”;[764] fourth, his neglect to make amends according to the Legate’s command for the plunderings which had brought upon him his former excommunication.[765] A summons was issued immediately to such of the barons as were not present, bidding them meet the King at Northampton with all the forces they could bring.[766] Some of the magnates made an attempt to persuade Aumale into submission, but without success.[767] When the King and the host reached Northampton, they found that the count had left Bytham secretly, and was making for his own castle of Skipton in Craven.[768] On this orders were issued that Skipton and two other of his strongholds, Cockermouth and Skipsey, should be “besieged and utterly destroyed” by the forces of the shires in which they respectively stood--Lancashire, Westmorland and Yorkshire.[769] Meanwhile the garrison left by Aumale at Fotheringay “hastened to consult their own safety” by going to join their friends at Bytham;[770] and when, on 3rd February, the royal forces, with a formidable siege train brought from Nottingham by Philip Marc,[771] marched upon Fotheringay, they found that castle deserted. Falkes was entrusted with its safe keeping,[772] and the rest of the host moved on to Bytham. There a summons to surrender was rejected by the garrison, who were forthwith excommunicated again.[773] Then the place was assaulted, with such effect that it was almost in ruin when on 8th February its defenders surrendered at discretion.[774] What remained of it was immediately burnt to the ground, with all its contents.[775] Aumale was presently found by the Archbishop of York and the northern barons, in sanctuary at Fountains Abbey, whence they brought him to the King under a promise that if he could not obtain mercy from his sovereign, they would take him back to Fountains in safety.[776] At the Legate’s desire, “peace was made between him and the King, forasmuch as he had served the King and his father faithfully and efficiently in the war”; and his knights and men-at-arms were all set free without punishment or ransom. Roger of Wendover grumbles at this clemency of the King, “who,” he says, “set a very bad precedent for others to rebel against him in like manner, trusting to be similarly treated.”[777] Pandulf was probably a better judge than Roger of the respective claims and advantages of mercy and severity in such a case. His mild policy certainly proved successful so far as Aumale himself was concerned. The count managed, indeed, to stave off the fulfilment of his crusading vow for more than twenty years longer; but in all those years he seems never, save for one brief moment in 1223, to have given any trouble to the government.[778]

The next step taken by the King’s guardians towards the recovery of control over the royal castles was a weighty one. They “urged” Earl William the Marshal to surrender Marlborough[779] and Luggershall; “a thing which”--as the king himself explained in a letter written some three years later--“was most expedient for us, that thereby the other magnates should be more easily induced to resign likewise the castles of ours which they held.”[780] To conciliate the Marshal himself was, however, at that moment especially, a matter of almost greater consequence than to get possession of the castles. No other man in England had as much power to strengthen or weaken the hands of the government as he; and that power was on the increase. In June, 1220, he had ceded to his brother Richard his rights to the Norman lands of their father. Richard, having no lands in England, could do what the Earl could not--enter into his Norman heritage, by doing homage for it to Philip Augustus; and he did so without delay.[781] Thus the family was brought into close connexion with the interests of France. The Marshal’s wife, a half-sister of the Count of Aumale, had now been dead some years, and he was contemplating a marriage with a sister of Earl Robert de Bruce. In view of the relative geographical positions of Bruce’s earldom on the Scottish border and the Marshal’s lands in Ireland, the prospect of this alliance filled the English King’s Council with alarm; the more so as they believed that “there were other magnates in England who by malicious confederations were striving to turn away his heart from” the King.[782] They therefore offered him a bride of higher rank--the youngest sister of the King.

The Justiciar and the Marshal pledged their faith to each other that this marriage should take place, if the King and the magnates of the realm would give their consent, which the Legate and Hubert promised to do their utmost to obtain. The Marshal then surrendered the two castles, delivering them into the hands of the Legate as their custodian, on a promise that they should be restored to him if the contract were not fulfilled within a certain time.[783]

It is difficult to guess who can have been the magnates suspected of “trying to turn the Marshal’s heart away” from his young sovereign. There were, however, rumours of a treasonable plot about this time. The Justiciar’s uneasiness was shown in an order, issued early in March, that no person, armed or unarmed, should be allowed to land at or sail from Bristol, Exeter, or any of the Cinque Ports unless he had a special warrant from the King.[784] While the court was assembled at Winchester for Whitsuntide, Peter de Maulay, the sheriff of Dorset and Somerset and warden of the royal castles of Corfe and Sherborne, was arrested on a charge of treason brought against him by one Richard Muscegros.[785] Engelard de Cigogné was arrested and imprisoned at the same time, also on suspicion of treason.[786] On the Friday in the same week (4th June) Peter de Maulay delivered to the King, by the hands of the Justiciar, the Earls of Salisbury and Pembroke, and William Brewer, the royal castle of Corfe, with the King’s cousin Eleanor, the Scot King’s sister Isabel, and the jewels, crossbows, and other property which King John had committed to Peter to keep in the castle.[787] Thereupon he seems to have been released,[788] on an undertaking to stand his trial before the King’s Court at a later time. The charge against him, whatever may have been its origin, was evidently already recognized as unfounded; he was left in possession of his sheriffdoms, and of another royal castle, Sherborne,[789] and no further proceedings were taken in his case till November. Then, at a great council in London, he was, according to one account, tried and acquitted;[790] according to another, “he put himself on the King’s mercy, and was reconciled with him, his accusers thinking better of the challenge which they had brought against him.”[791] His sheriffdoms were transferred to other hands,[792] but he was publicly acknowledged by the King as “trusty and well-beloved”;[793] and Sherborne castle was left in his keeping till the end of January, 1222.[794] The charge against Engelard de Cigogné was evidently found to be as baseless as that against Peter; Engelard was released on giving hostages for the surrender of Windsor castle whenever the King should require it,[795] but it was not required till more than two years later, and then only in consequence of a papal order for the surrender of all the royal castles of England; and meanwhile, four months after his arrest, he was employed by King and Council on important political and financial business in Poitou.[796] Peter de Maulay is said to have sworn to John that he would not give up the castles committed to his charge till Henry should be of age.[797] Possibly Engelard may have been in the same case, and the “treason” of both may have consisted in a refusal, grounded upon this previous oath, to obey some demand made by the Justiciar for the surrender of Corfe and Windsor on the strength of the oath taken at the coronation in 1220. There is indeed no evidence of such a demand having been made; but it appears somewhat significant that both Peter and Engelard were released, and the charges against them practically withdrawn, as soon as the one prisoner had surrendered Corfe and the other given security for the surrender of Windsor on demand.

