The political history of England during the four years which
followed Richard’s departure over sea is simply the history of the
administration of Hubert Walter. Richard never again interfered in
the concerns of his island realm, save for the purpose of obtaining
money from it; and even the method whereby the money was to be raised
he left, like all other details of administration, wholly to the
justiciar’s discretion. Hubert in fact, as justiciar and archbishop,
wielded during these years a power even more absolute than that
which William of Longchamp had wielded during the king’s absence on
crusade. But Richard’s second experiment in governing England by deputy
succeeded far otherwise than the first. It was, indeed, attended with
far less risk; for the king himself was never really out of reach, and
could at any moment have returned to take up the reins of government
in person, had there been any need to do so. Moreover, the man whom he
now left as viceroy had far other qualifications for the office than
William of Longchamp.
Hubert Walter had been trained under the greatest constitutional lawyer
and most successful administrator of the age, Ralf de Glanville. He
was nephew to Ralf’s wife,[1695] and had been a clerk or chaplain
in Ralf’s household until 1186, when he was appointed dean of
York.[1696] A few months later he was one of five persons nominated
by the York chapter in answer to a royal mandate for election to the
vacant see.[1697] King Henry, however, refused all five, and Hubert
remained dean of York for three years longer. He seems to have held,
besides his deanery, an office at court, either as protonotary or
as vice-chancellor under Geoffrey; for during the last few months
of Henry’s life he is found in Maine attending upon the king,
and apparently charged with the keeping of the royal seal.[1698]
Consecrated to Salisbury by Archbishop Baldwin on October 22,
1189,[1699] he immediately afterwards set out with him for Palestine;
there he won universal esteem by the zeal and ability with which he
exerted himself to relieve the wants of the poorer crusaders;[1700] on
Baldwin’s death Hubert virtually succeeded to his place as the chief
spiritual authority in the host;[1701] and after Richard’s arrival
he made himself no less useful as the king’s best adviser and most
trusty diplomatic agent in Palestine.[1702] It was Hubert who headed
in Richard’s stead the first body of pilgrims whom the Turks admitted
to visit the Holy Sepulchre;[1703] and it seems to have been he, too,
who led back the English host from Palestine to Europe after Richard’s
departure. He hastened as early as possible to visit the king in his
captivity;[1704] and Richard lost no time in sending him to England
to be made archbishop, and to help the justiciars in collecting the
ransom.[1705] They had refused the help of William of Longchamp,
but they could not reject that of Hubert; for they knew that, as a
contemporary historian says, “the king had no one so like-minded with
himself, whose fidelity, prudence and honesty he had proved in so
many changes of fortune.”[1706] Hubert was one of the commissioners
appointed to have the custody of the ransom;[1707] and there can be
little doubt that the scheme by which it was raised was in part at
least devised by his financial genius, and carried into execution by
his energy and skill--qualities which he displayed no less effectively
in dealing with the revolt which was finally quelled by the return of
Richard himself.
[1695] Hubert’s mother and Ralf’s wife were sisters; cf. the
Glanville family history in Dugdale, _Monast. Angl._, vol. vi.
pt. i., p. 380, and the foundation-charter of Arklow, given by
Hubert’s brother Theobald, _ib._ pt. ii. p. 1128. Hubert and
his brothers seem to have been brought up by their aunt and her
husband; Hubert, when dean of York, founded a Premonstratensian
house at West Dereham “pro salute aniniæ meæ, et patris, et
matris meæ, et domini Ranulphi de Glanvillâ, et dominæ Bertriæ
uxoris ipsius, qui nos nutrierunt.” _Ib._ vol. vi. pt. ii. p.
899.
[1696] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. i. 360. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 310.
[1697] _Gesta Hen._ as above, p. 352.
[1698] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. xli. note 1.
[1699] R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 71.
[1700] _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 134–137. _Gesta Ric._
(Stubbs), p. 145.
[1701] R. Diceto as above, p. 88. The Patriarch Heraclius
had become discredited in the eyes of all the right-minded
crusaders by his share in the divorce and remarriage of Queen
Isabel, which broke Baldwin’s heart.
[1702] Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 29 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 378).
[1703] _Ibid._ _Itin. Reg. Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 437, 438.
[1704] Will. Newb. as above, c. 33 (p. 388). Cf. Rog. Howden
(Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 209.
[1705] Will. Newb., l. iv. c. 33 (Howlett, vol. i. p. 388). Cf.
Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 516, 517.
[1706] Will. Newb. as above.
[1707] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 212.
Hubert entered upon his vice-royalty--for it was nothing less--under
more favourable conditions than William of Longchamp. He came to it
not as an upstart stranger, but as an Englishman already of high
personal and official standing, thoroughly familiar and thoroughly in
sympathy with the people whom he had to govern, intimately acquainted
with the principles and the details of the system which he was called
upon to administer; his qualifications were well known, and they were
universally acknowledged. Moreover, there was now no one capable of
heading any serious opposition to his authority, at least in secular
affairs. William of Longchamp was still chancellor; but like the
royal master to whose side he clave for the rest of his life, he had
left England for ever. From John there was also nothing to fear. His
intended trial never took place, for he threw himself at Richard’s
feet at the first opportunity, and was personally forgiven; but the
king was wise enough to leave untouched the sentence of forfeiture
passed by the justiciar, and to keep his brother at his own side,
a dependent upon his royal bounty, for nearly twelve months;[1708]
and then he restored to him nothing but the counties of Mortain and
Gloucester and the honour of Eye, but without their castles, giving
him in compensation for the latter and for his other estates a yearly
pension of eight thousand pounds Angevin.[1709] Even John’s capacities
for mischief-making were so far paralyzed by this arrangement that he
seems to have made no further attempt to meddle in English politics so
long as Richard lived. The one man in whom Hubert saw, or fancied he
saw, a possible rival on personal and ecclesiastical grounds, he swept
roughly out of his path. The two primates had already quarrelled over
the privileges of their respective sees, and nothing but the king’s
presence had availed to keep peace between them.[1710] The northern one
had been at feud with his own chapter ever since his appointment, and
they were now prosecuting an appeal against him at Rome. In June 1194,
backed, it can hardly be doubted, by Hubert’s influence, they obtained
from the Pope a sentence which practically condemned Geoffrey without
trial;[1711] and before these tidings reached England in September,
a committee of royal justices, sent by Hubert to deal with the case
in its temporal aspect, had already punished Geoffrey’s refusal to
acknowledge their jurisdiction by confiscating all his archiepiscopal
estates except Ripon.[1712] He went over sea and appealed to the
king, but in vain;[1713] and for the next five years there was again
but one primate in the land. One northern bishop, however, was still
ready to defy Hubert as he had defied William of Longchamp and his
own metropolitan. When the newly appointed sheriff of Northumberland,
Hugh Bardulf, sought to enter upon his office shortly after Richard’s
departure, he found that Hugh of Durham had already made a fresh
bargain with the king, whereby he was to retain the county on a
payment of two thousand marks. He tried, however, as before, to evade
the necessity of payment, and was in consequence forcibly disseized
by Richard’s orders.[1714] Still he was unwilling to give up the
game; and in the spring of 1195 he made another attempt to regain
the territorial influence in the north which Geoffrey’s fall seemed
to have placed again within his reach. The story went in Yorkshire
that he actually succeeded in once more obtaining from Richard--of
course on Richard’s usual terms--a commission as co-justiciar with
Hubert.[1715] Such a commission can hardly have been given otherwise
than in mockery; yet the aged bishop, untaught by all his experience
of the king’s shifty ways, once again set out from York, where he
had just been excommunicating some of Geoffrey’s partizans,[1716] to
publish his supposed triumph in London. Sickness, however, overtook him
on the way; from Doncaster he was compelled to turn back to his old
refuge at Howden, and there on March 3 he died.[1717] His palatinate
was of course taken into the custody of the royal justiciars.[1718] A
fortnight later Celestine III. sent to Archbishop Hubert a commission
as legate for all England;[1719] and thenceforth he was undisputed
ruler alike in Church and state.
[1708] Cf. Rog. Howden as above, pp. 252 and 286, and also R.
Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 64.
[1709] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 286.
[1710] _Ib._ pp. 246, 247, 250; vol. iv. pref. pp. lix, lx.
[1711] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 272, 273, 278–286; vol. iv. pref.
pp. lxii, lxiv.
[1712] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 261, 262; vol. iv. pref pp. lxi,
lxii.
[1713] Richard in November ordered his restoration, but the
order was not carried out; the brothers went on quarrelling,
and next year Richard again declared the archiepiscopal estates
forfeited, and this time finally. _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 273, 287;
vol. iv. pref. pp. lxiv, lxix.
[1714] _Ib._ vol. iii. pp. 260, 261; cf. p. 249.
[1715] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 10 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 438,
439).
[1716] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 284.
[1717] _Ibid._ Will. Newb. as above (p. 439).
[1718] Rog. Howden as above, p. 285.
[1719] Dated March 18 [1195]. _Ib._ pp. 290–293. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 125–127.
Like most of the higher clergy of Henry’s later years, Hubert was
distinctly more of a statesman than a churchman. His pontificate left
no mark on the English Church; as primate, his chief occupation was
to quarrel with his chapter. No scruples such as had moved Archbishop
Thomas to resign the chancellorship, or had made even Bishop Roger
of Salisbury seek a papal dispensation before he would venture to
undertake a lay office,[1720] held back Hubert Walter from uniting in
his own person the justiciarship and the primacy of all England. He
was, however, a statesman of the best school of the time, steeped in
the traditions of constitutional and administrative reform which had
grown up during Henry’s later years under the inspiration of the king
himself and the direction of Ralf de Glanville. The task of developing
their policy, therefore, could not have fallen to more competent
hands; and as Richard was totally destitute of his father’s business
capacities, it was well that Hubert was left to fulfil it according to
his own judgement and on his own sole responsibility for nearly four
years.
[1720] Will. Malm. _Gesta Reg._, l. v. c. 408 (Hardy, p. 637).
The justiciar’s first act after his sovereign’s departure was to
despatch the judges itinerant upon their annual visitation-tour with
a commission[1721] which struck the key-note of his future policy.
It was the note which had been struck by Henry II. in the Assizes
of Clarendon and Northampton; but the new commission shewed a great
advance in the developement of the principles which those measures
embodied. The jurisdiction of the justices is defined with greater
fulness and extended over a much wider sphere. The “pleas of the
Crown” with which they are empowered to deal include, besides those
formerly recognized under this head, such various matters as the
number and condition of churches in the king’s gift,[1722] escheats,
wardships and marriages;[1723] forgers[1724] and defaulters;[1725]
the harbouring of malefactors;[1726] the arrears of the ransom;[1727]
the use of false measures;[1728] the debts of the murdered Jews; the
fines due from their slayers,[1729] from the adherents of John, and
from his debtors, as well as from his own forfeited property;[1730]
the disposal of the chattels of dead usurers, and also of crusaders
who had died before setting out on their pilgrimage;[1731] and the
taking of recognitions under the Great Assize concerning land worth
not more than five pounds a year.[1732] In all these proceedings the
chief object evidently was to procure money for the royal treasury; a
tallage which the judges were also directed to assess upon all cities,
towns and royal demesnes[1733] being deemed insufficient to supply its
needs. The details of this multifarious business are however of less
historical importance than the method employed for its transaction.
Every item of it was to be dealt with on the presentment of what may
now be called the “grand jury”--the jury of sworn recognitors in
every shire, whose functions, hitherto confined to the presentment of
criminals, were thus extended to all branches of judicial work. This
growth in the importance of the jury was marked by the introduction
of a new ordinance for its constitution. The Assizes of Clarendon and
Northampton simply ordered that the jury should consist of twelve
lawful men of every hundred and four of every township, without
specifying how they were to be selected. Most probably they were
nominated by the sheriff.[1734] The recognitors employed in the civil
process known as the Great Assize, however, were from the first
appointed in a special manner prescribed in the Assize itself. Four
knights of the shire were summoned by the sheriff, and these four
elected the twelve recognitors.[1735] By the “Form of proceeding in
the pleas of the Crown” delivered to the justices-errant in 1194,
this method of election was applied to the jury of presentment in
all cases, with a modification which removed the choice yet one step
further from the mere nomination of the sheriff. Four knights were
first to be chosen out of the whole shire; these were to elect two
out of every hundred or wapentake, and these two were to choose ten
others, who with them constituted the legal twelve.[1736] Whether or
not the choice of the first four was actually, as seems most probable,
transferred from the sheriff to the body of the freeholders assembled
in the county-court,[1737] still this enactment shews a distinct
advance in the principles of election and representation, as opposed
to that of mere nomination by a royal officer. Another step in the
same direction was the appointment of three knights and a clerk to be
“elected in every shire to keep the pleas of the Crown.”[1738] This
was the origin of the office afterwards known as that of coroner. It
had the effect of depriving the sheriff of a considerable part of his
judicial functions; and his importance was at the same time yet further
limited by an order that no sheriff should act as justiciar in his own
shire, nor in any shire which he had held at any time since the king’s
first crowning.[1739] The difficulty of checking the abuse of power in
the hands of the sheriffs, which Henry had been unable to overcome,
had certainly not been lessened by Richard’s way of distributing the
sheriffdoms in his earlier years. It had indeed become so serious
that in this very year either the new justiciar, or possibly the king
himself, proposed an inquisition similar to that made by Henry in
1170, into the administration of all servants of the Crown, whether
justices, sheriffs, constables, or foresters, since the beginning of
the reign. When the king was gone, however, it seems to have been
felt that such an undertaking would add too heavily to the labours of
the judges-errant; and the inquiry was accordingly postponed for an
indefinite time by the archbishop’s orders.[1740]
[1721] “Forma qualiter procedendum est in placitis Coronæ
Regis.” Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 262–267; Stubbs,
_Select Charters_, pp. 259–263.
[1722] _Forma procedendi_, c. 4 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p.
259).
[1723] _Ib._ cc. 3, 5, 6, 23 (pp. 259, 260, 261).
[1724] _Ib._ c. 8 (p. 260).
[1725] _Ib._ c. 19 (as above).
[1726] _Ib._ c. 7 (as above).
[1727] _Ib._ c. 10 (as above).
[1728] _Ib._ c. 16 (as above). Richard had at the beginning of
his reign caused all weights and measures to be reduced to one
standard; Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 351.
