CHAPTER V

THE YOUNG KING

1223–1227

Aetatem habet; ipse de se loquatur.

[Sidenote: 1223]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: 1224]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: 1215–1224]

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

[Sidenote: 1224]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: 1224]

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

[Sidenote: 1225]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: 1226]

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

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

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

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

[Sidenote: 1225]

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

Archbishop Stephen’s prohibition to the commissioners in Kent was probably dictated by caution; certainly not by unwillingness to help in supplying the needs of the Crown. The Pope, on 3rd February, wrote to the English prelates and clergy exhorting them to make collections in their several dioceses for the King, but to take care that the proceeds went “for useful and necessary purposes,” not in “superfluous and vain expenses,” and that this collection should not be made a precedent.[1204] When this letter reached England Stephen bade his suffragans urge their clergy to obey it by contributing an aid out of such of their property as was exempt from the fifteenth, and also to pay up their share of that tax, but to take care that whatever money they gave was kept safe till further orders.[1205] Their compliance with these exhortations was made none the easier by the arrival, just before Christmas, of a papal messenger, Master Otto, and his presence in England during the next four months. The expenses which fell upon persons who went on business to the Roman Court were a subject of general complaint; Honorius proposed that this should be remedied by the reservation of a prebend in every cathedral and collegiate church, and a certain proportion of the revenue of every bishop and every religious house in all the realms of Latin Christendom, for the Apostolic See, so that the Pope and the officers of his court might have sufficient means to dispense with the need of charging such heavy fees.[1206] A council assembled at Bourges on S. Andrew’s day[1207] opposed this project so strongly that Cardinal Romanus decided to urge it no further in France till it should be accepted in the Empire, England, and Spain.[1208] In England, whither the Pope’s demand was carried by Otto, the need of consulting all the estates of the realm, and the King’s illness in January, 1226, served as reasons or excuses for deferring a decision till the middle of April. Then, according to one account, the King and the prelates followed the cautious example of their French brethren, saying they would wait to see how other countries would deal with the question; or, according to another authority, they answered that in any case England ought to be free from such an exaction, by reason of her annual tribute to the Pope.[1209] But that tribute was heavily in arrear, and obviously it was not to be expected that either Otto or Honorius would be satisfied till the arrears were paid up. This, therefore, had to be done, and a sum of over fifteen hundred marks went with Otto back to Rome.[1210] All this while Otto’s long stay had been adding to the financial burdens of the English clergy, for a papal envoy was entitled to claim from every cathedral and collegiate church procurations to the amount of forty shillings; although Otto seems to have contented himself with a smaller sum.[1211] In October {13 Oct.} the clergy made their grant to the Crown; it consisted of a sixteenth of the annual income of their benefices.[1212] Meanwhile Henry was chafing under the Papal command to refrain from war in France while Louis was on crusade. Again he sought to form alliances among the neighbours and the disaffected feudatories of the French King; in April he was negotiating with the Duke of Lorraine,[1213] in October he was making plans--which however came to nothing--to marry the daughter of the Duke of Britanny.[1214] Suddenly the political situation in France changed. On 8th November Master William Pierepunt’s forecast came true; Louis of France died at Montpensier in Auvergne.[1215] His successor was a boy ten years old. Neither the late King nor his father, Philip Augustus, had been liked by the barons, and many of these seized the occasion to assail the Queen-mother, Blanche of Castille, with demands for the restitution of sundry liberties of which, they said, Louis VIII and Philip had deprived them.[1216] The coronation, on 30th November, was almost if not quite as scantily attended as the first crowning of Henry had been.[1217] Henry at once despatched the Archbishop of York, Philip d’Aubigné, and some other envoys, to the chief nobles of Normandy, Anjou, and Poitou, and to the Duke of Britanny--all lands which, from his point of view, ought rightfully to be subject to himself--announcing his intention of going over sea, and calling upon them to receive him loyally.[1218] On 18th December elaborate schemes of concessions to Hugh and Isabel, and also to Hugh of Thouars[1219] and William Larchevêque, were drawn up, witnessed, and sealed ready for despatch, but they were never sent.[1220] Perhaps they were deemed needless owing to a piece of news which may have arrived from Aquitaine: Savaric de Mauléon had on the death of Louis VIII reverted to his old allegiance, and opened the gates of La Rochelle to Richard.[1221] Henry, however, was not ready for immediate action on a great scale; and at Mid-Lent (18th March), 1227, a truce was made between Richard of Poitou on the one part, and Louis IX, Blanche, Hugh of Lusignan, and their adherents on the other, to last till a fortnight after Midsummer.[1222]

[Sidenote: 1227]

The English court had spent the Christmas of 1226 at Reading[1223] and thence moved on by way of Wallingford to Oxford.[1224] What took place there, before the festal gathering usual at the season broke up, is related by the King himself in a circular letter issued on the 21st January, 1227, to all the sheriffs of England: “Be it known to you that by the common counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and other our magnates and faithful men, we recently at Oxford provided that henceforth we will cause charters and confirmations to be made under our seal. And we therefore bid you without delay publicly proclaim and make known to all persons in your bailiwick who have, or claim to have, lands or tenements or liberties by grant or concession and confirmation of our ancestors the Kings of England, or by our precept, that they come to us without fail before the beginning of this approaching Lent of the eleventh year of our reign, to shew us by what warrant they have, or claim to have, those lands or tenements or liberties, as they desire to keep or to recover them. You are also to make known to all persons in your bailiwick, and cause to be publicly proclaimed, that whosoever shall desire to obtain at any time our charter or confirmation of lands, tenements, markets, liberties, or anything whatsoever, let them come to us before the same term, to ask for our charter or confirmation thereof.”[1225] Thus in the second week of January, 1227 {8–10 Jan.}, three months after the completion of Henry’s nineteenth year, the Great Council of the realm sanctioned his release from the one restriction which in 1223 the same authority had decided should still remain imposed for a while upon his exercise of regal power. In what manner and on whose initiative this step was taken we do not know. The only chronicler who even professes to give any account of the matter asserts that Henry “declared before all” the Council “that he was of legal age, and henceforth, being set free from wardship, would order the affairs of the Crown as a prince”; and that the announcement about charters caused a great commotion, for which the Justiciar was universally held responsible, as the instigator of the King’s action.[1226] But this writer’s account of that action, and of its accompanying circumstances, is too full of demonstrable confusions and inaccuracies to be worthy of confidence in any particular.[1227] The suggestion may very likely have come from Hubert; but we need not accept for truth the insinuation which Hubert’s enemies seem to have induced Henry to believe at a later time, that Hubert was actuated mainly by a desire to secure for himself a grant in perpetuity from the Crown.[1228] Nor was there in the King’s proposed action any thing from which the other members of the Council could fairly withhold their consent. At the close of a long minority following on a period of confusion and civil war, it was not unreasonable--at any rate according to the ideas of that age--that there should be a general scrutiny of title-deeds which emanated or purported to emanate from the Crown, with a view to ascertaining their genuineness and validity, and thus safeguarding the rights both of the grantees and of the King. Whatever had been granted since Henry’s accession had been granted by a royal “precept,” not by charter; if such a grant was to be made permanent a charter would be necessary to make it so; and the letter of 21st January, fairly construed, implies no design of invalidating any earlier grants except such as should on examination prove to be inherently void. But the practice of seeking from the reigning sovereign confirmation of grants made by his predecessors was, and had been for centuries, so common that the King’s comprehensive invitation to “all who desired his confirmation of anything whatsoever” was certain to meet with an almost equally comprehensive response. On the other hand, every one knew that such grants always had to be paid for. In this latter circumstance may be seen the reason why Henry and his ministers were now so anxious to ante-date his full majority. The young King’s heart was set upon a great expedition over sea; the war-chest was empty;[1229] the payments for confirmations of royal grants would substantially--perhaps more substantially than any other scheme that could have been devised--help to fill it.

It is doubtful whether the far-off guardian who for ten years had watched over the interests of John Lackland’s heir and of his realm ever knew of his ward’s self-emancipation; for Honorius III died on 18th March, 1227. Some years later a transcript of one of the letters by which he had sanctioned Henry’s coming of age in 1223 appears to have been prepared by Bishops Peter of Winchester and Hugh of Ely for transmission to his successor Gregory IX;[1230] whether in consequence of some inquiry addressed to them by Gregory on the subject, we cannot tell. The authorizations given by Honorius were wide enough to cover the proceedings of January, 1227, without any need of further ratification from Rome. If those proceedings did reach the ears of the dying Pontiff, he may well have rejoiced to know that he would not have to leave his task of guardianship unfinished, and that this part of his burden of responsibility and care would not pass to the next Pope. Henceforth Henry of England must indeed be accounted as of full age, and answerable for himself and his realm.

FOOTNOTES:

[941] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 84; cf. R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 92. Orders to prepare for the Christmas court at Northampton were issued 9th and 10th December, _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 578. The King left London at some date between 12th and 19th December, and was at Northampton on the 23rd; _ib._ pp. 579, 579 b.

[942] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 84.

[943] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 92.

[944] Cf. _ib._ and _Quer. Falc._, p. 262.

[945] _Quer. Falc._, _l.c._, “Favore” is surely a misprint or a clerical error for _fervore_.

[946] _Ib._ Cf. R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 93, R. Coggeshall, pp. 203, 204, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 84; this last gives the date, “quinto die Natalis Domini,” _i.e._, 29th December.

[947] Its commission to Bishop Peter on Louis’s withdrawal in 1217 (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 450) was evidently only a temporary measure.

[948] See Note VIII.

[949] _Ib._

[950] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 71.

[951] On all these changes in the custody of castles see Note VIII.

[952] _Quer. Falc._, p. 262.

[953] R. Coggeshall, p. 204.

[954] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 496.

[955] Hugh of Windsor, _custos_ of the Tower in November, 1224 (_Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 8), and Thomas de Blundeville, _custos_ in 1225 and 1226 (_ib._ a. 1225–1226 _passim_) were sub-wardens. Cf. _ib._ pp. 33 b, 83 b.

[956] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 430.

[957] Hubert was constable of Dover in October, 1225, _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 65.

[958] William Hardres appears as constable of Canterbury castle from Candlemas to Michaelmas 1225, _ib._ p. 46 b; obviously he was a sub-warden, but whether under Stephen or under Hubert there is nothing to show.

[959] Matthew Paris’s assertion “Instillatum quippe fuerat illis in auribus secreto quod si prompta voluntate ea [scil. castra] regi ilico resignassent, statim illis redderet resignata” (_Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 261) may be taken for what his uncorroborated assertions are usually worth.

[960] R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 83–84.

[961] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 84.

[962] See above, p. 81.

[963] The only authority for this demand for a confirmation of the Charter, Roger of Wendover, places it in 1223. Its true date, however, seems to be 1224. Roger says it took place “in London, on the octave of Epiphany,” _i.e._ on 13th January. But in 1223 the court, which had kept Christmas at Oxford (as he says), and thence gone into Wiltshire, Dorset, and Hampshire, did not return to London till 20th or 21st January (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 527–529). In 1224, on the other hand, the King was at Westminster from 8th January to 26th February (_ib._ pp. 580 b–586). Moreover, in January, 1223, there were, so far as can be seen, no circumstances likely to suggest such a demand; but in January, 1224, the suggestion would be obvious. I think that Roger has betrayed at once his own confusion, and how he fell into it, in the words which immediately follow his report of Henry’s reply: “Et rex protinus, habito super hoc consilio, misit literas suas ad singulos vicecomites regni, ut per milites duodecim vel legales homines uniuscujusque comitatus per sacramentum facerent inquiri quae fuerunt libertates in Anglia tempore regis Henrici avi sui, et factam inquisitionem apud Londonias mitterent ad regem in quindecim diebus post Pascham” (vol. iv. p. 84). It is clear that the inquisition here spoken of is that ordered on 30th January, 1223 (see above, p. 201), which Roger took to be an inquiry into the ancient liberties of England, instead of (as it really was) into those of the Crown. Thus mistaking its character, he further mistook it for a consequence of the demand for the Charter: a demand which (as I believe) it really preceded by nearly twelve months, and with which its connexion--so far as the two things were connected at all--was quite the reverse of that which Roger implies; the inquest into the royal privileges having been, in all likelihood, one of the provocations which led the barons to ask for a confirmation of their own rights.

[964] _Quer. Falc._, pp. 262, 263. Cf. _Ann. Dunst._, p. 89, which gives the names of the envoys, Robert Passelewe and Robert of Kent.

[965] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 543.

[966] We arrive at this date by comparing _Quer. Falc._, _l.c._, with _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 593 b, and vol. ii. p. 72 b; see below, footnote 1047.

[967] _Quer. Falc._, p. 263.

[968] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 225.

[969] See above, p. 175.

[970] He was ordered on 18th July, 1222, to give them up to the Archbishop; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 505 b.

[971] _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 148 b.

[972] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 479 b.

[973] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 75; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 301, safe-conduct from 17th September to Christmas, 1221.

[974] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 527 b.

[975] Cf. _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 183, 184, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 85; the latter says he went after the Welsh war--_i.e._ in October or November--but we shall see that he must have gone some time before July.

[976] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 549 b.

[977] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 375, 5th June, 1223.

[978] _Ib._ p. 365.

[979] _Ib._ p. 374, 3rd June.

[980] _Ib._ p. 375, 5th June. This letter seems, however, not to have been despatched; the appointment is repeated on 10th September, 1224, and again on 12th May, 1225 (_ib._ pp. 470 and 526).

[981] _Ib._ p. 378, 18th July, 1223.

[982] _Ib._ p. 483.

[983] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 85.

[984] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 483.

[985] _Contin. Gerv. Cant._, vol. ii. p. 113. An order for Eleanor to be delivered into the Marshal’s custody had been issued on 5th February; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 426.

[986] Letters patent of 2nd May, 1224, announce the appointment of the Earl Marshal as Justiciar in Ireland, with power to receive all persons who shall come in within forty days after his arrival there; _ib._ pp. 437, 438.

[987] The _Ann. Dunst._, p. 86, say “octave of Pentecost,” but this is wrong; see above, p. 137.

[988] “Quod cepit occasione servicii nostri.”

[989] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 422. On Mausy see _ib._ pp. 356, 370, 379.

[990] On 22nd May, 1224, Mausy was in Hugh’s hands, _ib._ p. 440; in April, 1223, it seems to have been in Henry’s, _ib._ p. 370; to the date of its transfer we have no clue.

[991] _Ib._ pp. 431, 432, 27th March, 1224.

[992] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 592 b. The “truce” here mentioned may be either that between Henry and Louis, or that between Louis and Hugh. Louis had in September, 1223, made a truce with Hugh and one with Almeric of Thouars, both of which expired before May, 1224; Petit-Dutaillis, p. 233, note 2.

[993] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 593, 593 b, 595. This order for resumption of lands held by aliens is probably what the Bermondsey annalist means by his statement (a. 1224) “Hoc anno Henricus Rex tertius ordinavit et statuit edictum ut omnes alienigenae de regno expellerentur.”

[994] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 86; cf. Petit-Dutaillis, p. 235.

[995] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 484.

[996] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 172.

[997] Petit-Dutaillis, p. 235.

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

[999] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 483, 484. The towns addressed are the Cinque Ports, Portsmouth, Shoreham, Southampton, Seaford, Poole, Exeter, Bristol, Dartmouth, Norwich, Yarmouth, Orford, Dunwich, Ipswich, Lynn, and Orwell.

[1000] “Centum milites et amplius et quamplures servientes,” says Hubert de Burgh, _Responsiones_, p. 66.

[1001] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 86; this writer makes the knights only sixty.

[1002] _Responsiones_, _l.c._

[1003] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 599, 601, 602 b; in the last place “primo die _Maii_” seems to be a mistake for _Junii_.

[1004] _Responsiones_, p. 66.

[1005] _Quer. Falc._, p. 264.

[1006] This date is from Roger of Wendover, vol. iv. p. 94. The Dunstable annalist, _l.c._, says “octavis Pentecostes”; but on that day--9th June, Trinity Sunday--the King was a long way from Northampton; royal letters are dated at Winchester on 8th and 10th June, at Wallingford on 13th and 15th June, and the court did not reach Northampton till the 16th; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 604 b, 605.

[1007] “Daturi nobis ibidem consilium et auxilium facturi ad defensionem terrae nostrae in Pictavia,” _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 224.

[1008] “Convenerunt ad colloquium in octavis Sanctae Trinitatis rex cum archiepiscopis,” &c., “de regni negotiis tractaturi; voluit enim rex uti consilio magnatum suorum de terris transmarinis, quas rex Francorum paulatim occupaverat,” R. Wend., _l.c._ “Dum rex cum clero et baronibus apud Norhampton de succursu Pictaviae tractaret,” _Ann. Dunst._, _l.c._

[1009] “Cum autem Londoniis post illius simulatae pacis tractatum ordinatum fuisset ut apud Northamptoniam componeretur _exercitus_.” _Quer. Falc._, p. 264.

[1010] “Item de hoc respondeat [Hubertus] quod dum dominus rex fuit infra aetatem et subvenire debuit terrae Pictaviae, et _exercitus suus proficisci deberet in Pictaviam_, fecit ipse comes obsidere castrum Bedfordiae,” &c. Hubert in replying to this charge disclaims responsibility for the siege of Bedford, but appears to endorse the statement that “the King’s host” which went to that siege ought, or was intended or professedly intended, to have gone to Poitou; _Responsiones_, pp. 66, 67.

[1011] On 30th January Brian de Lisle was threatened with pains and penalties if he did not at once hand over Knaresborough (as he had been told on 30th December to do) to the Archbishop of York (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 425); and on 13th March Pandulf was urged to delay no longer the delivery (also ordered on 30th December) of Bristol (_ib._ p. 429). As nothing more is heard about either of these fortresses, we may conclude that both custodians obeyed.

[1012] M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. pp. 170, 171.

[1013] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 298 b, 378 b; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 90.

[1014] _Pat. Rolls_, p. 145.

[1015] _Ib._ p. 427.

[1016] _Ib._ p. 430.

[1017] _Ib._

[1018] For the relationship between Falkes and William there is abundant evidence. For Nicolas “frater Falkesii” see _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 197, _Pat. Rolls Joh._ p. 155 (1215), 183 b (1216); for Colin, _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 155, _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 195 (1215), 515 b (1222), _Pat. Rolls Hen. III_, vol. i. p. 458 (1224); for Avice “soror Willelmi de Brealte,” _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 595 b (1224). Gilbert (_ib._ p. 246, a. 1216, &c.), John (_ib._ pp. 617, a. 1224, and p. 642), and Henry (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 461, a. 1224), may have been brothers or more remote kinsmen.

[1019] _Hist. Ducs_, p. 173; M. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, vol. iii. p. 88, _Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 131; W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253; R. Coggeshall, p. 204.

