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The History of England from the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377)
The Regency Of William Marshal
by Tout, T.F. (M.A.)
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When John died, on October 19, 1216, the
issue of the war between him and the barons was still doubtful. The
arrival of Louis of France, eldest son of King Philip Augustus, had
enabled the barons to win back much of the ground lost after John's
early triumphs had forced them to call in the foreigner. Beyond the
Humber the sturdy north-country barons, who had wrested the Great
Charter from John, remained true to their principles, and had also
the support of Alexander II., King of Scots. The magnates of the
eastern counties were as staunch as the northerners, and the rich
and populous southern shires were for the most part in agreement
with them. In the west, the barons had the aid of Llewelyn ap
Iorwerth, the great Prince of North Wales. While ten earls fought
for Louis, the royal cause was only upheld by six. The towns were
mainly with the rebels, notably London and the Cinque Ports, and
cities so distant as Winchester and Lincoln, Worcester and
Carlisle. Yet the baronial cause excited little general sympathy.
The mass of the population stood aloof, and was impartially
maltreated by the rival armies.
John's son Henry had at his back the chief military resources of
the country; the two strongest of the earls, William Marshal, Earl
of Pembroke, and Randolph of Blundeville, Earl of Chester; the
fierce lords of the Welsh March, the Mortimers, the Cantilupes, the
Cliffords, the Braoses, and the Lacys; and the barons of the West
Midlands, headed by Henry of Neufbourg, Earl of Warwick, and
William of Ferrars, Earl of Derby. This powerful phalanx gave to
the royalists a stronger hold in the west than their opponents had
in any one part of the much wider territory within their sphere of
influence. There was no baronial counterpart to the successful
raiding of the north and east, which John had carried through in
the last months of his life. A baronial centre, like Worcester,
could not hold its own long in the west. Moreover, John had not
entirely forfeited his hereditary advantages. The administrative
families, whose chief representative was the justiciar Hubert de
Burgh, held to their tradition of unswerving loyalty, and joined
with the followers of the old king, of whom William Marshal was the
chief survivor. All over England the royal castles were in safe
hands, and so long as they remained unsubdued, no part of Louis'
dominions was secure. The crown had used to the full its rights
over minors and vacant fiefs. The subjection of the south-west was
assured by the marriage of the mercenary leader, Falkes de
Bréauté, to the mother of the infant Earl of Devon,
and by the grant of Cornwall to the bastard of the last of the
Dunstanville earls. Though Isabella, Countess of Gloucester, John's
repudiated wife, was as zealous as her new husband, the Earl of
Essex, against John's son, Falkes kept a tight hand over Glamorgan,
on which the military power of the house of Gloucester largely
depended. Randolph of Chester was custodian of the earldoms of
Leicester and Richmond, of which the nominal earls, Simon de
Montfort and Peter Mauclerc, were far away, the one ruling
Toulouse, and the other Brittany. The band of foreign adventurers,
the mainstay of John's power, was still unbroken. Ruffians though
these hirelings were, they had experience, skill, and courage, and
were the only professional soldiers in the country.
The vital fact of the situation was that the immense moral and
spiritual forces of the Church remained on the side of the king.
Innocent III. had died some months before John, but his successor,
Honorius III., continued to uphold his policy. The papal legate,
the Cardinal Gualo, was the soul of the royalist cause. Louis and
his adherents had been excommunicated, and not a single English
bishop dared to join openly the foes of Holy Church. The most that
the clerical partisans of the barons could do was to disregard the
interdict and continue their ministrations to the excommunicated
host. The strongest English prelate, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of
Canterbury, was at Rome in disgrace. Walter Grey, Archbishop of
York, and Hugh of Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, were also abroad,
while the Bishop of London, William of Sainte-Mère-Eglise,
was incapacitated by illness. Several important sees, including
Durham and Ely, were vacant. The ablest resident bishop, Peter des
Roches of Winchester, was an accomplice in John's
misgovernment.