The marriage of Alexander and Joan was now fixed to take place at York in the middle of June.[798] The court therefore moved northward, by way of Oxford, Northampton, and Nottingham; and in each of these castles, it is said, the garrison was reinforced, or a part of it replaced, by some knights of the King’s own household.[799] On 19th June[800] Alexander and Joan were married by Archbishop Walter.[801] A month later {19 July}, at Westminster, in presence of the bishops of Winchester, London, and Salisbury, Pandulf publicly resigned his legation.[802] Archbishop Stephen, who had been at Rome ever since the previous autumn,[803] was now coming home,[804] bringing with him a grant from the Pope of some important privileges, one of which was that during Stephen’s own lifetime no resident legate should again be appointed in England.[805] In all likelihood Pandulf had asked to be released from the double burden which he had now borne for more than two years.[806] By resigning his legation he also laid down his regency; for it was in virtue of his authority as the Pope’s representative that he had been chosen to succeed the Earl Marshal as regent. Neither the Pope nor the magnates took any steps to provide a successor to Pandulf in this latter office; and thus the first English regency suddenly came to an end.

FOOTNOTES:

[519] He is called “Magister Pandulfus, subdiaconus et familiaris domini Papae,” until his election to the see of Norwich in July, 1215, and even afterwards. See the preamble to Magna Charta, and _Pat. Rolls Joh._, pp. 154 b, 181. Roger of Wendover (vol. iii. p. 235) calls him cardinal in 1211; but Pandulf never was a cardinal at all.

[520] _Ann. Worc._, a. 1215.

[521] “Domine, de longinquo venimus huc per petitionem tuam,” is the opening speech of the envoys to John, in _Ann. Burton_ a. 1211, pp. 209–210; and the king at the end of the discussion bursts out--“Intimatum mihi erat per quosdam latores meos, immo latrones, quod vos in curia Romana promoveretis causam meam et quod me diligeretis; modo vero hic percipio quod causam meam non fovetis.... Talia autem mihi nunciaturos non mandavi, sed ut causam meam defenderetis,” _ib._ p. 216.

[522] _Ib._ pp. 209–217.

[523] See _John Lackland_, pp. 175, 179, 180.

[524] R. Wend., vol. iii. p. 256.

[525] “Domini Papae nuncius,” June, 1213, _Pat. Rolls Joh._, pp. 99 b, 100 b.

[526] _Ib._ p. 107, 1st January, 1214.

[527] _Ib._ p. 100.

[528] “In nuncium nostrum,” _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 141.

[529] _Pat. Rolls Joh._, pp. 129 b, 132.

[530] R. Wend., vol. iii. pp. 336–338, 340.

[531] Between 15th and 18th July; _Pat. Rolls Joh._, pp. 149, 149 b.

[532] _Ib._ p. 182 b, 13th September, 1215.

[533] Bliss, _Calendar_, vol. i. p. 56.

[534] _Ib._ p. 58.

[535] R. Coggeshall, p. 186.

[536] On the date of this correspondence see Professor Powicke’s article on “The Chancery during the Minority of Henry III,” _Eng. Hist. Rev._, vol. xxiii. p. 229.

[537] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 113.

[538] _Ib._ p. 112.

[539] _Ib._ p. 117.

[540] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 120.

[541] “Si ... ad beatum Martyrem visitandum ire velitis.”

[542] _Ib._ pp. 119–121.

[543] On the whole subject of Chancellor, Vice-chancellor, and custody of the seals, and on Richard de Marsh and Ralf de Neville, see Powicke, pp. 223–231.

[544] “Per vicarium,” _Dial. de Scaccario_, lib. i. c. xv.

[545] Professor Powicke, p. 228, says positively that this was so, citing as his authority “_Rot. Claus. passim_.” So far as I can see, however, these Rolls contain no actual proof that the “R. camerarius” who figures in them together with the treasurer and another chamberlain whose initial is “F.” is Ralf de Neville. The identification seems to be an inference from Pandulf’s injunctions about “paying nothing out.”

[546] This is clear from the tone of Pandulf’s letters. See especially the letter of 12th May--“Rogamus autem et monemus prudentiam tuam ut _verbum secretum quod tibi diximus_ studeas loco et tempore fideliter procurare.” _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 119.

[547] Pandulf issues his orders “_legationis_ qua fungimur auctoritate” (_ib._), because in his case the secular authority of the regent was included in and covered by the legatine authority. He had been made regent just because he was the Pope’s Legate.

[548] _Ib._ p. 116.

[549] “Ad factum scaccarii detis operam efficacem, sicut regi et regno cognoscatis expedire,” _Foedera_, I. i. p. 157, January, 1220.

[550] _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1223, p. 84.

