THE LEGATION OF PANDULF
1219–1221
Car n’a tele gent en nule terre
Comme il a dedenz Engleterre
De divers corages chascuns;
. . . .
Si la terre n’est defendue
Par l’Apostoire en icest point
. . . .
Dont ne sai je qui la defende.
_Hist. G. le Mar._, ll. 18041–18060.
Ille [Pandulfus] multos bellicos tumultus nondum congelatos
auctoritate sibi tradita tempore legationis viriliter comprimebat.
_Flores Historiarum_, a. 1221.
The new Legate was not a stranger to England. His first recorded visit
there had taken place in 1211. He was then in subdeacon’s orders, and a
member of the household of Pope Innocent III.[519] Of his earlier life
nothing is known, except that he was a Roman by birth;[520] but King
John seems to have already had some indirect knowledge of him, for it
was at John’s request that he and another papal envoy, a brother of the
Temple, were appointed by Innocent to go and confer with the King of
England for the restoration of peace to the English Church.[521] In
the one interview which took place between the commissioners and the
King, Pandulf was the spokesman on the papal side; and John found that
he had mistaken his man. The subdeacon simply stated the terms which
he was instructed to offer to John; a long argument ensued, in which
John was worsted; but he still refused to submit, whereupon Pandulf
told him to his face, in the presence of all the court, that the Pope
meant to subdue him and had already excommunicated him and absolved
his subjects from their allegiance, and that the sentence was to take
effect from that day forth. “If I had not sent for you, I would make
you ride about my realm for a year!” raved the King. “You might as well
say you would hang us,” coolly answered Pandulf; “we look for no other
reward from you”; and when John tried to frighten him by issuing in his
presence orders for the mutilation and execution of sundry prisoners,
one of whom was a priest, the only result was that Pandulf went to
fetch a candle for the avowed purpose of formally excommunicating then
and there any person who should lay hands on this particular victim,
and that John, evidently alarmed lest the candle should be used against
himself as well as against his officers, hurried after the dauntless
subdeacon and surrendered the man to his judgement.[522] Thenceforth
Pandulf became the Pope’s special confidant and assistant in all
matters relating to England and its King. It was he who in January,
1213, carried to Philip Augustus the Pope’s letter charging Philip with
the execution of the sentence of deprivation against John; and it was
he alone who shared with the Pope the secret of the negotiations which
were then already afoot for rendering Philip’s expedition needless.
Four months later he was in England again, receiving, in the Pope’s
behalf, first John’s assent to the identical terms which he had
refused in 1211, and secondly the King’s homage to the Roman See for
the realms of England and Ireland.[523]
After a hurried visit to France, to stop the intended invasion from
thence,[524] Pandulf returned to England, and remained there till
the beginning of the next year. His position during this time is
somewhat difficult to define. His official rank was merely that of
“the Pope’s messenger”;[525] he had never held a commission as Legate;
and the distinction between the two offices was clearly marked when in
September, 1213, an envoy of higher standing in the Curia, Nicolas,
Cardinal Bishop of Tusculum, came clothed with the full powers of a
Legate _a latere_ to receive a repetition of John’s homage to Rome,
and to raise the Interdict as soon as the bishops and clergy should
have been compensated for their losses and wrongs. Certain payments
made to Pandulf on the King’s behalf seem to indicate that he was the
authorized receiver of the earliest instalments of the tribute to
Rome.[526] John had already made a friend of the man who had withstood
him in 1211; the Pope’s clerk was taken into the counsels of the King;
“We have granted to Master Pandulf that a truce be made between ourself
and the Welsh,” wrote John to the Marcher barons in July, 1213;[527]
and when Pandulf went oversea in January, 1214, he went as “the King’s
messenger”[528]--whether to France or to Rome, there is nothing to
shew with certainty; but it is probable that he carried some of the
tribute money to the Pope. He seems to have been back in England by the
end of the year, when the recall of Nicolas of Tusculum left him once
more sole representative of the Pope in England, but still without any
higher title than before. In the spring of 1215 he and the Bishop of
Chichester conjointly were delegated by the Pope to investigate the
merits of a project for dissolving the union between the see of Bath
and the abbey of Glastonbury.[529] In the preamble to the Great Charter
“Master Pandulf, the Pope’s subdeacon and familiar,” stands with the
Master of the Temple between the bishops and the lay magnates in the
list of the King’s advisers; and he is the last named of the three
commissioners (the other two being the Bishop of Winchester and the
Abbot of Reading) to whom the Pope addressed his letter ordering that
the “disturbers of King and kingdom” should be proclaimed excommunicate
by the bishops. If any of these latter failed to obey the order, the
commissioners themselves were empowered to suspend the recalcitrant
prelates; and thus it fell to the lot of Pandulf and Bishop Peter to
proclaim the suspension of Archbishop Stephen.[530]
Some seven or eight weeks before this, Pandulf had been--of course on
the King’s recommendation--elected to the bishopric of Norwich;[531]
but no steps towards his consecration were taken for more than six
years. Shortly after the middle of September, 1215, he seems to have
gone to Rome on a mission from John, who wrote to the Pope that
“although Master Pandulf is most useful to us in England, inasmuch as
he labours faithfully and devotedly for the honour of the Roman Church
and of ourself and our whole realm, yet we send him to your Holiness
because we can trust no one else to explain the state of ourself and
our realm so well as he can do it.”[532] We find no further trace of
Pandulf for nearly two years. It is doubtful whether he had returned
to England before John’s death; Gualo had been residing there as
Legate since May, 1216, and the subdeacon’s presence was therefore no
longer necessary for the interests of either Pope or King. In July,
1218, he was at Rome, acting as notary to the Pope.[533] On 12th
September Honorius appointed him to the office which Gualo had just
resigned;[534] and on 2nd December he was formally welcomed as Legate
in S. Paul’s cathedral in London.[535]
Pandulf had well earned his promotion; and the special appropriateness
of his appointment as Legate in England was obvious. His qualifications
for the post may be summed up in an adaptation of the words in which
John had commended him to Honorius: there was no one in the Roman Curia
who could be trusted to understand and manage the affairs of John’s
heir and of his realm so well as this man whom King and Pope alike had
found by experience to be “most useful, faithful, and devoted” to the
interests of both. As Legate, Pandulf came to his task in far less
difficult circumstances than Gualo had done. Even when he set out from
Rome, however, there must have been a general consciousness that the
new Legate would ere long have to take upon him another charge, with
which his predecessor had never been burdened. The selection of an
English noble, instead of the legal representative of the overlord of
England, as governor of King and kingdom in 1216 had been occasioned
by circumstances which in 1218 had ceased to exist. There was now no
invader to expel, no rebellion to subdue, no need for a warrior-regent:
and there was also no man among the baronage clearly marked out for the
regent’s office as the Marshal had been by his personal qualities and
by the universal estimation of his fellow barons. It is only fair to
the English magnates to say that there are no indications of rivalry
among them for the reversion of the regent’s office; but there can be
no doubt that, as the Marshal himself foresaw, the appointment of any
one of them as his successor must inevitably have led to jealousy and
discord, and that the only person who could safely take the foremost
place in the government after him was the representative of the
Apostolic See. The matter might indeed not have been settled without
difficulty, had its settlement been postponed till after the Marshal’s
death. His forethought and his influence averted the danger, and
from the day when he transferred the custody of the King to Pandulf
at Reading the Legate was recognized as chief among the guardians of
little Henry and his realm.
[Sidenote: 1219]
Pandulf’s supremacy, however, was of a different character from that of
the Earl Marshal. Theoretically, it was more absolute, for the powers
which had appertained respectively to the Marshal and to Gualo were
united in his person; he was at once the elected regent of the realm
and the representative of its overlord. But practically his rule was
less absolute, because he had the good sense to recognize from the
outset that the direction of the entire home and foreign policy of
England, and of its internal government, was a charge too great for a
foreign ecclesiastic to undertake single-handed. He did not assume the
title of “ruler of King and kingdom”; and he shared the functions of
that office with the Justiciar and the Bishop of Winchester. He took
but little part in the routine of administrative business; he is seldom
found attesting royal letters; he left such matters to Hubert and
Peter. From the very beginning of his regency, however--even before the
death of the Marshal--he claimed an exclusive right of supreme control
over one department of royal administration: the treasury. This appears
from some letters written by him from the west of England to the
treasurer Eustace de Fauconberg and the vice-chancellor Ralf de Neville
in London, in the spring of the year 1219.[536] Soon after the council
at Reading, Pandulf went to reside for some weeks first at Cirencester,
and afterwards at the abbey of Lantony at Gloucester. On 30th April
he wrote from Cirencester to Eustace and Ralf conjointly: “By our
authority as Legate we lay upon you strict injunctions to give all
attention and diligence to the business of the Exchequer; to deposit
what money you can get in the house of the Temple in London, and to pay
nothing of it out to anybody without our special command and licence;
and we strictly forbid that the seal be withdrawn from the Exchequer
at the bidding of anyone.”[537] At the same time he wrote a separate
letter to Ralf, ordering him “not to withdraw from the Exchequer with
the seal at anyone’s bidding, because the proceedings of the Exchequer
and the advantage of the King would be hindered thereby.”[538] On 10th
May he “warned and exhorted” Ralf to “attend faithfully and devotedly
to the King’s business, and especially the business of the Exchequer
which is at present imminent.”[539] In subsequent letters to Ralf he
emphatically reiterated his orders to store up money in the Temple
and to let none of it be paid out “without our knowledge and command”;
on one occasion giving as a reason that “as you well know, the King
is burdened with many debts.”[540] On 16th May he so far relaxed his
injunction to Ralf about not quitting the Exchequer as to give him
leave “the holy blissful Martyr for to seek,”[541] if he wished it,
and if there was nothing that needed to be done at the Exchequer;
“but,” he added, “make haste back, and deposit the King’s seal under
your own in the Temple till you return”; and on 26th May he again told
the vice-chancellor not to leave the Exchequer “at the bidding of any
man.”[542]
It is not certain whether the seal referred to in these letters is
the King’s great seal or its duplicate the seal of the Exchequer.