The chief obstacle in the way of the royalists had been the
character of John, and the little Henry of Winchester could have
had no share in the crimes of his father. But the dead king had
lately shown such rare energy that there was a danger lest the
accession of a boy of nine might not weaken the cause of monarchy.
The barons were largely out of hand. The war was assuming the
character of the civil war of Stephen's days, and John's
mercenaries were aspiring to play the part of feudal potentates. It
was significant that so many of John's principal supporters were
possessors of extensive franchises, like the lords of the Welsh
March, who might well desire to extend these feudal immunities to
their English estates. The triumph of the crown through such help
might easily have resolved the united England of Henry II. into a
series of lordships under a nominal king.
The situation was saved by the wisdom and moderation of the
papal legate, and the loyalty of William Marshal, who forgot his
interests as Earl of Pembroke in his devotion to the house of
Anjou. From the moment of John's death at Newark, the cardinal and
the marshal took the lead. They met at Worcester, where the tyrant
was buried, and at once made preparations for the coronation of
Henry of Winchester. The ceremony took place at St. Peter's Abbey,
Gloucester, on October 28, from which day the new reign was
reckoned as beginning. The marshal, who had forty-three years
before dubbed the "young king" Henry a knight, then for a second
time admitted a young king Henry to the order of chivalry. When the
king had recited the coronation oath and performed homage to the
pope, Gualo anointed him and placed on his head the plain gold
circlet that perforce did duly for a crown.1 Next day
Henry's supporters performed homage, and before November 1 the
marshal was made justiciar.
1 There is some conflict of evidence on this
point, and Dr. Stubbs, following Wendover, iv., 2, makes Peter of
Winchester crown Henry. But the official account in Fædera,
i., 145, is confirmed by Ann. Tewkesbury, p. 62;
Histoire de G. le Maréchal, lines 15329-32; Hist.
des ducs de Normandie, et des rois d'Angleterre, p. 181, and
Ann. Winchester, p. 83. Wykes, p. 60, and Ann.
Dunstable, p. 48, which confirm Wendover, are suspect by reason
of other errors.
On November 2 a great council met at Bristol. Only four earls
appeared, and one of these, William of Fors, Earl of Albemarle, was
a recent convert. But the presence of eleven bishops showed that
the Church had espoused the cause of the little king, and a throng
of western and marcher magnates made a sufficient representation of
the lay baronage. The chief business was to provide for the
government during the minority. Gualo withstood the temptation to
adopt the method by which Innocent III. had ruled Sicily in the
name of Frederick II. The king's mother was too unpopular and
incompetent to anticipate the part played by Blanche of Castile
during the minority of St. Louis. After the precedents set by the
Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the barons took the matter into their
own hands. Their work of selection was not an easy one. Randolph of
Chester was by far the most powerful of the royalist lords, but his
turbulence and purely personal policy, not less than his excessive
possessions and inordinate palatine jurisdictions, made him
unsuitable for the regency. Yet had he raised any sort of claim, it
would have been hardly possible to resist his pretensions.1
Luckily, Randolph stood aside, and his withdrawal gave the aged
earl marshal the position for which his nomination as justiciar at
Gloucester had already marked him out. The title of regent was as
yet unknown, either in England or France, but the style, "ruler of
king and kingdom," which the barons gave to the marshal, meant
something more than the ordinary position of a justiciar. William's
friends had some difficulty in persuading him to accept the office.
He was over seventy years of age, and felt it would be too great a
burden. Induced at last by the legate to undertake the charge, from
that moment he shrank from none of its responsibilities. The
personal care of the king was comprised within the marshal's
duties, but he delegated that branch of his work to Peter des
Roches.2 These two, with Gualo, controlled the whole policy of
the new reign. Next to them came Hubert de Burgh, John's
justiciar, whomthe marshal very soon restored to that office. But
Hubert at once went back to the defence of Dover, and for some time
took little part in general politics.