[551] There is no authority for the oft-repeated assertion that Hubert’s father was brother to William FitzAudelin.

[552] For their relationship see Sweetman, _Calendar of Documents relating to Ireland_, vol. i. No. 2217.

[553] _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 9.

[554] R. Howden, vol. iv. p. 163.

[555] R. Coggeshall, pp. 139–140.

[556] _Ib._ p. 154.

[557] See references in Dugdale, _Baronage_, vol. i. p. 693.

[558] Before 7th April; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 142.

[559] Before 11th April (1215); _ib._ p. 194.

[560] _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 138, 24th May, 1215.

[561] Between 15th June, when he figures in the Great Charter as “senescallus Pictaviae,” and 25th June, when he appears for the first time as “Justiciarius Angliae,” _Ib._ p. 144 b. He himself seems to have stated in 1239 “quod dominus Johannes Rex tradidit ei justitiariam apud Runingmede coram domino Stephano Archiepiscopo, comite Warannae, comite de Ferrariis, et aliis magnatibus”; _Responsiones_ (M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, vol. vi.), p. 65.

[562] M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, vol. iii. pp. 28, 29.

[563] See above, pp. 51, 52.

[564] R. Wend., vol. iii. p. 181; M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, vol. iii. p. 309.

[565] _Dict. Nat. Biogr._, “Peter des Roches.”

[566] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 1 b.

[567] _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 22 b.

[568] See Rolls, a. 1201–1205, _passim_.

[569] _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 49.

[570] _Ib._ pp. 40, 43, 46 (a. 1204).

[571] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 18 b.

[572] _Ann. Winton._ a. 1205.

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

[574] _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 110, 110 b.

[575] R. Coggeshall, p. 168.

[576] _Ann. Wav._, a. 1214.

[577] In the Patent Roll of 15 John (1213–1214), _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 107, it is stated that “vicesimo secundo die Decembris liberatum fuit sigillum apud Windlesoram Radulfo de Nevill, sub domino Wintoniensi episcopo deferendum.” From this it has by some writers been inferred that Peter was Chancellor for a short time in 1213–1214. But Walter de Gray, who had been Chancellor ever since 2nd October, 1205 (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 53), appears in that capacity on 10th October, 1213, and again on 12th January, 1214 (_ib._ pp. 156 b, 160), and the title of chancellor is nowhere given to Peter. It seems therefore that Ralf was made keeper of the seal “under the Bishop of Winchester” as a mere temporary arrangement, necessitated by the fact that the Chancellor (Walter de Gray) was going to Flanders on business for the King; _ib._ p. 156 b. See also Powicke, “Chancery,” pp. 226, 227.

[578] Henry was born on 1st October, 1207; R. Wend., vol. iii. p. 219.

[579] The notices of little Henry during his father’s lifetime are unluckily very few. We know that about August, 1215, he and his mother were sent for safety to the royal castle of Corfe (_Hist. Ducs_, p. 152), and that at the time of his father’s death he was in the castle of Devizes, under the care of a valiant man-at-arms, Ralf of Saint-Samson (see above, pp. 2, 3). These temporary removals of the boy from Peter’s custody were, however, certainly not due to any withdrawal of John’s confidence from Peter, whose name follows that of Gualo in the list of executors of the will made by John on his death-bed.

[580] “Willelmus Mareschallus, regis rector et regni, diem clausit extremum; post cujus mortem memoratus rex in custodia Petri Wintoniensis episcopi remansit.” R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 46.

[581] Turner, pt. II. p. 237.

[582] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 13, 14.

[583] _Ib._ p. 136.

[584] _Ib._ p. 13; see on this Turner, pt. II. p. 236.

[585] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 136. The new custodian was Falkes, who had been custodian of Rockingham before Count William. The fact that Sauvey was not re-committed to Geoffrey de Serland implies no slight upon the latter; he had in the interval been well provided for elsewhere.

[586] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 245.

[587] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 257, 258; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 434, 434 b.

[588] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 416 b.

[589] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 235.

[590] _Ib._ p. 240.

[591] _Ib._ p. 191.

[592] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 98.

[593] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 400 b.

[594] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 99.

[595] _Ib._ pp. 128, 129.

[596] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 263–265.

[597] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 16, 17.

[598] There can be no doubt that this is the “forma pacis” which Pandulf asks Ralf de Neville to send him in May 1219: _ib._ p. 117 (for date see above, p. 113).

[599] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 197.

[600] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 157. The letter is dateless, but there can be no doubt about its reference. It cannot refer to the treaty made between the two kings at York in June 1220, because on that occasion Peter, as well as Pandulf, was present in person; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 235.

[601] This was explicitly stated in the charge against Hubert de Burgh in 1239, as reported in his _Responsiones_, M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, vol. vi. pp. 70–71. A promise that one of William’s daughters should be married to one of John’s sons is also mentioned by Gervase of Canterbury (vol. i. p. 103) as included in the treaty of Norham. The text of that treaty in _Foedera_, I. i. p. 103, rests on no authority beyond that of Rymer.

[602] Both Margaret and her sister were born before the end of 1195; R. Howden, vol. iii. pp. 299, 308.

[603] “Primae conventiones.”

[604] _Responsiones_, p. 71.

[605] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 59, 60.

[606] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 434.

[607] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 58, 59, 76, 77; _Foedera_, I. i. p. 157.

[608] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 260, 261.

[609] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 418, 418 b. Llywelyn’s version, as given in a letter from him to Pandulf, _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 122, 123, was very different.

[610] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 143.

[611] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 159.

[612] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 244.