Nominally, the custody of both these seals appertained to the
Chancellor; but since the latter years of Henry II a large part of
the Chancellor’s duties, including the keeping of the great seal,
had been usually delegated to a vice-chancellor; and the whole of
them were left in the capable and trusty hands of Ralf de Neville
throughout the greater part of the chancellorship of Richard de Marsh,
which lasted from 1214 till 1226.[543] The Exchequer seal was never
permitted to leave the precincts of the Exchequer, where it was kept
by the Chancellor “through a deputy,”[544] who doubtless might be,
but was not necessarily, identical with the vice-chancellor. With
the paying of money out of the Exchequer neither Chancellor nor
vice-chancellor, as such, had anything to do; this was a part of
the business of the treasurer and chamberlains. It seems probable
that the vice-chancellor may have been also one of the chamberlains
acting at the Exchequer at this time.[545] It is certain that he was
in Pandulf’s fullest confidence;[546] and he may thus in a twofold
or even threefold capacity--as keeper of the King’s great seal, as
the Chancellor’s deputy having the custody of the Exchequer seal,
and as chamberlain--have supported Pandulf’s efforts to maintain, as
a special prerogative attached to the regent’s office, the right of
exclusive control over the Exchequer.[547] That there was some matter
under discussion between the Legate, the Justiciar, the treasurer,
and the vice-chancellor, is clear from a letter written by Hubert de
Burgh on 15th May to Eustace and Ralf in which he says the Legate
“sent us word that he will labour altogether by our counsel for God’s
honour and the King’s advantage; and we sent him word that if he
will acquiesce in your advice, we will acquiesce in his counsel, for
God’s honour and the advantage of the King.”[548] The constitution
of the Exchequer underwent great changes in the course of the next
fifteen years; and some of these changes may have owed their origin to
Pandulf, who perhaps made, or attempted to make, some experiments in
the re-organization of this department of the government, possibly with
a view to checking what he may have regarded as extravagance on the
Justiciar’s part in the disposal of the King’s money. Some months later
we find him exhorting Hubert also to “take effectual steps concerning
the business of the Exchequer”;[549] and four years later one of the
charges brought against Hubert was that of having been “a waster of the
King’s treasure.”[550] There is, however, no means of ascertaining what
really lay behind Pandulf’s mysterious orders to the vice-chancellor.
If the matter was one which involved a conflict between the authority
of the regent and that of the Justiciar, it was probably compromised,
or at least decided by an amicable agreement; it evidently led to no
subsequent friction in the council of three which virtually governed
England throughout Pandulf’s legation, and in which, while the foremost
place belonged by a double right to the Legate-regent, the second
belonged by long-established constitutional tradition to the Justiciar.
[Sidenote: 1201–1217]
Hubert de Burgh’s reputation as a statesman had yet to be made; but a
career of distinction in more ways than one already lay behind him. His
origin is absolutely unknown. The surname of which he and his brothers
seem to be the earliest bearers mentioned in history represents,
no doubt, the birthplace of one of their ancestors, probably their
father;[551] but whether that place was Peterborough, or Brough in
Westmorland, or one of the many Burghs and Burys in England or of
the almost as numerous “Bourgs” in the continental dominions of the
Angevin house, there is nothing to shew. In the early years of John’s
reign Hubert’s brother William played some part in the affairs of the
Anglo-Norman March in Ireland.[552] {1201–1205} Hubert himself was in
1201 chamberlain to John,[553] and entrusted with the wardenship of the
Welsh Marches.[554] At the close of 1202 he was constable of Falaise,
and had charge of the captive Arthur of Brittany, whom he saved from
John’s cruelty chiefly, it seems, out of regard for the interests of
John himself.[555] In 1204 he was constable of Chinon; he held it
against the forces of Philip Augustus for twelve months, and when at
last--long after the rest of the old Angevin lands were lost--its walls
were so shattered that further defence became impossible, he sallied
forth at the head of his men, fighting desperately, and was only made
prisoner when disabled by a severe wound.[556] On his release he
returned to his duties as chamberlain; and he was also sheriff of six
counties at various times during the next eight or nine years.[557]
Early in 1214 John appointed him seneschal of Poitou,[558] whence
he returned in the following April with some troops for the King’s
service;[559] shortly afterwards all the King’s subjects from over sea
who obeyed his summons to come and help him against the barons were
instructed to place themselves under Hubert’s orders.[560] In June
Hubert became chief Justiciar of England.[561] For the exercise of the
Justiciar’s ordinary functions he had little scope during the next
two years; it was as constable of Dover castle that he rendered his
most important services to John and to John’s youthful successor. From
May, 1216, till August, 1217, he was practically absorbed in one task,
the defence of Dover; and although the account of the sea fight on S.
Bartholomew’s day given by an historian of the next generation,[562]
which ascribes the entire credit of that decisive victory to Hubert
alone, is very far from being borne out by contemporary and impartial
authorities,[563] he undoubtedly shewed himself on that day as brave
and capable on board ship as he had so often proved himself on land.
Thus he passed from the military to the political stage of his career
supported by the well-earned respect and goodwill of all parties in the
realm.
[Sidenote: 1198–1215]
The Bishop of Winchester’s position at the council-table was peculiar.
He had no official title and no specific functions in the civil
administration of the kingdom; his connexion with the government was
a purely personal one. A donjon of fourteenth century construction
overlooking a hamlet built on the slope of a hill with a little stream
flowing round its foot, some twelve kilometres south of Poitiers,
is in all likelihood the successor of a castle from which Peter des
Roches and his family derived their surname. In his youth Peter had
been a knight in the service of Richard Cœur-de-Lion;[564] and he
must have shown great aptitude for the career of a warrior, since,
long after his helmet had been replaced by a mitre, he was regarded
as “learned in the military art,” and proved himself worthy of his
reputation when he acted as “the master counsellor” of the English
host on the day of the Fair of Lincoln. When and why he became a
clerk there is nothing to shew; but he seems to have done so shortly
before or soon after Richard’s death. In June, 1198, he was Richard’s
chamberlain;[565] a year later he was a “beloved clerk” of John’s,
and treasurer of Poitou.[566] In the favour of Richard’s successor he
rose rapidly. On 3rd January, 1202, he was made dean of S. Martin’s
at Angers;[567] but his time was spent mostly in England as a clerk
in the royal household;[568] and though he still bore the title of
treasurer of Poitou at the beginning of 1205,[569] he must have lost
the profits of all his continental dignities and offices when the
Angevin lands passed into the hands of Philip of France. For these
he was indemnified by grants of various ecclesiastical revenues
and offices in England;[570] and before February 5th, 1205, he was
elected Bishop of Winchester,[571] the see which ranked next to the
two archbishoprics in wealth and importance. He of course owed his
election to the influence of the King; a part of the chapter had
chosen another candidate, against whom Peter had to plead at Rome for
confirmation; his pleading was successful, and he was consecrated by
Innocent III on 25th September.[572] Peter was the one bishop who
remained in England throughout the years of interdict. In 1210, during
the King’s absence in Ireland, he joined with the Justiciar Geoffrey
FitzPeter and the Earl of Chester in an expedition into Wales which
prevented a threatened Welsh invasion.[573] In October, 1213, Geoffrey
FitzPeter died; and on 1st February, 1214, John appointed the Bishop
of Winchester chief Justiciar of England.[574] The King’s choice of
a foreigner for this office is said to have caused much grumbling
among the barons,[575] the more so as John was on the eve of quitting
the realm for a military expedition to Aquitaine, so that during his
absence, which lasted eight months, Peter was practically viceroy of
England. One chronicler asserts that Peter “by misusing his power
turned the wrath of the barons against the King”;[576] but there is no
proof that the country was any worse administered during those eight
months than it had been for several years previously, and nothing to
indicate that Peter was guilty of personal tyranny or extortion, or, in
short, that he did anything worse than carry on the King’s government
as he found it. Nor is it by any means clear that he was really
disliked or distrusted, except by one section of the baronage--the
section whose lofty patriotism and keen sense of nationality were
soon to be displayed in their scheme for the annexation of England to
France. The substitution of Hubert for Peter as Justiciar at Midsummer,
1215, may have taken place in deference to the King’s other advisers;
but there is no evidence that such was the case; nothing is known about
the circumstances of Hubert’s appointment; and it is quite possible
that Peter may have resigned the justiciarship of his own accord.