1 The fears and hopes of the marshal's friends
are well depicted in Histoire de Guillaume le
Maréchal, lines 15500-15708.
2 The panegyrist of the marshal emphasises
strongly the fact that Peter's charge was a delegation,
ibid., lines 17993-18018.
On November 12, the legate and the regent issued at Bristol a
confirmation of the Great Charter. Some of the most important
articles accepted by John in 1215 were omitted, including the
"constitutional clauses" requiring the consent of the council of
barons for extraordinary taxation. Other provisions, which tied the
hands of the government, were postponed for further consideration
in more settled times. But with all its mutilations the Bristol
charter of 1216 marked a more important moment than even the
charter of Runnymede. The condemnation of Innocent III. would in
all probability have prevented the temporary concession of John
from becoming permanent. Love of country and love of liberty were
doubtless growing forces, but they were still in their infancy,
while the papal authority was something ultimate against which few
Christians dared appeal. Thus the adoption by the free will of the
papal legate, and the deliberate choice of the marshal of the
policy of the Great Charter, converted, as has well been said, "a
treaty won at the point of the sword into a manifesto of peace and
sound government".1 This wise change of policy cut away the ground
from under the feet of the English supporters of Louis. The friends
of the young Henry could appeal to his innocence, to his sacred
unction, and to his recognition by Holy Church. They offered a
programme of limited monarchy, of the redress of grievances, of
vested rights preserved, and of adhesion to the good old traditions
that all Englishmen respected. From that moment the Charter became
a new starting-point in our history.
1 Stubbs, Const. Hist., ii., 21.
In strange contrast to this programme of reform, the aliens, who
had opposed the charter of Runnymede, were among the lords by whose
counsel and consent the charter of Bristol was issued. In its
weakness the new government sought to stimulate the zeal both of
the foreign mercenaries and of the loyal barons by grants and
privileges which seriously entrenched upon the royal authority.
Falkes de Bréauté was confirmed in the custody of a
compact group of six midland shires, besides the earldom of Devon, and
the "county of the Isle of Wight,"1 which he guarded in the
interests of his wife and stepson. Savary de Mauléon, who in
despair of his old master's success had crossed over to Poitou
before John's death, was made warden of the castle of Bristol.
Randolph of Chester was consoled for the loss of the regency by the
renewal of John's recent grant of the Honour of Lancaster which was
by this time definitely recognised as a shire.2
1 Histoire des ducs de Normandie, etc.,
p. 181.
2 Tait, Medieval Manchester and the
Beginnings of Lancashire, p. 180.
The war assumed the character of a crusade. The royalist troops
wore white crosses on their garments, and were assured by the
clergy of certain salvation. The cruel and purposeless ravaging of
the enemy's country, which had occupied John's last months of life,
became rare, though partisans, such as Falkes de
Bréauté, still outvied the French in plundering
monasteries and churches. The real struggle became a war of
castles. Louis endeavoured to complete his conquest of the
south-east by the capture of the royal strongholds, which still
limited his power to the open country. At first the French prince
had some successes. In November he increased his hold on the Home
counties by capturing the Tower of London, by forcing Hertford to
surrender, and by pressing the siege of Berkhampsted. As Christmas
approached the royalists proposed a truce. Louis agreed on the
condition that Berkhampsted should be surrendered, and early in
1217 both parties held councils, the royalists at Oxford and the
barons at Cambridge. There was vague talk of peace, but the war was
renewed, and Louis captured Hedingham and Orford in Essex, and
besieged the castles of Colchester and Norwich. Then another truce
until April 26 was concluded, on the condition that the royalists
should surrender these two strongholds.
Both sides had need to pause. Louis, at the limit of his
resources, was anxious to obtain men and money from France. He was
not getting on well with his new subjects. The eastern counties
grumbled at his taxes. Dissensions arose between the English and
French elements in his host. The English lords resented the grants
and appointments he gave to his countrymen. The French nobles
professed to despise the English as traitors. When Hertford was
taken, Robert FitzWalter demanded that its custody should
be restored to him. Louis roughly told him that Englishmen, who had
betrayed their natural lord, were not to be entrusted with such
charges. It was to little purpose that he promised Robert that
every man should have his rights when the war was over. The
prospects of ending the war grew more remote every day. The
royalists took advantage of the discouragement of their opponents.