[1729] _Forma proced._, c. 9 (as above).
[1730] _Ib._ cc. 11–14 (as above).
[1731] _Ib._ cc. 15, 17 (as above).
[1732] _Ib._ c. 18 (as above).
[1733] _Ib._ c. 22 (p. 261).
[1734] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. pp. xcvi, xcvii.
[1735] R. Glanville, _De Legg. Angl._, l. xiii. c. 3.
[1736] _Forma proced._, introductory chap., Stubbs, _Select
Charters_, p. 259; Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 262.
[1737] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, as above, pp. xcvii–xcix.
[1738] _Forma proced._, c. 20 (Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p.
260).
[1739] _Ib._ c. 21 (as above).
[1740] _Ib._ c. 25 (p. 263).
The principle of co-operation between the government and the people
for maintaining order and peace, which underlies all Henry’s reforming
measures, and of which the new regulations for election of the
grand jury are a further recognition, was again enunciated yet more
distinctly in the following year. An edict was published requiring
every man above the age of fifteen years to take an oath that he would
do all that in him lay for the preservation of the king’s peace; that
he would neither be a thief or robber, nor a receiver or accomplice of
such persons, but would do his utmost to denounce and deliver them to
the sheriff, would join to the uttermost of his power in the pursuit of
malefactors when hue and cry was raised against them, and would deliver
up to the sheriff all persons who should have failed to perform their
share in this duty.[1741] The obligation binding upon every member
of the state to lend his aid for the punishment of offences against
its peace had been declared, in words which are almost echoed in this
edict, as long ago as the reign of Cnut.[1742] The difficulty of
enforcing it caused by the disorganized condition of society which had
grown up during the civil war was probably the reason which led Henry,
in framing his Assizes of Clarendon and Northampton, at once to define
it more narrowly and to lay the responsibility of its execution upon a
smaller body of men specially appointed for the purpose in every shire.
The completeness of organization which the system introduced by these
Assizes had now attained, however, gave scope for a wider application
of the principle through one of those revivals of older custom in which
the enduring character of our ancient national institutions and their
capacity for adaptation to the most diverse conditions of national
life are so often and so strikingly displayed. The edict of 1195 forms
a link between the usage of Cnut’s day and that of modern times. It
directed that the oath should be taken before knights assigned for the
purpose in every shire; out of the office thus created there seems to
have grown that of conservators of the peace; and this again developed
in the fourteenth century into that of justices of the peace, which has
retained an unbroken existence down to our own age.[1743]
[1741] _Edictum Regium._ Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp.
299, 300; Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 264.
[1742] “And we will that every man above xii years make oath
that he will neither be a thief nor cognizant of theft.” Cnut,
Secular Dooms, c. 21, Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 74.
[1743] Stubbs, _Select Charters_, p. 263; _Constit. Hist._,
vol. i. p. 507; pref. to Rog. Howden, vol. iv. pp. c, ci.
The same year was marked by the only important ecclesiastical act of
Hubert’s pontificate. Having received in the spring his commission
as legate, he made use of it to hold a visitation of the northern
province--now, by Geoffrey’s absence and Hugh of Puiset’s death,
deprived of both its chief pastors--and a council in York minster at
which fifteen canons were passed[1744] to remedy the general relaxation
of Church discipline which had been growing ever since Thomas’s flight.
At the close of the year Hubert was again at York, upon a different
errand: the negotiation of a fresh treaty with Scotland, on the basis
of a marriage between the Scot king’s eldest daughter and Richard’s
nephew Otto of Saxony.[1745] The marriage never took place, but the
alliance of which it was to be the pledge lasted throughout Richard’s
reign; and it is a noteworthy proof at once of the growth of friendly
relations between the two countries, and of the success of Hubert’s
recent ordinance for the preservation of peace and order in England,
that in the following year a similar edict, evidently modelled upon the
English one, was issued in Scotland by William the Lion.[1746]
[1744] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 293–298. Cf. R.
Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 146–148, and Will. Newb., l. v.
c. 12 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 442).
[1745] William the Lion had been sick almost to death, and
having no son, had proposed to leave his crown to his eldest
daughter, under the protection of Richard, whose nephew he
wished her to marry. The opposition of his barons, and the
restoration of his own health, caused him to drop the scheme of
bequest (Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 298, 299). That of
the marriage however was still pursued, and accepted by Hubert
in Richard’s name, on somewhat singular conditions: Lothian, as
the bride’s dowry, was to be given over to Richard’s custody,
while Northumberland and the county of Carlisle were to be
settled upon Otto and made over to the keeping of the king of
Scots. The negotiation, however, dragged on for a year, and
was again checked by the hope of an heir to the Scottish crown
(_ib._ p. 308); and the fulfilment of this hope in August 1198
led to its abandonment. _Ib._ vol. iv. p. 54.
[1746] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 33. He says William
issued his proclamation “de bono sumens exemplum.”
Neither the renewal of order in the Church, nor the securing
of the external tranquillity of the realm by alliance with its
neighbour-states, nor the organization of justice and police within
its own borders, was however the most laborious part of Hubert’s task.
One thing only was required of him by his royal master; but that was
precisely the one thing which cost him the most trouble to obtain.
From a country which must, as it seems, have been almost drained of
its financial resources over and over again during the last ten years,
he was perpetually called upon to extract supplies of money such as
had never been furnished before to any English king. That he contrived
to meet Richard’s ceaseless demands year after year without either
plunging the nation into helpless misery or provoking it to open
revolt, is the strongest proof not only of his financial genius and
tact, but also of the increase in material prosperity and national
contentment which had been fostered by Henry’s rule, and of the success
of Hubert’s own efforts in carrying out the policy which Henry had
begun. By Michaelmas 1194 it seems that the whole of the complicated
accounts for the ransom, including the carucage imposed in the
spring, were closed.[1747] In the same year the country had borne the
additional burthen of a tallage upon the towns. This, however, added
to the sums raised by sales of office during the king’s visit and to
the proceeds of the judges’ visitation, failed to satisfy the wants of
Richard. He therefore resorted to two other methods of raising money,
both apparently of his own devising, and both harmonizing very ill with
the constitutional policy of his justiciar. Save during the disorderly
reign of Stephen, the practice of tournaments had been hitherto
unknown in England. Both Henry I. and Henry II. were too serious and
practical-minded to encourage vain shews of any kind, far less to
countenance the reckless waste of energy and the useless risk of life
and limb which these entertainments involved, which had moved Pope
after Pope to denounce them as perilous alike to body and soul,[1748]
and, in spite of a characteristic protest from Thomas Becket, to
exclude those who were slain in them from the privileges of Christian
burial.[1749] The Church had indeed been unable to check this obnoxious
practice in Gaul; backed, however, by the authority of the Crown, she
had as yet succeeded in keeping it out of England. But in 1194 a fresh
prohibition, issued by Pope Celestine in the previous year,[1750] was
met by Richard with a direct defiance. On August 20 he issued a license
for the holding of tournaments in England, on condition that every man
who took part in them should pay to the Crown a specified sum, varying
according to his rank. Five places were appointed where tournaments
might be held, and no one was allowed to enter the lists until he
had paid for his license.[1751] The collection of this new item of
revenue was evidently looked upon as an important matter, for it was
intrusted to the justiciar’s brother Theobald Walter.[1752] Whatever
may have been Hubert’s share in this measure, he was clearly in no way
responsible for the other and yet more desperate expedient to which
Richard, almost at the same time, resorted for the replenishment of his
treasury. On pretext of a quarrel with his chancellor, he took away the
seal from him, ordered another to be made, and declared all acts passed
under the old one to be null and void, till they should have been
brought to him for confirmation:[1753] in other words, till they should
have been paid for a second time.
[1747] See Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. pp.
lxxxii–lxxxiv and notes.
[1748] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 422, 423).
[1749] Ep. xxiv., Robertson, _Becket_, vol. v. p. 36.
[1750] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 56.
[1751] Writ in Rymer, as above, p. 65, and in Stubbs, _R.
Diceto_, vol. ii., app. to pref. pp. lxxx, lxxxi; this latter
copy is dated August 22. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p.
268, Will. Newb., l. v. c. 4 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 422, 423),
and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 120.
[1752] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 268.
[1753] _Ib._ p. 267. Cf. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 93. Rog.
Howden’s very confused account of the seals is made clear by
Bishop Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 506 note.
In the following spring a fit of characteristic Angevin
penitence--fervent and absorbing while it lasted, but passing away all
too soon--moved the king to make some amends for his extortions as well
as for his other sins; he began to replace the church-plate which had
been given up for his ransom;[1754] no fresh tax was imposed till late
in the year, and then it was only a scutage of the usual amount--twenty
shillings on the knight’s fee--for the war in Normandy.[1755] Next
year, however, the king’s mood again changed. He was now resolved to
carry into effect, with or without Hubert’s assent, the inquiry into
the financial administration which Hubert had postponed in 1194. For
this purpose he sent over to England Robert, abbot of S. Stephen’s at
Caen, who, notwithstanding his monastic profession, had acquired great
experience as a clerk of the Norman exchequer, and seems to have there
enjoyed a high reputation for knowledge and skill in all matters of
finance.[1756] The abbot, accompanied by the bishop-elect of Durham,
Philip of Poitiers,[1757] reached London in Lent 1196, and demanded
Hubert’s co-operation in fulfilling the royal orders. The justiciar,
though displeased and hurt, had no choice but to comply, and an order
was issued in the king’s name bidding all sheriffs and officers of the
Crown be ready to give an account of their stewardship in London on
a certain day--apparently the day of the usual Exchequer-meeting in
Easter-week.[1758] Before Easter came, the abbot of Caen himself was
gone to his last account; he was seized with illness while dining with
Archbishop Hubert on Passion Sunday, and five days later he died.[1759]
The intended inquisition never took place; but the mere proposal to
conduct it thus through the medium of a stranger from over sea was
a direct slight offered to the justiciar by the king;[1760] and it
coincided with a disturbance which warned Hubert of a possible danger
to his authority from another quarter.
[1754] Rog. Howden as above, p. 290. Cf. _Itin. Reg. Ric._
(Stubbs), pp. 449, 450.
[1755] See Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 637, 638. That it
was imposed late in the year seems implied by so much of it not
being accounted for till the next year; see Stubbs, pref. to
Rog. Howden, vol. iv. p. lxxxviii and note 3.
[1756] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 19 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 464). Cf.
Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5.
[1757] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5. He seems to imply
that Philip shared in the abbot’s commission; but he evidently
made no attempt to act upon it after Robert’s death.
[1758] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 19 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 465).
[1759] Rog. Howden as above. “Nec cum eis quos evocaverat post
Pascha positurus, sed ante Pascha rationem superno Judici de
propriis actibus redditurus.” Will. Newb. as above.
[1760] On April 15, four days after the abbot’s death, Richard
wrote a sort of apology to the justiciar. See Stubbs, _R.
Diceto_, vol. ii. app. to pref. pp. lxxix, lxxx.
Strive as he might to equalize the burthens of taxation, he could
not prevent them from pressing upon the poorer classes with a
severity which grew at last well-nigh intolerable. The grievance was
felt most keenly in London. The substitution of the “commune” for
the older shire-organization of London in 1191 was a step towards
municipal unity, and thus indirectly towards local independence and
self-government; but it had done nothing for the poorer class of
citizens. It had placed the entire control of civic administration,
including the regulation of trade and the assessment of taxes, in the
hands of a governing body consisting of a mayor and aldermen, one of
whom presided over each of the wards into which the whole city was
divided, the head of them all being the mayor.[1761] This corporation
was the representative of the merchant-gild, which had thus absorbed
into itself all the powers and privileges of the earlier ruling
class of territorial magnates, in addition to its own. As might be
expected, the rule of this newly-established oligarchy over the mass
of its unenfranchized fellow-citizens was at least as oppressive as
that of the sheriffs and “barons of the city” which had preceded it;
and it was less willingly borne, owing to the jealousy which always
existed between the craftsmen and the merchant-gild. As the taxes
grew more burthensome year by year, a suspicion began to spread
that they were purposely assessed in such a manner as to spare the
well-filled pockets of the assessors, and wring an unfair proportion
of the required total from the hard-earned savings of the poor.[1762]
Whether the injustice was intentional or not, the grievance seems to
have been a real one; and it soon found a spokesman and a champion.
William Fitz-Osbert--“William with the Long Beard,” as he was commonly
called--was by birth a member of the ruling class in the city.[1763]
He seems to have shared with a goldsmith named Geoffrey the leadership
of a band of London citizens who in 1190 formed part of the crusading
fleet, and did good service, not indeed, so far as we know, in Holy
Land, but like their brethren forty-three years earlier, in helping
to drive the Moors out of Portugal.[1764] Since his return, whether
fired by genuine zeal for the cause of the oppressed, or, as some of
his contemporaries thought, moved by the hope of acquiring power and
influence which he found unattainable by other means,[1765] he had
severed himself from his natural associates in the city to become the
preacher and leader of another sort of crusade, for the deliverance
of the poorer classes from the tyranny of their wealthy rulers. At
every meeting of the governing body he withstood his fellow-aldermen
to the face, remonstrating continually against their corrupt fiscal
administration. They could not silence and dared not expel him,
for they knew that his whispers were stirring up the craftsmen;
and although the rumour that he had more than fifty thousand sworn
followers at his back must have been an exaggeration, yet there could
be no doubt of the existence of a conspiracy sufficiently formidable
to excuse, if not to justify, the terror of the civic rulers.[1766]
When after a visit to Normandy William began openly to boast of the
king’s favour and support, the justiciar thought it time to interfere.
