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Words in italics are marked with _underscores_.
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Sidenotes showing the year have been moved to the start of paragraphs,
and kept only when they change. For some long paragraphs a range of
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next to the description of the date, and are shown in parentheses, e.g.
{30 May}. Others, which merely repeat a date, have been removed.
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been changed to the footnote numbers used here.
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illustrations, additions by the transcriber are shown in pararenthes.
Some formatting and punctuation in citations, sidenotes and the index
have been standardized.
Variant spelling, inconsistent hyphenation and inconsistent spelling
of people’s names are retained, however a few palpable printing errors
have been corrected.
The errata list is in the note at the end of the book.
JOHN LACKLAND
[Illustration: MacMillan and Co.’s monogram]
JOHN LACKLAND
BY
KATE NORGATE
_WITH MAPS_
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1902
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
JOHN LACKLAND, 1167–1189 1
CHAPTER II
JOHN COUNT OF MORTAIN, 1189–1199 24
CHAPTER III
JOHN “SOFTSWORD,” 1199–1206 64
CHAPTER IV
KING JOHN, 1206–1210 118
CHAPTER V
JOHN AND THE POPE, 1210–1214 157
CHAPTER VI
JOHN AND THE BARONS, 1214–1215 210
CHAPTER VII
JOHN LACKLAND, 1215–1216 247
NOTE I
JOHN AND THE DE BRAOSES 287
NOTE II
EUSTACE DE VESCI AND ROBERT FITZ-WALTER 289
INDEX 295
LIST OF MAPS
I. IRELAND ACCORDING TO THE TREATY OF 1175 _To face page_ 12
II. IRELAND ACCORDING TO HENRY’S DISTRIBUTION, 1177 ” 14
III. IRELAND, A.D. 1185 ” 17
IV. ENGLAND, A.D. 1190 ” 27
V. IRELAND, A.D. 1210 ” 151
“The closer study of John’s history clears away the charges of sloth
and incapacity with which men tried to explain the greatness of his
fall. The awful lesson of his life rests on the fact that the king
who lost Normandy, became the vassal of the Pope, and perished in a
struggle of despair against English freedom was no weak and indolent
voluptuary but the ablest and most ruthless of the Angevins.”
JOHN RICHARD GREEN.
CHAPTER I
JOHN LACKLAND
1167–1189
.... Johan sanz Terre,
Por qui il[1] ot tant noise e guere.
_Estoire de la Guerre Sainte_, vv. 101, 102.
[Sidenote: 1167]
The fifth son, the eighth and last child, of Henry II. of England and
Eleanor of Aquitaine was born at Oxford, in the “King’s manor”--that
is, the palace of Beaumont--on Christmas Eve 1167.[2] Of their six
other surviving children, the three younger were daughters; the last of
these, Joanna, was then two years old. The eldest living son, Henry,
was nearly thirteen; Richard was ten, and Geoffrey nine. The boy Henry
had, when an infant, been acknowledged by the barons of England as
heir to the crown,[3] and in 1160 had done homage to Louis of France
for the duchy of Normandy.[4] In 1162 preparations had been made for
his crowning in England, and he had again received the homage of the
barons,[5] to which that of the Welsh princes and the Scot king was
added in 1163.[6] Eleanor’s duchy of Aquitaine had been destined for
her second surviving son, Richard, as early as 1159,[7] when he was
not yet two years old. In the summer of 1166 the king had secured
Britanny for Geoffrey by betrothing him to its heiress.[8] The whole
Angevin dominions, with one exception, were thus, in design at least,
partitioned among John’s brothers before John himself was born. The
exception was, indeed, an important one; in the contemporary accounts
of Henry’s plans during this period for the distribution of his
territories, there is no mention of Anjou and its dependency Touraine.
The reason, however, is obvious. Anjou was the cradle of his race, the
very heart and centre of his dominion, the one portion of it which he
had inherited from his forefathers in unbroken male descent, by a right
which had been always undisputed and indisputable. The destiny of Anjou
was therefore as yet unspecified, not because Henry was reserving it
for a possible younger son, but because its devolution to his eldest
son, as head of the Angevin house after him, was in his mind a matter
of course. It was in fact Henry himself who gave to his new-born child
the name which has clung to him ever since--“Johans Sanz Terre,” John
Lackland.[9]
[Sidenote: 1169]
Two years later the scheme of partition was fully developed, and now
Anjou was explicitly included in it. At Epiphany 1169 Louis of France
granted to the younger Henry the investiture of Anjou and Maine, on
the understanding that the boy was to hold these fiefs, as well as
Normandy, in his own person, directly of the French crown. Richard was
invested, on the same terms, with the county of Poitou and the duchy
of Aquitaine. Britanny was granted to young Henry, to be holden by his
brother Geoffrey of him as mesne lord, under the king of France as
overlord.[10] The one fragment of the continental dominions of the
Angevin house which the king of England formally reserved to himself
was Touraine; his homage for it was due to a prince of inferior rank,
the count of Blois, and his paternal pride chose rather to perform that
homage himself than to suffer it to be performed by any of his sons.[11]
[Sidenote: 1170]
All these arrangements were as yet merely prospective. Henry had no
intention of abdicating, nor of depriving Eleanor of her rights as
duchess of Aquitaine and countess of Poitou, nor even of dispossessing
the reigning duke of Britanny. His purpose was simply to insure that,
were he himself unexpectedly to become disabled or die, there should be
no fair pretext for fighting over his inheritance or defrauding any of
his sons of their shares, but that they should be bound to each other,
and their overlord Louis bound to each and all of them, by such legal
ties as none of the parties could lightly venture to set at defiance.