The regent was lavish in promises. There should be no inquiry into
bygones, and all who submitted to the young king should be
guaranteed all their existing rights. The result was that a steady
stream of converts began to flow from the camp of Louis to the camp
of the marshal. For the first time signs of a national movement
against Louis began to be manifest. It became clear that his rule
meant foreign conquest.
Louis wished to return to France, but despite the truce he could
only win his way to the coast by fighting. The Cinque Ports were
changing their allegiance. A popular revolt had broken out in the
Weald, where a warlike squire, William of Cassingham,1 soon
became a terror to the French under his nickname of Wilkin of the
Weald. As Louis traversed the disaffected districts, Wilkin fell
upon him near Lewes, and took prisoners two nephews of the Count of
Nevers. On his further march to Winchelsea, the men of the Weald
broke down the bridges behind him, while on his approach the men of
Winchelsea destroyed their mills, and took to their ships as avowed
partisans of King Henry. The French prince entered the empty town,
and had great difficulty in keeping his army alive. "Wheat found
they there," says a chronicler; "in great plenty, but they knew not
how to grind it. Long time were they in such a plight that they had
to crush by hand the corn of which they made their bread. They
could catch no fish. Great store of nuts found they in the town;
these were their finest food."2 Louis was in fact besieged by the
insurgents, and was only released by a force of knights riding down
from London to help him. These troops dared not travel by the
direct road through the Weald, and made their way to Romney through
Canterbury. Rye was strongly held against them and the ships of the
Cinque Ports dominated the sea, so that Louis was still cut off
from his friends at Romney. A relieving fleet was despatched from
Boulogne, but stress of weather kept it for a fortnight at Dover,
while Louis was starving at Winchelsea. At last the French ships
appeared off Winchelsea. Thereupon the English withdrew, and Louis
finding the way open to France returned home.
1 Mr. G.J. Turner has identified Cassingham with
the modern Kensham, between Rolvenden and Sandhurst, in Kent.
2 Histoire des ducs de Normandie, etc.,
p. 183.
A crowd of waverers changed sides. At their head were William
Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, the bastard great-uncle of the little
king, and William, the young marshal, the eldest son of the Earl of
Pembroke. The regent wandered from town to town in Sussex,
receiving the submission of the peasantry, and venturing to
approach as near London as Dorking. The victorious Wilkin was made
Warden of the Seven Hundreds of the Weald. The greatest of the
magnates of Sussex and Surrey, William, Earl Warenne, followed the
example of his tenantry, and made his peace with the king. The
royalists fell upon the few castles held by the barons. While one
corps captured Odiham, Farnham, Chichester, and other southern
strongholds, Falkes de Bréauté overran the Isle of
Ely, and Randolph of Chester besieged the Leicestershire fortress
of Mount Sorrel. Enguerrand de Coucy, whom Louis had left in
command, remained helpless in London. His boldest act was to send a
force to Lincoln, which occupied the town, but failed to take the
castle. This stronghold, under its hereditary warden, the valiant
old lady, Nichola de Camville,1 had already twice withstood a
siege.
1 On Nichola de Camville or de la Hay see M.
Petit-Dutaillis in Mélanges Julien Havet, pp.
369-80.
Louis found no great encouragement in France, for Philip
Augustus, too prudent to offend the Church, gave but grudging
support to his excommunicated son. When, on the eve of the
expiration of the truce, Louis returned to England, his
reinforcements comprised only 120 knights. Among them, however,
were the Count of Brittany, Peter Mauclerc, anxious to press in
person his rights to the earldom of Richmond, the Counts of Perche
and Guînes, and many lords of Picardy, Artois and Ponthieu.