He called the citizens together, endeavoured to allay their discontent
by reasonings and remonstrances, and persuaded them to give hostages
for their good behaviour.[1767] William however set his authority at
defiance. Day after day, in the streets and open spaces of the city,
and at last even in S. Paul’s itself,[1768] this bold preacher with the
tall stately form, singular aspect and eloquent tongue gathered round
him a crowd of eager listeners to whom he proclaimed himself as the
“king and saviour of the poor.” One of his audience afterwards reported
to a writer of the time his exposition of a text from Isaiah: “With joy
shall ye draw water out of the wells of the Saviour.”[1769] “I,” said
William, “am the saviour of the poor. Ye poor who have felt the heavy
hand of the rich, ye shall draw from my wells the water of wholesome
doctrine, and that with joy, for the time of your visitation is at
hand. For I will divide the waters from the waters. The people are the
waters; and I will divide the humble and faithful people from the proud
and perfidious people. I will divide the elect from the reprobate, as
light from darkness.”[1770]
[1761] In the _Liber de Antiquis Legibus_ (a chronicle of the
mayors and sheriffs of London, compiled in 1274, and edited
by Mr. Stapleton for the Camden Soc.), p. 1, the first mayor,
Henry Fitz-Aylwine, is said to have been appointed “anno gratie
Mº centesimo lxxxviii, anno primo regni Regis Ricardi;” and
the document known as Fitz-Aylwine’s Assize (_ib._ p. 206)
purports to have been issued “Anno Domini Mº Cº lxxxix,
scilicet primo anno regni illustris Regis Ricardi, existente
tunc Henrico filio Aylewini Maiore, qui fuit primus Maiorum
Londoniarum.” On this however Bishop Stubbs remarks: “It is
improbable that London had a recognized mayor before 1191,
in which year the communa was established ... and there is
I believe no mention of such an official in a record until
some three years later.” Introd. to _Annales Londonienses_
(“Chronicles of Ed. I. and Ed. II.”), p. xxxi.
[1762] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 5. Mat. Paris, _Chron.
Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p. 418. Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20
(Howlett, vol. ii. p. 466).
[1763] “Willelmus cum Barbâ,” Rog. Howden as above, pp. 5,
6; “agnomen habens a barbâ prolixâ,” Will. Newb. (as above);
“cognomento cum-Barbâ,” “dictus Barbatus vel Barba,” Mat.
Paris (as above), pp. 418, 419. Will. Newb. thinks he wore the
unusual appendage simply to make himself conspicuous; Mat.
Paris explains “cujus genus avitum ob indignationem Normannorum
radere barbam contempsit,” on which see Freeman, _Norm. Conq._,
vol. v. p. 900.
[1764] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), pp. 116–118.
[1765] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 5, 6, and Mat. Paris,
_Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. pp. 418, 419, represent the
former view; Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp.
467, 468), and R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143, the latter.
[1766] Will. Newb. as above (p. 468).
[1767] _Ib._ (pp. 468, 469).
[1768] R. Diceto as above.
[1769] “Of salvation,” A. V.; “de fontibus Salvatoris,” Vulg.
Is. xii. 3.
[1770] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 469).
Powerless to deal with these assemblies within the city, Hubert
determined at least to check the spread of such teaching as this,
and issued orders that any citizen of the lower class found outside
the walls should be arrested as an enemy to king and kingdom. Some
chapmen from London were accordingly arrested at Mid-Lent at Stamford
fair.[1771] A day or two afterwards--the justiciar’s fears being
perhaps quickened by the arrival of the abbot of Caen, which William
might easily interpret as the effect of his own remonstrances with the
king--an attempt was made to call William himself to account for his
seditious proceedings. The bearer of the summons found him surrounded
by such a formidable array of followers that he dared not execute
his commission, and a forcible arrest was decided on. Guided by two
citizens who undertook to catch him at unawares, a party of armed men
was sent to seize him;[1772] one of the guides was felled with a blow
of a hatchet by William himself, the other was slain by his friends;
William, with a few adherents, took sanctuary in the church of S.
Mary-at-Bow. The justiciar, after surrounding the church with soldiers,
ordered it to be set on fire,[1773] and William, driven out by the
smoke and the flames, was stabbed on the threshold by the son of the
man whom he had killed an hour before.[1774] The wound however was
not immediately fatal; the soldiers seized him and carried him to the
Tower for trial before the justiciars, who at once condemned him to
death; he was stripped, tied to a horse’s tail, thus dragged through
the city, and hanged with eight of his adherents.[1775] The rest of
the malcontents were so overawed by this spectacle that they at once
made complete submission.[1776] The justiciar had triumphed; but his
triumph was dearly bought at the cost of what little still remained
to him of personal popularity and ecclesiastical repute. The common
people persisted in reverencing William Longbeard as a martyr;[1777]
the clergy were horrified at the sacrilege involved in the violation
of the right of sanctuary and the firing of a church, a sacrilege all
the more unpardonable because committed by an archbishop; while his
own chapter seized upon it as the crowning charge in the already long
indictment which they were preparing against their primate.[1778]
Thus overwhelmed with obloquy on all sides, Hubert in disgust for a
moment threw up the justiciarship, but resumed it as soon as he was
once more assured of Richard’s confidence.[1779] For two more years
he toiled on at his thankless task. The budget of 1196 was made up
by the safe expedient of another scutage.[1780] Next year the sole
legislative act ventured upon by the justiciar was an attempt to
enforce uniformity of weights and measures throughout the kingdom by
means of an Assize,[1781] whose provisions however turned out to be
so impracticable that, like a similar ordinance issued earlier in the
reign, it seems to have remained inoperative, and six years later was
abolished altogether.[1782] In the autumn Hubert went over to Normandy,
where he was occupied for some weeks in diplomatic business for the
king.[1783] A month after his return the crisis came.
[1771] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 6.
[1772] Will. Newb. as above (p. 470).
[1773] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden as above; Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._
(Luard) vol. ii. p. 419. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143,
makes William himself fire the church, but this seems nonsense,
as he clearly had no intention of dying in it.
[1774] Will. Newb. as above. Cf. Rog. Howden as above.
[1775] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 20 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 471) says
nine. Eight is the number given by Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol.
iv. p. 6. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 143; Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. pp. 533, 534; and Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._
(Luard), vol. ii. p. 419. Gervase calls the place of execution
“ad ulmos,” Mat. Paris “ad Ulmetum” [“the Elms in Smithfield”
notes Mr. Luard in the margin]. R. Diceto calls it Tyburn;
the other writers give it no name at all. We are indebted
to Gervase (as above, p. 533) for the date of this affair;
Saturday, April 6--the day before the abbot of Caen fell sick;
see above, p. 344.
[1776] Rog. Howden and R. Diceto, as above.
[1777] See Will. Newb. as above, c. 21 (pp. 471, 472). Mat.
Paris (as above) heartily shared in their opinion.
[1778] Rog. Howden as above, p. 48.
[1779] _Ib._ pp. 12, 13.
[1780] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. lxxxviii and
note 3. Madox, _Hist. Exch._, vol. i. pp. 637, 638.
[1781] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 33, 34.
[1782] _Ib._ p. 172. Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._, vol. i. p. 509.
[1783] R. Diceto as above, p. 158. Gerv. Cant. as above, pp.
544, 545. The dates do not exactly agree.
Richard, at the height of his struggle with Philip of France, found
himself short not only of money but of men,[1784] at any rate of men
whom he could trust. He called upon Hubert to send him over from
England either a force of three hundred knights to serve him at their
own charges for a year, or a sum which would enable him to enlist the
same number of mercenaries for the same period, at the rate of three
English shillings a day.[1785] For some reason or other it seems
that Hubert, somewhat unwisely, at once decided to ignore the second
alternative; in a great council held at Oxford on December 7[1786] he
simply proposed, in his own name and that of his colleagues in the
government, that the barons of England, among whom the bishops were to
be reckoned, should come to the rescue of their distressed sovereign by
supplying him with three hundred knights to serve him at their own cost
for a year. Hubert himself, in his character of archbishop, declared
his readiness to take his share of the burthen; so did the bishop of
London, Richard Fitz-Nigel the treasurer. The bishop of Lincoln, Hugh
of Avalon, was then asked for his assent. “O ye wise and noble men here
present,” said the Burgundian saint, “ye know that I came to this land
as a stranger, and from the simplicity of a hermit’s life was raised
to the office of a bishop. When therefore my inexperience was called
to rule over the church of our Lady, I set myself carefully to learn
its customs and privileges, its duties and burthens; and for thirteen
years I have not strayed from the path marked out by my predecessors,
in preserving the one and fulfilling the other. I know that the church
of Lincoln is bound to do the king military service, but only in this
land; outside the boundaries of England she owes him no such thing.
Wherefore I deem it meeter for me to go back to my native land and my
hermit’s cell, rather than, while holding a bishopric here, to bring
upon my church the loss of her ancient immunities and the infliction of
unwonted burthens.”[1787]
[1784] _Magna Vita S. Hugonis_ (Dimock), p. 248.
[1785] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 40.
[1786] Cf. Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 549, and _Mag. Vita
S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 251.
[1787] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), pp. 249, 250.
Hugh of Lincoln was the universally-acknowledged leader of the English
Church in all matters of religion and morals; he had exercised in Henry
II.’s later years such an influence over the king as no one, except
perhaps Thomas Becket, had ever possessed; the whole Church and nation
reverenced him as it had never reverenced any man since the death of S.
Anselm. When he took up the position of Thomas and Anselm as a champion
of constitutional liberty, the victory was sure. Strangely enough, his
action seems to have taken the primate completely by surprise. For a
moment Hubert stood speechless; then he turned to Bishop Herbert of
Salisbury, and with quivering lips asked what he was minded to do for
the king’s assistance. As a son of Richard of Ilchester and a kinsman
of the great ministerial house founded by Roger of Salisbury,[1788]
Herbert represented the traditions of an old and venerated political
school, as Hugh represented those of the best school of ecclesiastics.
The statesman’s reply was an echo of the saint’s: “It seems to me that,
without grievous wrong to my church, I can neither do nor say aught but
what I have heard from my lord of Lincoln.” The justiciar, hurling a
torrent of reproaches at Hugh, broke up the assembly, and wrote to the
king that his plan had been foiled through Hugh’s opposition.[1789]
Richard in a fury ordered the property of the two recalcitrant bishops
to be confiscated; in the case of Salisbury this was done, but no
Englishman dared lay a finger on anything belonging to the saint of
Lincoln, “for they feared his curse like death itself.” In vain did
the king reiterate his command, till at last his own officers begged
Hugh to put an end to the scandal by making his peace, for their sakes
if not for his own; Hugh therefore went to seek Richard in Normandy,
and literally forced him into a reconciliation on S. Augustine’s day.
Herbert, on the other hand, had to purchase his restoration at a
heavy price;[1790] but the king and his justiciar were none the less
completely beaten. The death of Rees Ap-Griffith and a dispute between
his sons for the succession in South Wales gave Hubert an opportunity
of renewing his fading laurels by a brilliant expedition to the Welsh
marches, where he succeeded in restoring tranquillity and securing
the border-fortresses for the king.[1791] He had however scarcely had
time to recover from his political defeat before he was overwhelmed by
the bursting of an ecclesiastical storm which had long been hanging
over his head. Pope Celestine died on January 8, 1198. On the morrow
the cardinals elected as his successor a young deacon named Lothar,
who took the name of Innocent III., and began at once to sweep away
the abuses of the Roman court and to vindicate the rights of his see
against the Roman aristocracy with a promptness and vigour which were
an earnest of his whole future career.[1792] The monks of Canterbury
lost no time in sending to the new Pope their list of grievances
against their primate; and at the head of the list they set a charge
which, in the eyes of such a pontiff as Innocent, could admit of no
defence. Hubert, said they, had violated the duties and the dignity
of his order by becoming the king’s justiciar, acting as a judge in
cases of life and death, and so entangling himself in worldly business
that he was incapable of paying due attention to the government of
the Church. Innocent immediately wrote to the king, charging him, if
he valued his soul’s health, not to suffer either the archbishop of
Canterbury or any other priest to continue in any secular office;
and at the same time he solemnly forbade the acceptance of any such
office by any bishop or priest throughout the whole Church. Discredited
as Hubert now was in the eyes of all parties, he had no choice but
to resign, and this time Richard had no choice but to accept his
resignation.[1793]
[1788] On Herbert’s antecedents and connexions see Stubbs,
_Rog. Howden_, vol. iv. pref. p. xci, note 4.
[1789] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 250. Cf. the brief
account in Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 40.
[1790] _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 251.
[1791] On Rees’s death his two sons quarrelled over the
succession, and Hubert had to go to the “fines Gwalliæ” and
make peace between them. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p.
21. At Christmas he was at Hereford, where he took the castle
into his own hands, turning out its custodians and putting in
new ones, “ad opus regis”; he did the same at Bridgenorth and
Ludlow. _Ib._ p. 35. See also Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p.
543, Gerald’s letter to Hubert after his victory, and Hubert’s
reply: Gir. Cambr. _De Rebus a se gestis_, l. iii. cc. 5, 6
(Brewer, vol. i. pp. 96–102).
[1792] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 41–44.
[1793] _Ib._ pp. 47, 48.
The last few months of his justiciarship were however occupied with the
projection, if not the execution, of a measure of great constitutional
importance. Early in the spring he had, in his master’s name, laid upon
England a carucage to the amount of five shillings upon every carucate
or ploughland. The great increase in the rate of taxation, as compared
with that of 1194, was not unjustifiable; for since that year the
socage-tenants, on whom the impost fell, had paid no direct taxes at
all, while two scutages had been exacted from the tenants-in-chivalry.
But a far more important change was made in the assessment of the new
impost. Until now, the carucate, like the hide, had been a term of
elastic significance. It represented, as the literal meaning of the
word implied, the extent of land which could be cultivated by a single
plough; and this of course varied in different parts of the country
according to the nature of the soil, and the number and strength of
the plough-team. In general, however, a hundred acres seem to have
been reckoned as the average extent both of the carucate and of the
hide. In order to avoid the endless complications and disputes which
under the old system had made the assessment of the land-tax a matter
of almost more trouble than profit, Hubert Walter adopted this average
as a fixed standard, and ordered that henceforth, for purposes of
taxation, the word “carucate” should represent a hundred acres. It
followed as a necessary consequence that the whole arable land of
England must be re-measured. The old customary reckoning of hides,
based upon the Domesday survey, would no longer answer its purpose:
the venerable rate-book which had been in use for more than a hundred
years, partially superseded since 1168 by the Black Book of the
Exchequer, was now to be superseded entirely. Hubert therefore issued
in the king’s name a commission for what was virtually a new Domesday
survey. Into every shire he sent a clerk and a knight, who, together
with the sheriff and certain lawful men chosen out of the shire, were,
after swearing that they would do the king’s business faithfully, to
summon before them the stewards of the barons of the county, the lord
or bailiff of every township and the reeve and four lawful men of the
same, whether free or villein, and two lawful knights of the hundred;
these persons were to declare upon oath what ploughlands there were in
every township--how many in demesne, how many in villenage, how many
in alms, and who was responsible for these last. The carucates thus
ascertained were noted in a roll of which four copies were kept, one
by each of the two royal commissioners, one by the sheriff, and the
other divided among the stewards of the local barons. The collection
of the money was intrusted to two lawful knights and the bailiff of
every hundred; these were responsible for it to the sheriff; and the
sheriff had to see that it agreed with his roll, and to pay it into
the Exchequer. Stern penalties were denounced against witnesses,
whether free or villein, who should be detected in trying to deceive
the commissioners. No land was to be exempted from the tax, except the
free estates belonging to the parish churches, and lands held of the
king by serjeanty or special service; even these last, however, were
to be included in the survey, and their holders were required to come
and prove their excuses at its conclusion, in London at the octave of
Pentecost.[1794]
[1794] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 46, 47.