[1020] “Rex Johannes habuit quendam servum probum et audacem,” R. Coggeshall, _l.c._

[1021] _Hist. Ducs_ and M. Paris, _ll.cc._

[1022] R. Coggeshall, _l.c._ Unluckily this tale, which sounds so characteristic of its hero, rests on unknown authority, being an interpolation in Ralf’s text, and we have no means of judging whether it is derived from contemporary report, or is merely the invention of some imaginative etymologist. The French form of the name is Falkes, Faukes, or Fauques, variously Latinized as Falkesius or Falcasius, sometimes as Falco. It seems to have been a variant of Fulk, Fouques, Fulco, and more probably connected with _falco_ than with _falx_.

[1023] M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._, _l.c._ Cf. _Chron. Lanercost_, a. 1224: “Faukes re et nomine.”

[1024] “Chil Foukes ot este povres sergans au roi; fius fu a un chevalier de Normendie, de soignant; mais puis siervi il tant le roi et tant cru ses afaires que il fu puis uns des riches homes d’Engletiere; petis fu de cors, mais moult fu vaillans.” _Hist. Ducs_, _l.c._

[1025] “Pro meritis a patria sua fugitivus,” says Matthew Paris of Falkes (_Hist. Angl._, vol. iii. p. 226). The word _meritis_, though used sarcastically, may be true literally; the “merit” may have been that of loyalty.

[1026] “Regis aedituus et minister, ipsi in clientela militans,” _ib._ vol. ii. p. 131.

[1027] Cf. the case of Peter de Maulay, above, footnote 371.

[1028] _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 68 b.

[1029] “Faukes serviens domini regis,” _l.c._

[1030] “Rex Johannes ... in militem sublimavit.” W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253.

[1031] He was ordered to deliver them to a new constable, the Earl Marshal, in January, 1214; _Pat. Rolls Joh._, p. 109 b.

[1032] See _ib._ pp. 100–199 b _passim_, and _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 119 b, 120 b, 122.

[1033] See above, footnote 1024.

[1034] “Virga furoris Domini,” M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 131.

[1035] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 19; R. Coggeshall, p. 205; W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253.

[1036] See above, footnote 1031.

[1037] “Senescallus regis,” _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 190, 191 b, 192 b, March, 1215. This office was shared among several persons; another _senescallus regis_ at this time was William de Cantelupe (_ib._ p. 192), who had held the office for many years. Falkes seems to have been also a seneschal or steward of the household of Henry III; see _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 350, 350 b, and _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 226, where Henry in June or July, 1224, speaks of “officii maximi quod habuit [Falcatius] in curia nostra.”

[1038] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 214, &c.

[1039] R. Coggeshall, p. 204. It is at this time, in 1215, that Nicolas, Colin, Gilbert, and John de Bréauté first appear (see above, footnote 1018). Nicolas and Colin were clerks. William, “vadlettus noster”--_i.e._ a page or young squire of the king--had received in July, 1212, a grant of land in Leicestershire previously held by “his uncle, William de Oville,” “ad se sustentandum in servicio nostro quamdiu nobis placuerit,” _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 120.

[1040] See above, pp. 223, 224.

[1041] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 145.

[1042] “Quem ... Johannes rex ... comiti parificavit, donando illi comitissam de Wyth,” W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253; although Margaret never was a countess, since Baldwin de Rivers died before his father.

[1043] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 175, 221, 222.

[1044] R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 10, 11. Cf. M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 203.

[1045] “[Falco] prosperis successibus undique elevatus, parem in regno habere dedignabatur,” R. Coggeshall, p. 205; “cum videret statum suum supra modum subito prosperatum, dedignabatur habere parem; erat enim ei persaepe in operibus frequentibus pro ratione voluntas,” W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253.

[1046] _Quer. Falc._, pp. 263, 264.

[1047] _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 72 b, 73. These three writs are entered on the back of membrane 17 of the Close Roll 9 Hen. III (October, 1224–October, 1225), and thus appear to belong to April–May, 1225; but this cannot be their true date; Falkes was outlawed and out of England long before April, 1225. The scribe has put them on a wrong roll. With the chronological data for the year 1224 they fit in perfectly. Falkes says he was accused to the King “triduo post pacem,” _i.e._, three days after peace was made in London between Hubert and his opponents (cf. above, pp. 216, 217). In 1224 the King was in London, 21st April–26th May (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 593 b–601; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 436–441). Combining this fact with Falkes’s statement and with the writ of 26th April, we see that the “peace” must have been made not earlier than 21st April, and not later than the 23rd. The Monday after the octave of Trinity in that year, 17th June, was the morrow of the day fixed for the re-assembling of the Council at Northampton; see above, p. 222.

[1048] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 90.

[1049] _Quer. Falc._, p. 264.

[1050] “Accidit autem quod Henricus de Braibroc ... improbe exigeret a Falcasio et suis quasdam exactiones et reragia quae debebant; ex qua exactionum improbitate commoti violenter ceperunt praedictum,” &c. R. Coggeshall, p. 206.

[1051] See Note IX.

[1052] _Quer. Falc._, _l.c._; _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 225, 226; W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253; R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 94; R. Coggeshall, _l.c._; _Ann. Dunst._, p. 86. The date is from _Quer. Falc._, p. 265. The _Contin. Gerv. Cant._, vol. ii. p. 113, says the capture took place at Huntingdon, which seems geographically impossible.

[1053] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 95.

[1054] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 226; R. Coggeshall and R. Wend., _ll.cc._; _Ann. Dunst._, pp. 86, 90.

[1055] _Quer. Falc._, p. 264.

[1056] In the _Querimonia_, _l.c._ we read: “Cujus captio postquam mihi fuerat nunciata, ego apud Northamptoniam propter servitium regis cum aliis baronibus terrae conveneram, ad castrum de Bedeford pro exquirendo fratre meo ... tam cito perveni.” But the King, in a letter written a few weeks later, says Falkes refused to come before the Council when summoned to answer for Braybroke’s capture, “cum alias teneatur ratione possessionum magnarum et officii maximi quam tenuit in curia nostra” (see above, footnote 1037) “ad nos in conciliis nostris venire non vocatus” (_Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 226). This seems to imply that Falkes had not attended the Northampton meeting at all.

[1057] _Quer. Falc._, pp. 264, 265.

[1058] Cf. _ib._, R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 95, and W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253.

[1059] R. Wend., _l.c._ Cf. Hubert’s version of all this in _Responsiones_, pp. 67, 68, and the King’s in _Roy. Lett._, _l.c._; both in substantial agreement with Roger’s.

[1060] In 1221; see above, p. 180.

[1061] _Quer. Falc._, p. 265.

[1062] _Quer. Falc._, p. 265; R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 95, 96. Roger gives an absurd date, “Decimo sexto kalendas Julii, die videlicet Jovis proximo post octavas Trinitatis.” It was the Thursday after the octave of Trinity, but it was 20th, not 16th, June.

[1063] Petit-Dutaillis, pp. 236–238.

[1064] Cf. _Chron. Turonense_, in _Rer. Gall. Scriptt._, vol. xviii. p. 305, with R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 93, R. Coggeshall, p. 208, and the two contradictory versions of Savaric’s conduct given in _Ann. Dunst._, pp. 86 and 91.

[1065] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 236; Petit-Dutaillis, pp. 250, 251.

[1066] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253.

[1067] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 226.

[1068] _Responsiones_, pp. 66, 67.

[1069] _Quer. Falc._, p. 269.

[1070] With treason of such a nature as that of which the Barnwell annalist says “some people” accused Falkes--collusion with a foreign enemy of the King--Falkes was never publicly charged at all.

[1071] When once the siege of Bedford was begun, and still more in after-days, of course, King and Justiciar were alike more inclined to magnify than to minimize the whole affair; but this was wisdom after the event.

[1072] R. Wend., vol. iii. p. 349.

[1073] Or, possibly, of its ownership in fee. See Note X.

[1074] The chroniclers speak of this sacrilege as if Falkes were alone responsible for it. So far as concerned one of the churches, however, we know from a better authority that Falkes was neither the sole nor the chief culprit. On 5th February, 1217, the guardians of the realm made little Henry give a benefice to the Prior and convent of Newnham for the welfare of his own soul and his father’s soul, “et in recompensacionem dampni quod idem I. pater noster fecit priori et conventui de Newenham quando dirui fecit ecclesiam S. Pauli de Bedeford, quae fuit dicti prioris et conventus de Newenham, eo tempore quo firmari fecit castrum Bedefordiae.” _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 29.

[1075] R. Coggeshall, p. 205; cf. W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253.

[1076] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 87. Cf. _Ann. Wav._, a. 1224: “Falkesius ... nonnullis etiam de majoribus Angliae, sicut dictum est, eidem Falkesio conniventibus, tenuit idem castellum contra regem ... ad quod expugnandum ... omnes fere magnati Angliae, licet fortassis non uno eodemque animo” [printed _anno_] “pariter convenerant.” While at Northampton Henry had received a letter from the Pope, remonstrating with him about his treatment of Bishop Peter, Earl Ranulf, and some others of his father’s old friends; _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 224, 225.

[1077] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 605 b–608, 610, 611 b, 612, 632, 636, 641; dates, 20th June–10th August.

[1078] Cf. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 464, 465, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 86. Ralf of Coggeshall, p. 206, says that, by a general edict, two men were summoned from every plough [land] throughout the shires, to drag and work machines and convey stones from the quarries.

[1079] _Pat. Rolls_, _l.c._

[1080] _Quer. Falc._, pp. 265, 266.

[1081] R. Coggeshall, p. 207.

[1082] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 96.

[1083] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 172, _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 631 b.

[1084] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 450.

[1085] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 632.

[1086] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 233–235. In p. 233 Ranulf says the King’s letter reached him on 4th August.

[1087] _Ib._ pp. 229, 230. If Llywelyn thought the Pope was at the back of the attack on Bedford and the excommunication of Falkes, he was mistaken. On 17th August Honorius wrote to Henry reproaching him for his neglect of previous admonitions to treat his subjects gently, and especially for his ingratitude to Falkes, and pointing out the inexpediency of spending on civil war forces that were urgently needed for external defence (_ib._ p. 544). On or about the same date he addressed a very sharp letter to Archbishop Stephen, reproving him for his share in the matter, and ordering him to recall the sentence which he was reported to have passed upon Falkes and to stop the King’s action against that personage. On the justice of that action Honorius passes no judgement; what he insists upon is its inopportuneness (_ib._ pp. 543, 544).

[1088] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 96.

[1089] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 87. R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 96, 97; cf. R. Coggeshall, p. 206.

[1090] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 97.

[1091] R. Coggeshall, _l.c._

[1092] “Forinseci.”

[1093] _Ann. Dunst._, pp. 87, 88.

[1094] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 233.

[1095] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 175.

[1096] “Tres aemuli mei quos ex causis evidentissimis suspectos habebam”--“qui capitales inimici mei erant.” He does not give their names. Two of them were unquestionably Hubert and Stephen; the third may have been Earl William of Salisbury.

[1097] _Quer. Falc._, pp. 266, 267.

[1098] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 461.

[1099] _Quer. Falc._, p. 267.

[1100] For the story of the surrender I have combined the accounts given in _Ann. Dunst._, p. 88, R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 97, and R. Coggeshall, p. 207. Cf. also W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 254, and _Quer. Falc._, _ib._ p. 267.

[1101] _Ann. Dunst._, _l.c._

[1102] R. Wend., _l.c._

[1103] _Ann. Dunst._ and _Quer. Falc._, _ll.cc._

[1104] See Note XI.

[1105] _Quer. Falc._, p. 268.

[1106] Roger of Wendover, vol. iv. p. 98, says _fratres suos_, but Matthew Paris, _Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 265, who relates this scene on the authority of an eyewitness, the Bishop of Coventry, speaks of only one brother (William), and so does Falkes himself.

[1107] _Quer. Falc._, p. 268.

[1108] M. Paris, _l.c._

[1109] R. Wend. and M. Paris, _ll.cc._ The Barnwell annalist, W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 254, places this interview at Elstow.

[1110] R. Wend. and M. Paris, _ll.cc._

[1111] Stoke Courcy was part of the heritage of his wife. She and her elder sister, Joan, wife of Hugh de Neville, were co-heiresses to the lands of their father, Warin FitzGerold, who had been chamberlain to Henry II, and who was now dead. See _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 10, 89 b.

[1112] _Ann. Dunst._, pp. 88, 89.

[1113] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 462.

[1114] “Jurato autem stare mandatis Ecclesiae, in ruborem et confusionem meam, Londoniis in die dedicationis ejusdem Sanctae Trinitatis, affectata presentia plurimorum, idem archiepiscopus nudari me faciens, sermonem ad populum facto ... tandem absolutum post verba multa et probra me dimisit.” _Quer. Falc._, p. 268. We are not obliged to accept Falkes’s description of Stephen’s discourse as containing “blasphemias infinitas,” nor to believe that the words which he proceeds to give as a quotation from it (_ib._) were actually spoken by the Primate. His date--“die dedicationis ejusdem S. Trinitatis”--is absolutely unintelligible to me; but the safe-conduct given him on 19th August was to last till the 25th; and 25th August is also the date of his final act of surrender, which would no doubt be made directly after his absolution. That he was absolved before he made it is stated in the deed itself.

[1115] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 175; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 210, 211; date, 25th August. A dateless letter from Falkes to the constable of Stoke Courcy, urging its immediate surrender, is in _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 490. On 29th August twenty marks were granted to Falkes from the treasury “for his expenses”; _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 643 b.

[1116] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 98.

[1117] The _Ann. Wav._, a. 1224, say, “Uxor ejus [_i.e._, Falkesii] ... tradita est cuidam magnato Angliae custodienda cum filiis suis.” This means “_her_ sons”--one by Baldwin and one by Falkes. Falkes himself speaks only of “wife and son” (_Quer. Falc._, pp. 271, 272), and so does the Pope when writing in his behalf to Henry.

[1118] See (1) the Pope’s reproach to Stephen in 1226 concerning Falkes and Margaret--“Quomodo potest anima tua in eorum venire consilium qui uxorem ejus nobilis detinent, et in multorum scandalum animarumque suarum perniciem matrimonii violant sacramentum?” (_Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 547), which clearly takes it for granted that their marriage was still recognized by Stephen and everyone else; and (2) a letter patent of 1228 which calls Margaret “quondam uxorem Falkesii” (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 211); “quondam uxor” or “quae fuit uxor” being the legal description of a widow, but not of a woman who had been “divorced,” _i.e._, declared by a judicial sentence to have been never truly a wife at all.

[1119] In _Quer. Falc._, p. 270, Falkes says he was in the bishop’s custody “ix septimanis et amplius.” Nine weeks from 17th August, which seems to be the earliest possible date for his committal to Eustace’s keeping, brings us to 24th October; and we shall see that the latest possible date for the Council’s decision is 26th October. Roger of Wendover’s statement (vol. iv. p. 103) that it took place “Martio mense” is of course quite wrong.

[1120] See above, footnote 1087.

[1121] Cf. _Quer. Falc._, p. 270, and R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 103. Ralf of Coggeshall, p. 208, has a slightly different version of the way in which this sentence was arrived at.

[1122] _Quer. Falc._, _l.c._

[1123] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 478.

[1124] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 633 b.

[1125] R. Wend., _l.c._

[1126] Cf. _ib._, W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 254, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 89.

[1127] So says Roger, _l.c._; but the Barnwell annalist (W. Cov., _l.c._) says Louis sent him to prison at Compiègne, and only released him on an order from the Pope.

[1128] _Ann. Dunst._, _l.c._

[1129] R. Wend., _l.c._

[1130] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 264–269; cf. _Foedera_, I. i. 175, 176.

[1131] “Uxorem cum patrimonio sibi restitui,” _Ann. Dunst._, p. 89. The “patrimony” referred to must be Margaret’s, since Falkes had never had or been entitled to any of his own. Having been absolutely penniless for two years and a half, he was now “multis debitis oneratus” (_ib._), and considering Margaret’s conduct in September, 1224, it would be only natural if he valued his claims upon her chiefly on their pecuniary side.

[1132] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 547; date, 11th July, 1226. This letter to Stephen is the one referred to above, footnote 1118.

[1133] The _Ann. Dunst._, p. 89, say he died “ab Urbe rediens, apud Sanctum Ciriacum.” So do Roger of Wendover, vol. iv. p. 137, and Matthew Paris, _Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 291; the latter adds “infectus veneno quod in pisce quodam ei dabatur.”

[1134] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 313, 314, 12th September, 1227.

[1135] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 465, 468, 469, 29th August, 7th and 9th September.

[1136] _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 626 b, 20th October.

[1137] _Ib._ p. 632 b, 6th–8th September; cf. _Ann. Dunst._ (a. 1225), p. 92.

[1138] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 99.

[1139] Cf. _ib._ and _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 22, 25, &c.

[1140] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 496; cf. _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 22. This tallage, according to _Ann. Wav._, a. 1225, brought in five thousand marks.

[1141] R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 99, 100. Cf. _Ann. Dunst._, p. 93.

[1142] _Statutes of Realm, Charters of Liberties_, pp. 22–25.

[1143] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 237, 238.

[1144] According to the _Chron. Turon._ (_R.G.S._ vol. xviii.), p. 307, Savaric went to England (cf. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 477, _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 8 b, 9) to ask for succour, “sed Anglici, de ejus adjutorio diffidentes, eum latenter capere tentaverunt.” He however escaped, and at Christmas did homage to Louis.

[1145] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 239.

[1146] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 101.

[1147] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 507; cf. _Ann. Wav._ and _Dunst._, a. 1225.

[1148] “Dederat ei namque rex, ante recessum suum ab Anglia, comitatum Cornubiae cum tota Pictavia; unde ab omnibus comes Pictaviae vocabatur, titulusque literarum suarum ‘comes Pictaviae et Cornubiae.’” M. Paris, _Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 270, adding in margin: “Clam dederat ei Wasconiam et incartaverat.”

[1149] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 503, _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 10 b, 11, 21, 22 (1st and 3rd January, 13th March). By 21st March the fleet was found to be too large for its purpose, and many vessels were dismissed; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 514.

[1150] R. Wend., _l.c._; cf. _Ann. Dunst._, p. 94, and _Ann. Winton._, a. 1225. This last authority says they went “about Mid-Lent” (9th March), but Roger’s date agrees better with the Rolls. He says there were forty knights; the _Ann. Winton._ say seventy.

[1151] Cf. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 513–516, and _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 16 b, 19 b.

[1152] See Richard’s letter, dated 2nd May, in _Foedera_, I. i. p. 178, and cf. Petit-Dutaillis, p. 262.

[1153] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 579, 601, 580, 552, _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 43.

[1154] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 528, _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 70 b, 71, 72 b.

[1155] It is more difficult to understand what Henry can have expected to gain by another embassy sent out about the same time as the one to Germany. On 14th January, 1225, Ansoldus of Genoa is ordered to buy a hundred marks’ worth of scarlet and “tela de rey” to give from the King to the Soldan of Damascus, the King promising to pay him when he returns from the Soldan. _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 13 b.

[1156] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 179.

[1157] See the text (dateless) in Petit-Dutaillis, pp. 518–520.