In June 1170 the scheme was completed by the coronation of the younger
Henry at Westminster. Two months later the elder king fell sick at
La Motte-de-Ger, near Domfront. Believing his end to be at hand, he
confirmed the partition of January 1169, and solemnly bequeathed the
one son who had no share in it--John--to the guardianship of his eldest
brother, “the young king,” “that he might advance him and maintain
him.”[12] One contemporary historian adds: “And he (the king) gave
to his youngest son John the county of Mortain.”[13] The meaning of
this probably is that Henry expressed a wish, or made a suggestion,
that his successor should provide for John by investing him with
Mortain.[14] From the days of the Conqueror downwards, this Norman
county had always been held by some junior member of the Norman ducal
house. Henry I. had granted it to his favourite nephew, Stephen; it
had passed to Stephen’s son William, and afterwards to his daughter
Mary; in 1168, Mary’s husband, Count Matthew of Boulogne, had ceded it
to Henry II., on condition that a heavy sum charged upon its revenues
should be paid annually to his two daughters.[15] Its actual value,
therefore, was now very small; and Henry on his recovery seems to have
abandoned, for the time at least, his project of bestowing it on John.
A year later his diplomacy had wrought out a scheme for providing John
with a far more splendid, as well as more valuable, endowment than
Mortain, by betrothing him to the presumptive heiress of Maurienne.
[Sidenote: 1171–1172]
A proposal for this marriage was made by Count Humbert of Maurienne
and accepted by Henry in 1171.[16] Humbert was then a widower for the
third time, and had only two daughters. The marriage contract, which
was signed at the close of 1172,[17] provided that if he should yet
have a son, that son should inherit scarcely anything but the little
county of Maurienne itself, which was only a small and comparatively
unimportant part of Humbert’s dominions, stretching as they did along
both sides of the Alps and including all the passes between Gaul,
Germany and Italy. Except Maurienne, and a very trifling portion of
land reserved as a dowry for his younger daughter, all Humbert’s
territories--Rossillon-en-Bugey, the county of Belley, the valley of
Novalesia, Chambéry and its dependencies, Aix, Aspremont, Rochetta,
Mont-Major, and La Chambre on the western side of the Alps; and on
their eastern side, Turin, Cavaur, Colegno, with the homage and
service of the count of Canavesia, and that which the viscount of
Aosta owed for Châtillon, and also Humbert’s claims on the county of
Grenoble--were devised absolutely and unconditionally to John and his
bride, and were, if Henry so willed, to be secured to them immediately
by the homage of all Humbert’s subjects in those regions to the little
bridegroom; while if Humbert should die without a son, Maurienne itself
was to be added to John’s inheritance. The price stipulated for all
this was five thousand marks, of which one thousand were paid over at
once by Henry to Humbert.[18] It was not till the infant bride had been
actually delivered over to her intended father-in-law, who was to bring
her up in company with her betrothed till both were old enough to be
married, that Humbert asked what was to be John’s share in the heritage
of the Angevin house. Henry, seemingly on the spur of the moment,
proposed to give the boy three castles with the lands appertaining to
them--Chinon, Loudun, and Mirebeau.[19] Chinon was in Touraine; but
Loudun and Mirebeau were in Anjou. The project was defeated by young
Henry’s refusal to allow any part of his county to be settled upon his
little brother, and it thus gave the immediate occasion, though it was
certainly not the real cause, for his revolt.[20]
[Sidenote: 1173–1174]
When that revolt was subdued {1174 Oct.}, the political relations
between King Henry and his elder sons were settled upon a new footing.
