AFTER THE BATTLE
No sooner did intelligence that the day was going against the Count de
Perche and the Anglo-Norman barons spread through Lincoln than
consternation prevailed among the women whose kinsmen were connected
with the army doomed to defeat. Many of them, indeed, left their houses
to avoid insult, and, embarking on the Witham in boats, endeavoured to
escape with their children and servants, and such valuable property as
they could carry. Events proved that their fears were not unfounded.
In fact, notwithstanding the discipline maintained by Pembroke, and the
desire which he naturally felt to save the country from violence and
spoliation, he could not, in the hour of triumph, save Lincoln from the
horrors of war. Flushed with victory and eager for spoil, the royalists,
after having assured themselves that their foes were utterly beaten,
assumed all the airs of conquerors, and acted as if they had a right to
everything in the shape of plunder on which they could lay hands.
At first the victors contented themselves with rifling the waggons and
sumpter-mules containing the baggage of the French and the barons, and
found much booty in the shape of silver vessels and rich furniture of
various kinds. But this merely whetted their appetites for booty, and,
spreading rapidly over the city, they began to pillage the houses,
rushing from place to place with axes and hammers, and breaking open
store-rooms and chests, and seizing upon gold and silver goblets, and
jewels, and gold rings, and women’s ornaments, and rich garments.
Nothing, in fact, seems to have come amiss to them that was not too hot
or too heavy, and the churches were not respected any more than the
houses. Even the cathedral was not spared. In fact, the clergy of
Lincoln, being, like the bishop, stanch partisans of Prince Louis, and
under sentence of excommunication, were not only odious to the king’s
friends, but looked on by the English soldiers as persons whom they, as
faithful sons of the Church, were justified in plundering.
Meantime the women who had embarked on the Witham with their children
and domestics had not been fortunate in their efforts to escape. Much
too eager to leave the scene of carnage to be cautious in the mode of
doing so, they overloaded the boats to a dangerous degree, and when
fairly afloat they neither knew how to row nor steer. As a consequence,
serious evil befel them through the boats getting foul of one another,
and by various causes, and many of the fair fugitives went to the bottom
of the river with the property which they had been anxious to save, “so
that,” says the chronicler, “there were afterwards found in the river by
searchers goblets of silver and many other articles of value, for the
boats had been overloaded, and the women, not knowing how to manage
them, all perished.”
At length the riot and pillage came to an end, and the king’s peace
having been proclaimed through the city, the conquerors ate and drank
merrily in celebrating the victory they had so easily gained against
great odds. Ere this, however, everything having been settled, Pembroke
prepared to carry to the king tidings of the great triumph which had
crowned the efforts of his adherents. Having, therefore, instructed the
barons and knights to return to the fortresses of which they were
castellans, and to carry their prisoners with them, and to keep them
safely in custody till the king’s pleasure was known, the protector,
without even dining or taking food, rode off to Stowe to inform young
Henry of the great victory, which made him in reality sovereign of
England.
Even next day the consequences began to appear. Early on Sunday morning
couriers reached Stowe with intelligence that Henry de Braybroke and his
garrison had abandoned Mount Sorrel, and the king sent orders to the
Sheriff of Nottingham to raze the castle to the ground.
Of all the men of rank who fought in the battle few fell. Indeed, only
two are mentioned by name--Richard, surnamed Crocus, and the Count de
Perche--one on the winning, the other on the losing side. Richard, who
was Falco’s brave knight, was carried by his companions to Croxton and
laid with all honour in the abbey. The Count de Perche, whose
comrades-in-arms were slain, or taken, or fled, and who, as an
excommunicated man, could not, of course, be laid in consecrated ground,
was interred in the orchard of the hospital of St. Giles, founded by
Bishop Remigius outside the walls of Lincoln as a house of refuge for
decayed priests.
And so ended the battle of Lincoln in a victory of which Pembroke might
well and justly be proud. It not only overthrew the army on which Louis
relied for success in his enterprise, but it utterly undid all the work
which he had been doing in England since that June day when he rode into
London amidst the cheers of an unreasoning multitude.
As for the feudal magnates who had offered him a crown which was not
theirs to give, and who had done him homage as their sovereign, they
were no longer in a position to aid him, even if they had been so
inclined, but captives at the mercy of a king whose father they had
hunted to death, and whose inheritance they had attempted to give to a
stranger. Besides Robert Fitzwalter and the Anglo-Norman earls and
barons, three hundred knights and a multitude of men holding inferior
rank were prisoners.
Moreover, the spoil was regarded as something marvellous, and the
English, remembering the multitudinous articles of value that fell into
their hands that day as booty, and the ease with which they had obtained
it, though so much the weaker party, were long in the habit of talking
jocularly of that very memorable Saturday in the Whitsuntide of the year
1217, and with grim humour describing the battle as “LINCOLN FAIR.”