This was Hubert’s last great administrative act, and it had a far
more important significance than he himself probably knew. In form,
the application of the process of jury-inquest to the assessment of
an impost on the land was only a return to the precedent of Domesday
itself. In reality, however, it was something much more important
than this. The jury-inquest had been introduced by the Conqueror in
1086 under exceptional circumstances, and for an exceptional purpose
which could be attained by no other means. So far as its original
use was concerned, the precedent had remained a wholly isolated one
for more than a hundred years. But during those years the principle
which lay at the root of the jury-inquest had made its way into every
branch of legal, fiscal and judicial administration. It had been
applied to the purposes of private litigation by the Great Assize,
to the determination of individual liability to military duty by the
Assize of Arms, to the assessment of taxation on personal property
by the ordinance of the Saladin tithe; it had penetrated the whole
system of criminal procedure through the Assizes of Clarendon and
Northampton; and it had gained a yet fuller recognition in the
judicial ordinances of 1194. Viewed in this light, its application
to the assessment of taxation on real property was another highly
important step in the extension of its sphere of work. But this was
not all. The chief value of the jury-system lay in its employment
of the machinery of local representation and election, whereby it
was a means of training the people to the exercise of constitutional
self-government. The commission of 1198 shews that, although doubtless
neither rulers nor people were conscious of the fact, this training
had now advanced within measurable distance of its completion. The
machinery of the new survey was not identical with that used in 1086.
The taxpayers were represented, not only by the witnesses on whose
recognition the assessment was based, but by the “lawful men chosen
out of the shire” who took their place side by side with the king’s
officers as commissioners for the assessment, and by the bailiff and
two knights of the hundred who were charged with the collection of
the money. The representative principle had now reached its furthest
developement in the financial administration of the shire. Its next
advance must inevitably result in giving to the taxpayers a share in
the determination, first of the amount of the impost, and then of the
purposes to which it should be applied, by admitting them, however
partially and indirectly, to a voice in the great council of the
nation.[1795]
[1795] On this “Great Carucage” see Stubbs, _Constit. Hist._,
vol. i. pp. 510, 511, and pref. to Rog. Howden, vol. iv. pp.
xci–xcv.
We must not credit Hubert Walter with views so lofty or so far-reaching
as these. The chief aim of his policy doubtless was to get for his
master as much money as he could, although he would only do it by
what he regarded as just and constitutional methods. Unluckily the
commissioners’ report is lost, and there is not even any proof that
it was ever presented; for before Whitsuntide the new Pope’s views
had become known, and on July 11 a royal writ announced Hubert’s
retirement from the justiciarship and the appointment of Geoffrey
Fitz-Peter in his stead.[1796] Like Hubert, Geoffrey Fitz-Peter came
of a family which had long been engaged in administrative work. His
elder brother Simon had in Henry’s early years filled the various
offices of sheriff, justice-in-eyre, and king’s marshal.[1797] Geoffrey
himself had been sheriff of Northampton throughout the last five years
of Henry’s reign, and had during the same period acted occasionally
as an ordinary justice of assize, and more frequently as a judge of
the forest-court.[1798] In 1189 Richard appointed him one of the
assistant-justiciars, and in this capacity he supported Walter of Rouen
in the affair of William of Longchamp’s deposition.[1799] In the early
days of William’s rule, however, Geoffrey had made use of the latter’s
influence to secure for himself the whole English inheritance of the
earl of Essex, William de Mandeville, upon which his wife had a distant
claim.[1800] Such a man was likely to be controlled by fewer scruples,
as well as hampered by fewer external restraints, than those which had
beset the justiciar-archbishop; and in truth, before the year was out,
both clergy and people had cause to regret the change of ministers.
Some of the religious orders refused to pay their share of the
carucage; their refusal was met by a royal edict declaring the whole
body of clergy, secular as well as monastic, incapable of claiming
redress for any wrongs inflicted on them by the laity, while for any
injury done by a clerk or a monk to a layman satisfaction was exacted
to the uttermost farthing. The archbishop of Canterbury could hardly
have published what was virtually a decree of outlawry against his own
order; the new justiciar published it seemingly without hesitation,
and the recalcitrant monks were compelled to submit.[1801] This act
was followed by a renewal of the decree requiring all charters granted
under the king’s old seal to be brought up for confirmation under
the new one[1802]--a step which seems to imply that Richard’s former
command to this effect had not been very strictly enforced by Hubert.
Meanwhile three justices-errant, acting on a set of instructions
modelled upon those of 1194, were holding pleas of the Crown in the
northern shires;[1803] “so that,” says King Henry’s old chaplain Roger
of Howden, “with these and other vexations, just or unjust, all England
from sea to sea was reduced to penury. And these things were not yet
ended when another kind of torment was added to confound the men of
the kingdom, through the justices of the forest,” who were sent out
all over England to hold a great forest-assize, which was virtually a
renewal of that issued by Henry in 1184.[1804]
[1796] Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 71.
[1797] He was sheriff of Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and
Buckinghamshire from 1156 till 1160, and of Northamptonshire
again from Michaelmas 1163 till Easter 1170. See the list of
sheriffs in index to Eyton’s _Itin. Hen. II._, pp. 337, 339. He
appears as marshal in 1165 (Madox, _Form. Angl._, p. xix), and
as justice-errant in Bedfordshire, A.D. 1163, in the story of
Philip de Broi (above, p. 21).
[1798] Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._, list of sheriffs, p. 339; _ib._
pp. 265, 273, 281, 291, 298. Pipe Roll I. Ric. I. (Hunter)
_passim_.
[1799] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 16, 28, 96, 153.
[1800] Stubbs, _Rog. Howden_, vol. iii., pref. p. xlviii, note
6.
[1801] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 66.
[1802] _Ibid._ Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._ (Luard), vol. ii. p.
451. Ann. Waverl. a. 1198 (Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. ii. p.
251).
[1803] Instructions in Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 61, 62. The
judges were Hugh Bardulf, Roger Arundel and Geoffrey Hacket;
they held pleas in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire,
Yorkshire, Northumberland, Westmoreland, Cumberland and
Lancashire.
[1804] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 62–66.
Stern and cruel, however, as was the administration of the last eight
months of Richard’s reign, it was still part of a salutary discipline.
The milder chastenings which Richard’s English subjects had endured
from Hubert Walter, the scorpion-lashes with which he chastised them
by the hands of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, were both alike stages in the
training which Richard’s predecessor had begun, and whose value they
were to learn when left face to face with the personal tyranny of his
successor. For nearer at hand than they could dream was the day when
English people and Angevin king were to stand face to face indeed,
more closely than they had ever stood before. The nine generations of
increasing prosperity promised to Fulk the Good were all numbered and
fulfilled, and with their fulfilment had come the turn of the tide.
The power of the Angevins had reached its destined limit, and had
begun to recede again. From the sacred eastern land all trace of it was
already swept away; in the west it was, slowly indeed as yet, but none
the less surely falling back. Five years were still to pass before the
tide should be fairly out; then it was to leave the Good Count’s heir
stranded, not on the black rock of Angers, but on the white cliffs of
England.
Richard had spent the first half of his reign in fighting for a lost
cause in Palestine; he spent the other half in fighting for a losing
cause in Gaul. The final result of the long series of conquests
and annexations whereby the Angevin counts, from Fulk the Red to
Henry Fitz-Empress, had been enlarging their borders for more than
two hundred years, had been to bring them into direct geographical
contact and political antagonism with an enemy more formidable than
any whom they had yet encountered. In their earliest days the king
of the French had been their patron; a little later, he had become
their tool. Now, he was their sole remaining rival; and ere long he
was to be their conqueror. Since the opening of the century, a great
change had taken place in the political position of the French Crown;
a change which was in a considerable measure due to the yet greater
change in the position of the Angevin house. When Louis VI. came to the
throne in 1109, he found the so-called “kingdom of France” distributed
somewhat as follows. The western half, from the river Somme to the
Pyrenees, was divided between four great fiefs--Normandy, Britanny,
Anjou and Aquitaine. Four others--Champagne, Burgundy, Auvergne and
Toulouse--covered its eastern portion from the river Meuse to the
Mediterranean Sea; another, Flanders, occupied its northernmost angle,
between the sources of the Meuse, the mouth of the Scheld, and the
English Channel. The two lines of great fiefs were separated by an
irregular group of smaller territories, amid which lay, distributed in
two very unequal portions, the royal domain. Its northern and larger
half, severed from Flanders by the little counties of Amiens and
Vermandois, was flanked on the east by Champagne and on the north-west
by Normandy, while its south-western border was ringed in by the
counties of Chartres, Blois and Sancerre, which parted it from Anjou,
and which were all linked together with Champagne under the same ruling
house. Southward, in the upper valleys of the Loire and the Cher, a
much smaller fragment of royal domain, comprising the viscounty of
Bourges and the territory afterwards known as the Bourbonnais, lay
crowded in between Auvergne, the Aquitanian district of Berry, and the
Burgundian counties of Mâcon and Nevers and that of Sancerre, which
parted it from the larger royal possessions north of the Loire. The
whole domains of the Crown thus covered scarcely more ground than the
united counties of Anjou, Touraine and Maine, scarcely so much as the
duchy of Normandy. Within these limits, however, Louis VI. had in his
twenty-nine years’ reign contrived to establish his absolute authority
on so firm a basis that from thenceforth the independence of the Crown
was secured. To destroy that of the great feudataries, and to bring
them one by one into a subjection as absolute as that of the royal
domain itself, was the work which he bequeathed to his successors.
[Illustration: Map VII.
FRANCE AND THE ANGEVIN DOMINIONS.
To illustrate the wars of Richard and John with Philip Augustus.
Key: _Royal Domain of Philip. A. D. 1194._
Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co.
]
We may set aside the temporary annexation of Aquitaine through the
marriage of Louis VII. and Eleanor as forming no part of this process
of absorption. In the plans of Louis VI. it was doubtless meant to be a
very important part; but as a matter of fact, its historical importance
proved to be of a wholly different kind. The marriage of Louis and
Eleanor contributed to the final acquisition of Guienne and Gascony
by the French Crown not a whit more than the marriage of Geoffrey
Martel and Agnes had contributed to their acquisition by the house of
Anjou. The Parisian king, like his Angevin follower of old, had work
to do on his own side of the Loire before he might safely attempt
the conquest of the south. By the middle of the century, the map of
Gaul had undergone a marked transformation. Its eastern and central
portions indeed remained unchanged; but the western half was utterly
metamorphosed. Its four great divisions had been virtually swept away,
and the whole land had become Angevin. In face of this altered state
of things, the remaining powers of northern Gaul were of necessity
driven into union, as a counterpoise to this enormous growth of Anjou;
and the only possible centre of union, alike in a political and a
geographical point of view, was the king of the French. He alone could
claim to match in rank and dignity the crowned masters of the west;
and under his leadership alone was it possible to face them all along
the line from the mouth of the Somme to the source of the Cher with a
front as unbroken as their own. The old Angevin march had ceased to
be a marchland at all; its original character was now transferred to
the counties of Chartres and Blois; while to north and south of these,
from Nonancourt to Aumale and along the whole course of the Cher above
Vierzon, the royal domain itself was the sole bulwark of north-eastern
Gaul against the advancing power of Anjou. To secure Chartres and Blois
was the first necessity for the king: but their counts needed his
protection even more than he needed their fidelity, for the whole width
of his domains parted them from Champagne, where the bulk of their
strength lay. Accordingly Louis VII., by the matrimonial alliances
which he formed first for his daughters and lastly for himself with the
house of Blois and Champagne, easily succeeded in binding them to a
community of personal interests with the royal house of France, whereby
their subservience to the French Crown was for the future secured. The
chain was too strong to be broken by the boyish wilfulness of Philip
Augustus; and from the moment of his reconciliation with his mother and
uncles in 1180, the whole military and political strength of Blois,
Chartres and Champagne may be reckoned at his command as unreservedly
as that of his own immediate domains.
Since that time, the royal power had made an important advance to the
northward. At the opening of Philip’s reign the dominions of the count
of Flanders stretched from the Channel to the borders of Champagne,
covered the whole northern frontier of the royal domain, and touched
that of Normandy at its junction with Ponthieu. Twelve years later,
more than half this territory had passed, either by cession or by
conquest, into the hands of the king. Vermandois was given up to him
in 1186; and in 1191 the death of the Flemish count Philip made him
master of all Flanders south of the river Lys, which had been promised
to him as the dowry of his first queen, Elizabeth of Hainaut, niece
of the dead count and daughter of his successor.[1805] This was in
several respects a most valuable acquisition. Not only did it bring to
the Crown a considerable accession of territory, including the whole
upper valley of the Somme, the famous fortress of Péronne, and the
flourishing towns of Amiens and Arras; but the power of Flanders, which
a few years before had threatened to overshadow every other power in
northern Gaul, was completely broken; and the effect upon the political
position of Normandy was more important still. While Vermandois and
Amiens were in Flemish hands, a league between the Flemish count and
the ruler of Normandy would at any moment not only place the whole
north-western border of France at their mercy, but would enable them to
call in the forces of the imperial Crown to a junction which the French
king could have no power to hinder, and which must almost certainly
lead to his ruin. Now, on the other hand, such a junction was rendered
well-nigh impossible; the whole territory between Normandy, Ponthieu
and the German border was in the king’s own hands, and all that was
left of Flanders lay in almost complete isolation between the Lys and
the sea. In fine, as the dukes of Burgundy had for several generations
been obedient followers of their royal kinsmen, now that Blois,
Champagne and Vermandois were all secured, the power and influence of
the French Crown north of the Loire was fully a match in territorial
extent for that of the house of Anjou. South of the Loire the balance
was less equal. The extensive possessions of the house of S. Gilles may
indeed be left out of both scales; their homage for Toulouse was now
secured to the dukes of Aquitaine, but it was a mere formality which
left them practically still independent of both their rival overlords.