[1158] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 552.

[1159] 13th November, Petit-Dutaillis, p. 261. See more about the siege in R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 102, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 94.

[1160] On comparing the story in R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 105–107, 116, with the King’s letter to William, _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 83, and the entries _ib._ pp. 92–96, and _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 9, 12, 13, which show that William’s visit to the King at Marlborough took place between 31st December, 1225, and 29th January, 1226 (see especially _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 12, 23rd January), I venture to think that Roger’s “tres menses” in p. 107 should read “tres septimanas.”

[1161] R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 114, 115.

[1162] _Ib._ pp. 116, 117.

[1163] Dugdale, _Baronage_, vol. i. p. 177, from Register of Lacock Abbey. Roger (p. 117) says that after the reconciliation at Marlborough Hubert invited Longsword to dinner and there, “ut dicitur,” poisoned him. If so, the poison must have been a slow one, since the dinner took place before the court left Marlborough, _i.e._, before 30th January, and the Earl did not die till five weeks later. His health, already failing in October, was evidently broken down altogether by his sufferings at sea.

[1164] See _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 261–263; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 14, 15, 24, 31–36, 38, 59, 75–78; _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 38 b, 51, 98, 118 b.

[1165] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 25, 26, and _Ann. Dunst._, pp. 98, 99.

[1166] See his instructions concerning Brother Thomas of the Temple, “ducenti magnam navem nostram in hoc itinere nostro versus Wasconiam,” _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 11, 19th January, 1226.

[1167] Cf. R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 114, with dates in _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 9–13, and _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 92–96.

[1168] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 14.

[1169] _Chron. Turon._, p. 312.

[1170] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 74, 75.

[1171] _Chron. Turon._, p. 313.

[1172] _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 151.

[1173] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 125.

[1174] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 545–547.

[1175] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 126.

[1176] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 44.

[1177] Cf. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 489 and 471 (13th August and 23rd September, 1224) with _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 648, which shews that Henry was at Shrewsbury 24th–30th September.

[1178] “Kinardly caput de terris quas Madoc filius Griffin tenet per servicium militare est in manu Lewelini,” _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 24, 18th March, 1225.

[1179] _Foedera_, I. i. p. 178, _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 83 b, 154 b, 155, _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 56, 59.

[1180] _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 154 b, 155.

[1181] _Ann. Dunst._, p. 100.

[1182] The silence of the _Brut_ is most significant. That chronicle, after its daring assertion that the Earl Marshal was “slain” at Carnwyllon in 1223 (see above, footnote 893), says not another word about the relations between England and Wales till 1228.

[1183] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 500.

[1184] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 387.

[1185] _Ann. Dunst._, a. 1225, pp. 91, 92.

[1186] _Close Rolls_, vol ii. p. 37 b, 10th May.

[1187] _Ib._ p. 39 b, 13th May, 1225. Cf. _ib._ pp. 125 b, 126.

[1188] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 31, 32, 75–78, 12th May, 1226.

[1189] _Ib._ p. 47.

[1190] _Ib._ pp. 51, 52, 4th July.

[1191] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 500.

[1192] _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 96 b.

[1193] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 48, 49.

[1194] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 291.

[1195] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 80, 81.

[1196] _Ib._ p. 58.

[1197] See above, pp. 190, 191.

[1198] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 82.

[1199] _Ib._ p. 59, 27th August.

[1200] _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 291.

[1201] _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 70.

[1202] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 560–564.

[1203] _Ib._ pp. 572, 573.

[1204] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 585; also in W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 256.

[1205] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 257.

[1206] _Ib._ pp. 274–276.

[1207] _Chron. Turon._, p. 310.

[1208] W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 279.

[1209] Cf. R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 107, 115, 116, 123, 124, W. Cov., vol. ii. pp. 278, 279, and _Ann. Dunst._, p. 99.

[1210] _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 149, 149 b; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 24, and cf. _ib._ pp. 27, 28.

[1211] Cf. R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 118 and 108.

[1212] _Ann. Osen._ and _Wykes_, a. 1226, p. 67. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 64.

[1213] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 27.

[1214] _Ib._ pp. 153, 154.

[1215] _Chron. Turon._, p. 317.

[1216] Cf. R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 135, 136, and _Chron. Turon._, p. 318.

[1217] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 136.

[1218] R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 136, 137. Archbishop Walter went at some date between 1st December, 1226, and 7th January, 1227, _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii., pp. 94, 106, and the Bishop of Carlisle seems to have gone with him, _ib._ p. 107.

[1219] Brother and successor of Almeric, who died in March, 1226; _Chron. Turon._, p. 313.

[1220] _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 99, 100, 102, 103, 153.

[1221] _Chron. Turon._, p. 318.

[1222] _Foedera_, I. i. pp. 186, 187.

[1223] R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 138; _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 162.

[1224] Wallingford, December 29th, 30th; Oxford, 31st; Woodstock, 1st–7th January; Oxford, 8th–10th; Reading, 11th–13th; _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 163 b–166; cf. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 105–107.

[1225] _Close Rolls_, vol. ii. p. 207.

[1226] R. Wend., vol. iv. pp. 139, 140.

[1227] Roger dates these proceedings “mense Februario,” which the letter close shews to be a month too late; he says that Henry thereupon “excussit se per consilium Huberti de Burgo, justiciarii regni, de consilio et gubernatione dicti episcopi [Wintoniensis] et suorum, qui regi fuerant prius quasi paedagogi, ita quod omnes illas a curia sua et cohabitatione removit” (p. 139), whereas Peter had been removed from his tutorship six years before; and he travesties the proclamation about charters as follows: “In eodem itaque concilio rex fecit cancellare et cassare omnes chartas de provinciis omnibus regni Angliae de libertatibus Forestae, postquam jam per biennium in toto regno fuerant usitatae, hanc occasionem praetendens quod chartae illae concessae fuerant, et libertates scriptae et signatae, dum ipse erat sub custodia, nec sui corporis aut sigilli aliquam habuerit potestatem, unde viribus carere debuit quod sine ratione fuerat usurpatum.... Tunc vero denuntiatum est viris religiosis et aliis qui suis volebant libertatibus gaudere, ut innovarent chartas suas de novo regis sigillo, scientes quod rex chartas antiquas nullius esse momenti reputabat” (pp. 139, 140). The King’s instructions to the sheriffs say not a word of the Forest Charter, and were obviously never meant to apply either to that document or to the Great Charter; and what they do say about other charters is completely misrepresented by the last clause of Roger’s concluding sentence.

[1228] _Respons._, p. 69.

[1229] In the early part of December, 1226, the Archbishop of Dublin and the clergy of the March in Ireland had been entreated to send an aid to the King; _Pat. Rolls_, vol. ii. pp. 100–104.

[1230] See Note VII.

NOTES

NOTE I

THE TRUCES OF 1216–1217

The accounts of the truces made between Henry and Louis in the winter of 1216–1217 are so conflicting that it seems impossible either to reconcile them or to arrive at a precise conclusion as to all the facts and dates. The documentary evidence on the subject is unluckily very scanty; it consists--so far as I have been able to ascertain--only of two entries in the Patent Roll of 1. Hen. III (Oct. 1216--Oct. 1217). The first of these is a notice, dated 28th December, 1216, from Henry to Louis, concerning claims of redress for injuries done “infra treugas inter nos captas” (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 107). The second is a report, addressed by the Marshal and Council to Louis, of a meeting held “die Jovis in crastino S. Petri” between the _emendatores treugae_ on both sides, “ad emendaciones capiendas et faciendas de interceptionibus factis in prima treuga et secunda, et ad treugam faciendum observari et tenere” (_ib._ p. 109). This letter is dateless; it is entered on the Roll between a letter dated 28th February and one dated 10th March. “Thursday the morrow of S. Peter” probably means 19th January, the day after the festival of S. Peter’s Chair at Rome, which festival fell on a Wednesday in 1217. The feast of S. Peter’s Chair at Antioch, 22nd February, was also a Wednesday in that year; but it is hardly possible that this talk about truces could have been going on as late as 23rd February, only five days before the “Crusaders” mustered at Dorking proclaimed their intention of expelling Louis from Rye (see above, p. 24).

From these entries, then, it results that there were two truces, one of which was existing on 28th December, 1216; that a second truce was made before 19th January, 1217; and that _a_ truce--either this second truce, or a third--was existing at some date posterior to 19th January, 1217.

The _Hist. G. le Mar._ states that when the garrison of Hertford (besieged by Louis 11th November, 1216, see above, p. 18) became hopeless of relief, “Cil qui devers le rei se tindrent A Loeis por trieve vindrent De vint jor, e si lor dona, Par fei c’on li abandona Berkamestoude e Herefort; Seisis en fu, fust dreit ou tort” (ll. 15717–28); and that “Quant ceste trieve fu faillie, Cil qui aveient la baillie Autre trieve de vint jors pristrent, Sanz le Mar.; si mespristrent, Quer il baillerent deus chasteals Riches e forz e buens e beals; Ce fu Norviz e Orefort” (ll. 15735–41). The Chron. Merton (Petit-Dutaillis, p. 514) says: “Hoc anno [1216] facta fuit pax circa festum S. Andreae, quae duravit usque ad octabas S. Hillarii, inter Lodovicum et Henricum regem Angliae,” adding a detail which may be safely ignored--that the truce was purchased at the price of seven thousand marks paid to Louis. The Barnwell annalist says: “[Lodowicus] applicuit castra ad castellum cui nomen Berchamstede ... sed quoniam Natale Domini instabat, firmatae sunt treugae generales inter partes usque ad octavas Epiphaniae, reddito quod obsidebatur castello pro treugarum impetratione.... Post Natale Domini, durantibus adhuc treugis, convocaverunt fautores suos ad concilium Lodowicus apud Grantebriggiam, tutores regii apud Oxoniam. Elaboratumque est ut aut inter partes pax firmaretur, aut treugae prolongarentur. Sed cum paci detrectarent Angli qui cum Lodowico erant, protendereturque de treugis ineundis consilium, obsedit ipse castellum cui nomen Odingham [_i.e._, Hedingham, see Stubbs’s notes, p. 235, note 2, and pref. p. ix., note 2]. Redditum est autem ei tunc temporis castellum illud, et castellum Orefordiae, praesidiumque Nortwici, et praesidium Colecestriae, pro treugis usque ad mensem post Pascha” (W. Cov., vol. ii. pp. 234–5). Roger of Wendover mentions only one truce, which he represents as made in consequence of the tidings received by Louis as to the Pope’s intention of excommunicating him on Maundy Thursday: “Hac itaque de causa statutae sunt treugae inter Lodowicum et regem Henricum usque ad mensem de Pascha, ita scilicet ut omnia remaneant in eo statu quo fuerunt in die quo juratae fuerunt treugae, in castellis et rebus aliis, usque ad terminum constitutum” (vol. iv. p. 11). He has, however, previously stated that Berkhamsted surrendered “post diutinam obsidionem, ex praecepto regis” (_ib._ p. 6). These words, taken in connexion with the Biographer’s story, suggest that that story is correct, and that Waleran held Berkhamsted in defiance of the truce till he was peremptorily ordered by the Council to give it up. This first truce, then, seems to have been made not later than 6th December, the day on which Hertford surrendered (above, p. 18); it may have been made, as the Merton Chronicle asserts, a week earlier, and Walter de Godardville may, like Waleran, have ignored it as long as he could. If it were made on S. Andrew’s day, it would--supposing the Biographer to be right about its duration--expire on 20th December, the day on which Roger says that Berkhamsted surrendered. The Biographer seems to imply that the second truce commenced immediately on the expiration of the first; and twenty days from 20th December bring us to 9th January. If, however, the first truce began on 6th December, it would end on 26th December; and this would bring the termination of the second truce to 15th January. These dates agree neither with the Barnwell annalist’s “octave of Epiphany” nor with the Merton Chronicler’s “octave of S. Hilary”; and what is of much more consequence, even the latest date alleged for the expiration of the second truce--that given by the Merton writer, 20th January--fails to account for the letter patent which shews that there was a truce not merely unexpired, but, seemingly, not even approaching expiration, as late as 19th January. There seems to be no way of overcoming this difficulty except by supposing that the second truce was followed by a third. My belief is that this was so, and that the key to the whole puzzle about the truces and the surrenders of castles in 1216–1217 is to be found in the words of the Barnwell annalist. This writer appears to me to deal with the various truces made between the end of November, 1216, and the end of February, 1217, not singly, but in a group. His account of the _treugae generales_ up to the meeting of the rival councils at Oxford and Cambridge includes, _explicitly_, what may be called the Biographer’s first truce (“reddito quod obsidebatur castello,” _i.e._, Berkhamsted--and Hertford--“pro treugarum impetratione” (cf. _Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 15717–28); _implicitly_, the Biographer’s second truce (“Autre trieve de vint jors,” ending _approximately_ “ad octavas Epiphaniae”); and _implicitly_ also, I venture to think, a _third_ truce (“_durantibus adhuc treugis_ convocaverunt fautores suos ... tutores regii apud Oxoniam,” as we know from the Close Roll, _after_ the octave of Epiphany (see above, p. 19). After mentioning the two councils and the fruitless negotiations for peace, the annalist tells us that yet _another_ truce (seemingly the fourth) was proposed; and he winds up the whole subject by giving us, _not_ the conditions or the results of that particular proposal, but a general list of the castles--Hedingham, Orford, Norwich, Colchester--which “tunc temporis” (_i.e._ within the last five or six weeks) had, in consideration of the successive truces since the first, been surrendered to Louis, and of which the undisturbed possession was now secured to him for a further period of some two months or more, “pro treugis ad mensem post Pascha.” In a word, the Barnwell writer tells that these four castles were, at some time between the middle of December, 1216, and the middle of February, 1217, bartered for renewals of the truce which had begun with the surrender of Berkhamsted; but which particular castles were bartered for which particular renewal, he leaves us to make out for ourselves. The task is perhaps not so difficult as it looks at first glance. The _Histoire des Ducs_ gives an independent list, somewhat fuller than the Barnwell writer’s, of Louis’s gains after Hertford and Berkhamsted: “Puis prist le castiel de Colecestre e celui d’Orefort e celui d’Ingehem” [Hedingham] “e celui del Plasseis e Cantebruge, e moult d’autres fortereces.... La cites de Norewis li fu rendue” (_Hist. Ducs_, p. 182). The word _prist_ here would, if we had no other version of the story, naturally appear to mean “took by force”; but our other evidence shews that, with regard to Orford at least, it is in reality only equivalent to the phrase used by the same writer concerning Norwich, and by the Barnwell annalist concerning not only Norwich and Orford, but also concerning Hedingham and Colchester--“li fu rendu,” “redditum est.” We know from the Biographer that Norwich and Orford were the price of the second truce. We know from the combined evidence of the Barnwell annalist and the Close Roll that Cambridge had passed into the hands of Louis perhaps before S. Hilary’s day, certainly not later than ten days after its octave. We also know, from the Barnwell annalist, that Louis did not gain possession of Hedingham till after the simultaneous councils at Oxford and Cambridge. The inference seems plain: Cambridge and either Colchester or Pleshey were surrendered for the third truce; Hedingham, and whichever of the other two places had not been surrendered on the same occasion as Cambridge, formed the price of the fourth truce, the truce which was made after the councils (_i.e._, at the end of January or beginning of February), to last, as we learn from Roger of Wendover as well as from the Barnwell writer, till a month after Easter. The Flemish writer’s words about “many other castles” are probably an exaggeration; there is nothing to indicate what these other castles were; in any case they must have been of small importance.

One difficulty remains: the Biographer’s assertion that the second truce was made “sanz le Mareschal.” It seems impossible that this can be correct; no “general truce” between Henry and Louis, such as is clearly indicated by the letters patent, could have been made “without the Marshal,” _i.e._, without his participation and sanction as governor of King and kingdom. We may, perhaps, account for the Biographer’s mistake--for mistake it must surely be--somewhat as follows. The policy of the Royalist leaders in negotiating truces on such terms was doubtless too subtle for the understanding of most of the rank and file of their party; it seems to have been too profound for the understanding of the sturdy German constable of Berkhamsted, perhaps also for those of Falkes’s Norman lieutenant at Hertford and of the constable of Hedingham. The Marshal’s biographer evidently did not comprehend its object at all, and so disapproved of it utterly. He hints at his disapproval of the cession of Hertford and Berkhamsted--“Seisis en fu, _fust dreit ou tort_”; he gives us his undisguised opinion that when “cil qui aveient la baillie autre trieve de vint jors pristrent” at the price of evacuating Orford and Norwich, “_si mespristrent_.” On the other hand, he was not willing to admit that his hero could do wrong; so he decided--with a bold disregard of what was implied in his own statement that the terms were arranged by “cil qui aveient la baillie”--that this “mistake” must somehow have been made without the Marshal’s concurrence.

NOTE II

THE BLOCKED GATE AT LINCOLN

The story of Bishop Peter’s discovery of the blocked gate runs thus:

“Par un postiz a pie eissi En la vile, car il voleit Veeir coument ele seeit. E comme il esgardout issi, Une vielle porte choisi Qui ert de grant antequite E qui les murs de la cite Joigneit ovec cels del chastel. Quant il la vit, molt li fu bel, Mes el fu ancienement Close de piere e de ciment, Si que nuls entrer n’i puust Por nul besoing qu’il en eust. Quant li evesques ont veue Cele porte e aparceue, Por le chastel plus enforcier La fist abatre e trebuchier, E que l’ost veist e seust Que seure entree i eust.”

(_Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 16500–16518.)

The only two points where the walls of Lincoln city were ever “joined,” in any way whatever, “with those of the castle,” are the two which I have mentioned in p. 35, viz., the north-western and the south-western angles of the castle enclosure. At the former of these two points stood, we know, the West Gate of the medieval city; and this Professor Oman (_Art of War in the Middle Ages_, p. 410) considers to have been the blocked gate of the poet’s story. I have said in my text that the blocked gate “seems” to have been the West Gate, because it is quite possible that there may have been a gate opening from the city at the other junction-point of the two walls, immediately to the south of the castle ditch. Unfortunately there is no evidence whether a gate at this point ever existed or not. Two considerations arising out of the poet’s story may seem at first glance to raise a slight presumption in favour of the hypothesis that a gate did exist there, and was the one which he had in mind. I think however that in both cases the presumption is more apparent than real.

