A CAMP OF REFUGE
Immediately after his exploit at Chas-Chateil, William de Collingham, as
if a great idea had been suggested to him, repaired with Oliver Icingla
to an islet deep in the forests of Sussex, overgrown with willows and
rushes, and surrounded by marshes which regularly in autumn overflowed
with water and became a large lake, with the islet rising in the midst.
This islet had at one period been inhabited, and the ruins of a
fortress, of which the origin and history were lost in the obscurity of
ancient days, were still visible; but now it had no inhabitant save an
anchorite, who dwelt among the ruins in a rude hermitage built of timber
and overgrown with moss, and who appeared to be cut off from
communication with mankind, occupying himself much with the study of the
stars, and enjoying the reputation of being able to predict events, as
if he had been privileged to read what was written in the book of fate.
It was in this islet, situated in the recesses of what remained of the
great forest which before the Conquest extended all over Sussex, that
Collingham determined to establish a camp of Refuge for Englishmen who,
like himself, would not bow the knee to Prince Louis and his myrmidons,
and he had several reasons for selecting the place; some of these he
frankly stated, but the principal reason, which was a very strong one,
he, like a prudent man, kept to himself. However, he proceeded to throw
up intrenchments, constructed huts of earth and wood, set up his raven
banner, and summoned all to come thither who had made up their minds to
endure any privations and fight to the death rather than submit to the
French invaders and lay down their arms.
The summons of Collingham was not disregarded. Within a fortnight some
five hundred men had sworn to follow the raven banner for better or for
worse, and never a day passed without some new band of outlaws, or some
individual fighting man, or some ardent patriot, coming and adding to
the number. No doubt there were bad as well as good among those who
took refuge on the islet; but under Collingham’s discipline all were
under the necessity of living decently and in order.
At this camp of refuge, on the evening of the 2nd of June, 1216, an hour
after sunset, arrived William de Collingham and Oliver Icingla, riding
one horse, like the old Knights of the Temple, accompanied by the russet
bloodhound which Clem the Bold Rider had that morning been patting in
the stable-yard of the White Hart, but which now willingly followed its
old master, from whom it had been taken by Hugh de Moreville, who
coveted the animal as well as the rest of the patrimony which Oliver
Icingla ought to have derived from his mother. As for the knight and the
squire, they were by no means in the best plight. The garments of
both--the rustic garments which they had worn to disguise
themselves--were spotted with blood, and their appearance indicated that
they had been engaged in a desperate struggle for life or death.
All doubt on this subject, however, vanished when, after passing the
water on a raft, Collingham and Oliver entered the camp and threw down
their weapons. Both warriors were wounded: the sword of the knight was
hacked and red; the axe of the squire was dyed dark with gore. Moreover,
the strong steed that had carried them to the place of refuge was so
weary and wounded that it died that night of fatigue and loss of blood.
Such was the consequence to the patriotic warriors of one of their
earliest conflicts with the enemy; they were to have many more equally
sanguinary, but not so unequal in numbers.
But fierce as they had found the combat, neither Collingham nor Icingla
was daunted. No sooner were their wounds dressed and bound up by the
anchorite than, assembling the men by the light of the moon, they took a
solemn oath, by the cross on the hilt of the knight’s sword, not to
sleep under a roof, nor to dine in a hall, nor to drink a brimming can
at a chimney corner, till Prince Louis and the French were expelled from
England. At the same time, every man present--Oliver Icingla
included--engaged never to decline a combat with three of the enemy, and
to yield implicit obedience to the commands of their leader, upon which
Collingham swore to relieve them from their promise if he was known to
shrink from an encounter single-handed with six of the enemy.
And now every man understood what he was expected to do, and the work
was begun with spirit, and the camp of refuge soon boasted of a thousand
men, mostly archers, who attacked the French, and the Anglo-Normans who
sided with them, whenever an opportunity presented itself, and, as
historians tell us, made themselves particularly formidable when Louis
marched into Sussex to take possession of the county.
“Louis, availing himself of John’s weakness,” says Carte, “sent William
Fitzpiers, Earl of Essex, and Robert Fitzwalter, and William
Huntingfield into Essex and Suffolk, and marching himself into Sussex,
took all the fortresses in the county, but could not quell William de
Collingham, who, with a thousand archers, made incursions from the woods
and forests in those parts, killed several thousands of the French in
different encounters, and held out all the time that the hostilities
lasted. There was no attacking this man,” adds Carte, “in the fortresses
wherein he kept without great disadvantage.”