[Sidenote: 1216]
From that time forth Peter never held office as a minister of state.
He never had done so, save during those sixteen months of his
justiciarship in 1214–1215.[577] He had, however, received another
token of John’s confidence; he had been entrusted with the education of
John’s heir. We have seen that in October, 1216, the Earl Marshal, with
the assent of the other loyal barons, bestowed on Peter the important
charge of the little King’s person, expressly on the ground that he had
already been the child’s “master” and proved himself “a very good” one,
who had “brought him up carefully and well.” As Henry was but just nine
years old when these words were spoken,[578] we must infer from them
that he had been under Peter’s care from a very tender age. Probably
John had placed him in the bishop’s household as early as it was
possible to do so, somewhat as Henry II had placed his eldest son, when
quite a young child, in the household of Thomas the Chancellor.[579]
The Marshal and the magnates did only what was natural and right when
they replaced their young sovereign under the charge of his former
tutor. The commission which Peter received from them, however, involved
more than the boy’s education; it expressly included the responsibility
for his personal safety. The man to whom was confided a charge so
weighty as this obviously needed no official title to vindicate for
him a prominent place among the counsellors by whose advice England
was to be governed in his royal pupil’s name; and the active and
versatile Southerner, experienced and efficient alike in matters of
war, of administration, of finance, and of well-nigh every kind of
public business, secular and ecclesiastical, was a colleague whose help
the official governors of the realm would have been foolish indeed to
reject or undervalue on the score of his foreign birth. They and he
seem to have worked together without perceptible friction throughout
the regency of the Marshal. The sharp words which passed between
Peter and the regent shortly before the latter’s death, and Peter’s
unseemly behaviour to the younger Marshal and the Legate next day,
probably resulted from a misunderstanding on the part of the bishop.
He evidently thought that the proposal to appoint a new “guardian of
King and Kingdom” and the symbolical delivery of the King into the
hands of Pandulf were meant to deprive himself of his precious charge.
There was, however, no such intention. Pandulf gave Peter the rebuke
which his violence deserved, but immediately replaced Henry under his
care.[580]
[Sidenote: 1218–1219]
For the first six months of Pandulf’s regency the chronicles are blank,
so far as the internal history of England is concerned. Throughout
those months, however, one man was openly setting the government at
defiance. In December, 1216, the royal castles of Rockingham and
Sauvey, with the important Forest jurisdictions attached to them,[581]
had been committed by the Earl Marshal to the custody of William de
Fors, the titular Count of Aumale[582] (or “Albemarle,” as it seems to
have been commonly called in England), “that he might dwell in them
with his men until his own lands, which the King’s enemies had occupied
during the war, should be restored to him.”[583] The actual custodian
of Sauvey, Geoffrey de Serland, was apparently somewhat unwilling
to hand the place over to the young count;[584] and as Geoffrey’s
loyalty is unquestioned, his reluctance was probably caused by some
doubts either of William’s loyalty, or of his fitness for the charge
of such an important post. If so, these doubts were well founded.
On 11th February, 1218, William, having received restitution of his
own lands, was bidden to deliver up Rockingham and Sauvey to another
custodian.[585] This order was not obeyed; and a contemporary writer
asserts that the Earl Marshal before his death “greatly repented”
of having put these castles into the young count’s hands, “because
of the complaints which arose out of the ill-doings of the said
count and his officers who dwelt there and wrought serious injuries
to the people of the district, both rich and poor.”[586] For some
unexplained reason, however, no further steps seem to have been taken
in the matter till six months after the Marshal’s death. Then, on
30th November, 1219, a lengthy indictment against Aumale was issued
in the form of letters patent to the barons, knights, and freeholders
of the five counties--Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Cumberland, Rutland,
Leicestershire, and Yorkshire--in which the bulk of his possessions
lay. Count William was not only detaining, against the royal will
and command, certain lands and castles of the King’s which had been
placed in his charge (to wit, Rockingham and Sauvey), but was also
fortifying and victualling them in the King’s defiance, although a
day had actually been set--“to which he paid no heed”--for him to
surrender them to the King in person. He was also holding tournaments;
more especially he had lately held and attended one at Brackley,
contrary to the King’s express orders, and regardless of a sentence of
excommunication passed upon him by the Legate. He was therefore to be
avoided as an excommunicate and a rebel; the persons addressed were
warned, on pain of condign punishment, not to assist him in fortifying
Sauvey, but to be ready to take action against him in whatever way they
should be directed by future letters from the King; and the sheriffs
of the five counties were ordered to proclaim him excommunicate.[587]
Strangely enough, neither in record nor chronicle do we find any
further mention of William of Aumale till the following April {1220},
when an order addressed to him for forty bucks to be sent to the King
at Westminster shows that he was again recognized as warden of a royal
Forest, which can only have been that of Rockingham or Sauvey;[588]
and his next appearance is in the middle of June, when he was one of
the sureties for King Henry’s fulfilment of a treaty with the King of
Scots.[589] He seems to have been absolved on condition of taking the
Cross[590] and of surrendering the castles and setting forth on his
crusade within a given period. Such an arrangement would serve, for the
time being, the purposes of Count and Legate alike. William remained
in possession; Pandulf avoided, or at least staved off for a while,
the responsibility of taking forcible measures against a man whom the
Marshal had apparently deemed it prudent to treat with forbearance.
[Sidenote: 1220]
A like forbearance was exercised towards the Justiciar of Ireland,
Geoffrey de Marsh. Shortly before the Marshal’s death Geoffrey appears
to have announced his intention of going on Crusade; {1219} and the
Council seized the opportunity thus afforded them to insist that
before he went, he must come to England to perform his homage to the
King, and confer with them touching the state of affairs in Ireland.
For this purpose they gave him on 23rd April a safe-conduct till All
Saints’ day; and they arranged that during his absence from Ireland
the Archbishop of Dublin, who had been his colleague in the office of
Justiciar during the past twelve months, should take sole charge of the
March.[591] The Archbishop was himself anxious to go to England for an
interview with the King; and as Geoffrey delayed his departure, he at
length wrote and asked permission to do so.[592] His request seems to
have crossed with some royal letters issued on 22nd September, ordering
that his appointment as chief Justiciar should take effect from
Candlemas next, and that by that date Geoffrey should be in England
without fail;[593] and this order Geoffrey was just preparing to obey
when it was followed by a warm assent to the Archbishop’s proposed
visit, which the King’s advisers said “would be most welcome for many
reasons.” On this Geoffrey was disposed to make the Archbishop’s
impending departure from Ireland a reason for again deferring his own;
the Archbishop, however, besought the King not to let him do so, but
to bid him “commit the custody of the land, according as the Council
may provide, to some other man.”[594] The Archbishop was certainly
in England in the summer of 1220; but there is no sign of Geoffrey’s
presence there at Candlemas. Summoned again, this time to meet the King
and Council at Nottingham on 1st June, he at last came over, but was
unavoidably prevented from being at Nottingham on the appointed day,
and begged that a later date might be fixed on which he might “lay
before the King and council the affairs of the King’s land in Ireland,
and”--thus he wrote to his “very dear friend” Hubert de Burgh--“they
may be settled by the counsel of yourself and other of the King’s
faithful men and of our friends.”[595]
The settlement took the form of a convention between the King and
Geoffrey, drawn up at Oxford on 11th August, in presence of the Legate
and the Archbishop of Dublin, as well as Peter des Roches, Hubert
de Burgh, and other members of the royal council. The Justiciar is
in future to answer at the King’s Exchequer in Dublin for escheats,
wards, fines, gifts, tallages, reliefs, and aids, from Ireland; and
the proceeds of all these, after they have been accounted for at the
Exchequer, are to be rendered to the King at his command. Out of the
assessed revenue of Ireland, and its “reasonable perquisites” other
than those above mentioned, the Justiciar is to maintain the garrisons
of the King’s land and castles in Ireland; the garrisons to be such as
shall be determined by the advice of Archbishop Henry, Thomas FitzAdam,
and Richard de Burgh. The surplus of these revenues and perquisites
shall be accounted for at the Dublin Exchequer by the view of these
three persons; and clerks of the King, appointed for the purpose, shall
keep a counter-roll of all these things. The Justiciar shall appoint as
constables of the King’s castles loyal and fit men who shall swear to
keep the castles faithfully and safely for the King, so that in case of
the Justiciar’s capture, or death, or misconduct, the castles shall be
safe; and these constables shall give hostages for their fidelity to
the Archbishop of Dublin and the Earl Marshal, and shall also send to
the King, through the Archbishop, charters of fealty. The Justiciar
gave his two sons as hostages; the Earl Marshal stood pledge for him;
and he himself further pledged the whole of his lands, to fall in to
the King and the Marshal respectively (he held some of each), in case
of his failure to keep faith. He also took an oath to keep all these
promises, on pain of being excommunicated by the Archbishop of Dublin
in case of breaking them; and as he had left his seal in Ireland for
legal purposes there, this writing was at his request sealed with the
seals of his brother William and of the Archbishop of Dublin, until he,
Geoffrey, could put his own seal to it.[596]
From this document it must be inferred that nothing worse than
mismanagement was proved against Geoffrey. His mismanagement however
had clearly reached a point at which any sovereign of full age, and
in a position to enforce his commands, would have put an end to it
by summarily dismissing Geoffrey from his office. But the guardians
of Henry III knew that they were not in a position to enforce the
dismissal of the Justiciar whom Henry’s father had left in charge of
the March in Ireland. Geoffrey was not willing to resign because he was
not prepared to render an account of his stewardship. If they issued a
direct order for his supersession it was highly probable that he would
set them and their order at defiance, and that he would be supported
in his defiance by the wardens of the royal castles who owed their
appointments to him. Henry could not go, as John had gone, with an
armed force at his back, to settle matters in Ireland for himself; nor
could anyone in England be sent to do so in his stead. Should force
be needed to subdue Geoffrey, the task of subduing him could only be
committed to some of the barons of the March; and to commit it to any
of these would be to plunge the whole March into a civil war which
might result in the complete destruction of the King’s authority there.