1. The poet represents Peter as setting out on his reconnaissance in the city from the keep of the castle. He must, as M. Meyer says (_Hist. G. le Mar._, vol. iii. p. clix), have issued from the small door opening at the south-western angle of the keep. He would therefore, on reaching the further side of the ditch, find himself close to the southern junction-point of the castle wall and the city wall. If there was a gate at this point, and if it was the blocked one, his discovery of it and his return to the castle might have been effected in a few minutes, without difficulty or danger. If, on the other hand, the blocked gate was the West Gate proper, he could not have seen it from the city without going all round the southern, eastern, and northern sides of the castle, by a route answering roughly to the present Drury Lane, Bailgate, and Westgate, right through the heart of the city, and he must have returned by the same lengthy and frequented way to the door in the keep whence he had set out; an adventure which it seems hardly possible he could have achieved in safety, except under one condition. That condition, however, we may surely take for granted; it seems matter of course that before he ventured outside the castle walls he would disguise himself so as to look like an ordinary citizen going about his ordinary business in the city. In that case the longer expedition might be quite practicable, and really attended with very little risk. Moreover, if the blocked gate was the West Gate, Peter must have known of its existence before he entered the castle at all, for in going from the host to the sally-port he would pass before the outer side of the West Gate; and this would go far to account for his eagerness to explore the city--in other words, to ascertain what was on the inner side of a blocked-up gate whose outer side had already attracted his notice.

2. If there was a gate at the southern junction of the walls, it would very probably be “of great antiquity”--as old as the second Roman occupation of Lindum; for the wall itself thereabouts was certainly Roman, as some fragments still remaining testify to this day. The West Gate, on the other hand, in 1217 could not well be more than a hundred and fifty years old. But the poet’s description of the blocked gate as “une vielle porte qui ert de grant antequite” is a detail which--like his use of the word _ancienement_ in l. 16509--need not be taken literally. Such phrases, when used by even a prose writer in an uncritical age, may mean almost anything; moreover, epithets and descriptive phrases of all kinds when used by a medieval writer of verse may occasionally mean nothing. The poet had probably never seen the gate which he was describing; those who told him about it were soldiers, not archæologists; neither he nor they could have a very definite idea as to when it had been built, or how long it had been obstructed. Possibly, however, his use of the expressions above quoted may be accounted for in another way. Lincoln “above hill” unquestionably possessed one gate which even in 1217 could hardly fail to strike the most ignorant observer as being already “of great antiquity.” Some of the poet’s informants may have mentioned this to him, without specifying that it was the North Gate or giving it a name. Others may have told him that the North Gate was called New Port. If he was not further told that the “New Port” and the ancient gate were identical, the fact of their identity could not possibly enter his head; and as the North Gate and the blocked gate were evidently the only two gates (of the city) which played any part in the day’s fighting until it reached the Bar-Gate far away to the south beyond the river, he would naturally conclude that since the first was the “new” gate, the second must be the ancient one.

The real difficulty of the passage is in ll. 16515–16: “_Por le chastel plus enforcier_ La fist abatre e trebuchier.” How could the clearing out and opening of a city gate--whether it were the West Gate or a hypothetical gate further south--tend to reinforce, or strengthen, the castle? Professor Tout, who rejects the whole story of Peter’s reconnaissance, suggests (though without citing these lines) that if any blocked-up gate was re-opened, it may have been the great west gate (or sally-port) of the castle. He thinks that this gate may have been “walled-up” as a measure of precaution, the postern serving in its stead for ordinary communications, and that the difficulty of passing a large number of men through an entrance so small and inaccessible as the postern may have led to the reopening of the great gate, “so that the relieving force could send a strong detachment into the enclosure” (_Eng. Hist. Rev._, vol. xviii, p. 250, note). But this--whether it was the fact or not--was certainly not the idea of the poet; for (1) the castle sally-port does not “join the walls of the city with those of the castle”; and (2) it is not (as the poet clearly represents _his_ blocked gate to have been) visible from inside the city.

NOTE III

FALKES DE BRÉAUTÉ AT LINCOLN

The story of Falkes’s entrance into the castle and his sally thence into the town rests on the authority of Roger of Wendover (vol. iv. p. 22). In the _Hist. G. le Mar._ the only mention of Falkes in the whole account of the day is in the following lines: “E quant les gens Fauques oïrent Itels moz.” [_i.e._, Bishop Peter’s report to the host about the gate] “molt s’en esjoïrent; Trestot avant dedenz entrerent, Mes leidement les reuserent Cil dedenz, qu’il n’i furent gueres; Tost lor changierent lor afeires” (ll. 16535–40). Professor Tout (p. 251) says the poet’s “story supposes that Falkes did not enter the castle, but penetrated directly into the town. This is clear from the fact that when beaten they” (?) “were driven out into the open country. There the bishop encountered somewhat later the fugitive soldiers and roughly maltreated them for their cowardice.” For this statement he cites as his authority ll. 16573–6: “E quant les servanz encontrerent Qui leidement parti s’en erent Molt les leidirent cil qui vindrent Quand dedenz la presse les tindrent.” This passage is separated from the one which I have quoted above by thirty-three lines; and these thirty-three lines are entirely occupied with the discourse between the bishop and the Marshal, and the mission of the scouts, summarized in my p. 39. There is nothing to connect ll. 16573–6 with either Falkes or Peter. _Cil qui vindrent_ cannot refer to the bishop _individually_. There is nothing to identify the “servanz qui leidement parti s’en erent” with Falkes’s men; nothing to suggest that Peter was one of “those who came” (whence and whither we know not) and “met them” [_i.e._, the “servanz”] and “greatly abused them when they had them fast in the crowd”; and nothing to indicate that this meeting, described by the poet as having taken place _dans la presse_, occurred as Mr. Tout says it did, in “the open country”; nothing to connect these four lines with anybody or anything previously mentioned in the poem.

In connexion with this point it will be well to consider an apparent difficulty in ll. 16541–5: “Li avesques al Mar. dist: ‘Par mon chief! cist ont mal fait, Car c’est la verite provee Qu’il n’ont pas unquore trovee La dreite entree’” etc. (see above, p. 39). In the poem as we now have it this passage immediately follows the one about Falkes; _cist_ in l. 16542, therefore, would seem to refer to Falkes and his men. As, however, any thing that happened to Falkes and his men must have happened inside either the castle or the city, it could not become known to those who were still outside the western wall so speedily as this interpretation would imply; and I venture to think we may find a probable explanation of the difficulty, without supposing the poet to have been either so confused about the topography, or so careless, as to overlook this obvious fact. The obscurity and seeming incompleteness of the passage relating to Falkes, and the abruptness of the transition in ll. 16540–41, strongly suggest a _lacuna_ in the MS. at this point. If there be one, it is probable that the missing lines contained some further account of Falkes’s mishap; it is possible that they may have also contained an account of some other transaction, the actors in which were the subjects of Peter’s comment recorded in ll. 16541–5; and it is further possible that that transaction may have been the attack on the North Gate recorded by Roger of Wendover.

NOTE IV

THE END OF THE BATTLE OF LINCOLN

Of the closing scene of the battle of Lincoln there are two accounts; one by the Biographer of the Marshal, the other by Roger of Wendover.

(1) The Biographer, after describing the fight on the bridge, the accident which there befell William Bloet, and the capture of the two De Quincys and others, continues thus:--

“E li sorplus torna en fine Tote la rue contreval Qui s’en veit dreit a l’hospital. Molt lor sembla la veie forte Dusqu’ a la dererene porte; La lor avint une aventure Qui mult lor fu pesante e dure, C’une vache entra en la porte, En cele qui le fleel porte, E la porte se clost aval Issi que nuls homme a cheval N’i passast en nule maniere. Lors ne porent avant n’ariere; Mes cil qui angoissos en erent De issir s’en la vache acorerent.”

_Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 16940–54.

(2) Roger makes no mention of the rally of the French in the lower town, the second fight on the hill-top (“entre le chastiel e le moustier,” see above, pp. 42, 43), the second retreat or flight of the French down hill, and the last fight on and near the bridge; he ends the battle with the death of Perche, and then goes on thus: “Videntes igitur Galligenae phalanges quod major eorum cecidisset, inierunt fugam tam pedites quam equites sibi nimis damnosam; nam flagellum portae australis, per quam fugerunt, quod ex transverso illius portae fuerat fabricatum, fugientes non mediocriter impedivit; etenim quotiescunque aliquis adveniens exire voluit, oportebat eum ab equo descendere et portam aperire, quo exeunte porta denuo claudebatur flagello ut prius posito ex transverso; sicque porta illa fugientibus nimis molesta fuit” (vol. iv., p. 23).

At first glance these two accounts might seem to relate to two distinct occurrences at two different gates. “La dererene porte,” which the cow blocked against the fugitives when they had been driven beyond the bridge “tote la rue contreval qui s’en veit dreit a l’hospital,” is clearly the Great (or West) Bar-Gate. This was quite literally the “outermost” or “hindermost” gate of Lincoln to the southward; and outside it, on the south side of the Sincil Dyke, stood two hospitals, one belonging to the Order of Sempringham and named after the Holy Sepulchre, the other a lazar-house dedicated to the Holy Innocents (Sympson, _Lincoln_, pp. 386, 338, 344, 351). On the other hand, Roger’s _porta australis_ with the inconvenient sliding bar might, if we looked at his story alone, be taken to represent the south gate of the city proper, _i.e._, the Stone Bow. But a comparison of his story with that of the poet shews this to be impossible. Had it been the case, the greatest capture of prisoners must have taken place _inside_ the gate; whereas the Biographer clearly indicates that most of the rebel barons (the De Quincys, Fitz Walter, “e moult d’autres dont point ne m’ennuie”) were captured in the fight on and near the bridge, _i.e._, _outside_ the Stone Bow (ll. 16828–16939); and even after all this, there were still so many left that when the “hindermost gate” was at last reached, “_La_ fu plus fort li encombriers, _La_ ont molt pris de chevaliers” (ll. 16955–6). Moreover, ll. 16947–51 (“En la porte ... nule maniere”), especially ll. 16947–8, where this same “hindermost gate” is specially distinguished as _cele qui le fleel porte_, tally so closely with Roger’s words about the _flagellum_ and its effects that we cannot separate the two incidents. The difference between the two accounts is simply that the poet gives us the whole topography and tells the whole story, cow and all, while Roger leaves out the cow-incident, just as he has left out several things of far greater importance (the second rally and repulse of the French among them) in his story of the battle as a whole.

NOTE V

THE TREATY OF KINGSTON

There can be no reasonable doubt that the series of dates so carefully given in our fullest and most strictly contemporary account of the transactions connected with the treaty between Henry and Louis--the account in the _Histoire des Ducs de Normandie_--is correct. One of the best contemporary English authorities, the Chronicle of Merton, is in accord with it as to the dates on which the treaty was made and Louis was absolved: “Hoc anno” (1217) “facta est pax ... in quadam insula extra Kingestune, feria tercia ante Exaltationem S. Crucis” (_i.e._, Tuesday, 12th September), “et in vigilia Exaltationis” (Wednesday, 13th September) “absolutus est dominus Lodowicus in eadem insula” (_Chron. Merton_, _apud_ Petit-Dutaillis, pp. 514–515). Nearly all the other English chroniclers give a wrong date to the peace; some make it 11th September, others 13th September. The Patent Roll of 1216–17 settles the point against them all; “Si Reginaldus de Cornhill terminos redempcionis suae, statutos ante _diem Martis proximam ante Exaltacionem Sanctae Crucis_ anno regni nostro primo, _qua pax reformata fuit_ inter nos et Lodovicum domini regis Franciae primogenitum, servaverit,” etc. (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 95, 25th September, 1217).

The Barnwell annalist (W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 239) gives no date for the peace, but says Louis was absolved “die Mercurii proxima post Exaltationem S. Crucis,” _i.e._, 20th September. Curiously enough, the copy of the treaty printed by D’Achéry (_Spicilegium_, ed. 1723, vol. iii. pp. 586–7) appears to have borne the date “Lamech, anno ab Incarnatione Domini MCCXVII, XX die Septembris.” Rymer, whose text (_Foedera_, I. i. p. 148) corresponds almost _verbatim_ with D’Achéry’s in all other respects, has the word _undecimo_ instead of the numerals XX. The title of “treaty of Lambeth,” by which--in defiance of all our authorities--the agreement is commonly known, is derived solely from the dating clause as printed by Rymer and D’Achéry. No original copy of the treaty appears to be now known. In the eighteenth century three versions of it were printed, one by Rymer, one by D’Achéry, a third by Martène and Durand (_Thesaurus Anecdotorum_, vol. i. pp. 857–859, ed. 1717). As to the source of Rymer’s copy we know absolutely nothing. D’Achéry’s text was taken from the cartulary of the monastery of S. Giles at Pontaudemer, that of Martène and Durand--which has no date at all--“ex MS. illustrissimi Marchionis Daubais.” Both of these must obviously have been mere copies; and they differ so widely from each other that they cannot have been derived, even remotely, from one and the same original. The Daubais text not only omits several clauses entirely, as well as all mention of place, date, witnesses, and seals, and gives other clauses in a shortened form, but it inserts one interesting clause of which there is no trace anywhere else--that about the Exchequer documents (above, footnote 315). The Pontaudemer text, on the other hand, is, except as regards the date, practically identical with that which, for want of knowing its source, we can only call Rymer’s. This last contains some verbal corruptions which may be due to Rymer himself; while in D’Achéry’s printed text there is at least one obvious error--the Legate’s name is given as “Gualterius.” The terms of the treaty in the Rymer-Pontaudemer version are substantially the same as those indicated by the chroniclers. The list of attestations comprises only the names of the signataries on the English side; they are the Legate, the King, the Regent, the Justiciar, the Earls of Chester, Salisbury, Warren, and Arundel, William d’Aubigny, William Brewer, William Marshal the younger, Falkes de Bréauté, Ralf de Mortimer, “L. de Erdivert,” Robert de Vipont, Geoffrey de Neville, Brian de Lisle, Philip d’Aubigné, and Richard the late King’s son; all of whom are stated to have set their seals to the treaty. This is a somewhat puzzling statement in view of the fact that the King had as yet no seal of his own. It may be that the Marshal’s seal on this occasion did duty twice, once for its owner and once for his royal ward; though we should have expected, if this were so, to find an explicit mention of the circumstance.

To me there seem to be only two alternative theories by which the printed texts of the treaty can be reconciled with each other and with the evidence of the chronicles: (1) that the document of which Rymer and D’Achéry each had a copy before him was a transcript (more or less exact) of the body of the original treaty of Kingston, to which the list of signataries and the date had been added (the latter incorrectly) from some unknown source; or (2) that the opening words--“Haec est forma pacis facta,” etc. (Rymer) or “Haec est forma finis et concordiae facta,” etc. (D’Achéry)--were in each case the unauthorized addition of a scribe, and that the original document was not an actually executed treaty, but the draft which Hugh de Malaunay carried to Louis on 11th September (above, p. 56), and that this draft was sealed by the Legate, King, and councillors, as a pledge of its authenticity and of their intention to abide by its contents. I incline to the latter alternative, for the following reasons:--

(1) The so-called “form of peace” speaks throughout of what Louis and Henry _shall_ promise and swear, never once of what they _have_ promised and sworn. It seems therefore to date from a time previous to the solemn oaths which Roger of Wendover says they took at Kingston. The actual treaty would not be sealed till the oaths were sworn.

(2) The difficulty about the dates, both of time and place, practically disappears if we adopt the second theory. The date in Rymer can hardly be explained away as a transcriber’s error, because the word _undecimo_ is given in full; it must be either correct, or a downright blunder. Now, we know from _Hist. Ducs_ (p. 203) that 11th September was the day on which Malaunay carried back to Louis the “form of peace drawn up in writing” (R. Wend., vol. iv. p. 30; cf. above, pp. 56, 57) for his acceptance. The Pontaudemer text may have been transcribed from a copy in which the word had been translated into numerals, and if so, “XI” might easily become “XX” in transcription. As for the place, we know that King and regent were at Chertsey every day from 6th September to 12th September, both days inclusive, and we possess no other notice of their having gone to Lambeth on the 11th; but there is no reason why they should not have done so; a prolongation of the truce till the 14th had been guaranteed on the 10th, and it would be quite safe and practicable for the Marshal and the Legate to bring their royal charge as near to London as Lambeth for a few hours, if they found it convenient to do so as a means of saving time in communicating with Louis.

Mr. G. J. Turner (“Minority of Henry III,” part I, _Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc._, series II, vol. xviii. p. 288, note 3) says, “The treaty was in two parts, of which the text in the _Thesaurus_ is the part executed by Louis.” I do not understand on what grounds this inference is based, as the Daubais (or _Thesaurus_) text has no attestations, and the formulae employed in it are precisely the same as those in the Rymer-Pontaudemer text, which purports to be attested by the English party. Indeed, I cannot bring myself to believe that the Daubais text can possibly represent the form in which the treaty was “executed” at all. Save for the one clause which is peculiar to it, it is a mere summary, and a very imperfect one, of some--by no means all--of the conditions which the Rymer-Pontaudemer text sets forth in detail. My inference from a comparison of the two texts is that the Daubais text is a mere scribe’s epitome of a third text, now lost, which probably was the true text of the treaty actually executed at Kingston on 12th September, and consisted of the substance of the preliminary draft (the Rymer-Pontaudemer text) _plus_ the article about the Exchequer records.

NOTE VI

THE TENURE OF CROWN OFFICES DURING THE MINORITY

Mr. Turner (“Minority of Henry III,” part I, pp. 270–276) has gone into this question with great care and in considerable detail. He sums up his conclusions about it in four passages. (1) “It is highly probable that the three great officials, the two justices” (_i.e._, the chief Justiciars of England and Ireland) “and the Chancellor, claimed the right to continue in office till the King’s minority had determined.... Direct evidence of the claim is not forthcoming, but there are facts which point to it having been put forward” (p. 271). (2) “The sheriffs and castellans claimed to hold their bailiwicks throughout the King’s minority” (p. 272). (3) “A dispute between Engelard de Cigogné and William de Warenne as to which of them was entitled to the shrievalty of Surrey shows that it was decided early in the reign that the sheriffs who had been appointed by King John claimed the right to continue in office until his successor attained his majority” (p. 274). (4) “It had been decided that John’s sheriffs held office as of right during the minority” (p. 275).

Thus Mr. Turner--if I understand him rightly--regards the existence of this claim in the case of the great officers of state as merely a probable inference; but in the case of the sheriffs and castellans he regards not only the existence, but also the acknowledgment of the claim, as a fact, proved, so far as the sheriffs are concerned, by the case of the shrievalty of Surrey. That case is, briefly, as follows: Early in 1218 there were two rival claimants to the sheriffdom of Surrey; Engelard de Cigogné, who had been appointed to it by John in April, 1216, and William, Earl of Warren. The grounds of William’s claim are unknown. The most obvious conjecture is that he had received a grant, or a promise, of the sheriffdom in the summer of 1217 as the price of his return to allegiance; but this is only a conjecture; his claim may have been based on some old prescriptive right--his proper territorial designation was Earl of Surrey--or on some grant or promise made to him by John; John may have granted or promised the sheriffdom to William, before William’s defection from allegiance, on some special terms such as might justify William in arguing that on his “reversion” the promise was binding on John’s successor. The case was under consideration for nine months, from 1st February till November, 1218; and at the latter date it was still undecided, but Engelard was promised that if the decision went against him, he should be compensated by a grant of land and an annuity from the Treasury. The decision is unrecorded; the end, however, was that William got the sheriffdom and Engelard the promised compensation (Turner, pt. I, pp. 274–5). Whether this was the result of a formal judgement given by the Council in favour of Earl William’s claim, or of a compromise agreed upon between the two claimants and sanctioned by the Council, there is nothing to shew. On this case Mr. Turner comments: “The mere fact that the dispute between Engelard de Cigogné and William de Warenne arose, and was considered judicially by the Council, shews that it had been decided that John’s sheriffs held office as of right during the minority. Otherwise the dispute would have been settled by the immediate appointment of one of the claimants or of a third person without any consideration by the Council” (pp. 275–276).