Conscious that everything depended on the speedy capture of the
royal castles, Louis introduced for the first time into England the
trébuchet, a recently invented machine that
cast great missiles by means of heavy counterpoises. "Great was the
talk about this, for at that time few of them had been seen in
France."1 On April 22, Louis reached Dover, where the castle was
still feebly beset by the French. On his nearing the shore, Wilkin
of the Weald and Oliver, a bastard of King John's, burnt the huts
of the French engaged in watching the castle. Afraid to land in
their presence, Louis disembarked at Sandwich. Next day he went by
land to Dover, but discouraged by tidings of his losses, he gladly
concluded a short truce with Hubert de Burgh. He abandoned the
siege of Dover, and hurried off towards Winchester, where the two
castles were being severely pressed by the royalists. But his
progress was impeded by his siege train, and Farnham castle blocked
his way.
1 Histoire des ducs de Normandie, etc.,
p. 188; cf. English Hist. Review, xviii. (1903), 263-64.
Saer de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, joined Louis outside the
walls of Farnham. Saer's motive was to persuade Louis to hasten to
the relief of his castle of Mount Sorrel. The French prince was not
in a position to resist pressure from a powerful supporter. He
divided his army, and while the Earl of Winchester, along with the
Count of Perche and Robert FitzWalter, made their way to
Leicestershire, he completed his journey to Winchester, threw a
fresh force into the castles, and, leaving the Count of Nevers in
charge, hurried to London. There he learnt that Hubert de Burgh at
Dover had broken the truce, and he at once set off to renew the
siege of the stronghold which had so continually baulked his plans.
But little good came of his efforts, and the much-talked-of
trébuchet proving powerless to effect a breach, Louis
had to resign himself to a weary blockade. While he was besieging
Dover, Saer de Quincy had relieved Mount Sorrel, whence he marched
to the help of Gilbert of Ghent, the only English baron whom Louis
ventured to raise to comital rank as Earl of Lincoln. Gilbert was
still striving to capture Lincoln Castle, but Nichola de Camville
had resisted him from February to May. With the help of the army
from Mount Sorrel, the castle and its châtelaine were
soon reduced to great straits.
The marshal saw that the time was come to take the offensive,
and resolved to raise the siege. Having no field army, he
stripped his castles of their garrisons, and gave rendezvous to his
barons at Newark. There the royalists rested three days, and
received the blessing of Gualo and the bishops. They then set out
towards Lincoln, commanded by the regent in person, the Earl of
Chester, and the Bishop of Winchester, whom the legate appointed as
his representative. The strong water defences of the rebel city on
the south made it unadvisable for them to take the direct route
towards it. Their army descended the Trent to Torksey, where it
rested the night of May 19. Early next day, the eve of Trinity
Sunday, it marched in four "battles" to relieve Lincoln Castle.
There were more than 600 knights besieging the castle and
holding the town, and the relieving army only numbered 400 knights
and 300 cross-bowmen. But the barons dared not risk a combat that
might have involved them in the fate of Stephen in 1141. They
retreated within the city and allowed the marshal to open up
communications with the castle. The marshal's plan of battle was
arranged by Peter des Roches, who was more at home in the field
than in the church. The cross-bowmen under Falkes de
Bréauté were thrown into the castle, and joined with
the garrison in making a sally from its east gate into the streets
of the town. While the barons were thus distracted, the marshal
burst through the badly defended north gate. The barons taken in
front and flank fought desperately, but with no success. Falkes'
cross-bowmen shot down their horses, and the dismounted knights
soon failed to hold their own in the open ground about the
cathedral. The Count of Perche was slain by a sword-thrust through
the eyehole of his helmet. The royalists chased the barons down the
steep lanes which connect the upper with the lower town. When they
reached level ground the baronial troops rallied, and once more
strove to reascend the hill. But the town was assailed on every
side, and its land defences yielded with little difficulty. The
Earl of Chester poured his vassals through one of the eastern
gates, and took the barons in flank. Once more they broke, and this
time they rallied not again, but fled through the Wigford suburb
seeking any means of escape. Some obstruction in the Bar-gate, the
southern exit from the city, retarded their flight, and many of the
leaders were captured. The remnant fled to London, thinking that
"every bush was full of marshals," and suffering severely from the
hostility of the peasantry. Only three persons were slain in the
battle, but there was a cruel massacre of the defenceless citizens
after its close. So vast was the booty won by the victors that in
scorn they called the fight the Fair of Lincoln!1
1 For a discussion of the battle, see English
Hist. Review, xviii. (1903), 240-65.