The terms of this new settlement, while confirming the arrangements
made at Montmirail for the devolution of Henry’s territories after
his death, left no room for any doubt of his intention to keep them
all, for the present at least, in his own hands. He covenanted to give
to his eldest son, so long as he remained dutiful, two castles in
Normandy and a yearly revenue of fifteen thousand pounds Angevin; to
Richard, two castles in Poitou, and half the revenues of that county;
to Geoffrey, half the dowry of Constance till they should be married,
and the whole of it after that event. Richard and Geoffrey had to do
homage to their father “for what he granted and gave them,” but young
Henry was excused from doing the like in consideration of his regal
dignity. For John there was now made a carefully detailed provision;
he was to receive an income of a thousand pounds from the royal
demesnes in England, any escheats which the king might choose to give
him, the castle and county of Nottingham, the castle and lordship of
Marlborough; two castles and a revenue of one thousand pounds Angevin
in Normandy, and from the Angevin lands the same amount in money,
with one castle in Anjou, one in Touraine, and one in Maine; and this
settlement young Henry was made to promise that he would keep “firmly
and inviolate.”[21]
[Sidenote: 1175–1176]
The scheme looks almost as if planned purposely to give John a foothold
in every part of his eldest brother’s future dominions--a strip, so to
say, in every one of young Henry’s fields. There was indeed no thought
as yet of putting the boy into possession, of investing him with the
county of Nottingham, or making him do homage either to his brother or
to his father. The clause about escheats, however, soon furnished an
opportunity for adding to John’s portion. In 1175 the great estates
of Earl Reginald of Cornwall reverted to the Crown at his death,
and Henry set them aside for John.[22] Henry’s plans for his little
“Lackland” were in fact completely changed. The project of setting
him up as “marquis in Italy” was abandoned; Alice of Maurienne was
dead,[23] her father had married again, and neither he nor Henry seems
ever to have thought of insisting upon the fulfilment of the clause
in her marriage-contract which provided that in case of her premature
death her sister should take her place as John’s bride. The settlement
of October 1174 seems to indicate that Henry now saw his best hope
of providing for John in his insular dominions, rather than anywhere
on the continent. In 1176 there was added to John’s prospect of the
earldoms of Nottingham and Cornwall that of a third English earldom
and a yet wider lordship in the west. Earl William of Gloucester,
the son and successor of Earl Robert and Mabel of Glamorgan, had
been implicated in the recent rebellion. His three surviving children
were all daughters, two of them already married. He bought his peace
with the king by making John heir to all his lands, Henry in return
promising that John should marry William’s youngest daughter, or, if
the needful dispensation could not be obtained,[24] he would bestow her
on another husband “with the utmost honour”; while a yearly sum of one
hundred pounds was to be paid by the Crown to each of her sisters, as
compensation for the loss of their shares of the family heritage. If
William should yet have another son, that son and John were to divide
the lands of the earldom of Gloucester between them.[25]
[Sidenote: 1176–1178]
Where John himself had been from his birth until near the completion
of his fifth year, there is nothing to show. He seems to have been
with his father at the time of the marriage-treaty with Maurienne, and
throughout the subsequent revolt; “John alone, who was a little boy,
remained with his father,” says Gervase of Canterbury, when speaking of
the defection of Henry’s elder sons in 1173.[26] He was apparently in
England when the arrangement with Earl William of Gloucester was made,
September 28, 1176; and he was certainly with the king at Nottingham
at Christmas in that year,[27] and also at Oxford in May 1177, when
Henry bestowed on him the titular sovereignty of the English dominions
in Ireland, and made the Norman-Welsh barons to whom he had granted
fiefs in that country do homage for those fiefs to John as well as to
himself.[28] A slight indication of the boy’s increasing importance
may be found in two entries on this year’s Pipe Roll; the expenditure
accounted for by the fermor of Peterborough abbey includes a corrody
for “the king’s son John,” and fifty-two pounds spent in buying two
palfreys “for the use of the same John.”[29] In August the king
returned to Normandy; John followed him, travelling under the care
of his half-brother Geoffrey, the bishop-elect of Lincoln;[30] at
Mid-Lent, March 19, 1178, he was present with his father and eldest
brother at the consecration of the abbey church of Bec;[31] and at
Christmas 1178 Henry and John were together at Winchester.[32] During
the next four years no mention occurs of John, save that at some time
between Michaelmas 1178 and Michaelmas 1179 twenty shillings were spent
on horses for him “in England and Normandy” by one William Franceis,
who seems to have been a groom appointed by the king to attend him.[33]
[Sidenote: 1182–1184]
John’s earliest known appearance as witness to a charter of his
father’s seems to date from the early part of the year 1182; his
style is simply “John, the king’s son.”[34] This charter was given
at Arundel. When Henry went over sea, in March, he left John in
England under the guardianship of the justiciar, Ranulf Glanville.[35]
Fifteen months later, the king’s arrangements for the disposal of the
Angevin succession were all upset by the death of his eldest son,
June 11, 1183. Almost heart-broken as the father was, one consolation
immediately suggested itself; now at last he might secure to his
favourite child some provision at once loftier and more independent
than any number of Norman counties or English earldoms, and more
substantial than his titular sovereignty in Ireland. In September Henry
“sent to England for his youngest son, John, and his master Ranulf de
Glanville”; when they had joined him in Normandy he sent for Richard,
and bade him cede the duchy of Aquitaine to John and receive the boy’s
homage for it.[36] This command shows clearly what Henry’s present
intentions were. Richard was to take the place proper to the eldest
son, as heir to the whole Angevin dominions; when he should enter upon
his inheritance, his brothers were to hold the two great underfiefs,
Britanny and Aquitaine, under him, just as he and Geoffrey had been
destined to hold them under the younger Henry; and this arrangement
for the future was to be made binding by the immediate homage of his
brothers to him, although for the present all three sons were to remain
in subjection to their father. The scheme was reasonable and just; but
in Richard’s eyes it had a fatal defect. For the last eight years he
had been actual ruler of Aquitaine, as Geoffrey had been actual ruler
of Britanny. From 1175 Henry had given his second and third sons a free
hand and left them to govern their respective duchies for themselves.