It was not, however, till the French had learned by severe experience
what manner of man Collingham was, and the ferocity of his “Ravens”--for
so his followers were called, from the fierce raven on his banner--that
they came to regard him as invincible and his camp as impregnable. In
the effort to put him down, more than one continental warrior of high
name was tried and found wanting. Especially did there fail in this
endeavour a very valiant captain of free lances, who had been entrusted
with the castle of Lewes, and who was deemed equal to any enterprise of
the kind.
He was a native of Rheims, his name was Clarembald, and he was one of
the mercenary leaders who had come with Louis to conquer England,
bringing with him a rather remarkable surname, which, no doubt, he hoped
to exchange for a territorial title derived from some earldom or barony
on the Thames, or the Humber, or the Tweed. In fact, from his nocturnal
excursions into towns and villages in Anjou and Normandy during the wars
of King John and Philip Augustus, Clarembald had won the surname of
“Eveille-chiens,” or Wake-dog, and he had rendered the surname very
terrible to such as had learned what it was to have the misfortune to be
the foe of his friends.
When Louis seized the castles of the king’s adherents in Sussex,
Clarembald was appointed governor of Lewes, one of the castles of the
Warrens, and he began to rule the neighbourhood with a rod of iron.
Nowhere did the inhabitants of England find the invaders so tyrannical
and so merciless. In vain the unfortunate English endeavoured to soften
his heart by rendering him every possible honour. It only made him
worse. He vexed them, tormented them, plundered them, hounded his dogs
on their cattle so as to drive them into the marshes, and by breaking
their limbs or backs killed or rendered them worthless. Nay more, he
lamed their horses, slaughtered their sheep, and treated them very much
as the French magnates of the fourteenth century treated Jacques
Bonhomme, till the said Jacques, rendered furious by cruel treatment,
turned on his persecutors, and proved to the world, during that outbreak
known as the “Jacquerie,” how much worse than the beasts of the forest a
human being can become when brutalised by long and continuous
oppression.
Now Clarembald Eveille-chiens received very peremptory orders from
Prince Louis to attack and destroy the camp of refuge in Sussex, and the
bold warrior immediately prepared for the enterprise, only regretting,
as far as he was concerned, that it was not one in which there was any
chance of plunder.
It was late in autumn when Clarembald Eveille-chiens left the castle of
Lewes, encamped in the wood, set up his standard, which was the colour
of blood, and, investing the camp of refuge on all sides, constructed
dykes and gangways over the marshes, and commenced on one side a
causeway through the waters, so that his soldiers might enter the islet
and put its occupants to the sword. But he soon found that the work in
which he was engaged was no child’s play. Not only were the workmen
harassed and interrupted in their operations by mocking jests and
flights of arrows, but, night after night, Oliver Icingla, in spite of
the watch that was kept, contrived to cross the marshes in his white
jacket, and made attacks so sudden and unforeseen that the French at
length verily suspected that he dealt in magic.
One night in December, when the snow lay pretty thick, and the frost was
severe, and the ground hard as iron, and Eveille-chiens was absent from
his camp on one of the many love adventures with which he diverted his
leisure hours, the French were suddenly aroused from their slumbers by
shouts of
“Hey for the fierce raven!
Ho for the fierce raven!”
and found that Oliver in his white jacket, accompanied by six men, each
of them as fearless and most of them stronger than himself, was among
them and felling down everything in his way. Penetrating even to
Clarembald’s tent, with the hope of taking the doughty warrior captive,
they no sooner observed that it was empty than they seized on his red
banner, carried it off as a trophy, and cutting their way with shouts of
scorn and defiance through their startled foes, reached the island in
safety. Oliver immediately climbed a high tree that grew close to the
edge of the water, and fastened the red banner to one of the most
prominent branches.
“There,” said he, as he descended and it began to flap in the keen,
frosty wind--“there let it hang in wind and rain till Wake-dog plucks up
courage to come and reclaim it. By the Holy Cross, the sight of it may
tempt him to do something very venturesome, for surely it cannot fail to
have the effect on him which scarlet has on the wounded bull.”
