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The History of England from the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377)
The Rule Of Hubert De Burgh
by Tout, T.F. (M.A.)
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William Marshal had recognized that the
regency must end with him. "There is no land," he declared, "where
the people are so divided as they are in England. Were I to hand
over the king to one noble, the others would be jealous. For this
reason I have determined to entrust him to God and the pope. No one
can blame me for this, for, if the land is not defended by the
pope, I know no one who can protect it." The fortunate absence of
Randolph of Chester on crusade made it easy to carry out this plan.
Accordingly the king of twelve years was supposed to be capable of
acting for himself. But the ultimate authority resided with the new
legate Pandulf, who, without any formal designation, was the real
successor of the marshal. This arrangement naturally left great
power to Peter des Roches, who continued to have the custody of the
king's person, and to Hubert the justiciar, who henceforth acted as
Pandulf's deputy. Next to them came the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Langton's share in the struggle for the charters was so
conspicuous, that we do not always remember that it was as a
scholar and a theologian that he acquired his chief reputation
among his contemporaries. On his return from exile he found such
engrossing occupation in the business of his see, that he took
little part in politics for several years. His self-effacement
strengthened the position of the legate.
Pandulf was no stranger to England. As subdeacon of the Roman
Church he received John's submission in 1213, and stood by his side
during nearly all his later troubles. He had been rewarded by his
election to the bishopric of Norwich, but was recalled to Rome
before his consecration, and only came back to England in the
higher capacity of legate on December 3, 1218, after the recall of
Gualo. He had been the cause of Langton's suspension, and there was
probably no love lost between him and the archbishop. It was in
order to avoid troublesome questions of jurisdiction that Pandulf,
at the pope's suggestion, continued to postpone his consecration as
bishop, since that act would have subordinated him to the
Archbishop of Canterbury. But neither he nor Langton was disposed
to push matters to extremities. Just as Peter des Roches balanced
Hubert de Burgh, so the archbishop acted as a makeweight to the
legate. When power was thus nicely equipoised, there was a natural
tendency to avoid conflicting issues. In these circumstances the
truce between parties, which had marked the regency, continued for
the first years after Earl William's death. In all doubtful points
the will of the legate seems to have prevailed. Pandulf's
correspondence shows him interfering in every matter of state. He
associated himself with the justiciar in the appointment of royal
officials; he invoked the papal authority to put down "adulterine
castles," and to prevent any baron having more than one royal
stronghold in his custody; he prolonged the truce with France, and
strove to pacify the Prince of North Wales; he procured the
resumption of the royal domain, and rebuked Bishop Peter and the
justiciar for remissness in dealing with Jewish usurers; he filled
up bishoprics at his own discretion. Nor did he neglect his own
interests; his kinsfolk found preferment in his English diocese,
and he appropriated certain livings for the payment of his debts,
"so far as could be done without offence". But in higher matters he
pursued a wise policy. In recognising that the great interest of
the Church was peace, he truly expressed the policy of the mild
Honorius. For more than two years he kept Englishmen from flying at
each other's throats. If they paid for peace by the continuance of
foreign rule, it was better to be governed by Pandulf than pillaged
by Falkes. The principal events of these years were due to papal
initiative.1 Honorius looked askance on the maimed rites of the
Gloucester coronation, and ordered a new hallowing to take place at
the accustomed place and with the accustomed ceremonies. This
supplementary rite was celebrated at Westminster on Whitsunday, May
17, 1220. Though Pandulf was present, he discreetly permitted the
Archbishop of Canterbury to crown Henry with the diadem of St.
Edward. "This coronation," says the Canon of Barnwell, "was
celebrated with such good order and such splendour that the oldest
magnates who were present declared that they had seen none of the
king's predecessors crowned with so much goodwill and
tranquillity." Nor was this the only great ecclesiastical function
of the year. On July 7 Langton celebrated at Canterbury the
translation of the relics of St. Thomas to a magnificent shrine at
the back of the high altar. Again the legate gave precedence to the
archbishop, and the presence of the young king, of the Archbishop
of Reims, and the Primate of Hungary, gave distinction to the
solemnity. It was a grand time for English saints. When Damietta
was taken from the Mohammedans, the crusaders dedicated two of its
churches to St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Edmund the King. A new
saint was added to the calendar, who, if not an Englishman, had
done good work for the country of his adoption. In 1220 Honorius
III. canonised Hugh of Avalon, the Carthusian Bishop of Lincoln, on
the report of a commission presided over by Langton himself.
1 H.R. Luard, On the Relations between
England and Rome during the Earlier Portion of the Reign of Henry
III. (1877), illustrates papal influence at this period.
No real unity of principle underlay the external tranquillity.
As time went on Peter des Roches bitterly resented the growing
preponderance of Hubert de Burgh. Not all the self-restraint of the
legate could commend him to Langton, whose obstinate insistence
upon his metropolitical authority forced Pandulf to procure bulls
from Rome specifically releasing him from the jurisdiction of the
primate. In these circumstances it was natural for Bishop Peter and
the legate to join together against the justiciar and the
archbishop. Finding that the legate was too strong for him, Langton
betook himself to Rome, and remained there nearly a year. Before he
went home he persuaded Honorius to promise not to confer the same
benefice twice by papal provision, and to send no further legate to
England during his lifetime. Pandulf was at once recalled, and left
England in July, 1221, a month before his rival's return. He was
compensated for the slight put upon him by receiving his
long-deferred consecration to Norwich at the hands of the pope.
There is small reason for believing that he was exceptionally
greedy or unpopular. But his withdrawal removed an influence which
had done its work for good, and was becoming a national danger.
Langton henceforth could act as the real head of the English
Church. In 1222, he held an important provincial council at Oseney
abbey, near Oxford, where he issued constitutions, famous as the
first provincial canons still recognised as binding in our
ecclesiastical courts. He began once more to concern himself with
affairs of state, and Hubert found him a sure ally. Bishop Peter,
disgusted with his declining influence, welcomed his appointment as
archbishop of the crusading Church at Damietta. He took the cross,
and left England with Falkes de Bréauté as his
companion. Learning that the crescent had driven the cross out of
his new see, he contented himself with making the pilgrimage to
Compostella, and soon found his way back to England, where he
sought for opportunities to regain power.
Relieved of the opposition of Bishop Peter, Hubert insisted on
depriving barons of doubtful loyalty of the custody of royal
castles, and found his chief opponent in William Earl of Albemarle.