[613] “Eodemque anno ... devotus Deo rex Henricus III fecit inchoari fabricam novae capellae B. Virginis apud Westmonasterium, eodem rege existente fundatore et patrono, et primum lapidem operis in fundamento in bonum auspicium disponente, videlicet sabbato sancto Pentecostes.” M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._ a. 1220, vol. ii. p. 242. Cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 188, and _Ann. Berm._, a. 1220.

[614] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 244. There must have been many present who had seen three coronations before Henry’s accession--those of Richard in 1189 and 1195, and that of John in 1199. The _Ann. Dunst._, p. 57, mention a detail which would have a special significance for those who remembered Richard’s first crowning: “Judaei vero in Turri Lundoniarum servabantur interim ad cautelam.” Roger of Wendover, vol. iv. p. 63, says the crowning was at Canterbury, but he is certainly wrong. Cf. _Hist. Ducs_, p. 208, and R. Coggeshall, p. 187. T. Wykes, a. 1220, says: “Sane quia propter aetatis teneritudinem nondum sufficiens fuerat [rex] ad regni gubernaculum, totius regni proceres providebant sibi tutorem et custodem, virum summi discretionis et probitatis, dominum Hubertum de Burgo, qui motus regis voluntarios refraenaret, ne forte per immoderantiam lasciviret; factusque est justiciarius totius Angliae, ut sua prudentia, qua caeteris praepollebat, regis et regni negotia dispensaret.” And the Bermondsey Annals, a. 1220, say: “Hoc anno Hubertus de Burgo factus est justiciarius totius Angliae,” while the Waverley Annals make a like statement under the date 1219. These entries seem to be all derived from a common source, and based upon a mistake. There is superabundant documentary evidence that Hubert had been justiciar uninterruptedly ever since 1215; if he had not been reappointed at Henry’s accession, there could be no reason and no occasion for him to be reappointed now; and his own words in 1239, as given in the _Responsiones_, p. 64, distinctly imply that nothing of the kind had ever taken place.

[615] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 170, 171, August, 1214.

[616] See above, p. 117.

[617] Before 4th Feb. 1215: _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 186 b.

[618] Before 8th December, 1215: _ib._ p. 241.

[619] The Archbishop’s appointment as seneschal is dated 28th March, 1217. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 54.

[620] _Ib._ p. 152, 8th May, 1218.

[621] He was probably about the same age as Isabel, who was then twenty-six. His parents had been married in 1181; but his mother--who as the only child of the elder brother of Isabel’s father had claims on Angoulême--must have been then so young that her son is not likely to have been born till some years later.

[622] Of Jerusalem and Cyprus.

[623] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 159; _cf._ John’s treaty with the Lusignans, _Charter Rolls_, p. 197 b.

[624] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 30, 31.

[625] _Ib._ pp. 37, 38.

[626] She was proposing to go in July, 1217, _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 113, _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 315, but seems not to have actually gone till next year.

[627] _Hist. Ducs_, p. 206.

[628] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 73 b.

[629] _Ib._ p. 168 b.

[630] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 33, 34.

[631] Such at least was Hugh’s story: “non poterat exire de Rupella sine commodatione praedictae pecuniae,” _ib._ p. 44.

[632] _Ib._ pp. 43–45.

[633] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 395 b, 16th July.

[634] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 199, 25th July.

[635] See the King’s letter to William Maingo, 24th July, 1219, in _Foedera_, I. i. p. 155.

[636] It had been made in September, 1214, to last for five years from Easter, 1215; _ib._ p. 125.

[637] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 201.

[638] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 157; _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 74, 76.

[639] They were Philip d’Aubigné, the Abbot of Stratford, and Alan Basset. _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 410 b.

[640] _Foedera_, I. i. pp. 158, 159. Cf. _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 94, _Ann. Dunst._, a. 1220 (which wrongly make the period five years), and _Hist. Ducs_, pp. 207, 208; the two latter authorities expatiate on Philip’s generosity in consenting to prolong the truce without pecuniary consideration.

[641] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 33, 34.

[642] Warren went with her to the King, and a day, 15th September, was given them, at which Warren begged Hubert to attend and do his utmost “tam pro rege quam pro nobis”; _ib._ p. 42. The result does not appear.

[643] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 408, 14th November.

[644] He landed at Dover on 1st November, and proposed to be in London to meet Pandulf on the 4th; _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 49.

[645] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 54, 55.

[646] _Ib._ pp. 45, 46, 49–54, 62, 63, 65.

[647] _Ib._ pp. 94–96. Cf. the letter of Ivo de la Jaille--one of the Angevin barons who still held out for the Angevin house--_ib._ p. 93. Geoffrey de Neville was sent back to Poitou in February, 1220, but only “in nuncium nostrum,” _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 411 b; he went after 12th February, and seems to have returned to England before 27th April, _ib._ p. 417. The “Seneschal of Poitou and Gascony” to whom letters are addressed on 10th February, 2nd July, and 29th July, 1220 (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 228, 245, 243), was clearly a deputy, most likely William Gauler.

[648] On January 17th, 1220, Pandulf urged Hubert “Provideatis etiam de persona quae ire debeat in Pictaviam, quia tempus instat quo debeat quicumque fuerit iter arripere. Nec expectetis super praemissis consilium, cum nos hoc velimus et consulamus omnimodis bona fide.” _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 76. Again, on 27th January: “Si de mittenda persona in Pictaviam tractavistis et eam invenistis, nobis quam citius vestris literis intimetis.” _Ib._ p. 79.

[649] See for date Shirley’s note, _ib._ pp. 32, 33.

[650] “Comites Marchiae et _Angolismae_” in Shirley’s printed text, _ib._ p. 114; but this latter word must be an error for _Augiae_.

