A DESPERATE EXPEDIENT
It was the Christmas of 1215; and the barons, cooped up in London, and
not daring to venture beyond the walls, were almost in despair, and
listened with unavailing regret to reports of the devastation wrought by
the royal army on its march northward, and with dread to the sound of
the spiritual artillery which Pope Innocent directed against them.
However, they, as well as the citizens, celebrated Christmas with
unusual festivity, and appeared anxious to show the king and his
partisans that they were not to be cast down by adversity, and to
convince the pope and the legate that they did not tremble before the
thunders of Rome.
Nevertheless, Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates were sadly
disheartened by all that was taking place, and in mortal terror of what
might take place in London, if John turned his face towards the capital;
and Falco, and Manlem, and Soltim, and Godeschal had an opportunity of
stabling their steeds at Baynard’s Castle and the Tower, and quartering
their men among the worthy citizens who had proved such good friends in
the day of need to “the army of God and of the Church.”
Moreover, it was the reverse of flattering to Fitzwalter and De Vesci,
and De Clare and De Roos, and the Bigods and Bohuns, to find that, after
all, they had been fooled and humbled by a king whom they had not only
disliked but despised; and wounded pride and vanity whispered constantly
to each that it would be better to adopt any expedient likely to lead to
their relief from the perplexity of the present, than trust to the
course of events and the chapter of accidents. Nevertheless, it was not
very easy to discover a ready and short way out of their multitudinous
difficulties, and they spent many days in anxious debate and somewhat
unmanly lamentations. Naturally enough, different opinions were
expressed, and there was much variance; but nobody could refuse to admit
that something must be done, and that quickly; and at length they
arrived at a resolution which, to say the least of it, was unpatriotic,
imprudent, and unfortunate.
At that period, Philip Augustus, no longer young, was still occupying
himself with the projects which he had conceived in youth for rendering
France the great monarchy of Europe, and of all men he was the likeliest
to lend an attentive ear to any proposal for humbling the house of
Plantagenet; and it happened that Louis, the son of Philip by his first
wife, Isabel of Hainault, had, in 1200, espoused Blanche of Castile,
daughter of King Alphonso, the conqueror of Muradel, by Eleanor,
daughter of our second Henry. Louis, who was now in his twenty-ninth
year, cannot be described as one of the great princes of the Capet line,
though he rated himself very highly, owing to inheriting, through his
mother, Isabel, the blood of Charlemagne; and chroniclers, wishing to be
complimentary, have been content to call him “the son of an able father,
and the father of an excellent son.” But the barons were not in a
position to be very nice when in search of a puppet, and nobody, at all
events, could deny that Louis of France, the heir of Hugh Capet and
Charlemagne, was also the husband of Blanche of Castile, and that her
mother was a princess of the blood royal of England; so the barons, in
their perplexity, seem to have considered her claim to the crown of
England quite good enough to serve their purpose, and to have believed
that they could not do better, all things taken into account, than call
her and her husband to the throne which her maternal grandsire had
occupied. It is true that some dozen persons, male and female, actually
stood before Blanche of Castile in the legal order of succession; but
the barons were in no humour to make nice distinctions, or to be
fastidious as to genealogies; and early in the year 1216, while King
John was ravaging the North with his mercenaries, they actually
despatched Fitzwalter and De Quency as ambassadors to invite Prince
Louis, the heir of Philip Augustus, to land in England and take
possession of the crown which, with a fine disregard of facts, they
represented as his wife’s rightful inheritance.
To a man of ambition the prize was certainly tempting, and had there
been no more serious obstacle to encounter on the way to it than John’s
army of foreign hirelings, Philip Augustus would have urged his son to
grasp at it resolutely, and to hold by it tenaciously. But Philip, who
had fought side by side with the English in the Holy Land, and face to
face with them in Normandy in the days of Cœur-de-Lion, understood
what kind of people they were, and well knew that, whatever the
Anglo-Norman barons and the citizens of London might say, the English as
a nation would never submit to the rule of a foreigner, and that
foreigner a French prince. Besides, he could not overlook the fact that
John was under the especial protection of the pope; and he could not
forget that, years before, when he suffered excommunication for marrying
Agnes de Méranie, and vainly attempted to resist the power of Rome, he
had learned to his severe experience how good a friend and how terrible
a foe the pope could be to one of the sovereigns of Europe. It was no
pleasant retrospect, but it was instructive.
Much more caution was, therefore, observed in the matter by the court of
Paris than the barons had expected, or than they relished; but the
invitation was by no means declined. On the contrary, Louis seems to
have relished the prospect of reigning over England, and to have thought
his royal sire somewhat too cautious. In any case, a little fleet of
French ships reached the Thames in February, with several French knights
on board, who brought assurances that, by Easter, Louis would be at
Calais to embark for England, and that he only asked the barons to send
him their sons or nephews as hostages for the fulfilment of their part
of the covenant.
Probably the barons and the Londoners were not very well pleased with so
much hesitation and delay. But they had gone too far to recede, and
every day, while making their position more desperate, added to the
aversion which the barons had always felt towards the king. Besides, the
accounts which were given of the cruelties exercised by John in the
North were such as could not fail to add greatly to his unpopularity,
and every citizen who met his neighbour in the market-place, or gossiped
with him across the street from the house-tops, had something horrible
to relate of what was going on in York and Northumberland. One told how
the king was in the habit, after lodging during the night in any house,
of setting fire to it before he took his departure next morning; a
second told how on such occasions he had not only set fire to the house,
but ordered the host to be hanged at his own door-post; and a third told
that in the royal army the king had a number of Jews, whom he made the
instruments of his cruelties. Such stories, constantly repeated, and
losing nothing in the telling, ere long made the king so odious that the
citizens and populace of London began to regard the evil of calling in a
foreign prince to make himself master of England as a very light evil
indeed compared with that of living under a tyrant who set truth, and
justice, and humanity at defiance; and they shouted loudly, “Come what
may, we will not any longer have this man to reign over us.”
Meanwhile, at Poissy and in Paris, Prince Louis and his advisers were
making out as good a claim for Blanche of Castile as circumstances would
admit of their doing. It was, indeed, no easy matter. But what with
reviving the recollection of John having been forfeited by the Great
Council of England for rebellion against his brother, Richard
Cœur-de-Lion, and of his having been condemned by the peers of France
for the murder of his nephew Arthur, and what with pronouncing his
children disqualified to succeed, and overlooking the existence of
Eleanor of Brittany and of Blanche’s own brother and her elder sister,
they did make out a case which satisfied themselves, and which perhaps
they deemed good enough for their confederates in England; and Philip
Augustus, though hesitating, or pretending to hesitate, did not offer
any opposition to his son’s preparations; though Gualo, the cardinal of
St. Martin and papal legate, passing through France, visited Paris, and
warned Prince Louis against embarking on an enterprise of which the holy
see disapproved.
So far matters went smoothly, and the barons and citizens looked
longingly for the arrival of Prince Louis, whom they daily became more
eager to welcome as a deliverer. But their patience was put to a trial;
and Easter passed, and May Day passed, and the “merry, merry month of
May” was rapidly running its course, and still the French prince
lingered.