But still Clarembald made nothing worthy of the name of progress in his
enterprise, whilst Oliver continued to make nocturnal sallies which cost
the French so dear that Eveille-chiens was glad when the truce which
Louis concluded with Pembroke gave him a fair excuse for leaving his red
banner to its fate, drawing off his force, and returning to spend his
Christmas at Lewes in the halls of the Warrens. The existence of the
truce was also notified to William de Collingham by a messenger
despatched by the Protector. But Collingham bluntly refused to recognise
it.
“I know nothing,” the knight said, “of truces or treaties with Frenchmen
who have come into England as invaders. I have sworn to devote myself to
ridding the land of them, and to succeed or die in the attempt; and,
come what may, I will never lay aside my arms till the invaders have
laid down theirs. I have said my say.”
“What mean you, sir knight?” asked the messenger, astonished.
“I mean what I say,” was the brief answer.
And, in truth, Collingham did soon show that he meant what he said. When
Louis, with his train, escorted by the Bastard of Melun--a Frenchman,
who was captain of Bramber--was on his way from the castle of De Braos
to the coast, to take shipping for the Continent, Oliver Icingla,
despatched by Collingham to lie in wait for the prince, suddenly
appeared with some hundreds of archers, and made a fierce attack--his
men shouting, “Ho for the black raven!” and “St. Edward for Icingla!”
Louis attempted to charge the archers; but his horse was killed under
him, and he rolled on the ground. His knights assisted him to rise, and
he was about to mount a fresh steed, when Oliver and his men penetrated
to the very spot where he was drawing his sword; and the axe of the
Icingla, having rung well on the prince’s head, was already swung a
second time, and descending with a force which would have smashed both
helmet and head. But fifty knights spurred to the rescue, and saved the
invader’s head from the patriot’s hand. A fierce conflict ensued, and
Louis, after finding himself more than once in danger, deemed it
discreet to escape while his attendants screened his flight with their
bodies.
Hurrying on and hailing his ships, he embarked in haste, confusion, and
agitation, and sailed in no joyous mood from the shores on which, seven
months earlier, he had set foot with prospects so inviting and a heart
so elate. Indeed, a great reaction had already manifested itself; and
even in London the exploits of the English at the camp of refuge were
celebrated in ballads and sung about the streets--the names of William
de Collingham and Oliver Icingla gradually becoming so popular that they
were on every man’s tongue, and at length reached the ear of the Count
de Perche.
Evil was the hour in which this took place.
De Perche was a martial Frank, who frequently exclaimed “_Mort Dieu!_”
and sometimes swore by the bones of St. John the Baptist, which had been
secured by Martin Litz as spoil when Constantinople was taken by the
Crusaders in 1204, and brought to France, with the arm of St. James and
a piece of the true cross, as most precious sacred relics. The count was
a handsome personage, with broad shoulders, hazel eyes, and a
countenance “prouder than lion or leopard;” and he was cruel towards the
people of the country to which he had come as an invader.
One day the count, when about to leave London for the castle of
Hertford, and conversing with Constantine Fitzarnulph about the attack
made on Prince Louis, suddenly said--
“Foi de mon âme, fair sir, I would you could tell me where lies the
domain of this Icingla, for of him I would like well to make an example,
in order to encourage others not to follow his footsteps.”
Fitzarnulph smiled at the idea of Oliver’s domain, and explained to the
count that the Icingla only possessed an old grange in a woodland
occupied by his mother, who was a widow.
“Nevertheless,” rejoined the count, shaking his head, “it is necessary
to do something by way of an example; and if, by your favour, I can but
find one familiar with the country to guide me to the house of the
Icingla on my way to Hertford, _mort Dieu!_ I will teach him, and such
as are of his company, to think twice before they defy the authority and
attack the person of our good lord Louis.”
Fitzarnulph opened his mouth to speak, then paused, reflected, and
hesitated; then struggled with his own sense of what was generous; and
finally got over all the difficulty which he felt by shifting the
responsibility of this business to the shoulders of a man whom he knew
would be very willing to bear the burden, heavy and crushing as that
burden might one day become.
“Sir count,” at length he replied, “I swear to you, by St. Thomas, that
I scarce know what to do in this matter; for I own that I can hardly,
with propriety, aid you in your wish. But,” added the citizen,
significantly, “if you will send for that good knight, Sir Anthony
Waledger, who is even now at the house of the Lord Hugh de Moreville, in
Ludgate, I will answer for his finding you as trusty a guide as you
could desire.”