Louis' prospects were still not desperate. The victorious army
scattered, each man to his own house, so that the marshal was in no
position to press matters to extremities. But there was a great
rush to make terms with the victor, and Louis thought it prudent to
abandon the hopeless siege of Dover, and take refuge with his
partisans, the Londoners. Meanwhile the marshal hovered round
London, hoping eventually to shut up the enemy in the capital. On
June 12, the Archbishop of Tyre and three Cistercian abbots, who
had come to England to preach the Crusade, persuaded both parties
to accept provisional articles of peace. Louis stipulated for a
complete amnesty to all his partisans; but the legate declined to
grant pardon to the rebellious clerks who had refused to obey the
interdict, conspicuous among whom was the firebrand Simon Langton,
brother of the archbishop. Finding no compromise possible, Louis
broke off the negotiations rather than abandon his friends. Gualo
urged a siege of London, but the marshal saw that his resources
were not adequate for such a step. Again many of his followers went
home, and the court abode first at Oxford and afterwards at
Gloucester. It seemed as if the war might go on for ever.
Blanche of Castile, Louis' wife, redoubled her efforts on his
behalf. In response to her entreaties a hundred knights and several
hundred men-at-arms took ship for England. Among the knights was
the famous William des Barres, one of the heroes of Bouvines, and
Theobald, Count of Blois. Eustace the Monk, a renegade clerk turned
pirate, and a hero of later romance, took command of the fleet. On
the eve of St. Bartholomew, August 23, Eustace sailed from Calais
towards the mouth of the Thames. Kent had become royalist; the
marshal and Hubert de Burgh held Sandwich, so that the long voyage
up the Thames was the only way of taking succour to Louis. Next day
the old earl remained on shore, but sent out Hubert with the fleet.
The English let the French pass by, and then, manoeuvring for the
weather gage, tacked and assailed them from behind.1 The fight
raged round the great ship of Eustace, on which the chief French
knights were embarked. Laden with stores, horses, and a ponderous
trébuchet, it was too low in the water to manoeuvre
or escape. Hubert easily laid his own vessel alongside it. The
English, who were better used to fighting at sea than the French,
threw powdered lime into the faces of the enemy, swept the decks
with their crossbow bolts and then boarded the ship, which was
taken after a fierce fight. The crowd of cargo boats could offer
little resistance as they beat up against the wind in their retreat
to Calais; the ships containing the soldiers were more fortunate in
escaping. Eustace was beheaded, and his head paraded on a pole
through the streets of Canterbury.
1 This successful attempt of the English fleet
to manoeuvre for the weather gage, that is to secure a position to
the windward of their opponents, is the first recorded instance of
what became the favourite tactics of British admirals. For the
legend of Eustace see Witasse le Moine, ed. Förster
(1891).
The battle of St. Bartholomew's Day, like that of Lincoln a
triumph of skill over numbers, proved decisive for the fortunes of
Louis. The English won absolute control of the narrow seas, and cut
off from Louis all hope of fighting his way back to France. As soon
as he heard of the defeat of Eustace, he reopened negotiations with
the marshal. On the 29th there was a meeting between Louis and the
Earl at the gates of London. The regent had to check the ardour of
his own partisans, and it was only after anxious days of
deliberation that the party of moderation prevailed. On September 5
a formal conference was held on an island of the Thames near
Kingston. On the 11th a definitive treaty was signed at the
archbishop's house at Lambeth.