The case against Geoffrey was clearly not strong enough to justify
Pandulf and his colleagues in taking measures which involved such a
risk. The course which they took in giving Geoffrey another chance
of redeeming his errors, while hedging him round with the strongest
moral restraints that could be devised to prevent a repetition of those
errors, was at once more politic and more just.
Pandulf’s most congenial sphere of action was diplomacy; and at the
outset of his legatine career he was called upon to exercise his
diplomatic gifts on a readjustment of the relations between the Kings
of England and Scotland. In 1218 Alexander of Scotland--seemingly with
the knowledge and assent of the English government--sent to the Pope
a copy of the treaty which has been made between his father and John
in 1209, and requested that Honorius would by his apostolic authority
either confirm or annull it, as should seem to him best. Honorius
committed the decision of the matter to Pandulf,[597] who was then on
his way to England {Nov.}. Pandulf, after studying the text of the
document,[598] {1219} appointed a day for a formal discussion of the
questions at issue between the parties, in his presence, at Norham
on 2nd August, 1219.[599] Alexander appeared in person; Henry was
represented by a proctor. The discussion ended in an agreement that on
the morrow of All Souls’ day another meeting should take place before
the Legate, wheresoever he might be, “to treat concerning peace between
the two Kings; and if peace cannot then be attained, the cause shall
be proceeded with according to law.” Where this second meeting was
held we know not, nor by what means peace was “then attained”; but it
certainly was attained: “We are coming back at once” wrote Pandulf, in
the triumph of his successful mediation, to Peter des Roches, “for, as
Stephen de Segrave” (King Henry’s proctor) “and Master Robert of Arènes
may have told you by word of mouth, our lord the King’s matters with
the King of Scotland are by God’s grace now happily settled.”[600]
[Sidenote: 1219]
What these “matters” were is nowhere stated. Later indications,
however, point to a probability that all these obscure proceedings
resulted in a ratification of the treaty as a whole, but with a
modification of one article. William the Lion had given the wardship
and marriage of his two daughters, Margaret and Isabel, to John, with
fifteen thousand marks which were, seemingly, intended to form their
dowries. The only copy of the treaty of Norham which we possess says
nothing more on the subject than this; but from other sources we
have reason to infer the existence in the original text of a further
stipulation, that the elder girl, Margaret, was to become the wife of
John’s heir, or if the boy should not live long enough, of the next
heir, the baby Richard; and also of a formal surrender, made on the
express condition of this marriage, of all the Scot King’s claims
upon Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland.[601] When this
treaty was made, in August 1209, Henry’s age was one year and ten
months; Richard’s was seven months. Margaret of Scotland was fourteen
years old at the least.[602] By 1218 Margaret’s brother and Henry’s
guardians must all alike have begun to feel that this clause as it
stood was doomed to prove impracticable. Henry’s great-grandfather
Geoffrey of Anjou had, indeed, at the age of fifteen, married a woman
ten years older than himself; and the difference of age between Henry
II and Eleanor was probably not much less. But Eleanor was Duchess of
Aquitaine, and Geoffrey’s bride was heiress of Normandy and England;
while Margaret could bring to her husband nothing beyond her share
of the fifteen thousand marks. The guardians of the reigning King of
England might fairly expect to have no difficulty in finding for him
in due time a matrimonial alliance fraught with greater advantages,
personal and political, than were offered by a marriage under these
circumstances with a sister of his own vassal; and Henry himself, when
old enough to decide, was almost certain to repudiate the engagement
so lightly made for him by his father. On the other hand, unless some
steps were taken in anticipation of this contingency, Scotland might
find that she had given England fifteen thousand marks for nothing:
the non-fulfilment of this unlucky clause would invalidate the whole
treaty, and might lead to a rupture between the two countries, which
both parties desired to avoid. After Henry’s final coming of age in
1227, we are told, he had to give the King of Scots two hundred pounds
worth of land for the quit-claim of the three northern counties,
“because the former agreements[603] were not observed”--that is,
because Henry had not married Margaret.[604] This compensation for his
failure to marry her may have been agreed upon between the two Kings
when she was betrothed to Hubert de Burgh in 1220 or 1221. Possibly,
however, and even more probably, it may have been settled in Pandulf’s
presence in November, 1219.
From Scotland the Legate turned to Wales. Throughout the winter of
1219–1220 he was in the west of England, negotiating with Llywelyn
for the settlement of a dispute between the Welsh prince and Hugh
de Mortimer about certain manors on the Welsh border.[605] On 2nd
December Llywelyn was invited, or summoned, to meet the Legate at
Worcester to discuss the matter on 7th January, 1220.[606] The King’s
letter, however, contained a summons to answer complaints as well as
to make them; and it may have been for this reason that Llywelyn was
unwilling to obey it. At his request Pandulf postponed the meeting
till the octave of Candlemas.[607] {1220} It seems to have had a
successful result thus far, that Llywelyn was induced to refrain from
open hostilities throughout the spring. On Rogation Monday, 4 May, he
met the King, the Legate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop
of Winchester, and the Justiciar, in conference at Shrewsbury,[608]
and gave what was understood on the English side as a promise that
he would surrender the lands in dispute between himself and Hugh de
Mortimer.[609] An attempt was also made to check the perennial strife
between the men of the Welsh prince and those of the English Earl in
Pembroke, by a truce on the understanding that the Marshal and the
other Marcher lords “should be restored to their rights” before 1st
August.[610] On the strength of these promises David, Llywelyn’s eldest
son by Joan, was formally taken under the King’s protection, and the
subject princes of Wales were bidden in the King’s name to be loyal to
both Llywelyn and David.[611]
[Sidenote: 1220]
From Shrewsbury King, Legate, and council hastened to London for an
important public ceremony. Early in April the Legate and the Primate
had received letters from the Pope ordering that Henry “should be a
second time raised to the office of king, with due solemnity, according
to the custom of the realm; because his first coronation, on account of
the disturbed condition of his realm, had been performed less solemnly
than was right and fitting, and in another place than that which the
usage of the kingdom required.” This, of course, meant that the boy was
to be re-crowned at Westminster, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Stephen was delighted, “for he loved the King dearly on account of his
innocency.” He and Pandulf agreed that the ceremony should take place
on Whit-Sunday, 17th May, and all the prelates and nobles were summoned
to be present.[612] On the preceding day the young King himself had
another solemn function to perform. Henry came of a family who for two
hundred years past had been known as “great builders”; he was a lad
of refined, artistic temperament, as well as of a pious disposition;
and it seems that he had already undertaken the work which was to be
the great architectural glory of his reign, the rebuilding of the
abbey church of Westminster. On Whitsun Eve he laid the first stone of
the new Lady Chapel.[613] Next morning for the last time a king was
crowned in the old church of S. Edward the Confessor. In Pandulf’s
presence Henry renewed under the dictation of Archbishop Stephen the
oath which he had sworn in Gualo’s presence at Gloucester--to protect
the Church of God, and to preserve inviolate the peace of both clergy
and people and the good laws of the realm; then the Archbishop placed
in his hands the insignia of the regal office, and set upon his head
“the crown of the most holy King Edward.” “And this crowning of the
King was done with such great peacefulness and splendour, that the
oldest men among the nobles of England who were present asserted that
they never remembered any of his predecessors being crowned amid such
concord and tranquillity.”[614]
[Sidenote: 1205–1208]
Concord and tranquillity did indeed, to all outward seeming, reign at
that moment over all the dominions of the English Crown, except the
Duchy of Aquitaine. One of the most difficult of the many difficult
problems with which the regency had to deal was the problem of how to
retain Poitou and Gascony for Henry. The heritage of his grandmother
Eleanor had descended to him almost complete. Philip Augustus had
never made any attempt to conquer Gascony; he had seized Poitou,
but the greater part of it had been regained by John in 1214 and
left in his possession by the terms of the truce with which the war
between him and Philip had ended. John’s seneschal in Gascony at that
time was one of his chamberlains, Geoffrey de Neville[615]; another
chamberlain--Hubert de Burgh--soon became seneschal of Poitou.[616]
At the end of the year 1214 or the beginning of the next Geoffrey de
Neville was succeeded by a baron of Saintonge, Reginald de Pons;[617]
in June 1215 Hubert de Burgh became Justiciar of England; before that
year closed, the seneschalship of Poitou was united with that of
Gascony in the hands of Reginald[618]; and thenceforth the two offices
were always granted together and became practically one. Reginald
resigned it a few months after John’s death, and was succeeded by
Archbishop William of Bordeaux.[619] A year later William gave it up
likewise, and in May 1218 Geoffrey de Neville was again sent across the
sea to be Seneschal of Poitou and Gascony.[620] Reginald and William
had resigned ostensibly for the same reason--because they wanted to
go to the Holy Land. Possibly the layman and the prelate may both of
them have been glad of an excuse for ridding themselves of an extremely
disagreeable office. The loyalty--such as it was--of Poitou and Gascony
to the English Crown was of very recent growth; it had sprung up since
the expulsion of the Angevins from their other continental dominions.