To me the evidence furnished by this case does not seem as conclusive as it apparently does to Mr. Turner. The fact that the Council did not settle the matter in the summary and arbitrary fashion in which, no doubt, a King of full age would have settled it, does not to my mind necessarily imply an acknowledgement of lack of competence so to settle it. Bearing in mind that we know neither the origin and grounds of the dispute nor the mode in which its final settlement was arrived at;--bearing in mind also that the rival claimants were both of them men whose continued attachment to the King it was important not to endanger--I venture to think that the Council’s dealing with the case may have been dictated chiefly, if not entirely, by motives of policy. Mr. Turner himself says, in the very next sentence after the one which I have quoted above, “There can be little doubt that Gualo and the Earl Marshal acted prudently in allowing the sheriffs to continue in office” (p. 276). Precisely; and they would have acted very imprudently had they, without absolute necessity, given offence either to a servant of the Crown so faithful and so efficient as Engelard de Cigogné (who however, as we have just seen, did _not_ “continue in office”), or to a magnate so powerful and so lately “reverted” as Earl William of Warren. To me it seems hardly safe to argue decisively from a case so isolated and so obscure.

As for the castellans, the custody of some of the King’s castles habitually (though not necessarily) went with that of the shires in which they stood, but others were quite independent of the sheriffs. Mr. Turner in his second article (_Trans. Roy. Hist. Soc._, 3rd ser., vol. I, p. 247) says with reference to a document of 1220 (or 1221) relating to Bristol castle: “Here we may see another recognition of the claim that the castellans who had been appointed by John had the right to remain in office during the King’s minority.” The only “other” instance given by him of anything that can be construed into recognition of such a claim on the part of a constable holding a royal castle independently (as distinguished from a sheriff holding, in conjunction with his sheriffdom, certain castles within his shire) is the case of Sauvey, which Geoffrey de Serland was on 17th December, 1216, ordered to deliver to William of Aumale, but with a proviso that if he were unwilling to do so, he should come in person, or send a trusty representative, to hear the royal commands concerning the matter (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 13; Turner, pt. II, p. 236). This seems to indicate that, as Mr. Turner says (_l.c._), “The Marshal evidently thought it prudent to give him [Geoffrey] a voice in the appointment of his successor”; but it proves nothing as to any claim of right on Geoffrey’s part having been recognized by the Marshal and his colleagues, or even put forth by Geoffrey himself. The Bristol document has in reality no bearing at all upon the point under consideration. It is a letter patent whereby, in December, 1220, or January, 1221 (see above, p. 175), the Justiciar and six other members of the royal Council became sureties for the King to Hugh de Vivonne, who was going to Poitou as seneschal of that country, that if Hugh should be recalled or should resign his office and return to England, “idem dominus noster rex restituet ei castrum Bristolliae sicut illud prius tenuit, vel assignabit ei aliam wardam in custodia alicujus castri vel terrarum ad valentiam _custodiae praedicti castri Bristolliae et terrarum quam habuit de ballio domini regis Johannis et postmodum de ballio dicti domini nostri regis Henrici_; quam custodiam castri Bristolliae et terrarum eidem domino nostro regi Henrico liberavit quando iter arripuit versus Pictaviam” (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 306, 307). The sentence which I have italicized, construed literally, should of course mean that Hugh had originally received the custody of Bristol castle, and of certain lands, by a grant from John, and that this grant had been renewed by Henry. But whatever may have been the case with regard to the other lands here referred to, this was not the fact with regard to Bristol. Until 19th September, 1219, Hugh de Vivonne was merely lieutenant constable of Bristol castle for Savaric de Mauléon; on that day he, acting in pursuance of Savaric’s instructions and for Savaric (who had made up his mind not to return to England), surrendered it into the King’s hand, and thereupon immediately received it back again to hold “quamdiu nobis placuerit” as constable in his own person (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 203).

I will not dispute that a claim to continuity of tenure was made, explicitly or implicitly, by some of the castellans, and that _in practice_ they mostly succeeded in enforcing it; but that it ever received formal “recognition” seems to me disproved by (_a_) the oath of the barons at Henry’s second coronation, and (_b_) the Pope’s letters on the subject of the royal castles.

(_a_) “From the annals of Dunstable we learn that on the morrow of the coronation (in 1220) the barons who were there present swore that they would resign their castles and wardships” (_castra et wardias suas_) “at the King’s will, and would faithfully render accounts of their farms at the Exchequer” (Turner, pt. II, p. 239; see the original, from _Ann. Dunst._ a. 1220, above, footnote 680). This oath--taken at a time (18th May, 1220) when it had not yet been settled whether Henry was to attain his majority at fourteen or at twenty-one, and when his actual age was twelve years and seven months--is clearly to be understood as a promise to yield up the castles of which they had custody, and render account for them, whenever they should in the King’s name be called upon to do so, from that day forth, not merely after the King’s coming of age. Mr. Turner understands it thus, for he comments upon the passage, “In all probability the chief object of these proceedings was to obtain the castles of Rockingham and Sauvey from the Count of Aumale” (pt. II, p. 240). (_b_) On 26th May, 1220, the Pope issued orders that all prelates holding royal castles should surrender them; and on 28th May, that no man should be suffered to retain the custody of more than two royal castles at once (_Roy. Lett._, vol. I, pp. 535, 121; cf. above, pp. 146, 147, and Turner, pt. II, p. 242). To me it appears that these letters are incompatible with any “recognition” by the Pope--who, be it remembered, was acknowledged by all parties as the legal overlord of England and the chief guardian of the King--of the doctrine of the castellans’ right to continuity of tenure during the King’s minority; and that the oath taken after the coronation is equally incompatible with any such recognition on the part of the regents in England, or even with any general recognition of that doctrine among the castellans themselves.

With regard to the great officers of state, Mr. Turner’s inference is based (pt. I, p. 271) on (1) the case of Geoffrey de Marsh, Justiciar in Ireland; (2) that of Richard de Marsh, Chancellor of England; (3) the parallel, or analogy, between the position of the great officers of the Crown and that of the lesser ones--“the sheriffs and castellans claimed to hold their bailiwicks throughout the King’s minority, and the greater officers of state must have considered that they were entitled to the same privilege” (pt. I, 272). Of (1) I have given the whole story in my text, pp. 94, 95, 123–125, 174, 175, 217, 259. Of (2) Mr. Turner says: “Richard de Mareis, the Chancellor, seems to have grievously neglected his office, and to have left his duties to be performed by Ralph de Neville, the vice-chancellor. It is scarcely likely that he would have been permitted to enjoy the emoluments of his office while repudiating its burden, if he could have been removed” (pt. I, p. 272). The Chancellor’s office, unlike that of the Justiciar or the sheriffs, was necessarily vacated by the death of the King, inasmuch as he held it (as Mr. Turner points out, pt. I, p. 271) not by letters patent but by virtue of the delivery of the King’s seal into his hands, and every King had a new seal. The Chancellor appointed by John therefore, could not “claim the right to _continue_ in office until the king’s minority had determined”; such continuity was impossible in an office conferred by the delivery of a symbol which changed with a change of sovereigns. He _may_, as a great minister of the Crown, have claimed a right to be re-appointed for the term of the King’s minority. A formal re-appointment would not be possible in his case till the new great seal was made, and this was not till October, 1218; but there may have been an informal agreement by which he was left in possession of the functions and rights appertaining to the chancellorship throughout the two years during which the Marshal’s seal was used instead of the King’s, on the understanding that when this latter arrangement terminated he was to receive the new seal in the usual way. Such an agreement need not, however, imply any right of continuity in office. Richard de Marsh was not the only Chancellor who habitually left his duties to a deputy and yet was suffered to retain his title and his profits. As to (3), it would certainly appear that since justiciars, sheriffs, and castellans were all appointed in the same manner and on the same terms--by letters patent, to hold office during the King’s pleasure--the greater officers must have been irremoveable during the minority, _if the lesser ones were acknowledged to be so_. For the reasons already given, this latter point seems to me not proven.

With regard to the castles a further question remains. Falkes de Bréauté in the “Complaint” which he addressed to the Pope in 1225, and which is preserved in the Barnwell Annals, speaking of the arrest of Peter de Maulay in 1221, says: “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, contra pristinum juramentum quod patri fecerat de non restituendis eisdem castris donec iste rex legitimae foret aetatis” (W. Cov., vol. II, p. 260). On this Mr. Turner (pt. I, p. 284) observes: “The castles, he says, were entrusted to Pierre as well by Guala as by King John. It would seem from this that although the castellans were not re-appointed on the King’s death by letters patent under the seal of the Earl Marshal, their castles were formally delivered to them by Guala. The statement is confirmed by a letter dated May 10th, 1220, from Pandulph, who succeeded Guala as legate, to Ralph de Neville the vice-chancellor, in which he asks him to send the form under which Guala delivered castles to their wardens (Shirley, _Royal Letters_, i. 117).” Pandulf’s words are these: “Item, formam sub qua dominus Gualo castra ad custodiendum tradebat nobis mittas, si ipsam habes, vel ab his qui sciunt diligenter inquiras, et quod inveneres nobis rescribas.”

I venture to think that Mr. Turner’s suggested interpretation of these two passages is a little overstrained. The words of Falkes need not imply any formal act of delivery posterior to the one whereby Peter had originally received the castles to hold for John. Falkes’s “Complaint” is not a legal document, and we are neither obliged nor entitled to construe its phraseology as if it were such. If certain castles which John had committed to a certain man were left in that man’s custody by Henry’s guardians, they were practically committed or entrusted to him by the guardians as well as by John; and a reason why Falkes should bring Gualo’s name into the matter, rather than the name of the Marshal, is not far to seek. Falkes’s “Complaint” is a piece of special pleading addressed to a special person--the Pope--for the purpose of inducing him (as supreme guardian of his feudatary King Henry) to intervene in English affairs in behalf of the complainant Falkes himself; the case of Peter de Maulay being mentioned as an illustration of the ill-treatment which (according to Falkes) the leaders of the party now in power in England were meting out to faithful old servants of King John. In these circumstances it is perfectly natural that whatever sanction, whether explicit or tacit, was, at a time when these leaders were in a subordinate position, given by the highest authorities in the realm to Peter’s retention of the castles in his keeping, should be described as having been given by the Legate. Nor need the words of Pandulf bear any more definite meaning. The letter in which they occur was misdated by Dr. Shirley; its true date is 10th May, 1219 (see Prof. Powicke in _Eng. Hist. Rev._, vol. xxiii. p. 229), when Pandulf had been Legate about five months, and regent less than as many weeks. That he, at this time, supposed the castles to have been delivered to their wardens by Gualo is no proof that such was the fact. Moreover, the wording of his inquiry suggests that he had no very distinct idea of the thing about which he was inquiring; indeed, it almost suggests some uncertainty on his part whether what he asked for existed at all. I venture to think that--Ralf de Neville’s answer being unfortunately lost--in this uncertainty the question still remains. It would be a very remarkable circumstance if Gualo, who so scrupulously refrained from all shew of intervention in the administration of civil affairs, went out of his way to take upon himself a function utterly alien from his natural sphere of action, and one which there could be no conceivable reason for associating with his office rather than with that of the lay regent. It would be equally remarkable that the castellans, if they considered themselves entitled to retain their wardenships without re-appointment by letters patent from the Governor of King and Kingdom, in the new sovereign’s name, should have quietly submitted to re-appointment in a wholly unprecedented manner at the hands of a foreign ecclesiastic. And it is scarcely less remarkable that a proceeding so unusual, if it really took place, should have left no trace in the official records of the Kingdom and been passed over in silence by all the chroniclers of the time.

NOTE VII

THE PAPAL LETTERS OF 1223

The four papal letters summarized in p. 202 are to be found in the Red Book of the Exchequer, fol. 171. The letter which there stands first of the four--that to the Earls and barons of England--is printed in _Foedera_, I. i. p. 190 (with a marginal date, 1228, which does not agree with the date at the end of the letter itself). The salutation of all four is given in the Red Book as “Gregorius Papa,” etc., and the date as “idus Aprilis anno primo,” _i.e._, 13th April, 1227. The fact that some instructions about Henry’s coming of age, and about the castles, were issued by Honorius III in 1223 appears from at least three independent sources: the Dunstable Annals, Roger of Wendover, and the _Querimonia Falcasii_. For the precise wording of any portion of these instructions, and the date on which they (or a portion of them) were issued, the sole authority which has hitherto been recognized is a dateless letter preserved among the “bundles” in the Public Record Office, and printed by Shirley in _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 430, 431. Its salutation runs “Sanctissimo patri ... G. Dei gratia summo pontifici, P. Wintoniensis et H. Elyensis divina miseratione episcopi”; _i.e._ it is a letter to Pope Gregory IX from Bishops Hugh of Ely who was consecrated in June, 1229, and Peter of Winchester who died in June, 1238. (Why Shirley dated this letter “June, 1232--April, 1234,” I cannot guess.) These two prelates write: “Noverit sancta paternitas vestra nos mandatum piae recordationis Honorii praedecessoris vestri propriis manibus tractasse et oculis propriis inspexisse in haec verba: ‘Honorius episcopus, servus servorum Dei, dilecto filio ...’ (Shirley left a blank for the name or initial; presumably it was undecipherable) ‘Cycestrensi electo, carissimi in Christo filii nostri regis Anglorum vice-cancellario, salutem et apostolicam benedictionem.’” They then proceed to quote the whole letter; and it is absolutely identical with the fourth of the letters concerning Henry’s majority, ascribed in the Red Book to Gregory, except that its date is “idus Aprilis, pontificatus nostri anno septimo,” _i.e._, 13th April, 1223. Long ago Dr. Stubbs remarked that “Curiously enough, the bull of Gregory IX to the same effect” [as the letters in which Honorius on 13th April, 1223, had “declared Henry, although not yet of age, competent to govern”] “is dated 13th April, 1227” (_Const. Hist._, vol. ii. p. 34, note 2, 1875). A careful consideration of the subject has led me to the conviction that this “curious” correspondence of month and day is due to the fact that the words _idus Aprilis_ are the only correct part of the date as given by the scribe of the Red Book, and that the four letters have been attributed by him to a wrong Pope, being in reality all alike letters of Honorius III, issued on 13th April, 1223.

These four letters obviously form a group whose members are so inseparably inter-related that they must stand or fall together. The chief member of this group is not the one which the Exchequer scribe has placed at its head (the one printed in _Foedera_), but that which he has placed second, and which is addressed to Peter des Roches, Hubert de Burgh, and William Brewer conjointly. It is these three men whom the Pope charges to give the young King free disposition of his realm; the addressees of the other three letters are merely bidden to perform the special duties which will fall to them severally as a consequence of this primary command, which the Pope in each case expressly tells them he is giving to Peter, Hubert, and William. We have seen that the fourth letter is textually identical with one which, according to Bishops Peter and Hugh, was written on 13th April, 1223, by Honorius to the vice-chancellor. This identity extends to the salutation (except of course as to the writer’s name); in the Red Book version, as in that of the two bishops, the letter is addressed “Cycestrensi electo, vice-cancellario.” Now, the only man who was at the same time “elect of Chichester and vice-chancellor” was Ralf de Neville (who was elected to Chichester early in 1223); and before the first year of Pope Gregory began, Ralf had ceased to be either the one or the other--he had become Bishop of Chichester and Chancellor. Thus the compiler of the portion of the Red Book in which these letters occur has luckily betrayed his own error. Probably he had, in the first draft of his notes, copied these letters from their originals in the Exchequer without putting the Pope’s name or initial at their head, and when he came to re-copy his notes into the Red Book he--writing at a time when Henry’s first coming of age was no longer a matter of practical importance and may well have been almost forgotten, knowing that Henry had been set free from the trammels of minority while still under age, and in the first year of Gregory IX, and failing to notice the chronological indication conveyed in the address _Cycestrensi electo vice-cancellario_--ascribed the letters to Gregory, and (as he doubtless imagined) corrected the year accordingly. The words which I have italicized are indeed not the only ones which shew that he was mistaken in so doing. The whole contents of all four letters fit in perfectly with the circumstances of 1223; but a considerable portion of those contents is quite inappropriate to the circumstances of 1227. At this latter date the controversy about the castles was a thing of the past.

In further confirmation of this view of the matter, we find Hubert, in his answers to a long indictment brought against him by the King in 1239, quoting, from four letters addressed (1) “Comitibus et baronibus,” (2) and (3) “Comiti Cestriae” and “sub eisdem verbis Wintoniensi Episcopo,” (4) “Cancellario,” passages which all occur in the letters correspondingly addressed in the Red Book, and he describes all these quotations as taken from privileges of Pope Honorius. These answers were put into writing by Master Laurence of S. Alban’s; Laurence’s notes were preserved in a commonplace book of his abbey, and they figure among the miscellaneous collections of Matthew Paris as _Responsiones Magistri Laurentii de S. Albano pro comite Kantiae Huberto de Burgo_ (_Chron. Maj._, vol. vi. pp. 63–74). The answers in general have an appearance of honesty; but they were drawn up many years after the occurrence of some of the events to which they relate; and from this or some other cause the version given in them of the whole story of Henry’s coming of age is extremely confused, and certainly inaccurate in some particulars, the events of 1227 and those of 1223 being inextricably mixed up together. Hubert’s description of the Pope’s letter about the great seal as addressed “_Cancellario_,” however, presents no difficulty. The word may stand simply for “him who is Chancellor now,” or the prefix _vice_ may have been omitted by the scribe.