The Treaty of Lambeth repeated with little alteration the terms
rejected by Louis three months before. The French prince
surrendered his castles, released his partisans from their oaths to
him, and exhorted all his allies, including the King of Scots and
the Prince of Gwynedd, to lay down their arms. In return Henry
promised that no layman should lose his inheritance by reason of
his adherence to Louis, and that the baronial prisoners should be
released without further payment of ransom. London, despite its
pertinacity in rebellion, was to retain its ancient franchises. The
marshal bound himself personally to pay Louis 10,000 marks,
nominally as expenses, really as a bribe to accept these terms. A
few days later Louis and his French barons appeared before the
legate, barefoot and in the white garb of penitents, and were
reconciled to the Church. They were then escorted to Dover, whence
they took ship for France. Only on the rebellious clergy did
Gualo's wrath fall. The canons of St. Paul's were turned out in a
body; ringleaders like Simon Langton were driven into exile, and
agents of the legate traversed the country punishing clerks who had
disregarded the interdict. But Honorius was more merciful than
Gualo, and within a year even Simon received his pardon. The laymen
of both camps forgot their differences, when Randolph of Chester
and William of Ferrars fought in the crusade of Damietta, side by
side with Saer of Winchester and Robert FitzWalter. The
reconciliation of parties was further shown in the marriage of
Hubert de Burgh to John's divorced wife, Isabella of Gloucester, a
widow by the death of the Earl of Essex, and still the foremost
English heiress. On November 6 the pacification was completed by
the reissue of the Great Charter in what was substantially its
final form. The forest clauses of the earlier issues were published
in a much enlarged shape as a separate Forest Charter, which laid
down the great principle that no man was to lose life or limb for
hindering the king's hunting.
It is tempting to regard the defeat of Louis as a triumph of
English patriotism. But it is an anachronism to read the ideals of
later ages into the doings of the men of the early thirteenth
century. So far as there was national feeling in England, it was
arrayed against Henry. To the last the most fervently English of
the barons were steadfast on the French prince's side, and the
triumph of the little king had largely been procured by John's
foreigners. To contemporary eyes the rebels were factious assertors
of class privileges and feudal immunities. Their revolt against
their natural lord brought them into conflict with the sentiment of
feudal duty which was still so strong in faithful minds. And
against them was a stronger force than feudal loyally. From this
religious standpoint the Canon of Barnwell best sums up the
situation: "It was a miracle that the heir of France, who had won
so large a part of the kingdom, was constrained to abandon the
realm without hope of recovering it. It was because the hand of God
was not with him. He came to England in spite of the prohibition of
the Holy Roman Church, and he remained there regardless of its
anathema."
The young king never forgot that he owed his throne to the pope
and his legate. "When we were bereft of our father in tender
years," he declared long afterwards, "when our subjects were turned
against us, it was our mother, the Holy Roman Church, that brought
back our realm under our power, anointed us king, crowned us, and
placed us on the throne."1 The papacy, which had secured a new
hold over England by its alliance with John, made its position
permanent by its zeal for the rights of his son. By identifying the
monarchy with the charters, it skilfully retraced the false step
which it had taken. Under the ægis of the Roman see the national
spirit grew, and the next generation was to see the temper fostered
by Gualo in its turn grow impatient of the papal supremacy. It was
Gualo, then, who secured the confirmation of the charters. Even
Louis unconsciously worked in that direction, for, had he not
gained so strong a hold on the country, there would have been no
reason to adopt a policy of conciliation. We must not read the
history of this generation in the light of modern times, or even
with the eyes of Matthew Paris.
1 Grosseteste, Epistolæ, p. 339.
The marshal had before him a task essentially similar to that
which Henry II had undertaken after the anarchy of Stephen's reign.