In dignity and possessions, Albemarle was not ill-qualified to be a
feudal leader. The son of William de Fors, of Oléron, a
Poitevin adventurer of the type of Falkes de Bréauté,
he represented, through his mother, the line of the counts of
Aumâle, who had since the Conquest ruled over Holderness from
their castle at Skipsea. The family acquired the status of English
earls under Stephen, retaining their foreign title, expressed in
English in the form of Albemarle, being the first house of comital
rank abroad to hold an earldom with a French name unassociated with
any English shire. During the civil war Albemarle's
tergiversations, which rivalled those of the Geoffrey de Mandeville
of Stephen's time, had been rewarded by large grants from the
victorious party. Since 1219 he suffered slight upon slight, and in
1220 was stripped of the custody of Rockingham Castle. Late in that
year Hubert resolved to enforce an order, promulgated in 1217,
which directed Albemarle to restore to his former subtenant Bytham
Castle, in South Kesteven, of which he was overlord, and of which he
had resumed possession on account of the treason of his vassal. The
earl hurried away in indignation from the king's Christmas court,
and in January, 1221, threw himself into Bytham, eager to hold it
by force against the king. For a brief space he ruled over the
country-side after the fashion of a baron of Stephen's time. He
plundered the neighbouring towns and churches, and filled the
dungeons of Castle Bytham with captives. On the pretext of
attending a council at Westminster he marched southwards, but his
real motive was disclosed when he suddenly attacked the castle of
Fotheringhay. His men crossed the moat on the ice, and, burning
down the great gate, easily overpowered the scanty garrison. "As if
he were the only ruler of the kingdom," says the Canon of Barnwell,
"he sent letters signed with his seal to the mayors of the cities
of England, granting his peace to all merchants engaged in plying
their trades, and allowing them free licence of going and coming
through his castles." Nothing in the annals of the time puts more
clearly this revival of the old feudal custom that each baron
should lord it as king over his own estates.
Albemarle's power did not last long. He incurred the wrath of
the Church, and both in Kesteven and in Northamptonshire set
himself against the interests of Randolph of Chester. Before
January was over Pandulf excommunicated him, and a great council
granted a special scutage, "the scutage of Bytham," to equip an
army to crush the rebel. Early in February a considerable force
marched northwards against him. The Earl of Chester took part in
the campaign, and both the legate and the king accompanied the
army. Before the combined efforts of Church and State, Albemarle
dared not hold his ground, and fled to Fountains, where he took
sanctuary. His followers abandoned Fotheringhay, but stood a siege
at Bytham. After six days this castle was captured on February 8.
Even then secret sympathisers with Albemarle were able to exercise
influence on his behalf, and Pandulf himself was willing to show
mercy. The earl came out of sanctuary, and was pardoned on
condition of taking the crusader's vow. No effort was made to
insist on his going on crusade, and within a few months he was
again in favour. "Thus," says Roger of Wendover, "the king set the
worst of examples, and encouraged future rebellions."
Randolph of Chester came out with the spoils of victory. He secured
as the price of his ostentatious fidelity the custody of the Honour
of Huntingdon, during the nonage of the earl, his nephew, John the
Scot.
A tumult in the capital soon taught Hubert that he had other
foes to fight against besides the feudal party. At a wrestling
match, held on July 25, 1222, between the city and the suburbs, the
citizens won an easy victory. The tenants of the Abbot of
Westminster challenged the conquerors to a fresh contest on August
1 at Westminster. But the abbot's men were more anxious for revenge
than good sport, and seeing that the Londoners were likely to win,
they violently broke up the match. Suspecting no evil, the citizens
had come without arms, and were very severely handled by their
rivals. Driven back behind their walls, the Londoners clamoured for
vengeance. Serlo the mercer, their mayor, a prudent and
peace-loving man, urged them to seek compensation of the abbot. But
the citizens preferred the advice of Constantine FitzAthulf, who
insisted upon an immediate attack on the men of Westminster. Next
day the abbey precincts were invaded, and much mischief was done.
The alarm was the greater because Constantine was a man of high
position, who had recently been a sheriff of London, and had once
been a strenuous supporter of Louis of France. It was rumoured that
his followers had raised the cry, "Montjoie! Saint Denis!" The
quarrels of neighbouring cities were as dangerous to sound rule as
the feuds of rival barons, and Hubert took instant measures to put
down the sedition. With the aid of Falkes de
Bréauté's mercenaries, order was restored, and
Constantine was led before the justiciar. Early next day Falkes
assembled his forces, and crossed the river to Southwark. He took
with him Constantine and two of his supporters, and hanged all
three, without form of trial, before the city knew anything about
it. Then Falkes and his soldiers rushed through the streets,
capturing, mutilating, and frightening away the citizens.
Constantine's houses and property were seized by the king. The weak
Serlo was deposed from the mayoralty, and the city taken into the
king's hands. It was the last time that Hubert and Falkes worked
together, and something of the violence of the condottiere
captain sullied the justiciar's reputation. As the murderer of
Constantine, Hubert was henceforth pursued with the undying hatred
of the Londoners.