Of the letter in which Honorius bade the prelates enforce by ecclesiastical censure a general surrender of all the royal castles (above, p. 206), no actual copy is known; but there is no reason to question the accuracy of Roger of Wendover’s report of its contents. That report is, I think, confirmed by the brief but significant statements of Falkes de Bréauté. In 1225 Falkes (probably with the help of Robert Passelewe, a well known man of law) drew up a “Complaint” addressed to the Pope and Cardinals about the recent proceedings in England against himself. This complaint is inserted in the Barnwell Annals under the heading _Querimonia Falcasii coram Domino Papa_ (W. Cov., vol. ii. pp. 259–272). It sets the whole political history of England during the years 1221–1224 in a light startlingly different from that in which the same history is treated by the chroniclers; and although its author certainly had good opportunity of knowing the truth about the matters of which he wrote, there are obvious reasons which make him a dangerous authority to rely upon implicitly. The fact, however, that the “Complaint” was addressed to Honorius furnishes some guarantee of the correctness of its statements so far as they relate to the action of Honorius himself. These statements are as follows:--

“Cum _a sede apostolica jussio processisset ut castra, ballia, et caetera quae sunt regis a cunctis tenentibus redderentur, adjuncta clausula_ quod rex ipse jam adultus factus compelli non posset habere tutorem vel curatorem, nisi ad causam, invitus; dictus justiciarius et complices sui ... procuraverunt ut duo barones” etc. (here follows the story of Lacy and Musard and of Chester’s rising, see above, pp. 203, 204). “Interim tamen ... cum rex apud Northamptonam sollemnitatem Natalis sicut mos est celebrasset, effectum est ... ut tam comes Cestriae quam alii supranominati ad regis curiam vocarentur. Quibus ... in ipsius et archiepiscopi et quorundam episcoporum qui simul aderant presentia constitutis, _exhibitae fuerunt quaedam literae apostolicae in quibus continebatur ut esset domino regi restitutio rerum suarum facienda_” (pp. 261–262). In the first of the two passages which I have italicized the compulsory surrender of all royal castles etc. seems to be represented as the chief point dealt with in the papal mandate referred to, the King’s majority being apparently treated merely as an adjunct; while in the second passage the former point is still further emphasized by the latter not being mentioned at all. I think we may gather from these two passages that the papal mandates which Falkes had in his mind were not those preserved in the Royal Letters and the Red Book, but those whose substance is preserved by Roger of Wendover. The Dunstable annalist says that Henry’s _quasi_-majority was decided upon and proclaimed “by order of the Pope and assent of the barons,” _i.e._, the Pope’s letter to Peter, Hubert, and William Brewer was published in a council at London, on the King’s return from Wales (see above, footnote 921). The Rolls shew that Henry reached London on 22nd October and remained there till 8th November (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 566 b, 567, 575 b, 576). As, however, it was not till 9th December that Henry began to attest his own letters, it seems that either the annalist’s date must not be taken literally, or the proclamation remained inoperative for more than a month. I think it can be shewn that the latter was the case. The Rolls indicate that the affair of Walter de Lacy and Ralf Musard had taken place before 15th November (above, footnote 924). Falkes says that after that affair Henry and Hubert went to Gloucester; the Rolls shew that they were at Gloucester 16–22nd November (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. pp. 575 b–576 b). Chester’s attempt on the Tower must have been made during their absence from London. We know from the Rolls that they were there again from 28th November till 12th, perhaps till 19th December (_ib._ pp. 576 b–579); the rebels’ appearance before them and the scene between Peter and Hubert must thus have taken place there between 28th November and 5th December, since, as we learn from Falkes (p. 261), the “truce” arranged immediately after it by Langton began on 6th December. It was only in this December council that “the papal letters which declared him (Henry) of age were acted upon” (Powicke, _Eng. Hist. Rev._, vol. xxiii. p. 221), _i.e._, that the King began to attest his own letters, and, probably, the great seal began to follow the King instead of being kept at the Exchequer (_ib._, p. 224). Falkes, however, seems to imply that the papal command “ut castra, ballia, et caetera quae sunt regis a cunctis tenentibus redderentur” was known in England before the affair of Lacy and Musard took place. On the other hand he tells us that certain Apostolic letters “in quibus continebatur quod esset domino regi restitutio rerum suarum facienda” were “exhibited”--seemingly for the first time--at Christmas. To me all this seems to indicate that the letter to Peter, Hubert, and William and the letter to the prelates, had both reached the English court before the end of October; that the first was published then as the annalist says, but was not carried into immediate effect; that the second was published, as Roger implies, early in December, but that a number of barons--Falkes among them--not being present at its publication, had no _official_ knowledge of it till it was “exhibited” to them at Christmas.

While the barons in general seem to have regarded Hubert as the instigator of the papal order for a compulsory surrender of castles, etc., Falkes, hostile though he is to the Justiciar, neither asserts nor hints at any thing of the kind. He says indeed nothing whatever as to any suspicions which he or others may have had concerning the origin of that order. Yet I cannot but think that he had a suspicion, and possibly not altogether an unlikely one. Both on personal and political grounds Falkes is bitter enough against Hubert; to him, Hubert is a personal enemy and also an enemy of the peace and prosperity of King and kingdom; but he is neither the sole nor the chief enemy. Throughout his “Complaint,” even in reference to matters in which Hubert appears as the principal or the sole actor, Falkes speaks of “the Justiciar and his accomplices”; and the foremost of these “accomplices,” according to Falkes’s version of history, is the Archbishop of Canterbury. It is Stephen, not Hubert, who is the arch-enemy in the eyes of Falkes--the relentless persecutor of Falkes himself, the persistent sower of discord and plotter of mischief in the realm; one passage relating to him in the _Querimonia_ reads almost like a paraphrase of the accusation said by the Dunstable annalist to have been flung, in a moment of fury, by Hubert at Peter des Roches (above, p. 207). The animus displayed by Falkes against Stephen is in fact so violent that we instinctively feel his narrative is not to be trusted _in details_ where the Archbishop is concerned. Yet there is no intrinsic impossibility in its account of the formal surrender of the castles, in which Stephen is distinctly made to play the most prominent part (above, p. 210). We have seen the difficulties involved in supposing that the Pope’s action was prompted by any person or party among the other councillors of the Crown. Can it have been prompted--on the broad ground of the interest of public order and stable government, irrespective of persons and parties--by the Archbishop of Canterbury?

NOTE VIII

THE ROYAL CASTLES IN 1223–1224

The entries in the Patent Roll concerning the changes which took place in the custody of royal castles from November, 1223, to March, 1224, have been collected by Dr. Shirley in Appendix ii. to his edition of _Royal Letters_, vol. i. pp. 508–516. They are there given in the form and the order in which they appear on the Roll, and accompanied by some other entries which have no direct bearing on the general surrender and redistribution of castles after Christmas, 1223. The entries whose date is earlier than 29th December, 1223, have of course also no bearing upon that subject. A summary analysis, in chronological order, of those which do relate to it may therefore be useful to elucidate and check the statements in my text, pp. 210–212. My references are to the printed Patent Rolls of Henry III, vol. i.

From 30th December, 1223, to 13th March, 1224, (after which no further important changes seem to have taken place for some time) orders were issued for the transfer of the custody of thirty-three castles, viz: Shrewsbury, Bridgenorth, Lancaster, Kenilworth, Windsor, Odiham, Knaresborough, the Peak, Bolsover, Salisbury, Devizes, Corfe, Bristol, Sherborne, Lincoln, S. Briavel’s, Oxford, Northampton, Hertford, Rochester, Norwich, Orford, Dover, Canterbury, Hereford, Winchester, Porchester, Southampton, Carisbrook, Christchurch, Plympton, Marlborough, Luggershall. On 30th December Earl Ranulf of Chester was bidden to deliver the castles of Shrewsbury and Bridgenorth, and the shires of Salop and Stafford, to Hugh le Despenser. In the custody of Lancaster castle, county, and honour Ranulf was to be superseded by Earl Ferrers. Kenilworth castle and the shires of Leicester and Warwick were transferred from William de Cantelupe to John Russell; Windsor and Odiham from Engelard de Cigogné to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Brian de Lisle was ordered to deliver Knaresborough to the Archbishop of York, the Peak and Bolsover to Robert of Lexington, who was however to receive the latter fortress not for himself, but to hand it over to William Brewer (_Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 418). Earl William Longsword was to deliver the castle of Salisbury, William Brewer that of Devizes and Ralf Gernon that of Corfe, to the Bishop of Salisbury. Bristol castle was to pass from the Bishop of Norwich (Pandulf), Sherborne castle and the sheriffdom of Somerset from John Russell, to the Bishop of Bath; Lincoln castle from Stephen de Sedgrave to the bishop of the diocese (_ib._ p. 419. It is not quite clear whether at this time Stephen de Sedgrave was castellan of Lincoln in his own person, or as assistant to Nicolaa de Haye). Falkes de Bréauté was to deliver the castle and shire of Oxford to Richard de Rivers; those of Northampton to Ralf de Trubleville; and the castle of Hertford to William of Eynesford (_ib._ p. 418). The Justiciar was to deliver the castles of Rochester, Norwich, Orford, and Hereford, to their respective diocesan bishops, Dover and Canterbury to the Primate (_ib._ pp. 418–419). The supersession of John of Monmouth as custodian of S. Briavel’s and of the Forest of Dene is expressly stated to be due to his voluntary resignation on the score of ill-health; on 4th January, 1224, the castle and Forest were committed momentarily to the Bishop of Hereford, to be by him delivered to Walter Asmoins, whom the King appointed warden of them under Ralf FitzNicholas (_ib._ pp. 419–420).

On 7th January, 1224, the Bishop of Winchester was ordered to deliver the castles of Winchester, Porchester, and Southampton, with the sheriffdom of Hampshire, to the Bishop of Salisbury. Within five days, however, Jocelyn was superseded in all these bailiwicks by the Earl of Salisbury. On 12th January Hertford castle was transferred from its newly appointed constable, William of Eynesford, to Stephen de Sedgrave (_ib._ p. 420), who again was on 23rd January superseded there by Richard de Argentine (_ib._ p. 425). An order was issued on 12th January for the transfer of Windsor and Odiham to Hubert de Burgh, but seems to have been cancelled, for on 4th February these two castles were still in the hands to which they had been committed on 30th December--those of the Primate, who was now bidden to deliver them to Osbert Giffard (_ib._ pp. 420, 421). On 2nd February Falkes was ordered to deliver Carisbrook and Christchurch to Waleran the German (“le Theys”) to whom the King had given them in custody together with the lands of the late Earl Willam of Devon and the castle of Plympton (_ib._ p. 427). On 7th February the Bishop of Norwich was ordered to deliver Marlborough castle to Robert Wolf (“Lupus”; _ib._ p. 426). On 2nd March another new constable was appointed to Marlborough, Robert de Meisy, who was at the same time made constable of Luggershall; whether John Little, who was ordered to deliver these two fortresses to Meisy (_ib._ p. 428), was sub-warden of them for the recently appointed Wolf or for Pandulf, does not appear. On 11th March Robert de Lexington was bidden to deliver Bolsover to William Brewer (_ib._ p. 429), for whom he had received it in January. On 13th March Pandulf was desired to deliver Bristol “without delay” to Reginald de Hurle and John Little (_ib._). Lastly, on the same day, Plympton, of which Waleran “le Theys” had been appointed custodian six weeks before, was committed to Walter de Falkenberg (_ib._ p. 430). This appointment, like that of Waleran, proved ineffectual, owing to the resistance of Falkes. Falkes had on 18th January been ordered to deliver the shires of Bedford and Buckingham to William de Pateshull, and those of Cambridge and Huntingdon to Richard de Argentine (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 581 b; cf. _Pat. Rolls_, vol. i. p. 421); the two latter shires were immediately transferred again, to Geoffrey de Heathfield (_Pat. Rolls_, _l.c._).

NOTE IX

FALKES AND THE “THIRTY PAIRS OF LETTERS.”

The number of illegal disseisins of which Falkes was convicted at Dunstable in June, 1224 (above, p. 231), is officially stated as sixteen: “Cum ... Falcatius ... coram judicibus eisdem in sexdecim causis fuisset convictus ... et ad restitutionem ablatorum et satisfactionem plenam debito modo condemnatus,” are the words of King Henry himself in a letter to the Pope (_Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 225). Roger of Wendover (vol. iv. p. 94) says “Cecidit in misericordia regis de plusquam triginta paribus litterarum, de quibus singulis in centum libris debuerat condemnari.” Matthew Paris (_Chron. Maj._, vol. iii. p. 84, _Hist. Angl._, vol. ii. p. 263) copies this; and in an original paragraph of his own, inserted at the end of Roger’s account of the Bedford affair, he says that Falkes “xxxii liberos homines in manerio de Luituna sine judicio de suis tenementis disseisiavit” (_Chron. Maj._, vol. iii. p. 88). The Dunstable annalist (p. 90) says “Falchasius de triginta quinque saisinis convictus est.” Of course the evidence of the King’s letter is decisive. Roger’s odd phrase, “de plusquam triginta _paribus litterarum_,” reveals how the number came to be doubled. At some date obviously earlier (probably not less, possibly much more, than six months earlier, since the complaint of the earls is addressed to the Justiciar, not the King) than this Dunstable affair, the Earls of Salisbury and Pembroke, writing to Hubert about Falkes’s outrageous conduct towards John Marshal, reported “quod dominus Johannes Marescallus nobis per literas suas mandavit quod, cum misisset literas domini regis domino Falcasio de Brealte pro bosco suo ... idem Falkasius ad literas domini regis respondit quod si ei misisset triginta paria literarum domini regis, pacem utique non haberet de praedicto bosco,” etc. (_Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 221, 222). This story of Falkes’s declaration, uttered in a moment of anger, that “_if_ thirty pairs of royal letters should be sent to him” in behalf of one particular person, he would pay no heed to them, seemingly became confused, before it reached S. Alban’s and Dunstable, with a wholly different matter, and the “thirty pairs of letters” were supposed to have been actually sent, as the consequence of his conviction before Henry de Braybroke of the same number of disseisins; Roger or his informant inserted a “plusquam” on the strength of which Matthew raised the number to thirty-two; while the Dunstable annalist further improved it to thirty-five.

NOTE X

BEDFORD CASTLE

The nature of Falkes’s tenure of Bedford castle is a question of some difficulty. The only entry relating to it in the Rolls is provokingly laconic: “Mandatum est Waltero de Bellocampo quod habere faciat Falkesio de Breaute manerium de Seldelegia quod est de honore de Bedefordia, quia dominus rex castrum de Bedefordia cum toto honore et pertinentiis dedit Falkesio,” _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 250 b, 4th March, 1216. In July, 1224, King Henry, writing to the Pope about Falkes, calls Bedford “quoddam castrum nostrum quod habebat in custodia” (_Roy. Lett._, vol. i. pp. 225, 226). So too the Waverley annalist (a. 1224):--“castellum de Bedford quod ab eodem rege [Johanne] in custodiam acceperat.” One of the complaints brought against Hubert in 1239 in connexion with the Bedford affair was that on the capture of the castle he “illud prosterni fecit et reddi Willelmo de Bellocampo, super quem dominus J. rex castrum illud ceperat per guerram, et unde J. rex seisitus fuit quando obiit.” To this Hubert answered that “per consilium magnatum Angliae fuit castrum obsessum, captum, et dirutum ... et quia idem Willelmus semper erat petens versus dictum Falconem dictum castrum ut jus suum, nec habere potuit donec fuit captum per dominum regem; idem dominus rex de consilio magnatum suorum, propter formam pacis factae et prae timore sententiae latae” (_i.e._ the promise of general amnesty and restitution included in the treaty of Kingston, and the excommunication pronounced against infractors) “dictam sedem castri ei reddidit, tenendum eodem modo quo antecessores sui tenuerunt, prout patet in rotulis domini regis.” (_Respons._ pp. 67–69; cf. _Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 632). The Barnwell annalist (W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 253) says the castle “de jure spectabat ad Willelmum de Bello Campo”; and Ralf of Coggeshall (pp. 205, 206), says “Rex Johannes ... contulit etiam ei [_i.e._ Falconi] terram Willelmi de Bellocampo, qui enim cum aliis baronibus contra regem conspiraverat. Dedit insuper ei castellum de Bedeford pro servitio suo, et charta sua confirmavit.... Cumque caeteri barones custodias suas regi, ut dictum est, tradidissent” (after Christmas, 1223), “Falco etiam custodias suas regi similiter tradidit; sed castellum de Bedeford nullo modo regi aut Willelmo de Bellocampo tradere voluit, asserens illud suum esse proprium, et a rege Johanne sibi fuisse donatum, et charta sua fore confirmatum pro tam laborioso et diutino servitio suo.” Falkes in his Complaint to the Pope twice speaks of Bedford castle as his own property: “privilegio vestrae sedis per quae ... _tam castrum quam caetera bona nostra_” (_mea_ in another MS.) “sub protectione benignitatis vestrae fuerant constituta,” p. 264; “amissio _castri mei_,” p. 272; and the Pope, writing to the King on 17th August, 1224, says “castrum de Betford quod ipse pater tuus eidem [Falchesio] ... sicut dicitur, liberalitate regia, immo merita retributione donavit,” _Roy. Lett._, vol. i. p. 544.

To understand these various statements we have first to determine what was the relation between the honour of Bedford and the castle of Bedford. The former had been given by William Rufus to Payne de Beauchamp, and on land which formed part of it Payne built the castle. Payne’s heirs were deprived of their patrimony by Stephen. After the conclusion of the civil war they recovered their lands (Dugdale, _Baronage_, vol. i. p. 223), but not the castle, for in the Pipe Roll of 34 Hen. II (1187–1188) the accounts of the sheriff of Bedfordshire include an item of four pounds and six shillings spent “in the works of the castle of Bedford and of the postern towards the water” (Goddard, _Siege of Bedford_, p. 17, from _Bedfordshire Archæological Transactions_, vol. xii. p. 249), a fact which shews that the castle was then the property of the King. In 1189–1190 Simon de Beauchamp paid into the Treasury one hundred pounds, “to be governor of the castle of Bedford” (Dugdale, _l.c._, from Pipe Roll 2 Ric. I). These words clearly indicate that Simon was to hold the castle not in fee, but as its constable for the Crown. The bargain between him and King Richard may have included some understanding that the constableship was to be hereditary (somewhat as another branch of the Beauchamp family were hereditary constables of Worcester castle and sheriffs of Worcestershire), for Simon was succeeded in it by his son William; it was by entertaining the rebel barons in Bedford castle that William incurred forfeiture in 1215 (R. Wend., vol. iii. p. 299). It is clear that the seisin of Bedford castle was then, and had been for many years past, in the Crown; John would therefore be perfectly within his rights if in 1216 he chose to alienate the castle altogether by granting it to Falkes in fee. But the treaty of Kingston enacted that all men should be reinstated in their rights (as well as their lands) as they had held them when the war between John and the barons began. This definition would apparently entitle William de Beauchamp to claim restitution of the constableship of Bedford castle, if that office had been recognized by Richard and John as hereditary. Beauchamp “came in” to King Henry in August, 1217, and orders were at once given for the restoration of some of his lands (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 319 b); of the rest, including those in Bedfordshire, he was granted restitution early in October (_ib._ pp. 325 b, 326). Falkes, however, was slow to loose his hold upon the honour of Bedford, and further royal letters bidding him give Beauchamp full seisin of it were issued in February, 1222 (_ib._ p. 488 b). Neither in these letters nor in those of 1217 is there any mention of the castle.