It was indeed at the expense of Toulouse that the Angevin rulers of
Poitou had made their last conquest, that of the Quercy. But since
then the French king, too, had been gaining territory in Aquitaine; and
his gains were made at the expense of the Poitevin duke. Richard had
found it needful to buy Philip’s assent to his peaceful entrance upon
his ancestral heritage after his father’s death by a renunciation of
all claims upon Auvergne and a cession of two important lordships in
Berry, Graçay and Issoudun.[1806] The sacrifice was trifling in itself,
but it was significant. It marked Richard’s own consciousness that a
turning-point had come in the career of his house. Hitherto they had
gone steadily forward; now it was time to draw back. The aggressive
attitude which had been habitual to the counts of Anjou for nearly
three hundred years must be dropped at last. Henceforth they were to
stand on the defensive in their turn against the advance of the French
Crown.
[1805] See above, p. 234, note 7{1115}.
[1806] Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.) p.
29. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 75.
It was not the strength of that advance itself which made it so
formidable to Richard; it was the knowledge that, side by side with
the process of consolidation in France, there had been and still was
going on in the Angevin dominions a process of disintegration which
his father had been unable to check, and against which he himself
was well-nigh helpless. The French monarchy was built up around one
definite centre, a centre round which all the subordinate parts of the
structure grouped themselves unquestioningly as a matter of course.
Paris and its king, even when his practical authority was at the
lowest ebb, had always been in theory the accepted rallying-point of
the whole kingdom, the acknowledged head of the body politic, none of
whose members had ever dreamed of establishing any other in its place.
But the empire of Richard Cœur-de-Lion had no centre; or rather, it
had three or four rival ones. In Angevin eyes its centre was Angers;
in Norman eyes it was Rouen; to the men of the south, it was Poitiers.
Even Henry Fitz-Empress had felt at times the difficulty of fulfilling
two such opposite parts as those of duke of Normandy and count of
Anjou without rousing the jealous resentment of either country against
himself as the representative of the other; while as for Britanny
and Aquitaine, he had only been able to keep an uncertain hold over
them by sheer force, until Britanny was appeased by the marriage of
Constance, and Aquitaine subdued by the vigour of Richard. But for
Richard in his father’s place the difficulty was far greater. Chafe
as they might against the yoke which bound them together--dispute as
they might over their respective shares in their common ruler and their
respective claims upon him--neither Angevin nor Norman could fail to
recognize his own natural sovereign and national representative in
the son of Geoffrey and Matilda. But the chances of this recognition
being extended to the next generation expired with the young king.
If the two Henrys were strangers in Britanny and in Aquitaine, yet
on the banks of the Seine, the Loire and the Mayenne they were felt
to be at home. But Richard was at home nowhere, though he was master
everywhere, from the Solway to the Pyrenees. His Aquitanian subjects
for the most part, if they counted him as a fellow-countryman, counted
him none the less as an enemy; his subjects north of Loire counted him
as a southern stranger. Normans and Angevins still saw in him, as they
had been taught to see in him for the first twenty-six years of his
life, the representative not of Hrolf and William or of Fulk the Red
and Geoffrey Martel, but simply of his mother’s Poitevin ancestors.
The Bretons saw in him the son of their conqueror, asserting his
supremacy over them and their young native prince only by the right
of the stronger. As Suger had laid it down as an axiom, more than
half a century ago, that “Englishmen ought not to rule over Frenchmen
nor French over English,” so now we begin to discern growing up in
Richard’s continental dominions a feeling that Normans should not rule
over Angevins, nor Angevins over Normans, nor either over Bretons and
Poitevins, nor Poitevins over any of the rest; and that if one and all
must needs submit to the loss of their ancient independence, it would
be more natural and less humiliating to lay it down at the feet of the
prince who had always been acknowledged in theory as the superior of
all alike, the king of the French.
This feeling, however, had scarcely come into existence, much less
risen to the surface of politics, when Philip Augustus came home from
the Crusade at Christmas 1191. It is scarcely probable that any plan
of actual conquest had as yet taken shape in Philip’s mind. But the
very audacity of the demand which he made upon the credulity of the
Norman constables when in the following spring he asked them to believe
that Richard had ceded to him not only the whole Vexin, but also the
counties of Aumale and Eu--a cession for which there was not a shadow
of reason either in past history or in present circumstances, and which
if carried into effect would have cut off the Norman communications
with Ponthieu and Flanders, and given him at once a foothold upon
the Channel and an invaluable coign of vantage for an attempt upon
Rouen--seems to indicate that he was already forming some more definite
design against the Angevins’ power than the simple system of lying
in wait to steal from them any territorial or political advantage
that could be stolen with impunity, with which he, like his father,
had hitherto been content. The terms of his treaty with John in the
following year point still more strongly in the same direction. As the
price of John’s investiture with the rest of his brother’s dominions,
Philip reserved to himself the whole Norman territory on the right bank
of the Seine, except the city of Rouen; on the left bank, nearly half
the viscounty of Evreux, including the castles of Vaudreuil, Verneuil
and Ivry; and from the older Angevin patrimony, all that was most
worth having in Touraine--Tours itself, Azay, Montbazon, Montrichard,
Amboise and Loches--besides the transfer of the Angevin fiefs in
the Vendômois from the count of Anjou to the count of Blois.[1807]
Owing to the disorganized state of Richard’s dominions caused by his
captivity, Philip’s endeavours to carry this bargain into effect by
conquering Normandy in John’s interest and his own met for a while
with considerable success. His first attempt at invasion was indeed
repulsed by the Norman barons under the leadership of Earl Robert of
Leicester;[1808] but a few weeks later treason opened to him the gates
of Gisors and Neaufle; the rest of the Vexin was easily won,[1809] and
secured thus against attack in his rear, he marched northward to the
capture of Aumale and Eu.[1810] Thence he turned back to besiege Rouen,
but soon retreated again into his own territories,[1811] taking Pacy
and Ivry on his way.[1812] In July, finding that, according to his own
phrase, the Angevin demon was after all to be let loose upon him once
more, he thought it advisable to accept Richard’s overtures of peace;
and Richard on his part--being still in prison--deemed it wise for the
moment to sanction the French king’s recent conquests in Normandy and
the liberation of Ademar of Angoulême, and also to let Philip have
temporary possession of Loches, Châtillon-sur-Indre, Driencourt and
Arques, as pledges for the payment of twenty thousand marks, due within
two years of his own release.[1813]
[1807] Treaty in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 57.
[1808] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 205.
[1809] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 206. Will. Newb., l.
iv. c. 34 (Howlett, vol. i. pp. 389, 390). Rigord (Duchesne,
_Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 36. Will. Armor. _Gesta
Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 77.
[1810] Will. Newb. as above (p. 390).
[1811] _Ibid._ Rog. Howden, as above. Cf. Chron. Rothom., a.
1193 (Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. i. p. 369).
[1812] Will. Newb. as above.
[1813] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 217–220. These were apparently
the twenty thousand marks promised in 1189 and not yet paid.
Whether he intended to keep or to break these engagements is
practically no matter; for, if he meant to break them, Philip took care
to anticipate him. Seven months after the treaty was signed he again
crossed the Norman border, took Evreux,[1814] which he handed over to
John’s custody,[1815] and marched up by way of Neubourg and Vaudreuil,
both of which he captured, to besiege Rouen. Thence, however, he again
retired--scared, it may be, by tidings of Richard’s approach--and
hurrying back to the southern border laid siege to Verneuil on May
10.[1816] Two days later Richard landed at Barfleur,[1817] and by the
end of another fortnight he was encamped at L’Aigle,[1818] within a
few miles of Verneuil. His presence there, coupled with the defection
of John who had contrived to join him on the road,[1819] and the
surprise and slaughter of the French garrison of Evreux by a body
of Norman troops,[1820] alarmed Philip so much that on Whitsun Eve,
May 28, he again fled into his own dominions.[1821] Richard was busy
strengthening the walls of Verneuil when tidings came to him that “the
Angevins and Cenomannians” were besieging Montmirail,[1822] a castle
on the borders of Perche and Maine, famous as the scene of a stormy
conference between Henry II. and S. Thomas. Who the besiegers actually
were, or what was the ground of their hostility either to William
of Montmirail[1823] or to his overlord King Richard, must remain
undecided. It is plain, however, that in Richard’s ears the tidings
sounded as a warning of disaffection in his patrimonial dominions.
He hurried to the relief of Montmirail, but found it levelled with
the ground.[1824] He wasted no time in pursuit of its destroyers, but
pushed on direct to Tours, took up his quarters in Châteauneuf,[1825]
and shewed his suspicions concerning the origin of the new mischief by
driving the canons of S. Martin out of the abbey where they dwelt under
the special protection of the French king.[1826] The burghers, on the
other hand, made proof of their loyalty by a free-will offering of two
thousand marks.[1827] Determined now to redeem his pledges to Philip
not with gold but with steel, Richard marched on to Beaulieu,[1828] to
join a body of Navarrese and Brabantines, sent by his brother-in-law
Sancho of Navarre, in blockading the castle of Loches;[1829] a few
days after his arrival, on June 13, it was surrendered by its French
garrison.[1830] He was however standing between two fires. Bertrand de
Born was again stirring up the south, singing and fighting ostensibly
in Richard’s interest against his disaffected neighbours in the
Limousin, but in reality kindling into a fresh blaze all the reckless
passions and endless feuds which had been smouldering too long for the
warrior-poet’s pleasure.[1831] Philip meanwhile was again threatening
Rouen;[1832] the Norman archbishop and seneschal attempted to negotiate
with him in Richard’s name, but without result;[1833] and at the end of
the month he marched southward to meet Richard himself. On July 4 the
two kings were within a few miles of each other--Richard at Vendôme,
Philip at Fréteval.[1834] What followed is told so diversely by the
English and French historians of the time that it seems impossible
to reconcile the rival accounts or to decide between them. All that
we know for certain is that Philip suddenly struck his tents and
withdrew into the territories of the count of Blois; that Richard set
off in pursuit, missed Philip himself, but fell at unawares upon the
troops who were convoying his baggage towards Blois, routed them, and
captured all the French king’s most precious possessions, including
his royal seal and the treasury-rolls of the whole kingdom, besides
a number of valuable horses, an immense quantity of money and plate,
and--what would be scarcely less useful to Richard for political
purposes--the charters of agreement between Philip and all the Norman,
Angevin and Poitevin rebels who had plotted treason with him and John
against their lord.[1835]
[1814] Will. Newb. as above, c. 40 (p. 403). Rigord (as above),
p. 37. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as above; _Philipp._, l.
iv. (_ibid._) p. 143.
[1815] Will. Armor. _Philipp._ as above.
[1816] Rigord as above. Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ as
above. Cf. _Philipp._ as above; Rog. Howden (as above), pp.
251, 252; R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 114, 115; and Will.
Newb., l. v. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 418). The date of the
siege of Verneuil comes from Rog. Howden.
[1817] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 251. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 114.
[1818] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 2 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 418).
[1819] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 252. R. Diceto, as above,
says they met “apud Bruis.”
[1820] This is all that Rigord says about the disaster
(Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 37). In the
hands of the poet William of Armorica it becomes a horrible
romance, wherein John, as commandant of Evreux, invites the
unsuspecting Frenchmen to a banquet, and then brings in his
“armed Englishmen” to massacre them (_Philipp._, l. iv.,
_ib._ p. 143; _Gesta Phil. Aug._, _ib._ p. 77). John has so
many undoubted crimes to answer for that it probably seemed
a mere trifle to add one more to the list, but for that very
reason one cannot admit it on the sole testimony of the
poet-historiographer. The English writers say nothing of the
whole matter.
[1821] Rog. Howden and Will. Newb. as above. R. Diceto (as
above), p. 115. Cf. Rigord and Will. Armor. as above.
[1822] “Andegavenses et Cenomannenses” says Rog. Howden as
above. R. Diceto (as above), p. 116, has “Andegavenses” only;
the Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 49), has
“Andegavenses et alii.”
[1823] William “Gohet” as R. Diceto calls him; _i.e._ (see
Bishop Stubbs’s note, _ibid._), “William of Perche Gouet,
Goeth, or le petit Perche.”
[1824] Rog. Howden as above. R. Diceto as above, p. 117. Cf.
Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (as above).
[1825] R. Diceto as above.
[1826] Rigord (Duchesne), _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p.
38.
[1827] “Dono spontaneo,” Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p.
252; “nullâ coactione præmissâ,” R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii.
p. 117. The “burgenses” in question, as appears from R. Diceto,
were those of Châteauneuf, not the _cives_ of Tours proper.
[1828] R. Diceto as above.
[1829] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 252, 253.
[1830] _Ib._ p. 253 (with the date). R. Diceto as above. Cf.
Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 49).
[1831] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, pp. 83, 84.
[1832] Rog. Howden as above, p. 253. R. Diceto, p. 116.
[1833] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 253–255.
[1834] R. Diceto as above.
[1835] Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 255, 256; R.
Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 117, 118; Will. Newb., l. v.
c. 2 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 419); Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist.
Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 38; Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil.
Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 77; _Philipp._, l. iv. (_ibid._), p. 144;
and Chron. S. Albin. a. 1192 (Marchegay, _Eglises_, p. 49).
Rog. Howden alone mentions the charters, and Will. Armor. the
treasury-rolls and seal.