During the next two years parties became clearly defined. Hubert
more and more controlled the royal policy, and strove to strengthen
both his master and himself by marriage alliances. Powerful
husbands were sought for the king's three sisters. On June 19,
1221, Joan, Henry's second sister, was married to the young
Alexander of Scotland, at York. At the same time Hubert, a widower
by Isabella of Gloucester's death, wedded Alexander's elder sister,
Margaret, a match which compensated the justiciar for his loss of
Isabella's lands. Four years later, Isabella, the King of Scot's
younger sister, was united with Roger Bigod, the young Earl of
Norfolk, a grandson of the great William Marshal, whose eldest son
and successor, William Marshal the younger, was in 1224 married to
the king's third sister, Eleanor. The policy of intermarriage
between the royal family and the baronage was defended by the
example of Philip Augustus in France, and on the ground of the
danger to the royal interests if so strong a magnate as the earl
marshal were enticed away from his allegiance by an alliance with a
house unfriendly to Henry.1
1 Royal Letters, i., 244-46.
The futility of marriage alliances in modifying policy was
already made clear by the attitude of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, the
husband of Henry's bastard sister Joan. This resourceful prince had
already raised himself to a high position by a statecraft which
lacked neither strength nor duplicity. Though fully conscious of
his position as the champion of a proud nation, and, posing as the
peer of the King of Scots, Llewelyn saw that it was his interest to
continue the friendship with the baronial opposition which had
profited him so greatly in the days of the French invasion. The
pacification arranged in 1218 sat rightly upon him, and he plunged
into a war with William Marshal the younger that desolated South
Wales for several years. In 1219 Llewelyn devastated Pembrokeshire
so cruelly that the marshal's losses were currently, though
absurdly, reported to have exceeded the amount of the ransom of
King Richard. There was much more fighting, but Llewelyn's progress
was impeded by difficulties with his own son Griffith, and with the
princes of South Wales, who bore impatiently the growing hold of
the lord of Gwynedd upon the affections of southern Welshmen. There
was war also in the middle march, where in 1220 a royal army was
assembled against Llewelyn; but Pandulf negotiated a truce, and the
only permanent result of this effort was the fortification of the
castle and town at Montgomery, which had become royal demesne on
the extinction of the ancient house of Bollers a few years earlier.
But peace never lasted long west of the Severn, and in 1222 William
Marshal drove Llewelyn out of Cardigan and Carmarthen. Again there
were threats of war. Llewelyn was excommunicated, and his lands put
under interdict. The marshal complained bitterly of the poor
support which Henry gave him against the Welsh, but Hubert restored
cordiality between him and the king. In these circumstances the
policy of marrying Eleanor to the indignant marcher was a wise one.
Llewelyn however could still look to the active friendship of
Randolph of Chester. While the storm of war raged in South Wales,
the march between Cheshire and Gwynedd enjoyed unwonted peace, and
in 1223 a truce was patched up through Randolph's mediation.
Earl Randolph needed the Welsh alliance the more because he
definitely threw in his lot with the enemies of Hubert de Burgh. In
April, 1223, a bull of Honorius III. declared Henry competent to
govern in his own name, a change which resulted in a further
strengthening of Hubert's power. Towards the end of the year
Randolph joined with William of Albemarle, the Bishop of Winchester
and Falkes de Bréauté, in an attempt to overthrow the
justiciar. The discontented barons took arms and laid their
grievances before the king. They wished, they said, no ill to king
or kingdom, but simply desired to remove the justiciar from his
counsels. Hot words passed between the indignant Hubert and Peter
des Roches, and the conference broke up in confusion. The barons
still remained mutinous, and, while the king held his Christmas
court at Northampton, they celebrated the feast at Leicester. At
last Langton persuaded both parties to come to an agreement on the
basis of king's friends and barons alike surrendering their castles
and wardships. This was a substantial victory for the party of
order, and during the next few months much was done to transfer
the castles to loyal hands. Randolph himself surrendered Shrewsbury
and Bridgnorth.
Comparative peace having been restored, and the judicial bench
purged of feudal partisans, private persons ventured to complain of
outrageous acts of "novel disseisin", or unlawful appropriation of
men's lands. In the spring of 1224 the king's justices went
throughout the country, hearing and deciding pleas of this sort.
Sixteen acts of novel disseisin were proved against Falkes de
Bréauté. Despite all the efforts of Langton and
Hubert, that able adventurer, though stripped of some of his
castles, fully maintained the position which he first acquired in
the service of John. He was not the man to put up tamely with the
piecemeal destruction of his power by legal process, and, backed up
secretly by the feudal leaders, resolved to take the law into his
own hands. One of the most active of the judges in hearing
complaints against him was Henry of Braybrook. Falkes bade his
brother, William de Bréauté fall upon the justice,
who had been hearing suits at Dunstable, and take him prisoner.
William faithfully fulfilled his brother's orders, and on June 17
the unlucky judge was safely shut up in a dungeon of Bedford
Castle, of which William had the custody, as his brother's agent.
So daring an outrage on the royal authority was worse than the
action of William of Albemarle four years before. Hubert and the
archbishop immediately took strong measures to enforce the sanctity
of the law. While Langton excommunicated Falkes and his abettors,
Hubert hastily turned against the traitor the forces which were
assembling at Northampton with the object of reconquering Poitou.
Braybrook was captured on Monday. On Thursday the royal troops
besieged Bedford.
The siege lasted from June 20 to August 14. The "noble castle of
Bedford" was new, large, and fortified with an inner and outer
baily, and two strong towers. Falkes trusted that it would hold out
for a year, and had amply provided it with provisions and munitions
of war. In effect, though William de Bréauté and his
followers showed a gallant spirit, it resisted the justiciar for
barely two months. When called upon to surrender the garrison
answered that they would only yield at their lord's orders, and
that the more as they were not bound to the king by homage or
fealty. Nothing was left but a fight to the death. The royalists made
strenuous efforts. A new scutage, the "scutage of Bedford," was
imposed on the realm. Meanwhile Falkes fled to his accomplice, the
Earl of Chester, and afterwards took refuge with Llewelyn. But the
adventurer found such cold comfort from the great men who had lured
him to his ruin that he perforce made his way back to England,
along with a motley band of followers, English and French, Scottish
and Welsh.1 A hue and cry was raised after him, and, like William
of Albemarle, he was forced to throw himself into sanctuary, while
Randolph of Chester openly joined the besiegers of Bedford. In his
refuge in a church at Coventry, Falkes was persuaded to surrender
to the bishop of the diocese, who handed him over to Langton.
1 The names of his familia taken with him
are in Patent Rolls of Henry III., 1216-1227, pp.
461-62.
During Falkes's wanderings his brother had been struggling
valiantly against overwhelming odds. Petrariae and mangonels
threw huge stones into the castle, and effected breaches in keep
and curtain. Miners undermined the walls, while over-against the
stronghold two lofty structures of wood were raised, from which the
crossbowmen, who manned them, were able to command the whole of the
interior. At last the castle was captured in four successive
assaults. In the first the barbican was taken; in the next the
outer baily was stormed; in the third the interior baily was won;
and in the last the keep was split asunder. The garrison then
allowed the women and captives, including the wife of Falkes and
the unlucky Braybrook, to make their way to the enemies' lines.
Next day the defenders themselves surrendered. The only mercy shown
to these gallant men was that they were allowed to make their peace
with the Church before their execution. Of the eighty prisoners,
three Templars alone were spared.