The one persistent political aim of the men of the South was to escape
as much as possible from all external control, no matter whence it
came. Their land was full of thriving cities and towns, each with a
highly developed administrative organization of its own, almost like
so many miniature republics; and of high-spirited, hot-tempered barons
who were perpetually quarrelling among themselves. Moreover, towns
and barons were mutually jealous of one another; and all were alike
jealous of any interference with their respective privileges, corporate
or individual, on the part of a higher power. They were also all alike
shrewd enough to see that their chances of independence were greater
under the rule of a sovereign beyond the sea than under the direct rule
of the King of France. But they were also, all alike, fully alive to
the advantages of their position between two rival overlords; and the
possibility of some turn in Aquitanian politics which might furnish a
plea, an excuse, or a temptation for French intervention was a danger
never absent from the minds of Henry’s counsellors in their dealings
with his transmarine dominions.
Besides Poitou and Gascony, the Duchy of Aquitaine included four
counties whose rulers owed homage and obedience to the Duke as their
suzerain: Angoulême, La Marche, Limoges, and Périgord. Two of these
stood, during the early years of the thirteenth century, in relations
to each other and to their common overlord which gave them a special
importance in the politics of the Duchy. The county of Angoulême was
the heritage of Queen Isabel, John’s wife and Henry’s mother. La Marche
belonged to Hugh of Lusignan, to whose eldest son Isabel had been
betrothed in her infancy, under whose care she had been brought up,
and from whose house her own father had literally stolen her, a child
scarce twelve years old, {1200} to marry her to the King of England.
Between the houses of Lusignan and of Anjou there was already, even
at that date, a smouldering feud of some years’ standing, which this
outrage, of course, aggravated, but which was allayed for a time in
1214 by John’s promise of little Joan, his eldest daughter by Isabel
of Angoulême, as wife to the younger Hugh in her mother’s stead. Joan
was then four years old. Her bridegroom--known simply as “Hugh of
Lusignan,” his father being Hugh, Count of La Marche--was a young man
in the prime of life,[621] gifted with an ample share of the stirring,
ambitious, acquisitive spirit which characterized his race. That
race was famous alike in legend and in history, and had reached the
height of its greatness within the lifetime of the reigning count of La
Marche, two of whose brothers had been crowned and anointed Kings.[622]
Another brother, Ralf, was in right of his wife count of Eu in Normandy
and owner of some lands in England. In 1218 the elder Hugh went to the
Crusade; and thus when Geoffrey de Neville took up the government of
Poitou and Gascony, the younger Hugh was for practical purposes count
of La Marche, and the most important personage in northern Aquitaine.
He and Joan were still only betrothed, not married; but she was in his
custody, and he was officially treated as “brother” to King Henry; he
had claims against the English Crown respecting certain lands which
John had promised to him at his betrothal;[623] and when his uncle Ralf
of Eu died childless in the spring of 1219, he seems to have also--no
doubt on behalf of his father--laid claim to Ralf’s estates, and taken
a high-handed method of enforcing his demand, by picking a quarrel with
the King’s town of Niort. Geoffrey de Neville tried to mediate, and
promised to procure him satisfaction for any complaint that he might
have against the town, “but,” writes Geoffrey to the King, “he answered
that he would not cease from infesting your land for us or for anybody
else.” Geoffrey had now been seneschal for a year, and was confessedly
at his wit’s end and eager to be rid of an office in which he foresaw
nothing but failure and disgrace. “He”--that is, Hugh--“and others can
see how poor we are both in men and money.” “We greatly fear that
unless speedy and effectual counsel be taken for the defence of your
land, the said Hugh and the magnates will usurp it, and it will pass
to the rule of a stranger. And we do you to wit that unless you take
strong measures for its defence, we (Geoffrey) intend to set out for
Holy Land on Midsummer day, for we will on no account stay here to your
and our own damage and disgrace; because the said Hugh has let us know
that he will not cease from molesting you until you give up the English
lands of the count of Eu. For the love of God, write back quickly what
you wish us to do.”[624] Apparently the answer to this letter was an
order to remain at his post; and he did so, though complaining bitterly
of the impossibility of the task laid upon him. “We have already urged
you,” he writes again, “to take some counsel for the defence of your
land of Poitou and Gascony, not so much against the King of France as
against your own barons, who ravage your land and capture and put to
ransom your townsfolk, and behave themselves towards your men in such
fashion that it appears, and we believe, they are not well affected to
your service. We, by reason of our poverty, cannot defend the land,
nor subdue them; and they make no more account of me than if I were a
foot-boy. Wherefore we do you to wit that unless you take other counsel
without delay, you will soon see us in England. And do not say that the
King’s land is lost through us; you are casting it away yourselves for
lack of counsel.”[625]
[Sidenote: 1218–1219]
At this juncture a new complication arose. Queen Isabel had in 1218
returned to her own county of Angoulême, received in its capital
city the homage of its barons, and taken its government into her own
hands.[626] She had some trouble at the outset with Reginald of Pons,
the ex-seneschal of Poitou, who seems to have owned some castles in
the Angoumois, and for some unexplained reason held them against her,
but was soon overcome by her superior forces.[627] A matter of more
consequence was her quarrel with Bartholomew of Puy. In the early part
of John’s reign Bartholomew had been provost, or mayor, of the city of
Angoulême;[628] from July, 1214,[629] if not earlier, he was seneschal
of the county for John, and after John’s death for Henry. Isabel was
minded to govern for herself; rightly or wrongly, she asserted that
Bartholomew was plotting mischief against her with some of the Poitevin
barons, especially Ralf de Lusignan the count of Eu, and also with
the King of France; she therefore deprived him of his office and all
his possessions, and made him give her his two sons as hostages.
Bartholomew, apparently, appealed to the English government and the new
seneschal of Aquitaine, and fled for shelter to Hugh de Lusignan.[630]
Just then {1219} Hugh and the seneschal had suddenly become friends.