Ralf of Coggeshall’s story is not self-consistent. He begins by stating, as a positive fact, that John had given Bedford castle to Falkes by charter. Afterwards, however, this fact dwindles down to an assertion reported to have been made by Falkes in answer to a demand in 1223–1224 for restitution of the castle either to the King or to Beauchamp. No charter such as is here mentioned appears in the Charter Rolls of John’s reign. This of course does not prove that no such charter ever existed; nor does the fact that the Patent and Close Rolls of Henry’s reign contain no hint of Falkes’s having ever, before the capture of Henry de Braybroke, been summoned to deliver up the castle, prove that no such summons was ever issued. The words of Falkes himself and those of the Pope--these latter being of course based on information derived from Falkes or his friends--imply that he claimed to hold the castle in fee. But even if this claim was really based on a charter, it could scarcely have availed to bar the claim of the King; for by the treaty of Kingston the Crown as well as its subjects, was to regain whatever it had been seised of before the war, and it had certainly been seised of Bedford castle from the time of Henry II till the autumn of 1215; it seems therefore that Henry might have considered himself entitled to treat a charter granted by his father after that date as null and void, and thus to call Bedford _castrum nostrum_. With regard to its custody as a royal castle, the law of the matter may very likely have been quite uncertain. It may have been at least arguable that the definition laid down in the treaty did not necessarily cover the custody of a royal castle even if held by hereditary right; and it must be remembered that we do not know what was the precise nature of the tenure by which Beauchamp had held that office. The Barnwell writer, however, certainly appears to have gone too far in stating that the castle itself “de jure spectabat ad Willelmum de Bello Campo.” It had belonged to William’s ancestors; but William’s father had practically renounced all claim to its ownership by fining with King Richard for the office of its constable. William’s right in it was at the utmost only an hereditary title to that office. Whether John did grant the castle to Falkes in fee, or whether he died seised of it himself (as Hubert said)--having given merely the custody of it, as well as the enjoyment of the honour of Bedford, to Falkes _quamdiu regi placuerit_--we cannot determine. From Henry’s accession till autumn, 1223, any question which might exist on the subject between Falkes and the Crown was of little practical consequence. It was recognized on all hands that throughout that period whatever castles Falkes held, whether as constable or as lord, he held loyally for the King and used for the King’s interest with a rare capability and diligence. Henry’s counsellors might well prefer to leave this particular detail of the great castle-problem undiscussed _usque ad aetatem regis_. Still more natural was it that Beauchamp’s claim should get no hearing till Falkes had incurred forfeiture in his turn. Then King and Council decided that it would be prudent to satisfy Beauchamp without giving him a chance of treading in Falkes’s steps or repeating his own act of 1215; and they did so by pulling the half ruined castle down altogether and granting him the site, with leave to build himself _not_ a castle, but a dwelling-house, out of its stones (_Close Rolls_, vol. i. p. 632, 632 b).

NOTE XI

THE HANGING OF THE BEDFORD GARRISON

Eight writers tell this grim story very briefly--seven of them in almost identical words--differing only as to the number of the victims. A ninth--Falkes--has a longer and more elaborate version.

(1) “In crastino autem, cum omnes vulnerati et plagis lethiferis afflicti exiissent et ad presentiam regis adducti fuissent, addicti sunt ad suspendium universi; suspensi sunt itaque, inter milites et servientes, qui propter superbiam suam quam regi ostenderant in obsidione jam finita non potuerunt misericordiam impetrare.” Here, in the only two known MSS. of his history (Douce ccvii. and Cott. Otho B. v.), Roger of Wendover’s sentence ends. Obviously it is incomplete, and was meant to have been completed by the addition of a number; but the omission appears to have been an oversight in the original text, for in neither of the extant copies is there any blank between “impetrare” and the first word of the next sentence, “Henricus.” The addition “[viginti quatuor]” in the printed editions (Coxe, vol. iv. p. 98; Howlett, vol. ii. p. 281) is derived from Matthew Paris.

(2) Matthew Paris in his _Chronica Majora_ (vol. iii. p. 87) copies Roger exactly; but opposite “impetrare” he has written in one margin of his MS. “viginti quatuor,” and in the other margin “dub. de numero” (_ib._, note 1). In the _Historia Anglorum_ (vol. ii. pp. 264, 265) he says: “Suspensi sunt itaque inter milites et servientes circiter xxiiiiᵒʳ.” In both works he adds: “Tamen, multiplicatis intercessoribus et intervenientibus quibusdam rationibus excusatoriis, pepercit rex tribus, qui tamen propter regis jusjurandum salvandum laqueati a terra suspensi sunt, sed non usque ad mortem.”

(3) “Capto igitur castro, in Assumptione Beatae Virginis Mariae fere omnes in eo repertos, tam milites quam servientes, vita privavit sententia ignominiosa. Nam jussu regio circiter lxxxᵃ in patibulis sunt suspensi.” W. Cov., vol. ii. p. 254.

(4) “Mane vero sequenti, ante tribunal regis exhibiti, et per episcopos ab excommunicatione absoluti, ad mandatum regis et justitiarii sui suspensi sunt in patibulis octoginta et plures. Tres vero ad preces principum rex indulsit Templariis, ut in habito suo in Terra Sancta Domino militarent.” _Ann. Dunst._, p. 88.

(5) “Repertos in eodem castro, non considerata cujusquam generositate, usque ad octoginta duos et amplius digno condempnavit suspendio [rex].” _Contin. Gerv. Cant._, vol. ii. p. 114.

(6) “In patibulis suspenduntur tam milites quam servientes, die Assumptionis Beatae Mariae Virginis, numero octoginta tres.” R. Coggeshall, p. 207.

(7) “Omnes fere qui sponte ingressi in castello inventi sunt suspensi sunt in patibulis, in die videlicet Assumptionis Beatae Mariae, homines circiter octoginta.” _Ann. Wav._, a. 1224.

(8) “Suspensi sunt xiv milites.” T. Wykes, a. 1220.

(9) “Milites in manu domini regis et misericordia archiepiscopi et episcoporum se devotissime offerentes, sub tutela ecclesiae sicut crucesignati, et quia sub appellationis ad vos” (the Pope) “factae credebant defendi subsidio, in exercitum de castro prodierunt. Quibus in die Assumptionis dato cum ignominio absolutionis beneficio, idem Archiepiscopus cum episcopis Hugoni Lincolniensi, Jocelino Batoniensi et Radulfo Cicestrensi ad regem ingressus est ... ipsius regis adolescentiam ad indebitam provocans iracundiam, talia verba profudit: ‘Nos quidem ut nos decuit rigorem sumus ecclesiasticam executi; jam restat regem facere quod suum est.’ Cumque ad haec verba regis obstupesceret innocentia, et quaereret quid ad majestatem regiam pertineret, rursus idem archiepiscopus, non pater patriae sed tyrannus, ‘Justitiarium,’ inquit, ‘hujus dicti oportet esse interpretem, quia quid ad vos pertineat edocebit.’ Ne autem pro nihilo dictis comitatus esset episcopis, unus ex eis, videlicet Batoniensis, dixit: ‘Si suspensi fuissent qui capti fuerunt apud Biham, isti qui nunc capti sunt nullatenus castrum adversus nutum regium tenuissent.’ Postea vero apud regem altercatione suborta an exspectandi essent barones regni pro judicio faciendo, singuli qui aderant causa prandii ad propria tentoria secesserunt; ipsaque hora prandii milites, servientes, juvenes, cujuscunque conditionis quantaeque nobilitatis, ad numerum nonaginta vii, tam archiepiscopo quam dictis episcopis inspicientibus, in dedecus militiae et perpetuum regis opprobrium sunt suspensi.... Clamore autem tantae crudelitatis audito, aliqui de mensis propriis occurrentes de furcis et patibulis aliquos liberaverunt, qui tamen sub custodia adhuc detinentur.” _Quer. Falc._, pp. 267, 268.

Now, Falkes certainly did not witness the scenes which he here describes. They may have been reported to him by a member of the Council; but we have no guarantee for the reporter’s truthfulness or accuracy, or even for the report having originated elsewhere than in Falkes’s own brain--a brain which, keen as it was in other respects, really seems to have been, from some cause which we cannot fathom, hardly sane on matters in which Stephen de Langton was concerned. The narrative clearly conveys, and is clearly meant to convey, that it was Stephen who instigated the hanging of the garrison; that he did so in veiled language which the young King’s “innocence” at first failed to understand; that Stephen cast the responsibility of explaining it on the Justiciar (whom, it will be remembered, Falkes has all along represented as being hand and glove with the Archbishop); that before even the justiciar could speak, its meaning was made plain by one of three bishops whom the Primate had brought with him into the King’s presence for that very purpose; that the laymen of the Council, less bloodthirsty than the Primate, hesitated to adopt his suggestion and put off the decision till after dinner; and that while all the barons were occupied with that meal, the deed was done behind their backs (of course under orders issued by the Justiciar in the King’s name), Stephen and his three episcopal friends feasting their eyes on the sight. We should certainly require some other authority than Falkes to make us accept this story as he would have his readers accept it. But the main incidents of the story may be true, and only their meaning perverted by the narrator; the outlines of the picture may be correct, and only the colouring false. The Bedford garrison had submitted to the King; they were therefore entitled to be, after doing penance in the usual form, absolved from the excommunication which had been pronounced against them for resisting him. But they had submitted only on compulsion; therefore they were, by the law of the land, still liable to the extreme penalty due to men who were taken fighting against the person of their sovereign. The duty of the prelates towards these prisoners was to enforce their penance and then give them absolution; this the prelates had done; and therewith their part in the Council’s action was at an end. The temporal fate of the prisoners was a question of life or death, and in such questions, it is well known, ecclesiastics had no voice. In a case such as the present one, it was for the King’s lay counsellors to advise him, and for the King to decide; and if, owing to a divergence of opinions among those counsellors or from any other cause, the young sovereign thus called upon to exercise for the first time such a weighty prerogative felt doubtful of its extent or of the right direction in which to exercise it, the Justiciar was the person to whom he should look for guidance. This, and nothing more, is the plain and natural meaning of the words which Falkes places in the mouth of the Primate. In themselves they afford no ground for the interpretation which he evidently wished his readers to put upon them. Some of the barons were still, it seems, leniently disposed towards Falkes; many of them may have been reluctant to send brave soldiers to the gallows; if so, the execution may have been carried out somewhat as Falkes states. His account of the rescue of “some who are still”--_i.e._, some nine months later--“detained in custody” is easily reconciled with the story told by Matthew Paris and the Dunstable annalist of the three who were given to the Templars. The touch about the four prelates gloating over the ghastly scene may be set down to a fevered imagination.

INDEX

“Aid,” 82; from clergy, 264; for Holy Land, 194

Alexander, King of Scots, 77; his seizure of Carlisle, 87; homage, _ib._; negotiations with Pandulf, 126; treaty with Henry, 140; meeting with Henry, 145; marriage, 171

Angoulême, county of, 132

Aquitaine, its relations with the English Crown, 130–132; complaints of the towns, 138, 142, 143; projects about seneschalship, 143, 144; seneschals of, _see_ Bordeaux, Mauléon, Neville, Pons, Ulecote, Vivonne. _See also_ Gascony, Poitou

Arras, Hugh, constable of, 20, 31, 44

Arundel, Earl of, 49

Athée, family of, 74–75

Aubigné, Philip of, at Henry’s coronation, 5; at council of Bristol, 9; commands English fleet, 21; takes Porchester, 26; his sea-fight with French, 31; at battle of Sandwich, 51, 52, 54; the King’s “master,” 180; envoy to Poitou, 187, 188, 252, 255; to France, 197

Aubigny, William of, 25, 33

Aumale, William, Count of, 9, 33; rebels, 121–123, 154, 155, 163–167; proposed as seneschal of Poitou, 143, 156; at siege of Bedford, 238

Baliol, Hugh de, 17, footnote 490

Barres, William des, 52

Basset, Alan, 6, 9

Basset, Thomas, 33

Bath, Jocelyn, bishop of, 4, 212

Beauchamp, Walter de, 9

Beauchamp, William de, 238, 294–296

Bedford, castle of, 231, 238; its ownership, 293–296; siege of, 232, 239, 242–244; fate of the garrison, 244, 296–299

Berkhamsted, surrendered to Louis, 18

Blanche of Castille, 48, 264, 265

Bloet, William, 43

Bordeaux, 141, 144, 251

Bordeaux, William, archbishop of, 131

Braybroke, Henry de, 29, 44, note 6, 45, 230, 231, 244

Bréauté, Falkes de, _see_ Falkes

Bréauté, family of, 225, footnote 1039

Bréauté, William de, footnote 1039, 230–232

Breuse, Reginald de, 89, 90, 173, 196

Brewer, William, 5, 9, 211, 214

Bristol, council at, 9, 10; castle of, 212, 282, 283

Brittany, Duke of, 264

Burgh, Hubert de, defends Dover, 16; at council of Bristol, 9, 17; offices under John, 116, 117; Justiciar, 70, 117, footnote 614; at battle of Sandwich, 51; dealings with Aquitaine, 139, 144; with London rioters, 185, 186; marries Margaret of Scotland, 174; marches against Llywelyn, 191, 192; raises siege of Builth, 196; fortifies Montgomery, _ib._; his supremacy, 198, 199; charges against him, 115, 201, 206, 207, 235, 267; league against, 204; quarrel with Bishop Peter, 207; reconciled with the barons, 217; castles held by him, 154, 211–213; his charges against Falkes, 235, 236; dealings with Poitou and with Falkes, 237; relations with Salisbury, 254, 255; his “Responsiones,” 288

Burgh, Raymond de, 254

Burgh, Richard de, 124, 218, 259

Bytham, castle of, 163–167

Caerleon-upon-Usk, 92, 190, 260

Caermarthen, castle of, 89, 91, 192, 193, 197, 260

Cambridge, 19

Cantelupe, William, 9, 204, 211, 238

Canterbury, Stephen de Langton, archbishop of, returns to England, 103; buries the Marshal, 107; re-crowns the King, 130; translates relics of S. Thomas, 157, 158; goes to Rome, 171; returns, _ib._; reconciles Chester and Salisbury, 181; ambassador to France, 188, 190; excommunicates Llywelyn, 196; compels him to submit, _ib._, 197; holds council at Oseney, 199; negotiates with Chester’s party, 206; arranges “truce” between Chester and Hubert, 207; excommunicates rebel barons, 210; castles in his custody, 212; heads demand for confirmation of Charter, 214, 215; reconciles Hubert and Chester, 216, 217; excommunicates Falkes, 233; absolves him, 246; asked to divorce him, _ib._; bids clergy give aid to the King, 263

Cardigan, castle of, 91, 192, 193, 197, 260

Carlisle, 87

Carucage, 82, 85, 144, 158, 159, 249

Casinghem, William de, 18, 22, 28

Castles, troubles about, 99; royal rights over, 147; during Henry’s minority, 283–285; oath of barons about, 146, 283; Pope’s letters about, 146, 147, 153, 205, 206; general surrender of, 210; changes in custody of, 211–213, 291, 292

Chanceaux, Andrew de, 17

Chancellor, _see_ Marsh

Charter of Henry III, first, 10–15; second, 78–81; third, 250; demand for confirmation of, 214, 215; of the Forest, 81, 250

Charters, Henry’s proclamation about, 265–267

Chester, Ranulf, Earl of, 3; relations with the Marshal, 6; at battle of Lincoln, 33, 34, 43; goes on crusade, 98; quarrel with Salisbury, 181; mediates between King and Llywelyn, 192; heads opposition to Hubert, 204; attempt on the Tower, 205; his sheriffdoms, 212; reconciled to Hubert, 217; at siege of Bedford, 238; letter to King about Falkes, 241; agreement with Llywelyn, 258

Cigogné, Engelard de, 17, 74, 169, 170, 176, 204, 211, 281

Cinque Ports, their relations with Louis and John, 18

Clare, Isabel de, 65

Clergy, Gualo’s dealings with, 77, 78; grant an aid to the King, 264

Clifford, Roger de, 9

Clifford, Walter de, 9

Colchester surrendered to Louis, 19

Coleville, William de, 163

Corfe, castle of, 18, 76, 169

Coucy, Enguerrand de, 24, 28

Council, the King’s, 178

Courtenay, Robert de, 9, 182

Courtenay, Robert de, 55

Coventry, Alexander, bishop of, 243, 245

Croc, Reginald, 42, 45

David, son of Llywelyn, 129

Deheubarth, 88

Devon, William de Rivers, Earl of, 223

Dinas Powys, castle of, 183

Dover, castle of, 16; Louis at, 28, 31; sea-fight off, 31

Dreux, Robert, count of, 55, 60

Dublin, Henry, archbishop of, 94, 123, 124, 175

Earley, John of, 8

Eleanor, sister of Henry III, 168, 219

Eleanor of Brittany, 169, 179

Ely regained for the King, 26

Ely, Hugh, bishop of, 268, 286

Ely, John, bishop of, 197

Eu, Ralf de Lusignan, count of, 133, 134

Eustace “the Monk,” 23, 50, 53

Exchequer, its condition under John, 81, 82; records restored by Louis, 82; Pandulf’s relations with, 113–115

“Fair” of Lincoln, 41

Falkenberg, Walter de, 224

Falkes de Bréauté, his origin, 225; early career, 226, 227; seneschal to the King, 227; marriage, 223, 228; at council of Bristol, 9; his sheriffdoms, 17, 74; castles in his custody,17; plunders S. Alban’s, 21, 229; takes Ely, 26; takes Lynn, 48; at battle of Lincoln, 38, 39, 275, 276; quarrels with Salisbury, 149, 183; at siege of Rockingham, 155; takes the cross, 180; helps to quell riot in London, 186; joins Chester, &c., against Hubert, 204; relations with the magnates, 228; position during Henry’s minority, 229; proceedings against, 230, 231, 292, 293; movements after capture of Braybroke, 231, 232; excommunicated, 233; charges against, 234–237; goes into Cheshire, 239; writes to the King, _ib._, 240; chase after him, 240; visits Llywelyn, 241; goes to Coventry, 243; to Northampton, 244; submits, 245; absolved, 246; exiled, 247; his “Complaint,” 248, 288; death, 249

Farnham, castle of, 26, 29

Ferrers, Earl of, 5, 9, 33, 98

Fifteenth of moveables, tax of, 250, 261, 262

FitzHerbert, Matthew, 9

FitzWalter, Robert, footnote 86, 29, 36, 43, 98

Forest Charter, 81, 250

Fors, William de, _see_ Aumale

Fotheringay, castle of, 152, 162–166

France, Kings of, _see_ Louis, Philip

Galloway, Alan of, footnote 655

Gascony, 137, 251, 252, 254, 255; seneschals of, _see_ Neville, Pons; _see_ also Aquitaine

Gauler, William, 137

Gernon, Ralf de, 211

Gloucester, 2, 3, 91; castle of, 205, 211

Gloucester, Isabel, countess of, 89, 227

Gloucester, Gilbert, Earl of, 183, 204

Goodrich castle, 6

Gouy, Robert de, 99–102

Gray, Richard de, 222, 234

Gray, Walter de, _see_ York

Gregory IX, Pope, 268

Gruffudd, son of Llywelyn, 193, 195

Gualo, Legate in England, 2, 4; persuades Marshal to undertake regency, 7; summons a council, 9; lays interdict on Wales, 10; on lands of rebels, 15; proclaims the war a crusade, 25; absolves Louis, 60; punishes contumacious clergy, 77, 78; resigns the legation, 103; leaves England, _ib._