Falkes threw himself upon the king's mercy, appealing to his
former services to Henry and his father. He surrendered to the King
the large sums of money which he had deposited with his bankers,
the Templars of London, and ordered his castellans in Plympton and
the other west-country castles of his wife to open their gates to
the royal officers. In return for these concessions he was released
from excommunication. His life was spared, but his property was
confiscated, and he was ordered to abjure the realm. Even his
wife deserted him, protesting that she had been forced to marry him
against her will. On October 26 he received letters of safe conduct
to go beyond sea. As he left England, he protested that he had been
instigated by the English magnates in all that he had done. On
landing at Fécamp he was detained by his old enemy Louis,
then, by his father's death, King of France. But Louis VIII. was
the last man to bear old grudges against the Norman adventurer,
especially as Falkes's rising had enabled him to capture the chief
towns of Poitou.
Even in his exile Falkes was still able to do mischief. He
obtained his release from Louis' prison about Easter, 1225, on the
pretence of going on crusade. He then made his way to Rome where he
strove to excite the sympathy of Honorius III., by presenting an
artful memorial, which throws a flood of light upon his character,
motives, and hopes. Honorius earnestly pleaded for his restitution,
but Hubert and Langton stood firm against him. They urged that the
pope had been misinformed, and declined to recall the exile.
Honorius sent his chaplain Otto to England, but the nuncio found it
impossible to modify the policy of the advisers of the king. Falkes
went back from Italy to Troyes, where he waited for a year in the
hope that his sentence would be reversed. At last Otto gave up his
cause in despair, and devoted himself to the more profitable work
of exacting money from the English clergy. Falkes died in 1226.
With him disappears from our history the lawless spirit which had
troubled the land since the war between John and his barons. The
foreign adventurers, of whom he was the chief, either went back in
disgust to their native lands, or, like Peter de Mauley, became
loyal subjects and the progenitors of a harmless stock of English
barons. The ten years of storm and stress were over. The
administration was once more in English hands, and Hubert enjoyed a
few years of well-earned power.
New difficulties at once arose. The defeat of the feudalists and
their Welsh allies involved heavy special taxation, and the king's
honour required that an effort should be made both to wrest Poitou
from Louis VIII., and to strengthen the English hold over Gascony.
Besides national obligations, clergy and laity alike were still
called upon to contribute towards the cost of crusading enterprises,
and in 1226 the papal nuncio, Otto, demanded that a large
proportion of the revenues of the English clergy should be
contributed to the papal coffers. To the Englishman of that age all
extraordinary taxation was a grievance quite irrespective of its
necessity. The double incidence of the royal and papal demands was
met by protests which showed some tendency towards the splitting up
of the victorious side into parties. It was still easy for all to
unite against Otto, and the papal agent was forced to go home empty
handed, for councils both of clergy and barons agreed to reject his
demands. Whatever other nations might offer to the pope, argued the
magnates, the realms of England and Ireland at least had a right to
be freed from such impositions by reason of the tribute which John
had agreed to pay to Innocent III. The demand of the king's
ministers for a fifteenth to prosecute the war with France was
reluctantly conceded, but only on the condition of a fresh
confirmation of the charters in a form intended to bring home to
the king his personal obligation to observe them. Hubert de Burgh,
however, was no enthusiast for the charters. His standpoint was
that of the officials of the age of Henry II. To him the
re-establishment of order meant the restoration of the prerogative.
There he parted company with the archbishop, who was an eager
upholder of the charters, for which he was so largely responsible.
The struggle against the foreigner was to be succeeded by a
struggle for the charters.
In January, 1227, a council met at Oxford. The king, then nearly
twenty years old, declared that he would govern the country
himself, and renounced the tutelage of the Bishop of Winchester.
Henry gave himself over completely to the justiciar, whom he
rewarded for his faithful service by making him Earl of Kent. In
deep disgust Bishop Peter left the court to carry out his
long-deferred crusading vows. For four years he was absent in
Palestine, where his military talents had ample scope as one of the
leaders of Frederick II.'s army, while his diplomatic skill sought,
with less result, to preserve some sort of relations between the
excommunicated emperor and the new pope, Gregory IX., who in this
same year succeeded Honorius. In April Gregory renewed the bull of
1223 in which his predecessor recognised Henry's competence to
govern.
Thus ended the first minority since the Conquest. The
successful restoration of law and order when the king was a child,
showed that a strong king was not absolutely necessary for good
government. From the exercise of royal authority by ministers
without the personal intervention of the monarch arose the ideas of
limited monarchy, the responsibility of the official, and the
constitutional rights of the baronial council to appoint ministers
and control the administration. We also discern, almost for the
first time, the action of an inner ministerial council which was
ultimately to develop into the consilium ordinarium of a
later age.
No sudden changes attended the royal majority. Those who had
persuaded Henry to dismiss Bishop Peter had no policy beyond
getting rid of a hated rival. The new Earl of Kent continued to
hold office as justiciar for five years, and his ascendency is even
more marked in the years 1227 to 1232 than it had been between 1224
and 1227. Hubert still found the task of ruling England by no means
easy. With the mitigation of home troubles foreign affairs assumed
greater importance, and England's difficulties with France, the
efforts to establish cordial relations with the empire, the
ever-increasing aggressions of Llewelyn of Wales, and the chronic
troubles of Ireland, involved the country in large expenses with
little compensating advantage. Not less uneasy were the results of
the growing encroachments of the papacy and the increasing
inability of the English clergy to face them. Papal taxation, added
to the burden of national taxation, induced discontent that found a
ready scapegoat in the justiciar. The old and the new baronial
opposition combined to denounce Hubert as the true cause of all
evils. The increasing personal influence of the young king
complicated the situation. In his efforts to deal with all these
problems Hubert became involved in the storm of obloquy which
finally brought about his fall.
At the accession of Henry III., the truce for five years
concluded between his father and Philip Augustus on September 18,
1214, had still three years to run. The expedition of Louis to
England might well seem to have broken it, but the prudent
disavowal by Philip II. of his son's sacrilegious enterprise made
it a point of policy for the French King to regard it as still in
force, and neither John nor the earl marshal had a mind to
face the enmity of the father as well as the invasion of the son.
Accordingly the truce ran out its full time, and in 1220 Honorius
III., ever zealous for peace between Christian sovereigns, procured
its prolongation for four years. Before this had expired, the
accession of Louis VIII. in 1223 raised the old enemy of King Henry
to the throne of France. Louis still coveted the English throne,
and desired to complete the conquest of Henry's French dominions in
France. His accession soon involved England in a new struggle,
luckily delayed until the worst of the disorders at home had been
overcome.
