TURNING TO BAY
It soon appeared too clear to be doubted, even by the most incredulous,
that the King of England was bent on having his revenge on the
Anglo-Norman barons at all hazards and at all sacrifices, and that the
feudal magnates who had confederated to humble their sovereign in the
dust had too good grounds for the alarm with which the news of his
preparations inspired them. Ere October (then known as the wine-month)
drew to a close, and the vineyards and orchards yielded their annual
crop--indeed, almost ere the corn was gathered from the fields into the
garners and barnyards--the torch of war was lighted, and an army of
mercenaries was let loose on “merry England.”
The knights despatched by John as early as the middle of June to raise
fighting men on the Continent had executed their commission with a zeal
and fidelity worthy of a better cause; and all the bravoes and
cut-throats of Flanders, France, and Brabant, attracted by the hope of
pay and plunder, came to the trysting-places on the coast as vultures to
the carnage, headed by captains already notorious for cruel hearts and
ruthless hands. Falco, and Manlem, and Soltim, and Godeschal, and Walter
Buch, were men quite as odious--unless they are belied by
chroniclers--as Hugh de Moreville had represented them to be. Falco was
known as “without bowels,” Manlem as “the bloody,” Soltim as “the
merciless,” Godeschal as “the iron-hearted,” and Walter Buch as “the
murderer,” and none of them knew much more of humanity than the name and
the form. All of them were not, however, destined to reach the land
which was to be made over to their tender mercies. A large number, under
the command of Walter Buch, were caught in a gale and wrecked and lost,
as if even the elements had interfered between England and her king’s
wrath. But the others weathered the storm and gradually reached the
English coast; and early in October John found himself at the head of a
force so formidable and so fierce that he intrusted the castle of Dover
to the custody of Hubert de Burgh, a valiant warrior and a Norman noble
of great note in his day, and led his hireling army towards Rochester.
Rochester Castle--the stately ruins of which, hard by the Medway, still
attest its ancient grandeur, and recall the days when it stood in feudal
pride, guarded by moat, and rampart, and lofty battlements--was deemed a
place of immense importance; and Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates
had intrusted it to the keeping of William Albini, Earl of Arundel, a
great noble whose family had long maintained feudal state at Castle
Rising, in Norfolk, and whose ancestor had acquired Arundel with the
hand of Adelicia of Louvaine, the young widow of Henry Beauclerc. Albini
was a brave warrior, and quite equal to the duties of his post under
ordinary circumstances; but the castle was without engines of war, and
very slenderly furnished with provisions, when, about the middle of
October, John, with his army of foreigners, appeared before the walls,
and summoned the place to surrender.
No doubt William Albini was “some whit dismayed.” Perhaps, however, he
expected some aid from the barons, who were with their fighting men in
London. Accordingly, he prepared for resistance; and the barons, on
hearing that John had left Dover, did march out of the city with some
vague idea of relieving the imperilled garrison. On drawing near to the
king’s army, however, they began to remember that the better part of
valour was discretion, and after their vanguard was driven back they
quickly retreated to the capital and took refuge behind the walls,
leaving Albini to his fate.
Meanwhile, John laid siege to Rochester, and, impatient to proceed with
his campaign before winter set in, hurried on the operations, and, by
making promises to the besiegers and hurling threats at the besieged,
did everything in his power to bring the business to a close. But, with
all chances against him, Albini made an obstinate resistance, and weeks
passed over without any clear advantage having been gained by the king.
Even after his sappers had thrown down part of the outer wall, matters
continued doubtful. Withdrawing into the keep, the garrison boldly
resisted, and for a time kept the assailants at bay. At length, by means
of a mine, one of the angles was shattered, and John urged his
mercenaries to force their way through the breach. But this proved a
more difficult matter than he expected. Every attempt to enter was so
bravely repulsed, that the king, under the influence of rage and
mortification, indulged in loud threats of vengeance. At length, on the
last day of November, when his patience was well-nigh exhausted, famine,
which had been for some time at work among the besieged, brought matters
to a crisis, and William Albini and his garrison threw themselves on the
royal mercy.
“Hang every man of them up!” cried John, who at that moment naturally
thought with bitter wrath of the delay which they had caused him when
time was so peculiarly valuable.
“Nay, sire,” said Sauvery de Manlem, the captain of mercenaries, “that
were perilous policy, and would lead to retaliations on the baronial
side too costly to be hazarded by men who hire out their swords for
money.”