Geoffrey’s hold upon Britanny had been secured in 1181 by his marriage
with Constance; Richard had secured his own hold upon Aquitaine by
eight years of hard fighting with its rebellious barons, and was now,
in truth, duke by the right of the sword. But young Henry, the crowned
king, had throughout these years been in England little more than a
cipher, held in check by the authority of his father when present, and
by that of the justiciars in his father’s absence; while in Normandy
and the Angevin lands he had had no practical authority at all. Richard
had no mind to give up substance for shadow. To be _de facto_ duke of
Aquitaine was far better than to be merely titular duke of Normandy
and count of Anjou; for the title of king, he knew, Henry would never
again grant to any one during his own lifetime. Richard’s answer
therefore was that, so long as he lived, he and he alone would rule
Aquitaine.[37] In June 1184 the king went back to England,[38] leaving
John in Normandy. John was now in his seventeenth year, and Henry is
said to have given him permission to “lead an army into Richard’s
territories and win them for himself by force.”[39] Whether he also
furnished him with an “army” for that purpose, or how John was expected
to find one for himself, is not stated; possibly the permission was
nothing more than a hastily uttered word which the speaker never meant
to be taken seriously. In any case, however, Henry’s departure over
sea left John to his own devices, and to the influence of his next
brother, Geoffrey of Britanny.
[Sidenote: 1184]
Two or three years later, Gerald of Wales sketched the portraits of
Geoffrey and John both at once, in a manner highly suggestive of the
close relations which the two brothers formed at this time, and of
the points of likeness which drew them together. From that picture
we can see what was the character of the influence under which John
now fell, and what response it was likely to find in the character of
John himself. Geoffrey was now a man of twenty-six years, a knight of
approved valour, reputed scarcely inferior in this respect to either
of his elder brothers, while he surpassed them both in eloquence of
speech and subtlety of brain. “He was not easy to deceive, and would
indeed have been one of the wisest of men, had he not been so ready to
deceive others. He was a compound of two different natures, Ulysses
and Achilles in one. In his inmost soul there was more of bitterness
than of sweetness; but outwardly he was always ready with an abundance
of words smoother than oil; with his bland and persuasive eloquence he
could unbind the closest ties of confederation; with his tongue he had
power to mar the peace of two kingdoms. He was a hypocrite, never to be
trusted, and with a marvellous talent for feigning or counterfeiting
all things.”[40]
[Sidenote: 1184–1185]
There was nine years’ difference in age between Geoffrey and John;
but already a clear-sighted onlooker could see that the two brothers
were cast in the same mould, morally as well as physically. Both were
short in stature--shorter than their father, and far below the height
of young Henry or of Richard; they were well built, but on a small
scale. The likeness between them went deeper than that of outward
form. As Gerald expresses it, “while one was corn in the blade, the
other was corn in the ear”; but the blade developed fast. Before John
was twenty, Gerald, though evidently striving hard to make the best
of him, was driven to confess that, “caught in the toils and snared
by the temptations of unstable and dissolute youth, he was as wax to
receive impressions of evil, but hardened against those who would have
warned him of its danger; compliant to the fancy of the moment; making
no resistance to the impulses of nature; more given to luxurious ease
than to warlike exercises, to enjoyment than to endurance, to vanity
than to virtue.”[41] As soon as the king was out of Normandy, Geoffrey
and John joined hands; they collected “a great host,” with which they
marched, burning and plundering, into Poitou. Richard retaliated by
harrying Britanny, till Henry, on learning what was going on, summoned
all three brothers to England. They obeyed the summons,[42] and in
December a “final concord” between them was drawn up and sealed at
Westminster.[43] Whatever were its terms, they evidently did not
include any cession of territory by either of the elder brothers to
the youngest. Geoffrey was at once sent back to Normandy “to take care
of it with its other guardians”;[44] and immediately after Christmas
Richard obtained leave to return to Poitou.[45] The king’s project of
transferring Aquitaine to John had been merely a passing fancy. Of the
scheme for establishing him in Ireland Henry had never lost sight; and
this scheme he now determined to carry into effect.