Geoffrey wanted to go to England, but he was so absolutely penniless
that on reaching La Rochelle he found it impossible to proceed any
further, or even to leave the city,[631] till a loan of a hundred and
sixty marks from some local merchants was negotiated for him by Hugh
de Lusignan, who offered himself as surety for its repayment by the
English government. This simple but timely stroke of policy made Hugh
master of the situation in Aquitaine. The letters in which he and
Geoffrey notified the transaction to King and Council were carried
to England by Bartholomew of Puy. Geoffrey excused his acceptance of
Hugh’s help on the plea that “the trouble in your land is so great that
ruin would have followed if I had withdrawn”; Hugh modestly remarked
that “your land of Poitou was greatly disturbed, but by God’s grace
we have put it into a better state.” Both requested that the money
should be given to Bartholomew in the presence of Ralf of Saint-Samson,
who accompanied him, and who “knew that these things were true”; and
Geoffrey added a warning--“If it be not paid, and if Sir Hugh should be
compelled to pay it for me, you will never again find anybody who will
make any loan to your order or to you.”[632]
[Sidenote: 1219]
The Council perceived that the only thing to do with Sir Hugh was
to make a friend of him, if possible, by enlisting him as a sort of
unofficial colleague to the luckless seneschal. In July Bartholomew
of Puy came back, in the character of “the King’s messenger.”[633] He
seems to have brought letters from the King and Council to Isabel,
directing her to reinstate him in his property. Almost at the same
time negotiations were set on foot in the King’s name for a loan of a
thousand marks from the mayor and citizens of La Rochelle, and another
thousand from those of Bordeaux, “to be used and expended by the hands
of our very dear brother, Hugh of Lusignan, in defence of our land,
if it should be needful.”[634] The possible danger against which it
was thought that defence might be needed was an attack from Louis of
France. He had been for some months past in the county of Toulouse,
fighting against the Albigensians, and some of Henry’s subjects in
Aquitaine feared that the French host, when its work at Toulouse was
done, might be used against their sovereign and themselves.[635] These
suspicions of Louis were, however, without justification. There is not
the least indication that Louis ever thought of using, or allowing
his followers to use, the opportunity which certainly lay within his
reach for intervening at this time in the troubles of Poitou and
Gascony. The truce between France and England, however, was now within
nine months of its term;[636] and Pandulf was growing very anxious to
secure its prolongation. In September a month’s safe-conduct was given
to some envoys from the King of France to come over and discuss this
matter.[637] In January, 1220, the Legate wrote urgently from the west
of England, where he was detained by his negotiations with Llywelyn,
to the Bishop of Winchester and the Justiciar, begging them to send
some trusty messenger, “secretly, privately, and without delay,” to ask
Philip for a renewal of the truce; he himself drafted for them a letter
such as he deemed advisable for the envoy to convey; and he impressed
upon his colleagues the importance of taking the matter in hand at once
and insisting upon a decisive answer from the French King.[638] Three
envoys were accordingly despatched on 26th January;[639] and on 3rd
March the truce was renewed for four years from the ensuing Easter.[640]
[Sidenote: 1220]
Hugh of Lusignan meanwhile {1219} had thrown himself at once into
his new part, posing as the zealous protector of the interests and
loyal executor of the mandates of his little “brother,” even in
opposition to the Queen-mother, who complained bitterly to Pandulf of
the “maintenance” which Hugh and Geoffrey de Neville, acting under
instructions from the royal Council, afforded to Bartholomew of Puy
against her.[641] In August, 1219, the countess of Eu went to England,
to claim her share of her late husband’s possessions there. As she
was a kinswoman of the Earl of Warren and a niece of the Justiciar, a
conflict between her claims and those of her husband’s brother bade
fair to stir up a good deal of trouble.[642] By the middle of November
Bartholomew of Puy seems to have been in England again;[643] and before
that time Geoffrey de Neville was there also.[644] Geoffrey appears
to have left Poitou and Gascony under the charge of a knight named
William Gauler, who presently wrote a pathetic letter to Hubert de
Burgh, complaining that he had been left without any revenues save
those of the ports, which were only worth fifty pounds, “for all the
affairs of the Poitevins and of Bordeaux”; moreover, his friends
were telling him that the King had ordered him to be arrested, he
knew not why. With strong protestations of loyalty William declared
himself ready to settle his accounts, “willingly and truthfully,” with
any one whom Hubert might send to Gascony as seneschal, “whether it
were the chamberlain or some other man.” “Gascony,” he added, “is
in a good condition up to the present; but I greatly fear it will
quickly fall back into worse ways unless you send us good counsel and
reinforcements.”[645]
[Sidenote: 1219–1220]
Meanwhile the towns were protesting their loyalty, and complaining of
one another, and also of the intrigues of the French party and the
lawless doings of the local barons.[646] About this last grievance
they grew more clamorous than ever in the winter of 1219–1220. “The
King’s burghers” of La Rochelle, Niort, and S. Jean d’Angély lived in
perpetual terror of the lord of Parthenay, William Larchevêque, who
with the lord of Rancon “and with the consent of others whom we will
not at present name,” persecuted them “daily and unceasingly.” “He
seizes your burghers and holds them to ransom; he carries off their
beasts of burden,” wrote the mayor and commune of Niort. “He has put
out the eyes of the bearer of this letter, and those of two other men,
without any offence or fault of theirs, and though they were not even
on his land when he captured them. And all this evil he does to us, so
he declares, because of a hundred marks of silver which the late King
promised him, and on account of a certain traitor whom you, Sir Hubert
de Burgh, hanged when you were our seneschal.” With one voice the towns
entreated that an efficient governor might be sent into Poitou {1220
(_March_)}; and they gave it clearly to be understood that they did not
want Geoffrey de Neville back again. “Our former governors have been
somewhat slack in their dealings with your enemies.” “When Sir Geoffrey
was here, he could not protect us; he was not sufficient for these
things, nor for other things either. If he were here now, he would be
of no use. Send us some one more useful, more competent to manage this
country, and to provide for the welfare of its people and uphold the
rights and interests of the Crown.”[647]
[Sidenote: 1220]
The task of selection devolved upon Hubert de Burgh. Pandulf, a total
stranger to Aquitaine and its affairs, seems to have declined to take
any part in the matter beyond promising to ratify Hubert’s choice, on
whomsoever it might fall.[648] Hubert was the one man then in England
who knew by experience what were the most essential qualifications
for the vacant post. Before he could find a man to his mind, however,
another sudden change occurred in the political situation. In February
or March, 1220, tidings came from Damietta that the count of La Marche
was dead;[649] and before the middle of May Isabel of Angoulême wrote
a startling announcement to her son. “We do you to wit that the counts
of La Marche and Eu[650] being both dead, Sir Hugh de Lusignan was
left, as it were, alone and without an heir, and his friends would
not allow him to marry our daughter on account of her tender age, but
counselled him to make such a marriage that he might speedily have an
heir; and it was proposed that he should take a wife in France; which
if he should do, all your land in Poitou and Gascony, and ours too,
would be lost. We therefore, seeing the great danger that might arise
if such a marriage should take place, and getting no support from your
counsellors, have taken the said Hugh count of La Marche to be our lord
and husband.”[651]
This letter probably reached England shortly before the coronation;
on 22nd May Henry wrote to his step-father, expressing his approval
of the marriage.[652] At the same time he desired Hugh to escort Joan
to La Rochelle and there deliver her to two persons (Ralph Gernon and
Joldewin of Douai) who were charged to take care of her till they
received further orders from England.[653] A new use for the little
girl’s hand had already been devised by the royal Council; they offered
it to the young King of Scots. He was invited to meet Henry at York on
10th June;[654] and there, on 15th June, the treaty of marriage was
arranged. Henry pledged himself to give Joan to Alexander to be his
wife, at the ensuing Michaelmas, “if he could get her”; if he could
not, his second sister, Isabel, should be given to Alexander in her
stead, within fifteen days of the time appointed. Henry also promised
that he would either cause Alexander’s two sisters to be honourably
married in England within a year from S. Denys’s day (9th October),
or restore them to their brother within a month after that term
should have expired.[655] All thought of a marriage between Margaret
of Scotland and Henry himself had evidently been given up by mutual
consent.
Henry’s doubts whether he could get his eldest sister back in time for
her to be married at Michaelmas proved well founded. Queen Isabel, when
she announced her own marriage, had assured him that she was ready to
let Joan go home as soon as he liked to send for her. At the same time
she had requested that her own dower-lands, and a sum of three thousand
five hundred marks which she alleged had been bequeathed to her by
John, should be handed over to Hugh;[656] and it soon became apparent
that she and Hugh intended to hold Joan in pledge till this was done.
The English Council, however, were equally determined not to give up
the Queen’s dowry until that of Joan, and Joan herself, were safely
restored. On 20th June letters were written in Henry’s name to the
Pope, asking him to bid the bishops of Saintes and Limoges compel Hugh
to restore Joan and her dowry and right the wrongs which he had done to
Henry in other matters;[657] and also to the cardinals, requesting that
they would bring their influence to bear upon the count of La Marche,
who, “regardless of his plighted vow, having taken our mother to wife
instead of our sister, now refuses to give our sister back to us,
wishing by his detention of her to compel us to buy her back.”[658]
The union of La Marche and Angoulême, instead of making for the
peace and safety of Aquitaine as Isabel had pretended, was in fact
no sooner accomplished than it made matters worse than ever. Hugh
openly threatened the towns and barons who opposed him with a renewal
of hostilities, and so great was their terror that “all the bishops,
very many of the barons, and other good men of the King’s towns of
Bordeaux, Niort, La Rochelle, and S. Jean d’Angély went to him in a
body at Angoulême, desiring him that before he made war upon them
he should approach the King and the Council with reference to the
matters in dispute between him and the King.” The joint efforts of
the bishops and of the King’s envoys, who seem to have arrived in the
midst of the colloquy, wrung from Hugh a promise to stay his hand for
a while.[659] But his promises were worthless; and the complaints of
the towns continued to pour in upon Henry’s guardians. To the town of
Niort Hugh had granted a truce of seven weeks; “but,” wrote the mayor
and commune, “as we had no security except his word, we put it to Sir
William Maingo the younger whether he would keep us safe, so far as
he and his men were concerned, and maintain the truce. He wrote back
to us that if we would render to him one hundred marks a year, which
King John had promised him, he would keep us in safety; otherwise we
must guard ourselves against him and his men; and he has already done
us some injury. We likewise sent letters to Sir William Larchevêque,
that he might certify us whether he would keep the truce or not. And he
wrote back that he would not keep the truce, but would do us all the
evil and damage that he could; and he is oppressing us so that we dare
not get our harvest in; and he sets traps for us daily, and so do many
others”--Hugh’s own men-at-arms among the number.[660] “When the truce
was begun between us and the count of La Marche,” they write again,
“the count by one of his knights declared us deprived of all rights
within his fiefs”; he and his men were guarding all the roads so that
neither corn, nor wine, nor wood, nor any necessaries could be got into
the city, “and what is your own property he declares to be of his fee.”