The repairing of this disaster gave Philip sufficient occupation
for the rest of the year, and Richard was free to march upon the
Aquitanian rebels. Sancho of Navarre was already wasting the lands of
the ringleaders, Geoffrey of Rancogne and Ademar of Angoulême;[1836]
and by July 22 Richard was able to report to his justiciar in England
that he was master of all the castles of the Angoumois and all the
lands of Geoffrey.[1837] From Angoulême he marched northward again,
took measures for the security of Anjou and Maine,[1838] and then
returned to Normandy, where he found that his representatives, headed
by the chancellor, had just concluded a truce with the French king
to last till All Saints’ day[1839]--a proceeding which served him
as the pretext for that withdrawal of the seal from William and
repudiation of all engagements made under it, which has been mentioned
already.[1840] No further movement was however made by either party
until the spring. Then the wearisome story of fruitless negotiations
alternating with indecisive warfare begins again, and goes on
unceasingly for the next four years. Save for an occasional attempt to
make a diversion in Berry, the actual fighting between the two kings
was confined to the Norman border.[1841] Normandy was the chief object
of Philip’s attack, partly no doubt because, owing to its geographical
position, he could invade it with more ease and less risk than any
other part of Richard’s dominions, but also because it was the key
to all the rest. A French conquest of Normandy would sever Richard’s
communications not only with Flanders and Germany, but also with
England; and the strength of the Angevins in Gaul now rested chiefly
upon the support of their island-realm. Neither assailant nor defender,
however, was able to gain any decisive advantage in the field. The
armed struggle between them was in fact of less importance than the
diplomatic rivalry which they carried on side by side with it; and in
this, strangely enough, Richard, who had hitherto shewn so little of
the far-sighted statecraft and political tact of his race, proved more
than a match for his wily antagonist.
[1836] R. Diceto as above, p. 117. Will. Newb. as above.
[1837] Letter of Richard to Hubert Walter (date, Angoulême,
July 22) in Rog. Howden as above, pp. 256, 257. Cf. R. Diceto
as above, pp. 118, 119. Will. Newb. as above (p. 420).
[1838] “Rediit in Andegaviam, et redemit omnes baillivos suos,
id est, ad redemptionem coegit. Similiter fecit in Cenomanniâ.”
Rog. Howden as above, p. 267. At Le Mans “convocavit magnates
omnes suæ jurisdictioni subpositos,” and apparently tried to
shame them into more active loyalty--or more liberal gifts--by
eulogy of their English brethren: “ubi fidem Anglorum in
adversitate suâ semper sibi gratiosam, integram et probabilem
plurimum commendavit.” R. Diceto as above, p. 119.
[1839] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 257–260. Cf. R. Diceto as
above, p. 120, and Will. Newb., l. v. c. 3 (as above). This
last gives a wrong date; that of the document in Rog. Howden is
July 23.
[1840] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 267. See above, p.
343.
[1841] It may be followed in Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
pp. 301–305, vol. iv. pp. 3–7, 14, 16, 19–21, 24, 54–61, 68,
78–81; Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), pp.
38–40, 42; Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), pp. 78,
79; _Philipp._, l. v. (_ib._), pp. 146–154.
That the foes in Richard’s own household should league themselves
against him with Philip, as he had done in earlier days against his
own father, was, so far as Richard himself is concerned, no more than
retributive justice. Philip’s alliance with John had proved a failure;
but it was not long before he saw a chance of securing a more useful
tool in the person of little Arthur of Britanny. English historians
tell us that when Richard and Philip made their treaty at Messina in
March 1191 Richard obtained a formal acknowledgement of his rights,
as duke of Normandy, to the overlordship of Britanny and the liege
homage of its duke.[1842] The text of the treaty of Messina, however,
contains not a word on this subject; the agreement, if made at all,
must have been drawn up in a separate form; and it seems to have
remained a dead letter, like another agreement made at the same place a
few months earlier--the treaty with Tancred whereby Richard had engaged
to recognize Arthur of Britanny as his successor in default of direct
heirs. Although after five years of marriage Queen Berengaria was
still childless, no such recognition had yet been made. Richard on his
return to Europe probably perceived that Arthur’s succession would be
impossible in England, and in Gaul would be fatal to the independence
of the Angevin house. Accordingly, he was once more doing all in
his power to win the attachment of John; and John, having at length
discovered that his own interests could be better served by supporting
his brother than by intriguing against him, proved an active and useful
ally in the war against Philip.[1843] On the other hand, Richard seems
never to have received Arthur’s homage for Britanny; and those who had
the control of political affairs in that country were determined that
he never should. The dispute between Henry and Philip for the wardship
of the two children of Geoffrey and Constance had apparently ended in
a compromise. Eleanor, the elder child, was now under the care of her
uncle Richard;[1844] but Constance seems to have succeeded in keeping
her infant boy out of the reach of both his would-be guardians, and,
moreover, in governing her duchy without any reference to either of
them, for nearly seven years after the death of her father-in-law King
Henry. She had been given in marriage by him, when scarcely twelve
months a widow, to Earl Ralf of Chester,[1845] son and successor of
Earl Hugh who had been one of the leaders in the revolt of 1173. As
the earls of Chester were hereditary viscounts of the Avranchin--the
border-district of Normandy and Britanny--this marriage would have
furnished an excellent means of securing the Norman hold upon the
Breton duchy, if only Ralf himself could have secured a hold upon his
wife. In this however he completely failed. Safe in her hereditary
dominions, with her boy at her side, and strong in the support of
her people rejoicing in their newly-regained independence, Constance
apparently set Ralf, Richard and Philip all alike at defiance, till in
1196 Richard summoned her to a conference with himself in Normandy,
and she set out to obey the summons. Scarcely had she touched the soil
of the Avranchin at Pontorson when she was caught by her husband and
imprisoned in his castle of S. James-de-Beuvron.[1846] It is hard not
to suspect that Richard and Ralf had plotted the capture between them;
for Richard, instead of insisting upon her release, at once renewed
his claim to the wardship of Arthur, and prepared to enforce it at
the sword’s point. The Bretons first hurried their young duke away to
the innermost fastnesses of their wild and desolate country under the
care of the bishop of Vannes,[1847] and then, after a vain attempt to
liberate his mother, intrusted him to the protection of the king of
France,[1848] who of course received him with open arms, and sent him
to be educated with his own son.[1849]
[1842] _Gesta Ric._ (Stubbs), p. 161. Rog. Howden (Stubbs),
vol. iii. pp. 99, 100.
[1843] See _e.g._ Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 5, 16, 60;
Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 38;
Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._), p. 77.
[1844] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. pp. 275, 278.
[1845] _Gesta Hen._ (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 29.
[1846] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 7.
[1847] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 149. Will. Newb., l. v. c. 18 (Howlett,
vol. ii. pp. 463, 464).
[1848] Rog. Howden as above.
[1849] Will. Armor. as above.
Philip had now got the old Angevin patrimony between two fires; but
the Bretons were so little accustomed to act in concert even among
themselves, far less with any other power, that he found it impossible
to make any real use of them as allies either for military or political
purposes. The independent warfare which they carried on with Richard
across the south-western border of Normandy[1850] had little effect
upon that which Richard and Philip were carrying on along its eastern
border; and upon the Angevin lands which lay directly between Britanny
and France the Breton revolt had no effect at all. To the end of
Richard’s life, we hear of no further troubles in Maine or Anjou.
Nay more, we hear of no further troubles in Aquitaine. If Philip
had in some sense turned Richard’s flank in the west, Richard had
turned Philip’s flank far more effectually in the south. The unwonted
tranquillity there may indeed have been partly due to the fact that
one of the chief sources of disturbance was removed in 1196 by the
withdrawal of Bertrand de Born into a monastery;[1851] but it was also
in great measure owing to Richard’s quickness in seizing an opportunity
which presented itself, in that same eventful year, of forming a
lasting alliance with the house of Toulouse. His old enemy Count
Raymond V. was dead;[1852] he now offered the hand of his own favourite
sister, the still young and handsome Queen Jane of Sicily, to the new
Count Raymond VI.;[1853] and thenceforth the eastern frontier of his
Aquitanian duchy was as secure under the protection of his sister’s
husband as its southern frontier under that of his wife’s brother, the
king of Navarre.
[1850] Will. Newb. as above, c. 30 (p. 491). Rog. Howden as
above.
[1851] Clédat, _Bert. de Born_, p. 92.
[1852] In 1194, according to Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 38.
[1853] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 13. Will. Newb., l. v.
c. 30 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 491). R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p.
70.
Nor were Richard’s alliances confined within the boundaries of Gaul.
His year of captivity in Germany had not been all wasted time. When
he parted from his imperial jailor in the spring of 1194, they were,
at any rate in outward semblance, close political allies; and at the
same time Richard had succeeded in gaining over his bitterest foe,
Leopold of Austria, by an offer of his niece Eleanor of Britanny as
wife to Leopold’s son.[1854] The marriage-contract was however not
yet executed when the Austrian duke met with a fatal accident and
died in agony, owning with his last breath that his miserable end was
a just retribution for his conduct towards the English king.[1855]
The impression made by this event deepened the feeling of respect and
awe which the captive lion had already contrived to inspire in the
princes of the Empire. Meanwhile Henry VI. had made himself master
of Sicily;[1856] and now the old dream by which the German Emperors
never quite ceased to be haunted, the dream of re-asserting their
imperial supremacy over Gaul, was beginning to shape itself anew in
his brain. In the summer of 1195 he sent to Richard a golden crown
and a message charging him, on his plighted faith to the Emperor and
on the very lives of his hostages, to invade the French kingdom at
once, and promising him the support and co-operation of the imperial
forces. Richard, suspecting a trap, despatched William of Longchamp
to inquire into the exact nature, extent and security of Henry’s
promised assistance; Philip vainly tried to intercept the envoy as he
passed through the royal domains;[1857] and the negotiations proved
so far effectual that Henry remitted seventeen thousand marks out of
the ransom, as a contribution to Richard’s expenses in his struggle
with Philip.[1858] When, on Michaelmas Eve 1197, Henry VI. died,[1859]
the use of that homage on Richard’s part which his English subjects
had resented so bitterly was made apparent to them at last. While the
English king was holding his Christmas court at Rouen there came to him
an embassy from the princes of Germany, summoning him, as chief among
the lay members of the Empire[1860] by virtue of his investiture with
the kingdom of Arles, to take part with them in the election of a new
Emperor at Cöln on February 22.[1861] Richard himself could not venture
to leave Gaul; but the issue proved that his presence at Cöln was not
needed to secure his interests there. He wished that the imperial crown
should be given to his nephew Duke Henry of Saxony, eldest son and
successor of Henry the Lion. This scheme, however, when laid before the
other electors by the envoys whom he sent to represent him at Cöln,
was rejected on account of the duke’s absence in Holy Land.[1862] The
representatives of the English king then proposed Henry’s brother
Otto, for whom Richard had long been vainly endeavouring to find
satisfactory provision on either side of the sea,[1863] and who seems
really to have been his favourite nephew. The result was that, on the
appointed day, Otto was elected Emperor of the Romans,[1864] and on
July 12 he was crowned king of the Germans at Aachen by the archbishop
of Cöln.[1865]
[1854] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 273. See above, p.
325.
[1855] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 276, 277. R. Diceto (Stubbs),
vol. ii. p. 124. Will. Newb. as above, c. 8 (pp. 431–434). R.
Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 65, 66.
[1856] In the autumn of 1194. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii.
pp. 268–270. Cf. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 123, 124.
[1857] Rog. Howden (as above), pp. 300, 301.
[1858] _Ib._ pp. 303, 304.
[1859] _Ib._ vol. iv. p. 31.
[1860] “Sicut præcipuum membrum imperii.” _Ib._ p. 37.
[1861] _Ibid._
[1862] _Ib._ pp. 37, 38.
[1863] He appointed him earl of York in 1190, but as the grant
was made after the king left England, some of the Yorkshire
folk doubted its genuineness, and Otto never succeeded in
obtaining possession. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 86.
The elaborate scheme for his endowment in the north, projected
in 1195, has already been mentioned (above, p. 341). This
having also failed, Richard in 1196 gave him the investiture
of Poitou. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 7; cf. _ib._ vol.
iii. p. 86, and R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 70.
[1864] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 37–39. R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 163.
[1865] R. Diceto as above.
For a moment, at the mere prospect of beholding a grandson of Henry
Fitz-Empress seated upon the imperial throne of the west, there had
flashed across the mind of at least one friend of the Angevin house
a fancy that the world-wide dominion which seemed to be passing away
from the heirs of Fulk the Good was to be renewed for yet one more
generation.[1866] There was indeed an opposition party in Germany,
who set up a rival Emperor in the person of Philip of Suabia, a
brother of Henry VI.;[1867] and he at once made common cause with
his French namesake.[1868] This Suabian alliance, however, and the
support of the count of Ponthieu--purchased two years before with the
hand of the unhappy Adela, whom Richard had at last restored to her
brother[1869]--could not much avail Philip Augustus against such a
league as was now gathering around the English king. The vast sums
which Hubert Walter had been sending, year after year, to his royal
master over sea were bringing a goodly interest at last. Flanders,
Britanny, Champagne, had all been secretly detached from the French
alliance and bought over to the service of Richard;[1870] the Flemish
count had already drawn Philip into a war in which he narrowly escaped
being made prisoner;[1871] and in the summer of 1198, when the imperial
election was over, not only Baldwin of Flanders, Reginald of Boulogne,
Baldwin of Guines, Henry of Louvain, Everard of Brienne, Geoffrey of
Perche and Raymond of Toulouse, but even the young count Louis of
Blois and the boy-duke Arthur of Britanny himself, one and all leagued
themselves in an offensive and defensive alliance with Richard against
the French king.[1872] The immediate consequence was that Philip
begged Hubert Walter, who being just released from his justiciarship
had rejoined his sovereign in Normandy, to make peace for him with
Richard; and he even went so far as to offer the surrender of all
the Norman castles which he had won, except Gisors. Richard however
would listen to no terms in which his allies were not included.[1873]
At last, in November, a truce was made, to last till the usual term,
S. Hilary’s day.[1874] When it expired the two kings held a colloquy
on the Seine between Vernon and Les Andelys, Richard in a boat on
the river, Philip on horseback on the shore;[1875] this meeting was
followed by another, where, by the mediation of a cardinal-legate,
Peter of Capua, who had lately arrived in Gaul, they were persuaded to
prolong their truce for five years.[1876]
[Illustration: Plan VII.
LES ANDELYS AND CHATEAU-GAILLARD.
(From Deville, “Histoire du Château-Gaillard”)
Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co.
]
[1866] R. Diceto tells the story of the prophecy made to Fulk
the Good in two places; in the _Abbreviationes Historiarum_
(Stubbs, vol. i. p. 149) and in the _Opuscula_ (vol. ii. pp.