[Sidenote: 1185]
Before he could do so, however, a yet loftier destiny was proposed to
him for his favourite son. At the end of January 1185 Heraclius, the
patriarch of Jerusalem, came to England to implore Henry’s aid for the
perishing realm of Palestine. King Baldwin IV. was dying; after him
there was but one male heir left of the blood of King Fulk of Anjou
and Queen Melisenda, and that one was a little child. From the story
as told by Gerald it seems plain that Heraclius aimed at something
more than merely persuading Henry to take the command of a crusade;
his project was nothing less than a transfer of the succession from
the younger to the elder Angevin line--from the infant son of Fulk’s
grand-daughter to a son of Fulk’s grandson, Henry. When the king of
England, after taking counsel with his “faithful men,” declared that
he could not in person undertake the deliverance of the Holy Land
from its enemies, Heraclius still persisted in his other request;
he implored Henry to send at least one of his sons--if even it were
only John--“that from this scion of the Angevin house the seed royal
might be raised up and spring into new life.” The king, however, would
not listen. John, it is said, was inclined to embrace the patriarch’s
suggestion, and threw himself at his father’s feet to beg his consent,
but in vain.[46] At Mid-Lent Henry knighted him at Windsor, and
publicly gave out that he was to proceed at once to Ireland, where he
was destined to be king.[47]
[Sidenote: 1175]
The dominions of the English Crown in Ireland were defined by the
treaty made between the Irish Ard-Righ, Roderic of Connaught, and
Henry II. in October 1175 as consisting of the ancient Irish kingdoms
of Meath and Leinster, the cities of Dublin and Waterford, and a
tract of land extending from Waterford as far as, and including,
Dungarvan.[48] Meath had been granted by Henry in 1171 to Hugh de Lacy
to hold in chief of the Crown by the service of fifty knights;[49]
Leinster had been granted a few weeks before to Richard de Clare, earl
of Striguil.[50] The cities of Dublin and Wexford and the territory
appertaining to each of them, which had been held by the Ostmen, were
not included in these grants, but were reserved by Henry to himself,
and placed under the charge of custodians appointed by him. His
authority over the whole area occupied by his subjects in Ireland was
represented by a governor whose headquarters were at Dublin, and who at
the time of the treaty was Earl Richard, the lord of Leinster.[51]
[Illustration:
I.
IRELAND
_according to the treaty of 1175_.
_Kingdom of Roderic_ {CONNAUGHT}
_Overlordship of Roderic_ {ULSTER and MUNSTER}
_Domain of Henry_ {Small areas around Dublin, Wexford and Waterford}
_Overlordship of Henry_ {MEATH (_Hugh de Lacy_),
and LEINSTER (_Richard de Clare_)}
_Stanford’s Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. London._
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.]
[Sidenote: 1171–77]
On the side of the invaders and their king, the treaty was made only to
be broken. Henry on his visit to Ireland in 1171–72 had established
constables of his own in two other towns, Limerick and Cork.[52] Cork,
though not named in the treaty, and therefore implicitly included
in that portion of the island over which he renounced all claims to
ownership, seems nevertheless to have been continuously occupied by
his officers; it was certainly in their hands in November 1177.[53]
Limerick had been recovered by the Irish, probably when all Henry’s
garrisons were recalled from Ireland to swell his forces in Normandy
in 1173. It was, however, stormed and captured early in October
1175--only a few days before the treaty with Roderic was signed--by
Earl Richard’s brother-in-law and constable, Raymond the Fat, and his
cousin Meiler Fitz-Henry.[54] They evacuated it, indeed, six months
later, when Raymond was recalled by Henry to England on the death of
Earl Richard in May 1176;[55] but Raymond’s infraction of the treaty
was not the reason for his recall;[56] and the withdrawal of his
troops from Limerick was due not to any order from the king, but to
his own sense of the difficulty of holding a place so remote from the
other Norman-Welsh settlements in Ireland. Henry, when he heard of the
affair, merely remarked: “Great was the daring shown in seizing the
place, but the only wisdom was in leaving it.”[57] In 1171–72 he had
made, it is said, a grant of Ulster to John de Courcy “if he could
conquer it by force.”[58] At the opening of 1177 De Courcy set forth
to try whether he could make this grant effectual, and by February 2
he had taken the city of Down.[59] Shortly afterwards, Miles Cogan,
who was constable of Dublin under the new governor-general, William
Fitz-Audeline, made a raid into Connaught as far as Tuam.[60] A few
weeks later, Henry himself openly flung his treaty with Roderic to
the winds. According to one account, he bade Earl Hugh of Chester “go
into Ireland and subdue it for him and his son John, to whom he had
granted it; for he had obtained leave from Pope Alexander to crown and
make king in Ireland whichever of his sons he might choose; and he
bade the said earl conquer the kings and princes of Ireland who would
not submit to him.” The commission was probably given not to Hugh of
Chester, but to Hugh de Lacy, who was certainly appointed governor in
Ireland shortly afterwards.[61] However this may have been, in May 1177
Henry, in a great council at Oxford, arrogated to himself the right of
disposing at his pleasure not only of the territories in Ireland which
were already conquered, but also of the whole of Munster. Leinster was
at this time in his own hands; for Earl Richard’s heir was a girl, and
therefore a ward of the king. He confirmed Hugh de Lacy’s tenure of
Meath, and gave him the custody of Dublin, which carried with it the
office of governor-general; he appointed William Fitz-Audeline--whom
Hugh was thus to supersede as governor--custodian of Wexford, and
Robert le Poer custodian of Waterford; and he defined the territory
dependent upon the latter city as extending not merely as far as
Dungarvan (the limit specified in the treaty of 1175), but as far as
“the river which is beyond Lismore,” that is, the Blackwater. Moreover,
he granted to Robert Fitz-Stephen and Miles de Cogan in fee, for the
service of sixty knights, “the kingdom of Cork,” South Munster, or
Desmond;[62] and to Herbert and William Fitz-Herbert and their nephew
Jocelyn de la Pommeraye, on the same terms, “the kingdom of Limerick,”
North Munster, or Thomond. From each of these grants the capital city,
with the Ostmen’s cantred attached to it, was excluded, being expressly
reserved by Henry for “himself and his heirs.” The recipients of all
these grants did liege homage and swore fealty to John as well as to
Henry.[63]
[Illustration:
II.