Again “with tears” they implored Henry to send them such a governor as
should extricate them and all Poitou from these perils.[661]
The men of Bordeaux on the other hand were urgent that Hugh should
be appeased. “He has promised,” they wrote, “to maintain and defend
the towns, from himself and his, and all other living men, faithfully
to the utmost of his power, for your benefit and honour. And since
his defence and maintenance is, above that of all others, most useful
and necessary to your faithful men of Poitou, and molestation from
him is equally perilous and injurious to them, we entreat your royal
majesty, by every means we can, to take such counsel that a man of
such importance, such a useful defender of your land, and so pious
and humble a protector of peace and tranquillity, may not through any
other’s fault withdraw from your service; for he has promised that so
long as he lives he will, unless you give him cause to do otherwise,
remain faithfully in your service against all men living. All these
things,” they add, “have been communicated to us by the good men of La
Rochelle.”[662] But meanwhile the good men of La Rochelle had learned
something of the value of Hugh’s fine promises. Threatened by him
with “all the harm that he could do” to them, surrounded by enemies
who persecuted them for their loyalty, and without any protector save
the Bishop of Saintes, they again pleaded--as did also the men of
Bordeaux[663]--for the appointment of an efficient seneschal: “Send us
quickly a strong man, who will bring back the barons to allegiance, and
with their aid rout the enemies and restore the royal authority.”[664]
A rumour that the King was about to make the viscount of Thouars
seneschal of Poitou struck panic into Niort. “God forbid it! for the
viscount is our mortal foe, and in your father’s time, with the counsel
of the King of France, he did us all the evil that he could. As you
love your land of Poitou, and us, and your own honour, we beseech you
on no account to venture on making him seneschal; moreover, make not
anyone from these parts seneschal of Poitou. If you do, they will
take your land for their own advantage, as much as they can, as some
did in your father’s time. And we and the other faithful men shall
have to go out of your land, unless you take diligent care and good
counsel in this business. May it therefore please your excellency to
send some noble, discreet, wise, and powerful man from the parts of
England, to be your seneschal--such a man as will know how to deal
with your affairs in Poitou, and be able to hold your land.”[665]
Another rumour--this time in England--as to the Council’s intentions
with respect to the vacant office drew forth a trenchant protest from
Earl William of Salisbury. “I am given to understand,” he writes to
Pandulf, “that you, together with the King’s Council, proposed to
send the count of Aumale into Poitou to keep the land. And as it
seems to me that the count is less obedient than he should be to the
King’s commands concerning the things which he holds in England,
which are small, I doubt he would be less obedient still if he had
the seneschalship and government of Poitou which is a great thing.
And therefore I give notice to your holiness that you will in no wise
commit the custody of that land to him by my counsel or assent.”[666]
Oddly enough, the man finally chosen by Hubert was Philip of Ulecote,
who also had given the government some trouble about the restitution
of a castle to its rightful owner.[667] When the choice was at last
made, in August, some difficulty arose before it could be carried into
effect; the sequel suggests that Philip’s state of health may have been
the obstacle. “I never felt any confidence,” wrote Pandulf to Hubert
on 25th August, “that Philip should go there; though you seemed mighty
certain about the matter, rambling over seas and mountains in quest of
things that are not to be had.” In a more serious strain he warned the
Justiciar that some decision must be made at once. “You must provide
for that country, which plainly appears to be perishing through the
fault of the King’s Council. The matter has been already shamefully
delayed, and I greatly fear lest grave damage should come of it.”[668]
In the middle of September Philip of Ulecote was formally appointed
seneschal of Poitou,[669] and went across the sea.
Pandulf and Peter des Roches, meanwhile, had enlisted the services of
the Dean of Poitiers, who visited England in August, to negotiate with
Hugh of La Marche for a truce.[670] A carucage “for our great needs,
most urgent debts, and the preservation of our land of Poitou” had been
agreed upon in a council at Oxford on 9th August.[671] Negotiations
with the communes of La Rochelle and Bordeaux for a loan “for the safe
keeping of Poitou and Gascony” were begun in September.[672] These
two towns, with Niort and S. Jean d’Angély, had now resolved upon
sending representatives to England to lay their complaints before
the Council; the Preceptor of the Temple, Gerard Brochard, at their
request undertook to accompany these envoys, and begged the Council to
give him and them an audience in London in the week after Michaelmas,
“to hear the proposals of the count of La Marche, and of others, on
all sides.” Gerard, it is clear, was in the confidence of all parties,
and he declared positively that if the Council would listen to him,
the damsel Joan would be restored to them in honour and freedom;
“she would have been delivered to me,” he said, “if I would have
stood surety that the King would do to the count what he ought.”[673]
Probably Gerard received in London, and thence transmitted to Hugh, a
formal assurance that Henry would “do what he ought”--in other words,
surrender his mother’s dowry. At the same time the Pope took up the
matter; and a letter from him, on 20th September, threatening that
if Hugh did not within fifteen days after its receipt deliver Joan,
together with the city of Saintes and the Isle of Oléron (which had
been pledged to him by John as security for her dowry) to Henry’s
appointed representatives, he should be excommunicated and his lands
placed under interdict,[674] was followed by Hugh’s submission, so far
as the surrender of Joan herself was concerned. In obedience to an
order from England issued on 6th October that he should either himself
bring Joan to England, or deliver her at La Rochelle to certain persons
appointed to receive her there,[675] he set out with the child; but he
fell sick at Oléron, where the Dean of Poitiers and the new seneschal
of Aquitaine, Philip of Ulecote, had been ordered to meet him. The
Dean waited for the seneschal in vain, and at last learned that he was
dead.[676] At the beginning of November Hugh, being too ill to proceed,
delivered Joan to the commissioners--the Dean and two other envoys--who
escorted her to La Rochelle.[677] The term fixed for her marriage was
past, but at its expiration, on 13th October, Henry and Alexander had
met again at York,[678] and Alexander had evidently consented to wait
for her with patience; he waited in fact till the following Midsummer.
Her stepfather, when he gave her up to Henry’s commissioners, assured
them of his intention to go and perform his homage for La Marche and
Angoulême as soon as his health should permit him.[679] Thus for a few
months Aquitaine was--comparatively--at peace.
Meanwhile, however, the “concord and tranquillity” in England had
not been altogether unbroken. At first glance the Pope’s selection
of the spring of 1220 for the re-crowning of the young King appears
unaccountable. Since the ceremony had not taken place immediately after
the Primate’s return, two years ago, it would have seemed more natural
to delay it for seventeen months longer, till the boy should have
reached the completion of his fourteenth year, the earliest age which
could, on any known principle, be reckoned as that of legal majority.
A clue to the purpose for which the matter was hurried on may possibly
be found in certain steps which were taken immediately after the
coronation. On its morrow (18th May) “the barons who were present swore
that they would resign their castles and wardenships at the will of the
King, and would render at the Exchequer a faithful account of their
ferms; and also that if any rebel should resist the King, and should
not make satisfaction within forty days after being excommunicated by
the Legate, they would make war upon him at the King’s bidding, that
the rebel might be disinherited without the option of a fine.”[680]
A week after this, on 26 May, the Pope wrote a letter to Pandulf. He
began by expressing his distress at the reports that reached him of
his royal ward’s extreme poverty; this, he said, was imputed chiefly
to the archbishops, bishops, and other prelates in England, some of
whom had usurped the King’s castles, manors, and other domains, and
were detaining the same “on the frivolous pretext that they wish to
keep them safe till the King should be of age; and so meanwhile the
King must be a beggar, while they run riot, against his will, on what
belongs to him.” The Pope therefore ordered that they should surrender
all such castles and lands to the King, and make restitution of all the
proceeds thence derived since the war, and bade Pandulf enforce their
compliance with penalties both spiritual and temporal. In a second
letter, written two days later, Honorius instructed the Legate not to
suffer any man, howsoever faithful or closely attached he might be to
the King, to hold in his custody more than two of the King’s castles,
on pain of ecclesiastical censure without appeal.[681]
From the days of Henry II, if not from a yet earlier time, the Crown
had found it a hard matter to preserve its authority over castles held
in private ownership. Such ownership was limited by the King’s right in
three ways. The owner was bound to allow his castle to be garrisoned by
the King’s own men at the King’s will; to surrender it into the King’s
hand if required; and not to make any addition to its fortifications
without the King’s licence. Against the enforcement of these royal
rights the owners of castles had struggled, with varying success, under
Henry II, Richard, and John. The civil war, and the new conditions
under which the powers of the Crown had to be exercised during the
minority of John’s successor, had intensified their jealousy of all
restriction upon their tenure of their fortresses; and a like spirit
of independence began to show itself in some of the wardens of the
King’s own castles, with regard to the fortresses under their charge.
The only important case of this kind, until the latter part of the year
1219, was that of Count William of Aumale. But between August, 1219,
and March, 1220, trouble began to threaten in connexion with two royal
fortresses of not less consequence than Sauvey and Rockingham, and from
two men of far greater political and personal weight than William de
Fors.