Peace was impossible because Louis, like Philip, regarded the
forfeiture of John as absolute, and as involving the right to deny
to Henry III. a legitimate title to any of his lands beyond sea.
Henry, on the other hand, was still styled Duke of Normandy, Count
of Anjou, Count of Poitou, and Duke of Aquitaine. Claiming all that
his father had held, he refused homage to Philip or Louis for such
French lands as he actually possessed. For the first time since the
Conquest, an English king ruled over extensive French territories
without any feudal subjection to the King of France. However,
Henry's French lands, though still considerable, were but a shadow
of those once ruled by his father. Philip had conquered all
Normandy, save the Channel Islands, and also the whole of Anjou and
Touraine. For a time he also gained possession of Poitou, but
before his death nearly the whole of that region had slipped from
his grasp. Poitiers, alone of its great towns, remained in French
hands. For the rest, both the barons and cities of Poitou
acknowledged the over-lordship of their English count. Too much
importance must not be ascribed to this revival of the English
power. Henry claimed very little domain in Poitou, which
practically was divided between the feudal nobles and the great
communes. So long as they maintained a virtual freedom, they were
indifferent as to their overlord. If they easily transferred their
allegiance from Philip to Henry, it was because the weakness of
absentee counts was less to be dreaded than the strength of a
monarch near at hand. Meanwhile the barons carried on their feuds
one against the other, and all alike joined in oppressing the
townsmen.
During Henry's minority the crown was not strong enough to deal
with the unruly Foitevins. Seneschals quickly succeeded each other;
the barons expected the office to be filled by one of their own
order, and the towns, jealous of hostile neighbours, demanded the
appointment of an Englishman. At last, in 1221, Savary de
Mauléon, one of King John's mercenaries, a poet, and a
crusader against infidels and Albigenses, was made seneschal. His
English estates ensured some measure of fidelity, and his energy
and experience were guarantees of his competence, though, as a
younger member of the great house of Thouars, he belonged by birth
to the inner circle of the Poitevin nobility, whose treachery,
levity, and self-seeking were proverbial. The powerful Viscounts of
Thouars were constantly kept in check by their traditional enemies
the Counts of La Marche, whose representative, Hugh of Lusignan,
was by far the strongest of the local barons. His cousin, and
sometime betrothed, Isabella, Countess of Angoulême, the
widow of King John, had left England to resume the administration
of her dominions. Early in 1220 she married Hugh, justifying
herself to her son on the ground that it would be dangerous to his
interests if the Count of La Marche should contract an alliance
with the French party. But this was mere excuse. The union of La
Marche and Angoulême largely increased Count Hugh's power,
and he showed perfect impartiality in pursuing his own interests by
holding a balance between his stepson and the King of France.
Against him neither Savary nor the Poitevin communes could contend
with success. The anarchy of Poitou was an irresistible temptation
to Louis VII. "Know you," he wrote to the men of Limoges, "that
John, king of England, was deprived by the unanimous judgment of
his peers of all the lands which he held of our father Philip. We
have now received in inheritance all our father's rights, and
require you to perform the service that you owe us." While the
English government weakly negotiated for the prolongation of the
truce, and for the pope's intervention, Louis concluded treaties
with the Poitevin barons, and made ready an army to conquer his
inheritance. Foremost among his local partisans appeared Henry's
stepfather.
The French army met at Tours on June 24, 1224, and marched
through Thouars to La Rochelle, the strongest of the Poitevin
towns, and the most devoted to England. On the way Louis forced Savary
de Mauléon to yield up Niort, and to promise to defend no
other place than La Rochelle, before which city he sat down on July
15. At first Savary resisted vigorously. The siege of Bedford,
however, prevented the despatch of effective help from England, and
Savary was perhaps already secretly won over by Louis. Be this as
it may, the town surrendered on August 3, and with it went all
Aquitaine north of the Dordogne. Savary took service with the
conqueror, and was made warden of La Rochelle and of the adjacent
coasts, while Lusignan received the reward of his treachery in a
grant of the Isle of Oléron. When Louis returned to the
north, the Count of La Marche undertook the conquest of Gascony. He
soon made himself master of St. Emilion, and of the whole of
Périgord. The surrender of La Réole opened up the
passage of the Garonne, and the capture of Bazas gave the French a
foothold to the south of that river. Only the people of Bordeaux
showed any spirit in resisting Hugh. But their resistance proved
sufficient, and he withdrew baffled before their walls.
The easiness of Louis' conquests showed their instability. "I am
sure," wrote one of Henry's officers, "that you can easily recover
all that you have lost, if you send speedy succour to these
regions." After the capture of Bedford, Hubert undertook the
recovery of Poitou and the defence of Gascony. Henry's younger
brother Richard, a youth of sixteen, was appointed Earl of Cornwall
and Count of Poitou, dubbed knight by his brother, and put in
nominal command of the expedition despatched to Gascony in March,
1225. His experienced uncle, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury,
and Philip of Aubigny, were sent with him as his chief counsellors.
Received with open arms by Bordeaux, he boasted on May 2 that he
had conquered all Gascony, save La Réole, and had received
the allegiance of every Gascon noble, except Elie Rudel, the lord
of Bergerac. The siege of La Réole, the only serious
military operation of the campaign, occupied Richard all the summer
and autumn, and it was not until November 13 that the burgesses
opened their gates. As soon as the French had retired, the lord of
Bergerac, "after the fashion of the Poitevins," renounced Louis and
professed himself the liegeman of Earl Richard. Then the worst
trouble was that Savary de Mauléon's ships commanded the Bay
of Biscay, and rendered communication between Bordeaux and England
very difficult.1 Once more the men of the Cinque Ports came to
the king's aid, and there was severe fighting at sea, involving
much plunder of merchant vessels and dislocation of trade.
1 The names of his familia taken with him
are in Patent Rolls of Henry III., 1216-1227, pp.
461-62.