[651] See the whole of this very amusing epistle, _ib._ pp. 114, 115. The date is approximately determined by Henry’s letter of congratulation to Hugh.

[652] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 160.

[653] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 233. Ralf and Joldewin are spoken of as going to Poitou “in nuntium nostrum” on 20th May; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 418 b.

[654] _Close Rolls_, vol i. p. 436.

[655] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 235. The _Ann. Dunst._, a. 1220, say: “Mense Junio apud Eboracum rex Scotiae affidavit sororem Henrici regis Angliae; qua de causa idem rex Angliae remisit ei quinque millia marcarum.” Probably _remisit_ here is a scribe’s error for _promisit_, and five thousand marks was the dowry given by Henry to his sister on her marriage. The little damsel Isabel of England was apparently taken to York that Alexander might see her; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 234. The Lord of Galloway, Alan, also came to York at this time, and performed the homage which he owed to Henry; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 420 b.

[656] Isabel’s demand is curiously worded: “Precamur vos diligenter quod ei [_i.e._, Hugoni] reddatis jus suum, scilicet Niortum, Castrum Exonense, et de Rokingham, et tria millia et quingentas marcas quas pater vester, maritus quondam noster, nobis legavit” (_Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 115). The mention of Rockingham should probably run “et villam de Rokingham.” The lands bestowed by John upon Isabel in dower consisted of the city of Saintes, Niort, Saumur, La Flèche, Beaufort, Baugy, Château-du-Loir, “Trov” (_Charter Rolls_, pp. 74 b, 75), the city and fair of Exeter, the towns of Ilchester, Wilton, Malmesbury, Chichester, Queenhithe, and Waltham, the honour of Berkhamsted, the county of Rutland, and the town of Rockingham, Falaise, Domfront, Bonneville-sur-Toucques, and all the lands which had belonged to the dowry of his mother Queen Eleanor (_ib._ 128).

[657] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 161.

[658] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 261.

[659] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 149; cf. _ib._ p. 133.

[660] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 134.

[661] _Ib._ p. 140.

[662] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 132, 133.

[663] _Ib._ p. 127.

[664] _Ib._ pp. 123, 124.

[665] _Ib._ pp. 126, 127.

[666] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 129.

[667] See the story in Turner, pt. II. pp. 223, 224.

[668] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 162.

[669] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 249.

[670] Cf. Peter’s letter to Pandulf, _Foedera_, _l.c._, and _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 430, where we find the Dean sent home at the King’s expense “in nuncium nostrum” on 18th September.

[671] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 437.

[672] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 265, 266.

[673] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 149.

[674] _Ib._ pp. 536, 537.

[675] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 255.

[676] Philip of Ulecote died before 30th October; _ib._ p. 269.

[677] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 157–159.

[678] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 439.

[679] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 159.

[680] “Barones qui praesentes erant in crastino coronationis juraverunt quod castra et wardias suas ad voluntatem regis resignarent, et de firmis suis fidelem compotum ad scaccarium redderent; et si quis regi rebellis resisteret, et infra quadragintas dies post excommunicationem a legato non satisfecerit, quod ad mandatum regis ei bella moverent, ut exhaeredetur sine fine rebellis.” _Ann. Dunst._, a. 1220, p. 57. See Note VI.

[681] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 121.

[682] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 65. The castle is not expressly named; but its inclusion in the grant appears from the sequel.

[683] _Hundred Rolls_, vol. i. p. 309.

[684] On 26th November, 1217, the King bids “the sheriff of Lincolnshire”--no name is mentioned--“cause Nicolaa de Haye to have a reasonable aid from her knights and free tenants in your bailiwick for the payment of debts incurred by her when she was besieged in Lincoln castle.” _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 344.

[685] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 130.

[686] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 356, 367, 367 b, &c. The exact date at which she recovered the castle does not appear; probably it was not very long before the date of the first of these entries, 17th March, 1218; for on 13th November, 1218, we find an order to the Treasury for payment to Earl William of what he spent “per visum et testimonium legalium hominum in reparacione castri Lincolniae tempore pacis,” _ib._ p. 383. If he had delivered the castle to its Dame immediately on receipt of the King’s order to do so, at the beginning of November, 1217, he would not have had much time for its repair _tempore pacis_, the peace having been made on 12th September.

[687] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 200, 201.

[688] Order, dated 23rd May, 1220, for payment to Falkes of the wages of three knights “qui sunt in servitio nostro in castro Lincolniae cum eodem Falkesio” from the octave of the Assumption in the King’s third year (22nd August, 1219) to the octave of Trinity in his fourth year (31st May, 1220). _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 419.

[689] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 73.

[690] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 86, 87.

[691] _Hist. Ducs_, pp. 175, 176.

[692] “Johannes Marescallus reddit compotum de £128 7_s._ pro fine suo et fine fratris sui Gilleberti de terra patris eorum. In operatione castri de Merleberga £26 13_s._ 4_d._ per breve Regis et per visum Yvonis de Neville. Et debet £100 33_s._ 8_d._” _Pipe Roll 22 Hen. II_ (1175–1176), p. 172.

[693] The warden of Marlborough castle throughout John’s reign was Hugh de Neville; see _Pat. Rolls Joh._ and _Close Rolls_, vol. i., _passim_, the latter from p. 16 b (1205) onwards. John “de Turri” appears as its constable on the morrow of Magna Charta (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 214 b), no doubt as deputy for Hugh, who was at Runnimede with the king. It was Hugh who surrendered the place to Louis in 1216; _Hist. Ducs_, pp. 175, 176.