It was with the utmost difficulty that the sum promised to Louis
could be extracted from the war-stricken and famished tillers of
the soil. The exchequer was so empty that the Christmas court of
the young king was celebrated at the expense of Falkes de
Bréauté. Those who had fought for the king clamoured
for grants and rewards, and it was necessary to humour them. For
example, Randolph of Blundeville, with the earldom of Lincoln added
to his Cheshire palatinate and his Lancashire Honour, had acquired
a position nearly as strong as that of the Randolph of the reign of
Stephen. "Adulterine castles" had grown up in such numbers that the
new issue of the Charter insisted upon their destruction. Even the
lawful castles were held by unauthorised custodians, who refused to
yield them up to the king's officers. Though Alexander, King of
Scots, purchased his reconciliation with Rome by abandoning
Carlisle and performing homage to Henry, the Welsh remained
recalcitrant. One chieftain, Morgan of Caerleon, waged war against
the marshal in Gwent, and was dislodged with difficulty. During the
war Llewelyn ap Iorwerth conquered Cardigan and Carmarthen from the
marchers, and it was only after receiving assurances that he might
retain these districts so long as the king's minority lasted that
he condescended to do homage at Worcester in March, 1218.
In the following May Stephen Langton came back from exile and
threw the weight of his judgment on the regent's side. Gradually
the worst difficulties were surmounted. The administrative
machinery once more became effective. A new seal was cast for the
king, whose documents had hitherto been stamped with the seal of
the regent. Order was so far restored that Gualo returned to Italy.
He was a man of high character and noble aims, caring little for
personal advancement, and curbing his hot zeal against
"schismatics" in his desire to restore peace to England. His memory
is still commemorated in his great church of St. Andrew, at
Vercelli, erected, it may be, with the proceeds of his English
benefices, and still preserving the manuscript of legends of its
patron saint, which its founder had sent thither from his
exile.
At Candlemas, 1219, the aged regent was smitten with a mortal
illness. His followers bore him up the Thames from London to his
manor of Caversham, where his last hours were disturbed by the
intrigues of Peter of Winchester for his succession, and the
importunity of selfish clerks, clamouring for grants to their
churches. He died on May 14, clad in the habit of the Knights of
the Temple, in whose new church in London his body was buried, and
where his effigy may still be seen. The landless younger son of a
poor baron, he had supported himself in his youth by the spoils of
the knights he had vanquished in the tournaments, where his
successes gained him fame as the model of chivalry. The favour of
Henry, the "young king," gave him political importance, and his
marriage with Strongbow's daughter made him a mighty man in England,
Ireland, Wales, and Normandy. Strenuous and upright, simple and
dignified, the young soldier of fortune bore easily the weight of
office and honour which accrued to him before the death of his
first patron. Limited as was his outlook, he gave himself entirely
to his master-principle of loyally to the feudal lord whom he had
sworn to obey. This simple conception enabled him to subordinate
his interests as a marcher potentate to his duty to the English
monarchy. It guided him in his difficult work of serving with
unbending constancy a tyrant like John. It shone most clearly when
in his old age he saved John's son from the consequences of his
father's misdeeds. A happy accident has led to the discovery in our
own days of the long poem, drawn up in commemoration of his
career1 at the instigation of his son. This important work has
enabled us to enter into the marshal's character and spirit in much
the same way as Joinville's History of St. Louis has made us
familiar with the motives and attributes of the great French king.
They are the two men of the thirteenth century whom we know most
intimately. It is well that the two characters thus portrayed at
length represent to us so much of what is best in the chivalry,
loyalty, statecraft, and piety of the Middle Ages.
1 Histoire de Guillaume le
Maréchal, published by P. Meyer for the Soc. de
l'histoire de France. Petit-Dutaillis, Étude sur Louis
VIII. (1894), and G.J. Turner, Minority of Henry III.,
part i, in Transactions of the Royal Hist. Soc., new ser.,
viii. (1904), 245-95, are the best modern commentaries on the
history of the marshal's regency.
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