The English sought to supplement their military successes by
diplomacy. Richard of Cornwall made an alliance with the counts of
Auvergne, and the home administration negotiated with all possible
enemies of the French King. A proposal to affiance Henry's sister,
Isabella, to Henry, King of the Romans, the infant son of Frederick
II., led to no results, for the Archbishop of Cologne, the chief
upholder of the scheme in Germany, was murdered, and the young king
found a bride in Austria. Yet the project counteracted the
negotiations set on foot by Louis to secure Frederick II. for his
own side, and induced the Emperor to take up a position of
neutrality. An impostor appeared in Flanders who gave out that he
was the old Count Baldwin, sometime Latin Emperor of the East, who
had died in prison in Bulgaria twenty years before. Baldwin's
daughter, Joan, appealed to Louis for support against the false
Baldwin, whereupon Henry recognised his claims and sought his
alliance. Nothing but the capture and execution of the impostor
prevented Henry from effecting a powerful diversion in Flanders.
Peter Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, was won over by an offer of
restitution to his earldom of Richmond, and by a promise that Henry
would marry his daughter Iolande. Intrigues were entered into with
the discontented Norman nobles, and the pope was importuned to save
Henry from French assaults at the same moment that the king made a
treaty of alliance with his first cousin, the heretical Raymond
VII. of Toulouse. Honorius gave his ward little save sympathy and
good advice. His special wish was to induce Louis to lead a French
expedition into Languedoc against the Albigensian heretics. As soon
as Louis resolved on this, the pope sought to prevent Henry from
entering into unholy alliance with Raymond. It was the crusade of
1226, not the good-will of the Pope or the fine-drawn English
negotiations, which gave Gascony a short respite. Louis VIII. died
on November 8 in the course of his expedition, and the Capetian
monarchy became less dangerous during the
troubles of a minority, in which his widow, Blanche, strove as
regent to uphold the throne of their little son, Louis IX.
The first months of Louis IX.'s reign showed how unstable was
any edifice built upon the support of the treacherous lords of
Poitou. Within six weeks of Louis VIII.'s death, Hugh of Lusignan,
the viscount of Thouars, Savary de Mauléon, and many other
Poitevin barons, concluded treaties with Richard of Cornwall, by
which in return for lavish concessions they went back to the
English obedience. In the spring of 1227, however, the appearance
of a French army south of the Loire caused these same lords to make
fresh treaties with Blanche. Peter of Brittany also became friendly
with the French regent, and gave up his daughter's English
marriage. With allies so shifty, further dealings seemed hopeless.
Before Easter, Richard patched up a truce and went home in disgust.
The Capetians lost Poitou, but Henry failed to take advantage of
his rival's weakness, and the real masters of the situation were
the local barons. Fifteen more years were to elapse before the
definitive French conquest of Poitou.
During the next three years the good understanding between the
Bretons, the Poitevins, and the regent Blanche came to an end, and
the progress of the feudal reaction against the rule of the young
King of France once more excited hopes of improving Henry's
position in south-western France. Henry III. was eager to win back
his inheritance, though Hubert de Burgh had little faith in
Poitevin promises, and, conscious of his king's weakness, managed
to prolong the truce, until July 22, 1229. Three months before
that, Blanche succeeded in forcing the unfortunate Raymond VII. to
accept the humiliating treaty of Meaux, which assured the
succession to his dominions to her second son Alfonse, who was to
marry his daughter and heiress, Joan. The barons of the north and
west were not yet defeated, and once more appealed to Henry to come
to their aid. Accordingly, the English king summoned his vassals to
Portsmouth on October 15 for a French campaign. When Henry went
down to Portsmouth he found that there were not enough ships to
convey his troops over sea. Thereupon he passionately denounced the
justiciar as an "old traitor," and accused him of being bribed by
the French queen. Nothing but the intervention of Randolph of
Chester, Hubert's persistent enemy, put an end to the undignified
scene.
Count Peter of Brittany, who arrived at Portsmouth on the 9th,
did homage to Henry as King of France, and received the earldom of
Richmond and the title of Duke of Brittany which he had long
coveted, but which the French government refused to recognise. He
persuaded Henry to postpone the expedition until the following
spring. When that time came Henry appointed Ralph Neville, the
chancellor, and Stephen Segrave, a rising judge, as wardens of
England, and on May 1, 1230, set sail from Portsmouth. It was the
first time since 1213 that an English king had crossed the seas at
the head of an army, and every effort was made to equip a
sufficient force. Hubert the justiciar, Randolph of Chester,
William the marshal, and most of the great barons personally shared
in the expedition, and the ports of the Channel, the North Sea, and
the Bay of Biscay were ransacked to provide adequate shipping. Many
Norman vessels served as transports, apparently of their owners'
free-will.
On May 3 Henry landed at St. Malo, and thence proceeded to
Dinan, the meeting-place assigned for his army, the greater part of
which landed at Port Blanc, a little north of Tréguier.
Peter Mauclerc joined him, and a plan of operations was discussed.
The moment was favourable, for a great number of the French
magnates were engaged in war against Theobald, the poet-count of
Champagne, and the French army, which was assembled at Angers,
represented but a fraction of the military strength of the land.
Fulk Paynel, a Norman baron who wished to revive the independence
of the duchy, urged Henry to invade Normandy. Hubert successfully
withstood this rash proposal, and also Fulk's fatal suggestion that
Henry should divide his army and send two hundred knights for the
invasion of Normandy. Before long the English marched through
Brittany to Nantes, where they wasted six weeks. At last, on the
advice of Hubert, they journeyed south into Poitou. The innate
Poitevin instability had again brought round the Lusignans, the
house of Thouars, and their kind to the French side, and Henry
found that his own mother did her best to obstruct his progress. He
was too strong to make open resistance safe, and his long progress
from Nantes to Bordeaux was only once checked by the need
to fight his way. This opposition came from the little town and
castle of Mirambeau, situated in Upper Saintonge, rather more than
half-way between Saintes and Blaye.1 From July 21 to 30 Mirambeau
stoutly held out, but Henry's army was reinforced by the chivalry
of Gascony, and by a siege-train borrowed from Bordeaux and the
loyal lords of the Garonne. Against such appliances of warfare
Mirambeau could not long resist. On its capitulation Henry pushed
on to Bordeaux.
1 E. Berger, Bibl. Ecole des Chartes,
1893, pp. 35-36, shows that Mirambeau, not Mirebeau, was
besieged by Henry; see also his Blanche de Castille
(1895).