267, 268). In the latter place he adds: “Quod quondam probavit
regnum Jerosolimitanum; quod adhuc ostendit regnum Anglorum;
quod suo tempore declarabit Romanum imperium.” This, as Bishop
Stubbs notes, “looks like an anticipation of the election
of Otto IV. to the empire.... As Bishop Longchamp died in
1197, before which date we must suppose MS. R to have been
written” [the MS. from which the _Opuscula_ are printed, and
which begins with a dedication to William of Longchamp], “it
can scarcely be a prophecy after the event.” As William of
Longchamp died January 31, 1197 (R. Diceto, vol. ii. p. 150;
February 1 according to Gerv. Cant., Stubbs, vol. i. p. 543),
it seems indeed to shew that the possibility of one or other
of Richard’s nephews becoming Emperor at the next vacancy was
already in contemplation more than eight months before the
death of Henry VI. Or was Ralf dreaming rather of a transfer of
the imperial crown to Richard himself? for it is to be observed
that Otto can be included within the “nine generations” only
by excluding from them Fulk the Good himself; but this mode of
computing would fail if applied to the eastern branch of the
Angevin house, where it would give only eight generations, so
that we can hardly suppose it to have been adopted by Ralf.
According to R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 88, and Gerv. Cant.
as above, p. 545, a party among the electors actually did
choose Richard, and--much more strangely--another party chose
Philip of France.
[1867] Rog. Howden as above, p. 39.
[1868] Treaty in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 70; date,
June 29 [1197].
[1869] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iii. p. 303. Rigord
(Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 38. Will.
Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (_ibid._) p. 77.
[1870] Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 19, R. Coggeshall
(Stevenson), p. 77, and Will. Newb., l. v. c. 32 (Howlett, vol.
ii. p. 495). Richard’s treaty with Flanders is in R. Diceto
(Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 152, 153, and Rymer, as above, pp. 67,
68; it has no date, but as R. Diceto (as above, p. 158) tells
us that it was drawn up by Hubert Walter, and also that Hubert
was in Gaul from September 14 (or 28, according to Gerv. Cant.,
Stubbs, vol. i. p. 574) to November 8 [1197], it must fall in
that interval.
[1871] Rog. Howden as above, pp. 20, 21. Will. Newb. as above.
R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), pp. 77, 78.
[1872] Rog. Howden as above, p. 54.
[1873] _Ib._ p. 61.
[1874] _Ib._ p. 68.
[1875] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 79, 80.
[1876] _Ib._ p. 80. Rigord (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._,
vol. v.), p. 42.
Yet all the while, there lurked in Richard’s heart a misgiving that,
in the last resort, his diplomacy would prove to have been in vain;
that, strive as he might to turn away the tide of war from his own
borders by stirring up north and east and south to overwhelm the Crown
of France, still, after all, the day must come when the Angevins would
have to stake their political existence solely upon their own military
resources, and to stand at bay, unaided, unsupported, alone, behind
whatever bulwark they might be able to devise by their own military
genius. It was the genius and the foresight of Richard himself which
insured that when the crisis came, the bulwark was ready, even though
it were doomed to prove unavailing in the end. The last and mightiest
of the many mighty fortresses reared by Angevin hands since the first
great builder of the race had begun his castle-building in the Loire
valley was the Château-Gaillard, the “saucy castle” of Richard the
Lion-heart. He “fixed its site where the Seine bends suddenly at
Gaillon in a great semicircle to the north, and where the valley of
Les Andelys breaks the line of the chalk cliffs along its banks. Blue
masses of woodland crown the distant hills; within the river curve
lies a dull reach of flat meadow, round which the Seine, broken with
green islets and dappled with the grey and blue of the sky, flashes
like a silver bow on its way to Rouen.”[1877] Some three-quarters of a
league from the right bank of the river, in a valley opening upon it
from the eastward and watered by the little stream of Gambon, stood
the town of Andely. Between the town and the river stretched a lake,
or rather perhaps a marsh,[1878] through which the Gambon and another
lesser rivulet descending from the hills to the north of Andely found
their way by two separate issues into the Seine, nearly opposite two
islets, of which the larger and more northerly was known as the Isle
of Andely.[1879] The space enclosed between the three rivers and the
marsh seems to have been a tract of waste land, occupied only by a
toll-house for the collection of dues from the vessels passing up and
down the Seine[1880]--dues which formed one of the most important items
in the revenue of the archbishop of Rouen, to whom Andely and its
neighbourhood belonged.[1881] Over against this spot, on the southern
bank of the Gambon, in the angle formed by its junction with the Seine,
a mass of limestone crag rose abruptly to the height of three hundred
feet. Its western side, almost perpendicular, looked down upon the
great river, the northern, scarcely less steep, over the Gambon and
the lake beyond; to the north-east and south-west its rocky slopes
died down into deep ravines, and only a narrow neck of land at its
south-eastern extremity connected it with the lofty plateau covered
with a dense woodland known as the Forest of Andely, which stretches
along the eastern side of the Seine valley between Andely and Gaillon.
One glance at the site was enough to rivet a soldier’s gaze. If,
instead of the metropolitan church of Normandy, a lay baron had owned
the soil of Andely, we may be sure that long ago that lofty brow would
have received its fitting crown; if the power of Fulk the Builder had
reached to the banks of the Seine, we may doubt whether the anathemas
of the Norman primate would not have availed as little to wrest such a
spot from his grasp as those of the archbishop of Tours had availed to
wrest from him the site of Montrichard. But a greater castle-builder
than Fulk Nerra himself was the architect of Château-Gaillard.
[1877] I copy Mr. Green’s picture, _Hist. of the English
People_, vol. i. p. 187.
[1878] Now dried up. See Deville, _Hist. du Château-Gaillard_,
pp. 27, 28.
[1879] “Est locus Andelii qui nunc habet insula nomen.” Will.
Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. v. 29 (Deville, _Château-Gaillard_,
p. 126; Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v. p. 169).
[1880] See a charter of Archbishop Malger (11th century) and
one of Pope Eugene III., a. 1148, quoted in Deville as above,
p. 26, note 2.
[1881] The archbishops seem to have looked upon Andely as
their most profitable territorial possession; Rotrou called it
his “unicum vivendi subsidium” (Rotr. Ep. xxiv., _Rer. Gall.
Scriptt._, vol. xvi. p. 632); Walter called it “patrimonium
ecclesiæ solum et unicum” (R. Diceto, Stubbs, vol. ii. p. 148).
Richard’s historical connexion with the “rock of Andely” has its
ill-omened beginning in a ghastly story of the fate of three French
prisoners whom he flung from its summit into the ravine below, in
vengeance for the slaughter of some Welsh auxiliaries who had been
surprised and cut to pieces by the French king’s troops in the
neighbouring valley.[1882] By the opening of 1196, however, he had
devised for it a more honourable use. In a treaty with Philip, drawn
up in January of that year, the fief of Andely was made the subject of
special provisions whereby it was reserved as a sort of neutral zone
between the territories of the two kings, and a significant clause was
added: “Andely shall not be fortified.”[1883] As by the same treaty the
older bulwarks of Normandy--Nonancourt, Ivry, Pacy, Vernon, Gaillon,
Neufmarché, Gisors--were resigned into Philip’s hands, this clause,
if strictly fulfilled, would have left the Seine without a barrier
and Rouen at the mercy of the French king. The agreement in short,
like all those which bore the signatures of Philip and Richard, was
made only to be broken; both parties broke it without delay; and while
Philip was forming his league with the Bretons for the ruin of Anjou,
Richard was tracing out in the valley of the Gambon and on the rock of
Andely the plan of a line of fortifications which were to interpose
an insurmountable barrier between his Norman capital and the French
invader. His first act was to seize the Isle of Andely.[1884] Here he
built a lofty octagonal tower, encircled by a ditch and rampart, and
threw a bridge over the river from each side of the island, linking it
thus to either shore.[1885] On the right, beyond the eastern bridge, he
traced out the walls of a new town, which took the name of the New or
the Lesser Andely,[1886] a secure stronghold whose artificial defences
of ramparts and towers were surrounded by the further protection of the
lake on its eastern side, the Seine on the west, and the two lesser
rivers to north and south, a bridge spanning each of these two little
streams forming the sole means of access from the mainland.[1887]
The southern bridge, that over the Gambon, linked this New Andely
with the foot of the rock which was to be crowned with the mightiest
work of all. Richard began by digging out to a yet greater depth the
ravines which parted this rock from the surrounding heights, so as to
make it wholly inaccessible save by the one connecting isthmus at its
south-eastern extremity. On its summit, which formed a plateau some six
hundred feet in length and two hundred in breadth at the widest part,
he reared a triple fortress. The outer ward consisted of a triangular
enclosure; its apex, facing the isthmus already mentioned, was crowned
by a large round tower,[1888] with walls ten feet in thickness; the
extremities of its base were strengthened by similar towers, and two
smaller ones broke the line of the connecting curtain-wall. This
was surrounded by a ditch dug in the rock to a depth of more than
forty feet, and having a perpendicular counterscarp. Fronting the
base of this outer fortress across the ditch on its north-western
side was a rampart surmounted by a wall ninety feet long and eight
feet thick, also flanked by two round towers; from these a similar
wall ran all round the edges of the plateau, where the steep sides
of the rock itself took the place of rampart and ditch. The wall on
the south-west side--the river-front--was broken by another tower,
cylindrical without, octagonal within; and its northern extremity
was protected by two mighty rectangular bastions. Close against one
of these stood a round tower, which served as the base of a third
enclosure, the heart and citadel of the whole fortress. Two-thirds
of its elliptical outline, on the east and south, were formed by a
succession of semicircular bastions, or segments of towers, seventeen
in number, each parted from its neighbour by scarcely more than
two feet of curtain-wall--an arrangement apparently imitated from the
fortress of Cherbourg, which was accounted the greatest marvel of
military architecture in Normandy, until its fame was eclipsed by that
of Richard’s work.[1889] This portion of the enclosure was built upon
a rampart formed by the excavation of a ditch about fifteen to twenty
feet in width; the counterscarp, like that of the outer ditches, was
perpendicular; and a series of casemates cut in the rock ran along on
this side for a distance of about eighty feet. On the western side of
the citadel stood the keep, a mighty circular tower, with walls of
the thickness of twelve feet, terminating at an angle of twenty feet
in depth where it projected into the enclosure; it had two or perhaps
three stages,[1890] and was lighted by two great arched windows, whence
the eye could range at will over the wooded hills and dales of the
Vexin, or the winding course of the river broadening onward to Rouen.
Behind the keep was placed the principal dwelling-house, and under this
a staircase cut out of the rock gave access to an underground passage
leading to some outworks and a tower near the foot of the hill, whence
a wall was carried down to the river-bank, just beyond the northern
extremity of a long narrow island known as the “isle of the Three
Kings”--doubtless from some one of the many meetings held in this
district by Louis VII. or Philip Augustus and the two Henrys.[1891] The
river itself was barred by a double stockade, crossing its bed from
shore to shore.[1892]
[Illustration: Plan VIII.
CHATEAU-GAILLARD
(From Deville, “Histoire du Château-Gaillard”).
Wagner & Debes’ Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. Leipsic. London, Macmillan & Co.
]
[1882] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 151.
[1883] Treaty in Rymer, _Fœdera_, vol. i. p. 66. For date see
Rigord (Duchesne as above), p. 39.
[1884] Letter of Walter of Rouen (a. 1196), R. Diceto (Stubbs),
vol. ii. pp. 148, 149. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p.
14, and Will. Newb., l. v. c. 34 (Howlett, vol. ii. p. 499).
[1885] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 29–43 (Deville,
_Château-Gaillard_, p. 126; Duchesne as above, p. 169).
[1886] A poet of the thirteenth century, William Guiart, calls
it “le Nouvel-Andeli.” It is known now as “le Petit-Andely.”
Deville as above, p. 26.
[1887] Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._ (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 81. Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 27.
[1888] Now known as “tour de la Monnaie.” Deville as above, p.
30, note 1.
[1889] See Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 34, and the passage
there quoted from _Hist. Gaufr. Ducis_ (Marchegay, _Comtes
d’Anjou_, p. 300).
[1890] See Deville as above, p. 38, note 2.
[1891] _Ib._ p. 36. The island is now joined to the mainland;
_ib._ note 1.
[1892] For description see Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
(Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 81;
_Philipp._, l. vii. vv. 48–85 (_ib._ pp. 169, 170; Deville as
above, pp. 126, 127), and Deville as above, pp. 25–40.
All this work was accomplished within a single year.[1893] Richard,
who had watched over its progress with unremitting care, broke into
an ecstasy of delight at its completion; he called his barons to see
“how fair a child was his, this child but a twelvemonth old”;[1894]
he called it his “saucy castle,” “Château-Gaillard,”[1895] and the
name which he thus gave it in jest soon replaced in popular speech
its more formal title of “the Castle on the Rock of Andely.”[1896]
The hardness of the rock out of which the fortifications were hewn
was not the sole obstacle against which the royal builder had had to
contend. Richard had no more thought than Fulk Nerra would have had of
asking the primate’s leave before beginning to build upon his land;
the work therefore was no sooner begun than Archbishop Walter lifted
up his protest against it; obtaining no redress, he laid Normandy
under interdict and carried his complaint in person to the Pope.[1897]
Richard at once sent envoys to appeal against the interdict and make
arrangements for the settlement of the dispute.[1898] Meanwhile,
however, he pushed on the building without delay. Like Fulk of old,
the seeming wrath of Heaven moved him as little as that of its earthly
representatives; a rain of blood which fell upon the workmen and
the king himself, though it scared all beside, failed to shake his
determination; “if an angel had come down out of the sky to bid him
stay his hand, he would have got no answer but a curse.”[1899] He
had now, however, made his peace with the Church; in the spring of
1197 he offered to the archbishop an exchange of land on terms highly
advantageous to the metropolitan see; and on this condition the Pope
raised the interdict in May of the same year.[1900] The exchange was
carried through on October 16,[1901] and ratified by John in a separate
charter, a step which seems to indicate that John was now recognized as
his brother’s heir.[1902]
[1893] That is, the castle on the rock, built 1197–1198. See
the story of the rain of blood in May 1198 (R. Diceto, Stubbs,
vol. ii. p. 162), which fixes its completion after that date.
The tower on the island and the Nouvel-Andely were the work of
the previous year, 1196–1197.
[1894] “Ecce quam pulcra filia unius anni!” J. Bromton,
Twysden, _X. Scriptt._, col. 1276.