John listened, acknowledged that there was reason in Manlem’s words, and
consented to spare life. Accordingly, Albini and his knights were sent
as prisoners to the castles of Corfe and Nottingham; the other men
belonging to the garrison were pressed into the royal service.
The loss of Rochester was felt to be a severe blow to the baronial
cause; and the pope having meantime annulled the charter, as having been
exacted from the king by force, John’s star was once more in the
ascendant, and after making arrangements for the safe keeping of
Rochester, and little guessing the circumstances under which the
fortress was to change hands within the next six months, he marched from
Kent to St. Albans, his mercenary forces spreading terror wherever they
appeared. But it was towards the North that his eye and his thoughts
were directed; for the chiefs of the houses of De Vesci, De Roos, De
Vaux, Percy, Merley, Moubray, De Brus, and D’Estouteville were
conspicuous among the confederate barons; and, moreover, Alexander, the
young King of Scots, had not only allied himself with the feudal
magnates, but raised his father’s banner, on which “the ruddy lion
ramped in gold,” and at the head of an army crossed the Tweed to make
good his title to the three Northern counties with which the barons had
gifted him.
At St. Albans, accordingly, about the middle of December, John divided
his forces into two armies: one he placed under William Longsword, Earl
of Salisbury, to keep the barons in check and maintain the royal
authority in Hertford, Essex, Middlesex, and Cambridge; while at the
head of the other he marched northward to avenge himself on the barons
of the North and the King of Scots. With a craving for vengeance still
gnawing at his heart, he passed the festival of Christmas at the castle
of Nottingham, and then, still breathing threats, precipitated his
troops on the North.
It was on the 2nd of January, 1216, when John entered Yorkshire with
fire and sword. The snow lay thick on the ground; the streams were
frozen; and the cold was intense; but the king, who but recently had
been branded by his foes as a tyrant fit only to loll in luxury, and
averse to war and fatigue, now appeared both hardy and energetic, and
urged his bravoes up hill and down dale. It was a terrible expedition,
and one long after remembered with horror. Fire and sword rapidly did
their work in the hands of the mercenaries who composed the royal army;
men were slaughtered; houses and stackyards given to the flames; and
towns, castles, and abbeys ruthlessly destroyed. Beyond the Tyne the
country fared almost worse. Morpeth, the seat of Roger de Merley,
Alnwick, the seat of Eustace de Vesci, and Wark, one of the castles of
Robert de Roos, were stormed and sacked; and John, crossing the Tweed at
Berwick, prepared to inflict his vengeance on the King of Scots.
“Now,” said he to his captains, as he found himself beyond the Marches,
“we must unkennel this young red fox.”
The captains of the royal army offered no objection; and while John
burned Roxburgh--a royal burgh and castle at the junction of the Teviot
and the Tweed--the mercenaries pursued the King of Scots to the gates of
Edinburgh, and, during their return, deliberately burned Haddington,
Dunbar, Berwick, and the fair abbey of Coldingham, associated with the
legend of St. Ebba and her nuns. Nothing, indeed, was spared; and John,
having intrusted the government of the country between the Tees and the
Tweed to Hugh Baliol and Philip de Ullecotes, with knights and
men-at-arms sufficient to defend it, returned southward with such
satisfaction as he could derive from the reflection that he had taken
revenge on his baronial foes, and included in his vengeance many
thousands who had not given him the slightest cause of offence.
But whatever may have been his feelings on the subject--and it is
impossible to suppose that he had not his hours of compunction--John was
destined, ere long, to find that his revenge had been dearly purchased.
Scarcely had he returned to the South with blood on his hands, and the
execrations of two countries ringing in his ears, when he received
tidings which made his heart sink within him.
It was when the winter had passed, and the spring had come and gone,
that messengers brought to John, who was then at Dover, intelligence
that his baronial foes, driven to desperation, had taken a step which
was likely to detach his mercenary soldiers from his standard, and leave
him almost alone and face to face with an exasperated nation. It was a
terrible contingency, and one on which the king, in pursuing his schemes
of vengeance, had not calculated. But there was no mistake about the
news; and John trembled as he foresaw how that, as soon as it spread
among his mercenaries, the army which, while ministering to his
vengeance, had made him odious to the nation on whose support he might
otherwise have counted in case of the worst, would melt as surely as had
melted the winter’s snow through which he had urged on that army to
devastation and carnage.