Gwenwynwyn, prince of South Powys, 89

Gwynedd, 87

Haringot, Nicolas, 31

Haye, Nicolaa de, 20, 37, 147–149

Hedingham castle, 19

Henry, son of King John, 2, 3; meeting with the Marshal, 3; knighted, 4; crowned, _ib._, 5; placed in care of Peter des Roches, 7; territory held by his party, 17, 18; treaty with Louis, 57–59; enters London, 78; given in charge to Pandulf, 105, 106; projects of marriage, 127, 253, 264; lays first stone of new church at Westminster, 129; second coronation, _ib._, 130; relations with Hugh of La Marche, 139–141, 220; treaty with Scotland, 140; meeting with Alexander, 145; oath of barons to, about castles, 146; visits castles, 154; at translation of S. Thomas, 158; his debts, 160; period for termination of his minority, 173, 199; released from Peter’s tutorship, 180; demands restitution of Normandy, &c., 188, 189; receives John de Brienne, 194, 195; with the host in Wales, 196; agreement with Llywelyn, 197; first coming of age, 203; attests his own letters, 207; his position after December, 1223, 208; demands restitution of castles, 210; answer to demand for confirmation of Charter, 215; seizes lands of Normans and Bretons, 220; summons ships, 221; sends reinforcements to La Rochelle, 222; summons barons to Northampton, _ib._; besieges Bedford castle, 232, 239, 242, 243; hangs the garrison, 244; negotiations with Germany, 253; with Toulouse, _ib._; with Auvergne, _ib._; sends envoy to Damascus, footnote 1155; contemplates going to Gascony, 256; illness, _ib._; conferences with Llywelyn, 257, 258; relations with Earl Marshal (II), 260, 261; declared of age, 266; tenure of Crown offices during his minority, 281–284; Charters of, _see_ Charter

Hereford, Giles de Breuse, bishop of, 89

Hereford castle, 204

Hertford castle, 18

Hidage, 82, 85

Hobrigg, Gervase of, footnote 240

Honorius III, Pope, orders prelates to give an aid, 82, 262; threatens Hugh of La Marche, 145; letters concerning castles, 146, 147, 153, 205, 206; conflicting requests to, from England, 216; his letters concerning Henry’s coming of age, 202, 286–290; letters to Henry, footnote 1076, footnote 1087; intercedes for Falkes, 249; forbids Henry to attack France, 256; dies, 268

Huntingdon, David, Earl of, 152

Huntingdon, honour of, 87, 152, 163

Indemnity paid to Louis of France 83–85

Ireland, the March in, 93–95, 217–219; Justiciars of, _see_ Dublin, Marsh, Marshal

Isabel, Queen, at Henry’s coronation, 5; negotiates with Count of Nevers, 55; confirms treaty of Kingston, 60; returns to Angoulême, 134; relations with the Lusignans, 132; second marriage, 139; disputes about her dower lands, 140, 141, 177

Isabel, sister of Henry III, 140, 253

Isabel of Scotland, 169

Isles, King of the, _see_ Ragnald

Jews, ordinance concerning, 97; tallage on, 250

Joan, sister of Henry III, 132, 133, 140, 141, 145, 171

Joan, half sister of Henry III, 89

John, King of England, 1, 2

John de Brienne, King of Jerusalem, 97, 194, 195

Justices in eyre, 86, 87

Kingston, treaty of, 57–59, 278–280

Kinnerley, castle of, 191, 197, 257

Lacy, Hugh de, 217, 218, 258

Lacy, John de, 204

Lacy, Walter de, 9, 203, 204, 217–219, 258

Langton, Simon de, 28, footnote 240

Langton, Stephen de, _see_ Canterbury

Larchevêque, William, 138, 142

L’Estrange, John, 9

Liberties, Charters of, _see_ Charter

Liberties of the Crown, inquest into, 201

Lincoln, city, 34, 35; sacked, 45; castle, 20, 31, 35, 148, 149; battle of, 36–44, 273–277

Lincoln, Hugh II bishop of, 99–101

Lisle, Brian de, 33, 98, footnote 490, 204, 211, 238

Llywelyn ap Iorwerth, Prince of North Wales, 89; conquers and divides South Wales, _ib._; attacks Pembroke, 90, 161; made constable of Cardigan and Caermarthen, 91; dispute with Hugh de Mortimer, 128; disputes with the Marshal, 129, 160–162; truce with Marshal, 173; destroys Kinnerley and Whittington, 191; war against, 193, 194; besieges Builth, 195; excommunicated, 196; submits, 197; conference with, postponed, 240; letter to King about Falkes, 241; conferences with Henry, 257, 258; agreement with Marshal and Chester, 258

London, Louis in, 16, 47; blockaded,55; Henry received in, 78; riot in, 184–186; Tower of, 211, 213

Louis of France, besieges Dover castle, 16; truces with Hubert, _ib._; goes to London, _ib._; territory held by his party, 17; alleged capture of Norwich castle, _ib._ note 3; besieges Hertford, 18; truces with Royalists, _ib._, 19; holds council at Cambridge, 19; goes to Lincoln, 20; proposes returning to France, _ib._; dealings with S. Alban’s, 21; blockaded in Winchelsea, 22, 23; regains Rye, 24; goes to France, _ib._; returns to England, 27, 28; renews truce with garrison of Dover, 28; besieges Farnham, 29; sends relief to Mountsorel, 29; occupies Winchester, 30; returns to London, _ib._; renews siege of Dover, 31; raises siege and goes to London, 46; negotiates, 47, 55, 56; his treaty with Henry, 57–59; absolution, 60; leaves England, _ib._; indemnity promised to, 83; his Albigensian wars, 136; appeal against his coronation, 188, 189; crowned, 190; refuses Henry’s demands, 197, 198; offers to renew truce, 221; conquers Poitou, 233, 234; undertakes Albigensian war, 256; prediction about, 257; death, 264

Louis IX, King of France, 264, 265

Lucy, Geoffrey de, 33

Ludlow, conference at, 193

Luggershall, castle of, 168

Lusignan, Hugh de, the elder, Count of La Marche, 132, 133, 139

Lusignan, Hugh the younger of, 132, 133; his relations with Geoffrey de Neville, 133, 135; with Henry and Isabel, 137; marries Isabel, 139; disputes with the English Council, 140, 141; relations with the towns, 141–143; with the English Crown, 144, 145, 175–177, 187–190, 219, 220; homage to Louis, 233; successes in Gascony, 251; truce with Richard, 265

Lusignan, Ralf de, _see_ Eu

Lynn, taken by Falkes, 48

Maingo, William, 142

Malaunay, Hugh de, 56

Marc, Philip, 74, footnote 490, 101, 204

Marche, La, _see_ Lusignan

Margaret of Scotland, 127, 174

Marlborough, castle of, 150, 151, 168

Marsh, Geoffrey, Justiciar in Ireland, 93–95, 123, 124, 174, 175, 217, 259, 261

Marsh, Richard de, Chancellor, 114, 284

Marshal, William, the elder, his origin and early life, 63–65; marriage, 65; Earl of Pembroke, 66; character, 67–70; at burial of John, 2; meeting with Henry, 3; knights him, 4; made guardian of the King, 6–8; at council of Bristol, 9; takes Farnham, 26; besieges Winchester castle, _ib._; sends party to besiege Mountsorel, 27; orders castles to be razed, 29; proposes to relieve Lincoln castle, 32; at battle of Lincoln, 34, 37, 39–42; musters fleet at Sandwich, 49, 51; blockades London, 55; negotiates with Louis, 55–57; his style and position as regent, 70–72; his seal used instead of the King’s, 14, 72, 73; arrangements for indemnity to Louis, 83–85; dealings with Scotland, 87; with Wales, 90–92; with Ireland, 93–95; orders concerning tournaments, 96, 97; ordinance about Jews, 97; grants Plympton to Falkes, 224; last days, 104–106

Marshal, John, 5, 8, 9; at battle of Lincoln, 33, 86, 44; chief justice of the Forest, 96; seneschal of Cork, etc., 218; of Ulster, 258

Marshal, Richard, 168

Marshal, William, the younger, rejoins the King, 25; besieges Winchester, 26; at battle of Lincoln, 33, 42; warden of Marlborough castle, 151; detains Fotheringay, 152, 162; gives it up, 163; disputes with Llywelyn, 160–162; truce with him, 173; urged to surrender Marlborough and Luggershall, 168; betrothed to Eleanor, _ib._; bidden to surrender Caerleon, 190; goes to Ireland, 191; returns, 192; takes Cardigan and Caermarthen, _ib._; defeats Gruffudd, 193; leads the host into Wales, 194, 195; constable of Cardigan and Caermarthen, 197; marries Eleanor, 219; Justiciar in Ireland, _ib._; agreement with Llewelyn, 258; overcomes Hugh de Lacy, _ib._; resigns justiciarship, 259; surrenders Caermarthen, Cardigan, and Caerleon, 260

Maulay, Peter de, constable of Corfe, 18; his alleged oath to John, 73, 74; his sheriffdoms, 74; arrest, 169, 179; release, 170; joins Hubert’s opponents, 204; at siege of Bedford, 238

Mauléon, Savaric de, 5, 9; his sheriffdoms, 74; constable of Bristol, _ib._, 283; returns to Poitou, 76; seneschal of Aquitaine, 175–177, 187; surrenders Niort, 233; defends La Rochelle, 234; joins Louis, 251; reverts to Henry, 265

Mausy, castle of, 220

Melun, viscount of, 48

Merton, treaty confirmed at, 60

Minority, the King’s, its duration, 73, 74; tenure of Crown offices during, 280–285

Monmouth, John of, 9

Morgan of Caerleon, 91, 92

Mortimer, Hugh de, 9, 91, 128, 257

Mortimer, Robert de, 9

Mountsorel, castle, 27, 30, 45

Musard, Ralf, 8, 203, 204, 211

Muscegros, Richard, 169

Nevers, Count of, 28, 30, 55, 60

Neville, Eustace de, 23, 48

Neville, Geoffrey de, seneschal of Gascony, 131; of Aquitaine, _ib._, 133–135, 137, 138; sheriff of Yorkshire, 159; envoy to La Marche, 189; at La Rochelle, 222, 234

Neville, Ralf de, vice-chancellor, 113, 287; correspondence with Pandulf, 113–115; bishop of Chichester and Chancellor, 287

Newark, Royalists muster at, 33; castle of, 99–101

Niort, 133, 138, 141, 144, 219, 220, 233

Normans in England, their position after treaty of Kingston, 77; their lands seized, 220

Northampton, Henry at, 87, 91, 209; council or muster at, 222, 235, 236

Norwich, castle of, footnote 81, 19

Odiham, 26, 212

Olaveson, Constantine, 185, 186

Oléron, Isle of, 145

Oliver, son of King John, 28, 98

Orford surrendered to Louis, 19

Oseney, Church council at, 199

Otto, Master, 263, 264

Oxford, councils at, 19, 49

Pandulf, his relations with King John, 108–111; Legate, 111; regent, 105, 106, 112; dealings with the Exchequer, 113–115; with Irish March, 123–125; with Scotland, 126, 128; with Wales, 128, 174; with France, 136, 137; with Aquitaine, 144; loans to Henry, 160; makes peace between the King and Aumale, 167; makes truce between Marshal and Llewelyn, 173, 174; resigns, 171; mission to Poitou, 175–178; bishop of Norwich, 188, 211

Passelewe, Robert, footnote 964, 248, 288

Payne, Reginald, 52

Pembroke invaded by Llewelyn, 161

Pembroke, Earls of, _see_ Marshal

Perche, Count of, 29, 36, 41, 42

Perpetuity, grants in, forbidden during minority, 73, 102

Philip Augustus, King of France, his opinion of the Marshal, 48, 67; death, 188

Pierepunt, William, 257

Pipe Rolls, 83

Pleshy, castle of, 19

Plympton, castle of, 183, 223, 224, 245

Poissy, Simon of, 44

Poitou, 131, 138, 175–177, 233, 234; _see_ Aquitaine; seneschal of, _see_ Burgh

Pons, Reginald de, 131, 134

Porchester regained for the King, 26

Powys, 88

Puy, Bartholomew de, 134, 135, 137

Quincy, Saer de, _see_ Winchester

Ragnald, King of the Isles, 92

Regency, the first in England, 61–63, 70

Réole, La, 252, 254

Richard, brother of Henry III, 18, 76, 127, 252, 265

Richard, half-brother of Henry III, 24, 50–52

Rivers, Baldwin de, 223

Rivers, Margaret de, 223, 224, 228, 246, 247

Rochelle, La, 138, 141, 144; reinforcements sent to, 222; surrendered to Louis, 234; to Richard, 265

Roches, Peter des, _see_ Winchester

Rockingham, castle of, 121, 154, 155

Romanus, Cardinal, 252, 256, 263

Ropsley, Robert of, 41

Russell, John, 211

Rye, 18, 21, 24

S. Alban’s, plundered, 21, 229

S. Edmund’s, plundered, 48

St. Germain, Robert of, footnote 240

St. Jean d’Angély, 138, 141, 144, 233

St. Samson, Ralf de, 3, 135

Saintes, 145

Salisbury, Ela, Countess of, 149, 254

Salisbury, William Longsword, Earl of, rejoins the King, 25; besieges Winchester, 26; at battle of Lincoln, 34, 41; forbidden to hold tournament, 97; protest about Aumale, 143, 144; relations with Lincoln castle, 148, 149; with Falkes, 149, 183; quarrel with Chester, 181; leads the host into Wales, 194, 195; sent with Richard to Gascony, 252; adventures at sea, 254; complaint against Hubert, 255; death, _ib._

Sandford, Thomas de, 2

Sandwich, fleet mustered at, 49; sea-fight off, 50–53

Sauvey, castle of, 121, 155

Say, Geoffrey de, 18

Scotland, treaties with, 126, 127, 140; King of, _see_ Alexander

Scutage, 81, 85, 250

Seal, the King’s, 73, 102, 284; restrictions on its use, 102, 202; Pandulf’s orders concerning, 113, 114; its custody, 114

Sedgrave, Stephen de, 211

Serland, Geoffrey de, 36, 121, 282

Serland, William de, 218

Sherborne, castle of, 169, 170, 212

Sheriffdoms, changes in, 212

Shrewsbury, conferences at, 128, 257

Sleaford, castle of, 17, 25, 101

Southampton, 18, 26

Stoke Courcy, castle of, 245

Tallage, 82, 85, 86; on Jews, 250

Tancarville, William de, 64

Taxation under the Marshal’s regency, 82, 85, 86; _see_ Aid, Carucage, Fifteenth, Hidage, Scutage, Tallage

Temple, Gerard Brochard, preceptor of the, 144, 145

Thomas, S., of Canterbury, translation of, 157–158

Thouars, Almeric, viscount of, 143, 233, footnote 1219

Thouars, Hugh, viscount of, 265

Tournaments, 96, 97

Treaty of Kingston, 57–59, 278–280

Truce with France, 136, 137; expires, 219; negotiations for its renewal, 221; between Richard and France, 265

Truces with Louis, 18, 19, 269–272

Tyre, archbishop of, 47

Ulecote, Philip de, 144, 145

Valtort, Reginald de, 9

Vipont, Robert de, 33, footnote 490, 204

Vivonne, Hugh de, 175, 176, 282, 283

Waleran the German, 18, 224

Wales laid under interdict, 10; homage of its princes to Henry III, 91, 92; Pandulf’s dealings with, 128, 174; ancient divisions of, 87, 88; South, conquered by Llywelyn, 89; _see_ Llywelyn

Walter of the Hithe, 102

War, private, revival of, in England, 182, 183

Warren, Earl of, 49, 50, 51, 281

Westminster, Henry rebuilds abbey church of, 129; Henry crowned at, 130

Whitchurch, conference at, 258

Whittington, castle of, 191, 197

“Willikin of the Weald,” _see_ Casinghem

Winchelsea, Louis at, 21–24

Windsor, castle of, 17, 170, 212

Winchester, 26, 30, 181; castle, 26, 28, 29, 153, 181, 211

Winchester, Peter des Roches, bishop of, crowns Henry III, 5; the King placed in his charge, 7; at battle of Lincoln, 34, 37–40; claims guardianship of King, 105, 106; early life, 117–119; “master” to Henry III, 120, 121; pilgrimage to S. James, 179; accused of plotting treason, _ib._; takes the Cross, 180; end of his tutorship, _ib._; character, 200; relations with Hubert de Burgh, _ib._, 207; at siege of Bedford, 238; castles held by him, 153, 211

Winchester, Saer de Quincy, Earl of, 28, 29, 36, 43, 98

Woodstock, homage of Welsh princes at, 92

Worcester, homage of Welsh princes at, 91, 92

York, Henry and Alexander at, 140, 145, 171

York, Walter de Gray, archbishop of, 103, 171, 264, footnote 1218

RICHARD CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BRUNSWICK ST., S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

Transcriber’s Note

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

ERRATA

P. 39, note 3 (Footnote 517), line 6, for “_li_” read “_le_”; and line 7, for “walls” read “wall.”

Pp. 99–102 _passim_, for “Gaugy” read “Gouy”; and make a corresponding correction in index.

P. 139, last line, for “Doé” read “Douai.”

P. 148, last line of note 5 (Footnote 686), for “13th” read “12th.”

P. 154, note 1 (Footnote 703), line 2, for “two” read “three.”

P. 160, line 6 of note (Footnote 726), for “later in the summer” read “early next year.”

P. 212, line 1 of second paragraph, for “twenty-eight” read “twenty-five.”

P. 225, line 11, for “_falx_, _faulx_” read “_faus_ or _fauc_”.

P. 291, line 20 of second paragraph, _dele_ “and”; and after “Devizes” insert “and Ralf Gernon that of Corfe.”

These changes have been applied to this text.

Other changes that have been made are:

Page 97 - the punctuation mark after “but they were ineffectual” did not print. A comma has been added.

Footnote 517 (originally page 106 note 2) - “1229” has been changed to “1219” in “The date--14th May, Tuesday before Ascension Day--is given in _Ann. Wav._, a. 1219”.

Page 163 - “Huntingdom” has been changed to “Huntingdon” in “the honour of Huntingdon”.

Footnote 878 (originally page 192 note 5) - “quaequae” has been changed to “quaeque” in “et ferro quaeque sibi obvia devastavit”.

Footnote 1045 (originally page 229 note 2) - “supro” has been changed to “supra” in “cum videret statum suum supra modum subito prosperatum”.

Page 283 - “quamdui” has been changed to “quamdiu” in “quamdiu nobis placuerit”.

Further note:

Footnote 326 (originally page 60 note 7) - the chronicle referred to is in volume 26 of Pertz’s “_Scriptores_”, rather than his “_Rerum Germanicarum Scriptores_”.

End of Project Gutenberg's The Minority of Henry the Third, by Kate Norgate