IRELAND
_according to Henry’s distribution, 1177_.
_Domain of the English Crown._
{WATERFORD and small arears around Dublin and Wexford}
_Fiefs held of the English Crown._
{MEATH (_Hugh de Lacy_), and
LEINSTER (_Isabel de Clare, Ward of the King_)}
_Fiefs granted by Henry but not yet conquered._
{LIMERICK (_Philip de Braose_), and CORK (_Robert Fitz Stephen_)}
{ULSTER and CONNAUGHT are outside the area marked as being claimed or
held by the English Crown.}
_Stanford’s Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. London._
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.]
[Sidenote: 1177]
The grant of Thomond to the two Fitz-Herberts and their nephew was
shortly afterwards annulled at their own request, on the ground that
this realm “was not yet won or subdued to the king’s authority”;
evidently they did not feel equal to the task of winning it. Henry then
offered its investiture to Philip de Braose, who accepted it; and this
time the city of Limerick, with its cantred, was either included in
the enfeoffment, or, more probably, Philip was appointed to hold it,
when won, as custodian for the king.[64] The “kingdom of Cork” was also
as yet unconquered; but here the grantees had the advantage of being
supported by an English constable, Richard of London, in Cork itself.
They seem to have compelled or persuaded the king of Desmond, Dermot
MacCarthy, to some agreement, in virtue of which they are said to have
obtained peaceable possession of “the seven cantreds nearest to the
city,” and divided these between themselves, Fitz-Stephen taking the
three eastern, Cogan the four western; and they seem also to have been
appointed by Henry joint custodians of the city of Cork, in succession
to Richard of London.[65] As for the other twenty-four cantreds which
made up the rest of their promised territory, they agreed to divide the
tribute equally between them, “when it should come.”[66]
[Sidenote: 1182–83]
Philip de Braose had helped Cogan and Fitz-Stephen to effect their
settlement in Desmond; they now went to help him to gain possession
of Limerick. As the three adventurers and their little band of Welsh
followers reached the bank of the Shannon, the citizens noticed
their approach and fired the town before their eyes. De Braose lost
heart, and “chose rather to return safe to his home than to try the
risks of fortune in a land so hostile and so remote”;[67] and it does
not appear that he ever obtained any footing in the country. Cogan
and Fitz-Stephen held their seven cantreds in Desmond and the city
of Cork for five years; then, in 1182, Cogan was slain by an Irish
chieftain,[68] and the natives rose at once throughout the district.
They besieged Fitz-Stephen in Cork; his nephew, Raymond the Fat, went
to his rescue by sea, and managed to throw himself and some troops into
the city; while King Henry, as soon as the news reached him, despatched
Miles Cogan’s brother Richard, with some soldiers, from England to take
Miles’s place.[69] In 1183, or very soon after, Fitz-Stephen died;[70]
Henry then appointed Raymond sole constable of Cork, and Raymond
contrived to restore at least some degree of “English”--more properly
to be called Norman-Welsh--ascendency throughout the cantreds occupied
in 1177, of which the western ones were apparently now held by Richard
de Cogan as heir to Miles, while Raymond was recognized by Henry as
tenant-in-chief of the eastern ones in succession to Fitz-Stephen, who
had no heirs.[71] The temporary loss of ground in the south in 1182 was
more than counterbalanced by the successes of John de Courcy in the
same year at the opposite extremity of the island, where he seems to
have effected a permanent settlement in Dalriada, though probably only
along the coast.[72]
[Illustration:
III.
IRELAND
_A.D. 1185_.
{CONNAUGHT is outside the area marked as being claimed or held by
the English Crown.
As is ULSTER, except for the East coast (_John de Courcy_)
and MUNSTER, except for the South coast (_Raymond the Fat?_) and
(_Richard de Cogan_)
WATERFORD, and the areas around Dublin and Wexford are marked as
the Domain of the English Crown.
MEATH (_Hugh de Lacy_), and LEINCESTER (_Isabel de Clare, Ward of
the King_) are both marked as held by the English Crown.}
_Stanford’s Geogˡ. Estabᵗ. London._
London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd.]