[694] In a writ of _Computate_ in favour of the sheriff of Wiltshire, 13th November, 1222, occurs this item: “Computate et eidem in firma manerii de Merleberge c. et lx. libras blanchas, videlicet xxxii libras annuas de praedictis v. annis praeteritis, quas comes W. Marescallus senior et comes W. Marescallus junior et Johannes de Ferentino receperunt de eodem manerio per eosdem annos ad custodiendum castrum de Merleberge”; and the “past five years” are in an earlier part of the writ defined as “de anno regni nostri secundo, tertio, quarto, quinto, et sexto,” _i.e._ from 29th October, 1217, to 28th October, 1222. _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 521.

[695] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 100, 101; date, 3rd April [1220].

[696] On 24th July, 1221, “the King’s constable of Marlborough” is bidden to give the heirs of Robert of Barfleur seisin of the mill at Marlborough called Port Mill, “de quo W. Marescallus comes Penbrochiae cum habuisset seisinam castri de Merleberge eosdem heredes _pro voluntate sua_ disseisivit.” _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 466.

[697] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 299 b, 305 b; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 55.

[698] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 348. Cf. above, p. 87.

[699] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 354 b, 13th March, 1218.

[700] _Ib._ p. 397, 22nd July, 1219.

[701] _Ib._ p. 406 b, 29th October, 1219.

[702] That the Marshal had taken this oath is stated in the King’s letter of 11th September, _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 429 b.

[703] Hubert held the castles of Dover, Canterbury, Rochester, Norwich, Orford, and the Tower of London (see Turner, pt. II. pp. 242, 243); the first three as sheriff of Kent, the next two as sheriff of Norfolk and Suffolk, and the last as Justiciar.

[704] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 244.

[705] Pontefract, 19th June; Nottingham, 21st June; Leicester, 23rd June; Northampton, 23rd June; Rockingham, 26th June. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 238.

[706] W. Cov., _l.c._

[707] See above, p. 123.

[708] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 238.

[709] “Computate Falkesio de Bréauté £100 quas posuit in expensis nostris in obsidione castri de Rockingham,” 5th November, 1220, _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 439 b.

[710] W. Cov., vol. ii. pp. 244, 245.

[711] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 239.

[712] The Barnwell annalist’s account of this affair (W. Cov., _l.c._) suggests a possibility that Aumale’s deputy constable at Rockingham may have been more forward than Aumale himself to resist the King, and in fact gone beyond the count’s orders in shutting the gates. Mr. Turner thinks the statement of Roger of Wendover (vol. iv, p. 65) that the two castles were found “penitus omnia victualium genere destituta, ita quidem quod nec etiam tres panes invenirentur in eis,” “suggests that the count had been misrepresented by the letters patent of November, 1219, which recited that he was fortifying the castles and storing them with corn” (Turner, pt. II. p. 242). I cannot follow this argument; to me a statement as to the contents of a place in June, 1220, conveys no suggestion whatever as to the contents of that place in November, 1219.

[713] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 240, 29th June, 1220.

[714] See above, p. 143. The date must be before 29th June, as the Earl speaks of the Count’s lack of obedience to the King “de his quae modo custodit in Anglia.”

[715] He may even have had no stake there at all. For all we know, his father may not have possessed a rood of land at Fors or anywhere else. Fors itself is a mere village.

[716] _Ann. Dunst._, a. 1220, p. 64.

[717] _Ib._ p. 58; cf. W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 246, and _Ann. Wav._, a. 1220.

[718] _Hist. Ducs_, p. 209.

[719] Cf. W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 245, _Ann. Dunst._, p. 58, and _Hist. Ducs_, pp. 208, 209. The last reckons twenty-five bishops; the first, seventeen bishops and three archbishops, among whom, however, he does not name Reims.

[720] _Hist. Ducs_, p. 209; _Ann. Dunst._, _l.c._

[721] _Hist. Ducs_, p. 208.

[722] “Praesente ... rege Anglorum Henrico quarto,” says the Barnwell annalist (W. Cov., _l.c._), using the reckoning which counted the “young King,” Henry II’s son, as Henry III.

[723] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 437.

[724] Cf. _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 437 b, and _Ann. Dunst._, a. 1220.

[725] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 151.

[726] I venture to suggest that this may be the explanation of a letter from Pandulf to Hubert de Burgh, _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 130: “Quod actum est de vicecomite Eboracensi, in Dei et domini regis ac nostrum pariter acceptatum esse noscitur praejudicium et contemptum, non enim per nostram vel vestram ammonitionem adhuc potuit liberari. Ideoque discretionem vestram monemus attentius et hortamur quatenus ipsum secundum justitiam et legem terrae faciatis quantocius liberari, cum teneamini hoc circa quemlibet observari facientes” (?) “ita quod honor domini regis conservetur illaesus, et vos inde possitis merito commendari.” In the printed edition this letter purports to be “datum apud Lincolniam, nonas Junii”; Dr. Shirley took this to be 5th June, 1220, and tentatively suggested as “not impossible” that the outrage to which it alludes may have been an act of vengeance perpetrated by William of Aumale, Geoffrey’s most powerful neighbour in Yorkshire, on the erroneous suspicion that it was Geoffrey’s influence which had “disappointed” him of Geoffrey’s former office of seneschal of Poitou. But (1) I greatly doubt whether Aumale, or anybody else, would be “disappointed” at not being made seneschal of Poitou. That office was neither a pleasant nor a lucrative one, but one which most of its various holders, for many years past, seem to have accepted with reluctance and escaped from as soon as possible. (2) The fact that in none of the various accounts of Aumale’s misdoings--in the chronicles, or in the royal letters patent--is there any mention of the capture of the sheriff of Yorkshire, makes it appear very improbable that he was concerned in the matter. Had he been so, or even suspected of being so, his enemies would surely have made the most of such a charge to add to the indictment which, as we shall see, was brought against him early next year. (3) Dr. Shirley cites as a reference showing this letter to have been written in 1220 “_inter alia_, Rot. Claus. i. p. 419 b”; but I can see there nothing which bears on the subject. It seems to me possible that the word printed _Junii_ may have been originally a contracted form of _Januarii_; that the true date of the letter may be 5th January, 1221; and that its true connexion may be not with Aumale but with the dispute about the carucage. I can find in the Rolls nothing to prove or to indicate whether Geoffrey de Neville was or was not at liberty either _c._ 5th June, 1220, or _c._ 5th January, 1221. On 22nd January he was sent with a message from the King to the count of Aumale; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 446.