Useless as the march through Poitou had been, it was then
repeated in the reverse way. With scarcely a week's rest, Henry
left the Gascon capital on August 10, and on September 15 ended his
inglorious campaign at Nantes. Although he was unable to assert
himself against the faithless Poitevins, the barons of the province
were equally impotent to make head against him. On reaching
Brittany, Hubert once more stopped further military efforts. After
a few days' rest at Nantes, Henry made his way by slow stages
through the heart of Brittany. It was said that his army had no
better occupation than teaching the local nobles to drink deep
after the English fashion. The King had wasted all his treasure,
and the poorer knights were compelled to sell or pawn their horses
and arms to support themselves. The farce ended when the King
sailed from St. Pol de Leon, and late in October landed at
Portsmouth. He left a portion of his followers in Brittany, under
the Earls of Chester and Pembroke. Randolph himself, as a former
husband of Constance of Brittany, had claims to certain dower lands
which appertained to Count Peter's mother-in-law. He was put in
possession of St. James de Beuvron, and thence he raided Normandy
and Anjou. By this time the coalition against the count of
Champagne had broken down, and Blanche was again triumphant. It was
useless to continue a struggle so expensive and disastrous, and on
July 4, 1231, a truce for three years was concluded between France,
Brittany, and England. Peter des Roches, then returning through
France from his crusade, took an active part in negotiating the
treaty. Just as the king was disposed to make the justiciar the
scapegoat of his failure, Hubert's old enemy appeared once more upon
the scene. The responsibility for blundering must be divided among
the English magnates, and not ascribed solely to their monarch. If
Hubert saved Henry from reckless adventures, he certainly deserves
a large share of the blame for the Poitevin fiasco.
The grave situation at home showed the folly of this untimely
revival of an active foreign policy. The same years that saw the
collapse of Henry's hopes in Normandy and Poitou, witnessed
troubles both in Ireland and in Wales. In both these regions the
house of the Marshals was a menace to the neighbouring chieftains,
and Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, and Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, made
common cause against it and vigorously attacked their rivals both
in Leinster and in South Wales. Nor was this the only disturbance.
The summons of the Norman chieftains of Ireland to Poitou gave the
king of Connaught a chance of attacking the justiciar of Ireland,
Geoffrey Marsh, who ultimately drove the Irish back with severe
loss. Llewelyn was again as active and hostile as ever. Irritated
by the growing strength of the new royal castle of Montgomery, he
laid siege to it in 1228. Hubert de Burgh, then castellan of
Montgomery, could only save his castle by summoning the levies of
the kingdom. At their head Hubert went in person to hold the field
against Llewelyn, taking the king with him. The Welsh withdrew as
usual before a regular army, and Hubert and the king, late in
September, marched a few miles westwards of Montgomery to the vale
of Kerry, where they erected a castle. But Llewelyn soon made the
English position in Kerry untenable. Many of the English lords were
secretly in league with him, and the army suffered severely from
lack of food. In the fighting that ensued the Welsh got the better
of the English, taking prisoner William de Braose, the heir of
Builth, and one of the greatest of the marcher lords. At last king
and justiciar were glad to agree to demolish the new castle on
receiving from Llewelyn the expenses involved in the task. The
dismantled ruin was called "Hubert's folly". "And then," boasts the
Welsh chronicler, "the king returned to England with shame."
In 1230 Llewelyn inflicted another slight upon his overlord.
William de Braose long remained the Welsh prince's captive, and
only purchased his liberty by agreeing to wed his daughter to
Llewelyn's son, and surrendering Builth as her marriage portion.
The captive had employed his leisure in winning the love of
Llewelyn's wife, Joan, Henry's half-sister. At Easter, Llewelyn
took a drastic revenge on the adulterer. He seized William in his
own castle at Builth, and on May 2 hanged him on a tree in open day
in the presence of 900 witnesses. Finding that neither the king nor
the marchers moved a finger to avenge the outrage done to sister
and comrade, Llewelyn took the aggressive in regions which had
hitherto been comparatively exempt from his assaults. In 1231 he
laid his heavy hand on all South Wales, burning down churches full
of women, as the English believed, and signalling out for special
attack the marshal's lands in Gwent and Pembroke. Once more the
king penetrated with his barons into Mid Wales, while the pope and
archbishop excommunicated Llewelyn and put his lands under
interdict. Yet neither temporal nor spiritual arms were of avail
against the Welshman. Henry's only exploit in this, his second
Welsh campaign, was to rebuild Maud's Castle in stone. He withdrew,
and in December agreed to conclude a three years' truce, and
procure Llewelyn's absolution. Hubert once more bore the blame of
his master's failure.
On July 9, 1228, Stephen Langton died. Despite their differences
as to the execution of the charters, his removal lost the justiciar
a much-needed friend. Affairs were made worse by the unteachable
folly of the monks of Christ Church. Regardless of the severe
warning which they had received in the storms that preceded the
establishment of Langton's authority, the chapter forthwith
proceeded to the election of their brother monk, Walter of Eynsham.
The archbishop-elect was an ignorant old monk of weak health and
doubtful antecedents, and Gregory IX. wisely refused to confirm the
election. On the recommendation of the king and the bishops,
Gregory himself appointed as archbishop Richard, chancellor of
Lincoln, an eloquent and learned secular priest of handsome person,
whose nickname of "le Grand" was due to his tall stature. The first
Archbishop of Canterbury since the Conquest directly nominated by
the pope—for even in Langton's case there was a form of
election—Richard le Grand at once began to quarrel with the
justiciar, demanding that he should surrender the custody of Tunbridge
castle on the ground of some ancient claim of the see of
Canterbury. Failing to obtain redress in England, Richard betook
himself to Rome in the spring of 1231. There he regaled the pope's
ears with the offences of Hubert, and of the worldly bishops who
were his tools. In August, Richard's death in Italy left the Church
of Canterbury for three years without a pastor.