[Sidenote: 1181–1185]
The internal condition of the so-called “English” dominion in Ireland,
meanwhile, was not altogether satisfactory to the king. It was of
course necessary that he should have a viceroy there to represent him
and to hold the feudataries in check; but for that very reason the
viceroy was always, simply as viceroy, an object of jealousy to the
other barons; and the viceroy who had been appointed in 1177, Hugh
de Lacy, presently incurred the distrust of the king himself. Hugh’s
rivals accused him of currying favour with the Irish in the hope of
making himself an independent sovereign; and on his marriage with a
daughter of the king of Connaught, a marriage contracted “according
to the manner of that country” and without King Henry’s leave, Henry
in May 1181 removed him from his office and summoned him to England,
sending the constable of Chester and Richard de Pec to Ireland as joint
governors in his stead. Hugh’s disgrace, however, lasted only six
months; he returned to Dublin as governor at the end of the year.[73]
Meanwhile Henry was providing himself with a new instrument for working
out his purposes in Ireland. The saintly and patriotic archbishop of
Dublin, S. Laurence O’Toole, had died in November 1180;[74] Henry kept
the see vacant ten months, and then, in September 1181, gave it to an
English clerk and confidant of his own, John Cumin. The new archbishop
was consecrated by the Pope on March 21, 1182;[75] but more than two
years elapsed before he set foot in his diocese. At last, in August
1184, he was sent over by Henry to prepare the way for the coming of
John.[76] It was doubtless for the same purpose that Hugh de Lacy
was again superseded as governor; at the beginning of September he
was replaced by Philip of Worcester, whose first work was to recover
for the Crown certain lands which Hugh had alienated, and whose next
undertaking was a plundering raid upon the clergy and churches of
Armagh, achieved with great success in March 1185.[77]
[Sidenote: 1185]
On April 24 John sailed from Milford[78] with a fleet of sixty
ships,[79] which carried some three hundred knights, a large body of
archers, and a train of other followers. Next day they all landed
at Waterford.[80] There the neighbouring Irish chieftains came to
salute the son of the English king. The knights of John’s suite, young
and reckless like himself, jeered at the dress and manners of these
Irishmen, and even pulled some of them by their beards, which they wore
long and flowing according to their national custom. The insulted
chieftains reported to their brethren in more remote districts the
indignity with which they had been treated; and in consequence, the
kings and princes of Munster and Connaught not only refused to attend
John’s court, but agreed among themselves to oppose him by force.[81]
Archbishop Cumin, who had been sent over on purpose that he might set
an example of clerical submission and lend John the support of his
countenance as spiritual head of the province over which John was to
be the secular ruler, of course welcomed the lad as his sovereign and
gave him his homage and fealty, and so did the lay barons who owed
their possessions in Ireland to King Henry; but among the survivors
and representatives of the original Norman-Welsh conquerors the king’s
son--like the king himself fourteen years before--evidently received
but a half-hearted welcome;[82] and John did nothing to gain their
confidence or their respect. He ordered castles to be built at Lismore
and at two places on the Suir, Ardfinnan and Tibraghny;[83] beyond this
he seems to have taken no measures to oppose the threatened coalition
of the Irish princes and people; and while they were openly joining
hands against him, he was spending in riotous living the money which
had been destined for the pay of the soldiers who had come with him
from England. When these soldiers demanded their wages, he met them
with a refusal.[84] Some of them, whom he had left to garrison the
new castles at Ardfinnan and Tibraghny, provided for themselves by
making plundering raids into Munster, till they were defeated with
great slaughter by the king of Thomond, Donell O’Brien;[85] most of
the others refused to serve John any longer, and went over to the
Irish.[86] Such was the characteristic beginning of John’s public life.
Equally characteristic was the facility with which he escaped from
the consequences of his criminal folly. In September, finding himself
on the verge of ruin, he hurried back to his father’s court and laid
the blame of his ill-success upon Hugh de Lacy, whom he accused of
plotting with the Irish against him.[87] The task of repairing the
mischief wrought by his five months’ stay in Ireland was entrusted by
Henry to John de Courcy as governor-general.[88]
[Sidenote: 1186–1187]
Within a few months, however, the king again took up his cherished
scheme with renewed eagerness and hope. “Lord of Ireland” was the
title which John had assumed during his visit to that country,[89] as
it was the title by which Henry had claimed authority over the Irish
princes; but ever since 1177 Henry had been planning to secure for his
son a more definite basis of power, by having him crowned and anointed
as king. For this the Pope’s permission was necessary; Alexander III.