[727] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 437.

[728] See above, p. 124.

[729] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 253, 254.

[730] _Ib._ p. 253.

[731] See the details of the debts to Pandulf, Feb. 18th, 1221, _ib._ p. 284.

[732] See above, p. 129.

[733] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 141, 142.

[734] _Ib._ p. 143.

[735] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 428.

[736] _Brut_, p. 307.

[737] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 144, 145. Cf. _Ann. Dunst._, p. 61.

[738] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 144, 145.

[739] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. pp. 254, 255.

[740] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 164.

[741] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 431 b. Of course it by no means follows that these commissioners got what they went for.

[742] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 236.

[743] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 429 b.

[744] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 150.

[745] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 257.

[746] See above, p. 145.

[747] We shall find it in his custody in January, 1221.

[748] He eventually gave it, not later than 12th March, 1221, to the boy’s maternal uncle, Ranulf of Chester. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 285.

[749] Cf. _ib._ p. 272, and _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 442.

[750] Turner, pt. II. pp. 247, 248.

[751] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 119.

[752] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 64.

[753] Turner, pt. II. p. 248.

[754] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 66. Cf. W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 247.

[755] R. Wend., _l.c._ He goes on: “Habuit autem, ut dicebatur, hujus factionis incentores Falcasium, Philippum Marc, Petrum de Maloleone” [_recte_ “Malolacu”] “Engelardum de Athie, et alios multos, qui clam miserunt ei viros armatos ut pacem regni turbaret.” But there is not a particle of evidence to indicate that such was the fact, or even that it was suspected at the time; indeed, the evidence of the records disproves the existence of such a suspicion against two of the men named, Philip Marc and Falkes; see Turner, pt. II. p. 254, and _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 448 b. Once again, as in his account of the Newark affair in 1217, Roger is carrying back to an earlier date his recollections of 1223.

[756] “Comes de Albomari mense Januario visus est furtive capere castra de Neuwerga, et de Latford, et de Kimbautona; sed turpiter repulsus, accessit ex improvisu ad Fodringham,” etc., says the printed text of _Ann. Dunst._, a. 1221, p. 63. _Visus_ is obviously an error for _nisus_. Newark and Sleaford belonged to the Bishop of Lincoln; Kimbolton to the Earl of Essex.

[757] I think this must be the real meaning of the words of Roger of Wendover, (vol. iv. p. 67): “Convenerunt interim magnates Angliae ad regem apud Westmonasterium ut de negotiis regni tractarent; comes vero, qui cum caeteris vocatus fuerat, simulavit se illo ire,” coupled with the safe-conduct until Candlemas granted to Aumale on some day between 15th and 22nd January, 1221, _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 278; cf. _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 446.

[758] “Justiciarius Angliae tunc in custodiam habebat,” W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 247. Roger, _l.c._, says “erat tunc castellum in custodia Ranulfi comitis Cestrensis,” but the former is probably right. Cf. Turner, pt. II. p. 252.

[759] Cf. R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 67, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 63.

[760] R. Wend., _l.c._

[761] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 247.

[762] On 22nd January a letter close was sent to Aumale bidding him trust what two persons named therein should say to him on the King’s behalf; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 446. This, from its tone, would seem to have been despatched in ignorance of the Fotheringay outrage--certainly before the assembly in which Aumale was excommunicated again. The date of that assembly is given in the Dunstable Annals, _l.c._, as “in die Conversionis Sancti Pauli.” But the excommunication is announced, as having already taken place, in a letter dated January 23rd, _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 169.

[763] Cf. W. Cov., _l.c._, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 64.

[764] “Tum quia castrum domini sui regis proditione cepit antequam ipsum difidasset.” I think this sentence of the Dunstable annalist (_l.c._) tends to confirm the Barnwell writer’s statement that Fotheringay was in the custody of Hubert. Strictly speaking, Fotheringay was never “a castle of his (Aumale’s) lord the King,” _i.e._, King Henry; it was a castle of the Earl of Huntingdon’s, and held of the King of Scots; Henry had only the right to its custody during the minority of the heir, and he had committed it to Alexander as custodian. If, however, Alexander had (as he very likely may have done) placed it temporarily in Henry’s hand, to be garrisoned by Henry’s men under Henry’s justiciar, the Dunstable writer’s words would be far more intelligible than if they were applied to it when in the keeping of the Earl of Chester, who we know was, at some date before--unluckily there is nothing to prove how long before--12th March, 1221, appointed custodian of the honour of Huntingdon not by Henry, but, with Henry’s sanction, by Alexander; see above, footnote 748.

[765] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 64.

[766] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 169. This letter, dated 23rd January, is addressed to Geoffrey de Neville. There can be no doubt that a like summons was sent to the other sheriffs and barons, and that the muster was a general one.