The combined offices of sheriff of Lincolnshire and warden of Lincoln
castle were hereditary in the family of Haye, represented at this time
by the old Dame Nicolaa, whose capability, courage, and loyalty had
never failed in the service of John and his heir throughout the last
twenty years. Three days after the battle of Lincoln {24 May 1217} the
city and county had been committed to the boy-King’s uncle, William
Longsword Earl of Salisbury, to hold during the King’s pleasure.[682]
This grant was probably made with the double purpose of rewarding
Longsword for his share in the victory, and relieving Nicolaa of a
burden which she had, nearly two years before, declared to be too great
for her.[683] Five months later, however, when peace was made, the old
lady asked to be reinstated in her hereditary functions. Her request
was granted, and on 31st October the Earl was bidden to deliver the
castle to her and give her seisin of the sheriffdom without delay; but
the latter half of this order seems not to have been enforced;[684] and
at the beginning of December the county “with all its appurtenances”
was again committed to William to hold during the King’s pleasure.[685]
This time, however, the castle did not go with the shrievalty; for
from March, 1218, onwards we find the former once more, with the full
sanction of the Crown, under the charge of its veteran castellan,
Nicolaa.[686] No one seems to have ventured on molesting her till three
months after the death of the old Earl Marshal. Then, on 23rd August,
1219, “the sheriff of Lincoln”--no doubt the Earl of Salisbury’s
deputy--had to be sharply told that he was to “maintain, protect, and
defend the lands, goods, and men of our trusty and well-beloved Nicolaa
de Haye within his bailiwick, to cause her no molestation, injury or
damage, nor to meddle in any way with her debts to the Crown, or in any
matters concerning her, till he received orders to do so”; and next
day “all the knights and good men” of the shire were informed that the
King had assigned Falkes de Bréauté (who was sheriff of two shires
contiguous to Lincolnshire, those of Northampton and Rutland) to Dame
Nicolaa as her assistant in the defence of Lincoln castle, “and that
they should all efficaciously counsel and assist Falkes in the King’s
business which Falkes would explain to them, for the preservation of
the peace of the realm.”[687] It seems that Falkes, with three of his
knights (and no doubt some attendant men-at-arms), at once took up his
abode in the castle and made it his headquarters for the next nine
months.[688] From a temporary absence in January, 1220, when he went
to meet the King at Northampton, he was recalled by an urgent message
from Nicolaa; and a letter from Falkes himself to Hubert de Burgh makes
it perfectly clear that the danger against which he was required to
protect her was a persistent endeavour of the Earl of Salisbury, as
sheriff of the county, to enter the castle. “But,” wrote Falkes, “God
helping me, with the force at the Dame’s command I will take good care
that he shall not get in.”[689]
William Longsword was a son of Henry II; illegitimate, but always
acknowledged and treated as “the King’s brother” by both Richard and
John, and by Henry as “our beloved uncle.” Richard had given him the
earldom from which he took his title, together with the hand and
the great possessions of Ela, heiress of an earlier line of Earls
of Salisbury. He had done good service to John until the middle of
1216; then he had joined Louis, but early in 1217 he had returned to
the side of little Henry, and had received back all his forfeited
estates, to which in August of the same year were added the counties
of Somerset and Devon.[690] His attempt to interfere with the rights
of a castellan appointed by the King to the command of a royal castle
certainly failed, and was probably abandoned without any open strife,
for there is no sign of any breach in the friendly relations between
the King and his “beloved Uncle William,” to whom the boy seems to have
been really attached. But the mere making of such an attempt, by a
man of such high rank and so closely connected with the King, was not
without grave significance; and it coincided ominously with another
incident of graver significance still.
[Sidenote: 1220]
The castle of Marlborough, like that of Lincoln, belonged to the Crown.
When it fell into the hands of Louis in 1216 the younger William
Marshal, then in arms on Louis’s side, claimed it as his by right. The
chronicler who records this claim mentions also a claim put forth by
William to act as Marshal for Louis in England;[691] possibly he may
have claimed the wardenship of Marlborough castle as appertaining to
the Marshalcy. The two offices may have been granted together to his
grandfather John FitzGilbert, who was certainly Marshal under Henry I,
and commandant at Marlborough after that King’s death. In 1175–1176 a
part of the fine due to the Crown from the heirs of John FitzGilbert
for entering upon their patrimony was remitted in reimbursement for
repairs done to Marlborough castle.[692] At the coronation of Richard
John FitzGilbert’s two elder surviving sons, John and William, shared
between them the functions of Marshal, but the hereditary character
of that office was not explicitly determined till ten years later.
During the greater part of those ten years Marlborough was not a
royal fortress; Richard had given it to his own brother John. John’s
accession as King restored it to its old status; but no reference to
its wardenship occurs in the charter whereby John granted the Marshalcy
to William and his heirs for ever; and the great Earl never was,
nor, so far as we can see, claimed to be custodian of Marlborough
castle during John’s lifetime.[693] He certainly was so, however,
from November, 1217, until his death, and his eldest son succeeded
him in this wardenship.[694] In March, 1220, Hubert de Burgh informed
Pandulf that Marlborough castle was being fortified--evidently without
instructions from the Crown. Pandulf bade him despatch without delay
“the most stringent letters from the King that could be drawn up,”
ordering the Marshal to stop the work at once, and strictly forbidding
all persons engaged in it, on pain of their bodies, goods, “and even
their inheritance,” to do anything towards fortifying the castle
without a special licence and order from the King.[695] No further
letters on the subject appear to be extant; the information which
Hubert had forwarded to Pandulf may have proved to be incorrect, or
the Marshal may have given some satisfactory explanation. There is,
however, an indication elsewhere that he took upon himself to exercise
over the tenants of the castle of Marlborough more arbitrary authority
than he was entitled to assume as custodian of that fortress for the
King.[696] Moreover, there was another matter about which trouble with
him must have been felt to be impending.
[Sidenote: 1217]
Immediately after the younger Marshal’s return to allegiance, in
March, 1217, there had been granted to him, to hold during the King’s
pleasure, the English lands of Earl David of Huntingdon.[697] The most
important part of these lands was the honour of Huntingdon, which
the Scot Kings had inherited from the English wife of King David of
Scotland, which William the Lion had subenfeoffed to his brother David,
and which, with the estates held by David direct of the English Crown,
had now become forfeit to its English overlord because David and the
reigning King of Scots--his nephew Alexander--had espoused the cause
of Louis. A few months later they both submitted to Henry; Alexander,
having performed his homage in December, was granted seisin of “the
lands held of him in England by Earl David”;[698] and in the following
March orders were issued for complete restitution to David himself of
all his English possessions.[699] He seems to have regained them all
except one castle: Fotheringay. In June, 1219, he died, leaving an heir
under age. His fief being an English one, the right to its custody
fell not to its immediate overlord the King of Scots, but to its lord
paramount the King of England; in Henry’s name it was committed, during
his pleasure, to the charge of three knights, and an order was issued
that they should receive full seisin of “the manor of Fotheringay” from
the constable of the castle[700]--that is, the younger Marshal (now
Earl William the second of Pembroke and Striguil), or his lieutenant
there. In October the custody of the honour was transferred to the
King of Scots.[701] But twelve months later {1220} Fotheringay castle
was still in the hands of the Earl Marshal; not because either Henry
or Alexander had authorized him to retain it, but because he was, for
some reason or other, unwilling to give it up, and to make him do so
against his will was, as things then stood, practically impossible.
He was the eldest son of the late regent. He was the most intimate
friend of the Earl of Salisbury. On him, as Earl of Striguil, the
security of the Welsh March chiefly depended; as heir of his mother,
Isabel of Leinster, he was the mightiest baron of the English March in
Ireland; and as heir to the lands which had belonged to his parents in
Normandy, he could at any moment put himself in touch with Philip of
France. In private life he seems to have been a man of high character;
and since his return to allegiance, with his friend Salisbury, in
1217, he had, like Salisbury, acted as a valiant, useful, and faithful
adherent of the King. If the Council had shrunk from taking extreme
measures against Aumale, much less could they proceed to extremities
with Salisbury and the Marshal. Yet the example set by these two men
was certain to lead to further mischief unless some steps were taken to
prevent it.
[Sidenote: 1220]
The Earl Marshal was certainly, the Earl of Salisbury and the count
of Aumale were almost certainly, included among the nobles who were
present at the coronation and who next day took the oath which has been
mentioned already.[702] The coronation, the oath, the Pope’s letters,
taken all together, suggest that in the spring of 1220 the Council had
invoked the Pope’s assistance to enhance the authority of the Crown for
the special purpose of strengthening the hands of its guardians in an
effort to deal with the whole question of the English castles. It is,
however, very difficult to guess what, or who, can have prompted the
instructions issued to the Legate by the Pope on 26th and 28th May. The
information on which the letter of 26th May purports to be written is
shown by the records to be erroneous. No castle belonging to the King
was in the custody of either of the archbishops; only three were in the
custody of any other prelate. Those three were Porchester, Winchester,
and Southampton, held by Peter des Roches together with the sheriffdom
of the county in which they stood. There is also no indication that
either Peter or any other prelate had ever attempted, or even been (in
England) accused or suspected of attempting, to usurp castles or lands
belonging to the Crown, or made difficulties about restoring any such
lands which may have been temporarily entrusted to him for safe keeping
during the war. The second letter is equally unaccountable; for while
the enforcement of the order that no man should hold more than two
royal castles at once would have deprived Peter of one such wardenship,
it would have deprived Hubert de Burgh of four;[703] and it would have
further involved a wholesale rearrangement not only of the wardenships,
but also of the sheriffdoms, throughout south-eastern England and
also in the Midlands, where a still greater number of royal castles
were in the hands of Falkes de Bréauté as sheriff of seven shires. It
is therefore not surprising that no use was made of these two papal
mandates. As no mention of them occurs in the chronicles of the time,
it is most probable that they were never published; Honorius may have
sent with them private instructions authorizing Pandulf to publish or
suppress them at his own discretion. By the time they reached England
the King’s guardians were feeling their way in more wary fashion
towards the end which they had in view.