[1895] “Totamque munitionem illam vocavit Gaillardum, quod
sonat in Gallico petulantiam.” Will. Armor. _Gesta Phil. Aug._
(Duchesne, _Hist. Franc. Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 81.
[1896] “Castrum” or “castellum de Rupe Andeleii” or
“Andeliaci,” it is called in the charters of Richard and John.
The first document in which it appears as “Château-Gaillard” is
a charter of S. Louis, “actum in Castro nostro Gaillard,” A.D.
1261; Deville, _Château-Gaillard_, p. 40. Will. Armor. however
uses the name, and other writers soon begin to copy him.
[1897] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 14. Cf. Will. Newb.,
l. v. c. 28 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 487, 488), R. Coggeshall
(Stevenson), p. 70, and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs), vol. i. p. 544.
[1898] The envoys were William of Longchamp, William bishop of
Lisieux and Philip elect of Durham; Rog. Howden (as above), pp.
16, 17. They must have started early in 1197, for William of
Longchamp died on the journey, at Poitiers, on January 31 or
February 1; see above, p. 373, note 4{1866}.
[1899] Will. Newb., l. v. c. 34 (as above, p. 500). This is
William’s last sentence. R. Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. p. 162,
also tells of the portent, and gives its date, May 8, 1198.
[1900] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. pp. 17–19. Will. Newb.,
l. v. c. 34 (Howlett, vol. ii. pp. 499, 500).
[1901] Richard’s charter, of which Deville gives a fac-simile
in his _Château-Gaillard_, p. 18, and a printed copy in his
“pièces justificatives,” _ib._ pp. 113–118, is also in R.
Diceto (Stubbs), vol. ii. pp. 154–156. According to this last
writer (_ib._ pp. 158, 159), and Gerv. Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i.
p. 544), the settlement was due to the mediation of Archbishop
Hubert.
[1902] See Deville, as above, pp. 21, 22. John’s charter is in
the “pièces justificatives,” _ib._ pp. 119–123.
It was probably about the same time that the treaty with Flanders, the
corner-stone of the league which Richard was forming against the king
of France, was signed within the walls of the new fortress.[1903] Yet,
as has been already seen, the coalition was not fully organized till
late in the following summer; and even then the complicated weapon hung
fire. Want of money seems to have been Richard’s chief difficulty, now
as ever--a difficulty which after Hubert Walter’s defeat in the council
at Oxford and his resignation in the following July must have seemed
well-nigh insurmountable. At last, however, in the spring of 1199, a
ray of hope came from a quarter where it was wholly unexpected. Richard
was leading his mercenaries through Poitou to check the viscount of
Limoges and the count of Angoulême in a renewal of their treasonable
designs[1904] when he was met by rumours of a marvellous discovery
at Châlus in the Limousin. A peasant working on the land of Achard,
the lord of Châlus, was said to have turned up with his plough a
treasure[1905] which popular imagination pictured as nothing less than
“an emperor with his wife, sons and daughters, all of pure gold, and
seated round a golden table.”[1906] In vain did Achard seek to keep
his secret and his prize to himself. Treasure-trove was a right of the
overlord, and it seems to have been at once claimed by the viscount
Ademar of Limoges, as Achard’s immediate superior. His claim, however,
had to give way to that of his own overlord, King Richard; but when
he sent to the king the share which he had himself wrung from Achard,
Richard indignantly rejected it, vowing that he would have all. This
Achard and Ademar both refused, and the king laid siege to Châlus.[1907]
[1903] R. Diceto (as above), p. 153.
[1904] Rog. Howden as above, p. 80, says merely that Richard
was on his way to Poitou. R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 94,
says he was marching against the viscount of Limoges, to
punish him for a treasonable alliance with the French king.
The writer of the _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p. 280, says
“expeditionem direxerat adversus comitem Engolismensem”; and
that Angoulême had some share in the matter appears also from
the confused story of Gerv. Cant. (as above), pp. 592, 593, who
makes Richard receive his death-wound while besieging “castrum
comitis Engolismi, quod Nantrum erat appellatum.” A joint
rebellion of the lords of Limoges and Angoulême would be very
natural, for they were half-brothers. On the other hand, the
two men were very likely to be confounded by historians, for
they both bore the same name, Ademar. See above, p. 220 and
note 3{1035}.
[1905] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 155. Rigord (_ib._ p. 42) describes the
finder as a soldier.
[1906] “Qui posteris, quo tempore fuerant, certam dabant
memoriam,” adds Rigord (as above), p. 43. Is it possible that
the thing can have been a real relic of some of the old Gothic
kings of Aquitania?
[1907] This seems to be the only way of reconciling the
different accounts in Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 82,
Rigord (as above), p. 42, Will. Armor. as above, and R.
Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 94.
This place, not far from the western border of the Limousin, is now
represented by two villages, known conjointly as Châlus-Chabrol, and
built upon the summits of two low hills, at whose foot winds the
little stream of Tardoire. Each hill is crowned by a round tower of
late twelfth-century work; the lower one is traditionally said to be
the keep of the fortress besieged by Richard with all his forces at
Mid-Lent 1199.[1908] In vain did Achard, who was utterly unprepared
to stand a siege, protest his innocence and offer to submit to the
judgement of the French king’s court, as supreme alike over the duke
of Aquitaine and over his vassals; in vain did he beg for a truce
till the holy season should be past; in vain, when the outworks were
almost wholly destroyed and the keep itself undermined,[1909] did he
ask leave to surrender with the honours of war for himself and his men.
Richard was inexorable; he swore that he would hang them all.[1910]
With the courage that is born of despair, Achard, accompanied by six
knights and nine serving-men, retired into the keep, determined to hold
it until death.[1911] All that day--Friday, March 26[1912]--Richard
and his lieutenant Mercadier, the captain of his mercenaries,[1913]
prowled vainly round the walls, seeking for a point at which they
could assault them with safety.[1914] Their sappers were all the while
undermining the tower.[1915] Its defenders, finding themselves short
of missiles, began throwing down beams of wood and fragments of the
broken battlements at the miners’ heads.[1916] They were equally short
of defensive arms; one of the little band stood for more than half the
day upon a turret, with nothing but a frying-pan for a shield against
the bolts which flew whistling all around him, yet failed to drive him
from his post.[1917] At last the moment came for which he had been
waiting so long and so bravely. Just as Richard, unarmed save for his
iron head-piece, paused within bow-shot of the turret, this man caught
sight of an arrow which had been shot at himself from the besieging
ranks--seemingly, indeed, by Richard’s own hand--and had stuck
harmlessly in a crevice of the wall within his reach. He snatched it
out, fitted it to his cross-bow, and aimed at the king.[1918] Richard
saw the movement and greeted it with a shout of defiant applause; he
failed to shelter himself under his buckler; the arrow struck him on
the left shoulder, just below the joint of the neck, and glancing
downwards penetrated deep into his side.[1919] He made light of the
wound,[1920] gave strict orders to Mercadier to press the assault with
redoubled vigour,[1921] and rode back to his tent as if nothing was
amiss.[1922] There he rashly tried to pull out the arrow with his own
hand.[1923] The wood broke off, the iron barb remained fixed in the
wound; a surgeon attached to the staff of Mercadier was sent for, and
endeavoured to cut it out; unluckily, Richard was fat like his father,
and the iron, buried deep in his flesh, was so difficult to reach that
the injuries caused by the operator’s knife proved more dangerous
than that which had been inflicted by the shaft of the hostile
crossbow-man.[1924] The wounded side grew more swollen and inflamed day
by day; the patient’s constitutional restlessness, aggravated as it
was by pain, made matters worse;[1925] and at last mortification set
in.[1926]
[1908] Will. Armor. (as above) says the treasure was discovered
_after_ Mid-Lent. But Rog. Howden (as above, p. 84), Gerv.
Cant. (Stubbs, vol. i. p. 593), R. Coggeshall (Stevenson,
p. 95), and the Ann. of Margam, Winton. and Waverl. a. 1199
(Luard, _Ann. Monast._, vol. i. p. 24, vol. ii. pp. 71, 251),
all tell us that Richard received his death-wound on March
26--Friday, the morrow of Mid-Lent--and R. Coggeshall adds that
this was the third day of the siege, which must therefore have
begun on Wednesday, March 24.
[1909] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 155.
[1910] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 82. Cf. Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 593.
[1911] Will. Armor. as above.
[1912] See above, p. 382, note 4{1908}.
[1913] On this man’s history see an article by H.
Géraud--“Mercadier; les Routiers au xiiiᵉ siècle”--in
_Bibl. de l’Ecole des Chartes_, ser. i. vol. iii. pp. 417
_et seq._ The writers of his own time call him “Marcadeus,”
“Mercaderius,” in every possible variety of spelling; in a
charter of his own, printed by Géraud (as above, p. 444),
his style is “ego Merchaderius”; it seems best therefore
to adopt the form “Mercadier,” which Géraud uses. He was a
Provençal by birth (Mat. Paris, _Chron. Maj._, Luard, vol. ii.
p. 421). He makes his first historical appearance in 1183,
in Richard’s service, amid the disorders in Aquitaine after
the death of the young king (Geoff. Vigeois, l. ii. c. 25,
Labbe, _Nova Biblioth._, vol. ii. p. 340). He reappears by
Richard’s side at Vendôme in 1194 (Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol.
iii. p. 256); about this time Richard endowed him with the
lands of Bainac in Périgord (see his own charter, a. 1195, as
referred to above, and Géraud’s comments, _ib._ pp. 423–427).
He played a considerable part in Richard’s wars with Philip
(see authorities collected by Géraud, as above, pp. 428–431),
remained, as we shall see, with Richard till his death, and
afterwards helped Eleanor to regain Anjou for John. He was
slain at Bordeaux in April 1200 (Rog. Howden, Stubbs, vol. iv.
p. 114).
[1914] Rog. Howden (as above), p. 82.
[1915] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 94.
[1916] _Ibid._ Will. Armor. as above.
[1917] R. Coggeshall, p. 95.
[1918] Will. Armor. _Philipp._, l. v. (Duchesne, _Hist. Franc.
Scriptt._, vol. v.), p. 156. Cf. Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv.
p. 82.
[1919] “Percussitque regem super humerum sinistrum juxta colli
spondilia, sicque arcuato vulnere telum dilapsum est deorsum
ac lateri sinistro immersum.” R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p.
95. See also the briefer accounts of the scene and the wound
in Rog. Howden and Will. Armor. as above, and Gerv. Cant.
(Stubbs), vol. i. p. 593.
[1920] R. Coggeshall as above.
[1921] Rog. Howden as above.
[1922] _Ibid._ R. Coggeshall as above.
[1923] R. Coggeshall as above. Rog. Howden (as above), p. 83,
lays the blame of this unskilful operation upon the doctor.
[1924] Rog. Howden and R. Coggeshall as above.
[1925] The English writers--Rog. Howden and R. Coggeshall--try
to shift the blame of their king’s death as much as possible
upon the foreign surgeon. Will. Armor. (as above) attributes
it wholly to Richard’s disregard of the doctor’s orders; and
even R. Coggeshall (Stevenson, p. 96) is obliged to add at
last “rege ... præcepta medicorum non curante.” Rog. Wendover.
(Coxe), vol. iii. p. 135, says the arrow was poisoned, but this
seems to be only an inference from the result.
[1926] R. Coggeshall as above.
Then Richard, face to face with death, came to his better self once
more, and prepared calmly and bravely for his end. Until then he had
suffered no one to enter the chamber where he lay save four barons
whom he specially trusted, lest the report of his sickness should be
bruited about,[1927] to discourage his friends or to rejoice his foes.
Now, he summoned all of his followers who were within reach to witness
his solemn bequest of all his dominions to his brother John, and made
them swear fealty to John as his successor.[1928] He wrote to his
mother, who was at Fontevraud, requesting her to come to him;[1929] he
bequeathed his jewels to his nephew King Otto, and a fourth part of
his treasures to be distributed among his servants and the poor.[1930]
By this time Châlus was taken and its garrison hung, according to
his earlier orders--all save the man who had shot him, and who had
apparently been reserved for his special judgement. Richard ordered the
man to be brought before him. “What have I done to thee,” he asked him,
“that thou shouldest slay me?” “Thou hast slain my father and two of my
brothers with thine own hand, and thou wouldst fain have killed me too.
Avenge thyself upon me as thou wilt; I will gladly endure the greatest
torments which thou canst devise, since I have seen thee upon thy
death-bed.” “I forgive thee,” answered Richard, and he bade the guards
loose him and let him go free with a gift of a hundred shillings.[1931]
The story went that Richard had not communicated for nearly seven
years, because he could not put himself in charity with Philip.[1932]
Now, on the eleventh day after his wound--April 6, the Tuesday in
Passion-week[1933]--he made his confession to one of his chaplains,
and received the Holy Communion. His soul being thus at peace, he gave
directions for the disposal of his body. It was to be embalmed; the
brain and some of the internal organs were to be buried in the ancient
Poitevin abbey of Charroux; the heart was to be deposited in the
Norman capital, where it had always found a loyal response; the corpse
itself was to be laid, in token of penitence, at his father’s feet
in the abbey-church of Fontevraud.[1934] Lastly, he received extreme
unction; and then, “as the day drew to its close, his day of life also
came to its end.”[1935] His friends buried him as he had wished. S.
Hugh of Lincoln, now at Angers on his way to protest against a fresh
spoliation of his episcopal property, came to seal his forgiveness
by performing the last rites of the Church over this second grave
at Fontevraud,[1936] where another Angevin king was thus “shrouded
among the shrouded women”--his own mother, doubtless, in their
midst.[1937] He was laid to sleep in the robes which he had worn on his
last crowning-day in England, five years before.[1938] His heart was
enclosed in a gold and silver casket, carried to Rouen, and solemnly
deposited by the clergy among the holy relics in their cathedral
church;[1939] and men saw in its unusual size[1940] a fit token of the
mighty spirit of him whom Normandy never ceased to venerate as Richard
Cœur-de-Lion.
[1927] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 96.
[1928] Rog. Howden (Stubbs), vol. iv. p. 83. And this, although
he and John had parted on bad terms shortly before. R.
Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 99. _Mag. Vita S. Hug._ (Dimock), p.
287.
[1929] R. Coggeshall (Stevenson), p. 96.
[1930] Rog. Howden as above.