[767] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 248.

[768] _Roy. Lett._, vol i. p. 171. He left Bytham on 31st January; _ib._

[769] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 474 b.

[770] W. Cov., _l.c._

[771] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 448.

[772] _Ann. Dunst._, _l.c._

[773] W. Cov., vol. ii. pp. 248, 249.

[774] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 67.

[775] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 249. _Ann. Dunst._, p. 64.

[776] _Ann. Dunst._, _l.c._

[777] R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 67, 68.

[778] Commentators seem puzzled to account for a letter, dated 29th April, 1221, in which the Pope bids the Archbishop of York and his suffragans, “cum, sicut audivimus et dolemus, gravis guerra in regno Angliae incipit pullulare, quae nisi fuerit repressa celeriter, in totius regni poterit excrescere detrimentum ... quatenus singuli tanquam propriam causam agentes ad praecidendam guerrarum materiam et pacis foedera reformandam omne studium et diligentiam impendatis”; _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 174, 175. I would suggest that Honorius had heard something of the misdoings of the lord of Holderness, and was neither sufficiently learned in English geography to realize that they were not actually done in the northern province, nor, as yet, aware--as, indeed, he could not be at that date--how promptly they had been brought to an end.

[779] _Ann. Dunst._, a. 1221, p. 68. On 28th April Falkes, Richard de Rivers, and Engelard de Cigogné were sent to the Marshal with a letter desiring him to trust to what they should tell him from the King about the castle of Marlborough “ad fidem, commodum, et honorem nostrum.” _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 287.

[780] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 245.

[781] Stapleton, _Rotuli Normanniae_, vol. ii. introduction, p. cxxxviii.

[782] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 244, 245. This may be an allusion to the supposed plot of Peter de Maulay, or merely to what was possibly the origin of a misunderstanding which had occurred between the Marshal and the government at the time of the siege of Bytham. The Marshal received no summons for that expedition, but hearing when on his way “ad remotas partes” on business of his own that the host was mustering, he hurried back and wrote to the King, expressing his surprise at not having been summoned, and his readiness to join the muster; _ib._ pp. 170, 171. The omission to summon him can hardly have been intentional; it is much more likely that the summons miscarried, and this may have occurred through its interception by some mischief-maker.

[783] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 244, 245. Marlborough castle was in Pandulf’s custody till 7th February, 1224; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 426. So also, no doubt, was Luggershall, John Little, who on 2nd March, 1224, was ordered to deliver both castles to Robert de Meisy (_ib._ p. 428), being sub-warden under Pandulf. The _Ann. Dunst._ (p. 68) which do not mention Luggershall, say of Marlborough, “Quod quidem [Marescallus] tali conditione reddidit in manum legati, quod si alii similiter castra sibi commendata redderent, et suum retineretur, alioquin ei redderetur”; but the King’s letter is a better authority as to the condition.

[784] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 284. Cf. _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 451.

[785] Cf. W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 250, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 75, and for Richard Muscegros see _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 216.

[786] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 68. This authority says “post Pentecosten”; the Barnwell annalist (W. Cov., _l.c._) places the capture of Peter de Maulay “in festo Pentecostes,” which, like Falkes’s narrative (which will be dealt with later) leaves it uncertain whether the date meant is Whit-Sunday or merely Whitsuntide.

[787] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 321.

[788] _Querimonia Falcasii_, W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 260, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 68.

[789] “De qua captione non ante dictus nobilis evadere potuit quam ea castra quae sibi tam a domino Guala quam etiam a patre domini regis commissa fuerant restitueret,” says Falkes (_Quer. Falc._, _l.c._). But the records show that Peter really resigned nothing, except Corfe, until 20th November (1221), and that he retained Sherborne till 30th January, 1222 (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 325). On the words about Gualo see Note VI.

[790] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 75.

[791] W. Cov., vol. ii. pp. 250, 251.

[792] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 320.

[793] _Ib._ p. 321; cf. _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 481 b.

[794] See footnote 789 above.

[795] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 68.

[796] See below, p. 176.

[797] See above, pp. 73, 74.

[798] Early in the year it seems to have been arranged that Henry and Alexander should meet at Lincoln on 7th June; but the place and day were changed to York and 14th June (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 476), and the meeting was ultimately postponed till 19th June.

[799] _Ann. Dunst._, pp. 68, 69. Hubert (and of course Henry) was at Oxford 9th June, Northampton 11th, Nottingham 14th, Blyth 15th, and York 19th; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 461 b, 462.

[800] _Chron. Melrose_ and _Chron. Lanercost_, a. 1221. M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, vol. iii. p. 66, gives the date as 25th June, which the _Close Roll_, vol. i. p. 463, shows to be incompatible with the movements of the English court. Alexander’s settlement of dowerlands upon Joan--“sponsae nostrae dilectae”--is dated York, 18th June; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 309.

[801] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 249.

[802] Cf. _ib._ p. 250, and _Flores Hist._, vol. ii. p. 172; the date comes from the latter.

[803] He went after Michaelmas, 1220, _Ann. Dunst._, p. 64, “propter quaedam negotia Anglicanae Ecclesiae,” W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 246.

[804] He reached England about 15th August; W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 250.

[805] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 74.

[806] The Continuator of Florence of Worcester, a. 1221, (p. 173), says that Pandulf “a legationis officio revocatur.” This phrase need not exclude a voluntary resignation; he may have been recalled at his own request. No papal letters on the subject are extant; it is probable that Pandulf, like Gualo, asked permission to lay down an office which seems never to have been much to his taste; and it is even possible that he may have made his request through Stephen.