Kate Norgate

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

M. Paris, Hist. Angl. vol. ii. p. 191.

1215

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1215–16

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

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

1215

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

1215–16

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

1216

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

1215–16

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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