While Gregory IX. did more to help Henry against Louis than
Honorius III., the inflexible character and lofty hierarchical
ideals of this nephew of Innocent III. made his hand heavier on the
English Church than that of his predecessor. Above all, Gregory's
expenses in pursuing his quarrel with Frederick II. made the wealth
of the English Church a sore temptation to him. With his imposition
of a tax of one-tenth on all clerical property to defray the
expenses of the crusade against the emperor, papal taxation in
England takes a newer and severer phase. The rigour with which
Master Stephen, the pope's collector, extorted the tax was bitterly
resented. Not less loud was the complaint against the increasing
numbers of foreign ecclesiastics forced into English benefices by
papal authority, and without regard for the rights of the lawful
patrons and electors. A league of aggrieved tax-payers and patrons
was formed against the Roman agents. At Eastertide, 1232, bands of
men, headed by a knight named Robert Twenge, who took the nickname
of William Wither, despoiled the Romans of their gains, and
distributed the proceeds to the poor. These doings were the more
formidable from their excellent organisation, and the strong
sympathy everywhere extended to them. Hubert, who hated foreign
interference, did nothing to stop Twenge and his followers. His
inaction further precipitated his ruin. Archbishop Richard had
already poisoned the pope's mind against him, and his suspected
connivance with the anti-Roman movement completed his disfavour.
Bitter letters of complaint arrived in England denouncing the
outrages inflicted on the friends of the apostolic see. It is hard
to dissociate the pope's feeling in this matter from his rejection
of the nomination of the king's chancellor, Ralph Neville, Bishop
of Chichester, to the see of Canterbury, as an illiterate
politician.
The dislike of the taxes made necessary by the Welsh and French
wars, such as the "scutage of Poitou" and the "scutage of Kerry,"
swelled the outcry against the justiciar. So far back as 1227
advantage had been taken of Henry's majority to exact large sums of
money for the confirmation of all charters sealed during his
nonage. The barons made it a grievance that his brother Richard was
ill-provided for, and a rising in 1227 extorted a further provision
for him from what was regarded as the niggardliness of the
justiciar. Nor did Hubert, with all his rugged honesty, neglect his
own interests. He secured for himself lucrative wardships, such as
the custody for the second time of the great Gloucester earldom,
and of several castles, including the not very profitable charge of
Montgomery, and the important governorship of Dover. On the very
eve of his downfall he was made justice of Ireland. His brother was
bishop of Ely, and other kinsmen were promoted to high posts. He
was satisfied that he spent all that he got in the King's service,
in promoting the interests of the kingdom, but his enemies regarded
him as unduly tenacious of wealth and office. All classes alike
grew disgusted with the justiciar. The restoration of the malign
influence of Peter of Winchester completed his ruin. The king
greedily listened to the complaints of his old guardian against the
minister who overshadowed the royal power. At last, on July 29,
1232, Henry plucked up courage to dismiss him.
With Hubert's fall ends the second period of Henry's reign.
William Marshal expelled the armed foreigner. Hubert restored the
administration to English hands. Matthew Paris puts into the mouth
of a poor smith who refused to fasten fetters on the fallen
minister words which, though probably never spoken, describe with
sufficient accuracy Hubert's place in history: "Is he not that most
faithful Hubert who so often saved England from the devastation of
the foreigners and restored England to England?" Hubert was, as has
been well said, perhaps the first minister since the Conquest who
made patriotism a principle of policy, though it is easy in the
light of later developments to read into his doings more than he
really intended. But whatever his motives, the results of his
action were clear. He drove away the mercenaries, humbled the
feudal lords, and set limits to the pope's interference. He renewed
respect for law and obedience to the law courts. Even in the
worst days of anarchy the administrative system did not break down,
and the records of royal orders and judicial judgments remain
almost as full in the midst of the civil war as in the more
peaceful days of Hubert's rule. But it was easy enough to issue
proclamations and writs. The difficulty was to get them obeyed, and
the work of Hubert was to ensure that the orders of king and
ministers should really be respected by his subjects. He made many
mistakes. He must share the blame of the failure of the Kerry
campaign, and he was largely responsible for the sorry collapse of
the invasion of Poitou. He neither understood nor sympathised with
Stephen Langton's zeal for the charters. A straightforward,
limited, honourable man, he strove to carry out his rather
old-fashioned conception of duty in the teeth of a thousand
obstacles. He never had a free hand, and he never enjoyed the
hearty support of any one section of his countrymen. Hated by the
barons whom he kept away from power, he alienated the Londoners by
his high-handed violence, and the tax-payers by his heavy
exactions. The pope disliked him, the aliens plotted against him,
and the king, for whom he sacrificed so much, gave him but grudging
support. But the reaction which followed his retirement made many,
who had rejoiced in his humiliation, bitterly regret it.
Three notable enemies of Hubert went off the stage of history
within a few months of his fall. The death of Richard le Grand has
already been recorded. William Marshal, the brother-in-law of the
king, the gallant and successful soldier, the worthy successor of
his great father, came home from Brittany early in 1231. His last
act was to marry his sister, Isabella, to Richard of Cornwall.
Within ten days of the wedding his body was laid beside his father
in the Temple Church at London. In October, 1232, died Randolph of
Blundeville, the last representative of the male stock of the old
line of the Earls of Chester, and long the foremost champion of the
feudal aristocracy against Hubert. The contest between them had
been fought with such chivalry that the last public act of the old
earl was to protect the fallen justiciar from the violence of his
foes. For more than fifty years Randolph had ruled like a king over
his palatine earldom; had, like his master, his struggles with his
own vassals, and had perforce to grant to his own barons
and boroughs liberties which he strove to wrest from his overlord
for himself and his fellow nobles. He was not a great statesman,
and hardly even a successful warrior. Yet his popular personal
qualities, his energy, his long duration of power, and his enormous
possessions, give him a place in history. His memory, living on
long in the minds of the people, inspired a series of ballads which
vied in popularity with the cycle of Robin Hood,1 though,
unfortunately, they have not come down to us. His estates were
divided among his four sisters. His nephew, John the Scot, Earl of
Huntingdon, received a re-grant of the Chester earldom; his
Lancashire lands had already gone to his brother-in-law, William of
Ferrars, Earl of Derby; other portions of his territories went to
his sister, the Countess of Arundel, and the Lincoln earldom,
passing through another sister, Hawise of Quincy, to her
son-in-law, John of Lacy, constable of Chester, raised the chief
vassal of the palatinate to comital rank. None of these heirs of a
divided inheritance were true successors to Randolph. With him died
the last of the great Norman houses, tenacious beyond its fellows,
and surpassing in its two centuries of unbroken male descent the
usual duration of the medieval baronial family. Its collapse made
easier the alien invasion which threatened to undo Hubert's
work.
1 "Ich can rymes of Robyn Hode, and of Randolf
erl of Chestre," Vision of Piers Plowman, i., 167; ii.,
94.
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