was said to have granted it,[90] but his grant seems never to have
been embodied in a bull, and Lucius III., who succeeded him in 1181,
absolutely refused to sanction Henry’s project. When Lucius died, in
November 1185, Henry at once despatched an embassy to his successor,
Urban III., “and from him he obtained many things which Pope Lucius
had strongly resisted; of which things this was one, that whichever
of his sons he might choose should be crowned and anointed king of
Ireland.”[91] This grant Urban is said to have confirmed by a bull,
and by sending to Henry a crown of peacock’s feathers set in gold.[92]
Bull and crown were probably brought by two legates who are expressly
described as commissioned by Urban as legates for Ireland, “to crown
John king of that country.” But these envoys did not reach England till
Christmas Eve 1186;[93] and meanwhile, in August, news had come that
“a certain Irishman had cut off the head of Hugh de Lacy,” whereupon
Henry bade John proceed at once to Ireland and seize Hugh’s vast
estates there.[94] John, however, was still in England when the legates
arrived; possibly his father detained him on learning that they were
actually on their way. But they had no sooner landed than they offended
Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury by wearing their mitres and having
their crosses carried before them in his cathedral church; and they
repeated the insult in the king’s court, to the great indignation of
Baldwin and his suffragans.[95] Under these circumstances it would
obviously have been impossible to let them crown John in Baldwin’s
province; and if Henry entertained any idea of sending them and John to
Ireland together, that the rite might be performed there, he speedily
abandoned it. Baldwin, in fact, to rid himself of the legates, advised
the king to employ them in France, as mediators in the disputes which
were arising between Henry and Philip Augustus out of the death of
Geoffrey of Britanny, the minority of Geoffrey’s daughter, and the
critical condition of his widow. Henry accepted the suggestion, sent
John to Normandy instead of to Ireland,[96] and himself followed with
the legates on February 17 (1187).[97]
[Sidenote: 1187]
No pacification between the kings was arrived at, and at Whitsuntide
both openly prepared for war. This was the first real war in which
John took part; for his attacks upon Aquitaine in 1184 had been mere
raids, probably directed by Geoffrey, and it was not under his personal
leadership that his mercenaries had fought their losing fight with
the Irish in Munster. Now he was appointed to command one of the four
bodies into which King Henry divided his host; the other three being
entrusted to Richard, Earl William de Mandeville, and Geoffrey the
chancellor.[98] The position of these different bodies of troops at
the opening of the campaign is obscure. One English authority states
that when Philip began the war by laying siege to Châteauroux, Richard
and John were both within its walls.[99] A contemporary French
historian, however, who was probably better informed, says that when
Philip besieged Châteauroux Henry and Richard proceeded together to
its relief;[100] and it appears that John accompanied his father and
brother, for we are told that “John who is called Lackland, being
sent by his father, chanced to be present” when one of Richard’s
mercenaries broke off an arm of a statue in the church of Our Lady,
whereupon the figure bled as if it were alive; and John picked up the
severed arm and carried it off as a holy relic.[101] One contemporary
asserts that Richard’s subsequent desertion of his father was owing to
Philip’s communicating to him a letter in which Henry proposed that
Philip’s sister Adela, Richard’s betrothed, should marry John instead
of Richard, and that John should succeed to the whole of his dominions
except England and Normandy.[102] Whether this letter was genuine or
forged, there is nothing to show; if such a proposition was really made
by Henry, it was probably only as a temporary expedient for putting off
Philip’s importunity on the awkward question of Adela’s marriage. In
the autumn Henry and Richard were again reconciled,[103] and a little
later both were for a moment reconciled to Philip by a common vow of
crusade.
[Sidenote: 1188–1189]
On January 30, 1188, Henry returned to England, and it seems that John
went with him; for when Philip attacked Berry again in the summer,
Henry “sent into Normandy his son John, who crossed from Shoreham to
Dieppe.”[104] The king rejoined his son in July, and they probably
remained together during the greater part of the next eleven months,
though there is no mention of John’s presence at any of the numerous
conferences between Henry and Philip. At one of these conferences--that
at La Ferté Bernard, on Trinity Sunday, June 4, 1189[105]--Philip and
Richard demanded that John should be made to accompany his father
and brother on the crusade; Richard even declared that he would not
go himself unless John went too.[106] Henry, on the other hand, now
openly proposed to Philip that Adela should marry John instead of
Richard; but Philip, now that Richard was at his side, would not listen
to this suggestion.[107]
Our last glimpse of John during his father’s lifetime is at Le Mans
on June 12, when Philip and Richard captured the city, and Henry was
compelled to flee. A contemporary tells us that before setting out on
his flight “the king caused his son John, whom he loved and in whom
he greatly trusted, to be disarmed.”[108] This precaution may have
been due to anxiety--groundless, as the issue proved--lest John should
thrust himself into danger in his father’s behalf; that it was not
suggested by any doubts of John’s loyalty is plain, not only from the
words of the writer who records it, but also from Henry’s action on
the next morning, when, before setting out on his solitary ride from
La Frênaye back into Anjou, he despatched his remaining followers to
Normandy, after making the seneschal of the duchy and Earl William
de Mandeville swear that in case of his own death the Norman castles
should be given up to John.[109] John, however, had then already left
him--under what circumstances, or at what precise moment, we know
not; but it seems clear that at some time between the French attack
upon Le Mans on the Monday morning and Henry’s arrival at La Frênaye
on the same night, John had either been sent away by his father for
safety, or had found some pretext for quitting his company, and that,
in either case, he used the opportunity to go his own way with such
characteristic ingenuity that for three whole weeks his father never
guessed whither that way really tended.[110]
[Sidenote: 1189]
Henry and Richard had been set at strife by an illusion of their own
imaginations. Richard had been spurred to rebellion by the idea that
his father aimed at disinheriting him in favour of John, and might
succeed in that aim, unless prevented by force. Henry’s schemes for
John were probably in reality much less definite and less outrageous
than Richard imagined; but there can be little doubt that the otherwise
unaccountable inconsistencies and self-contradictions, the seemingly
wanton changes of front, by which the king in his latter years had
so bewildered and exasperated his elder son, were the outcome of an
insatiable desire to place John, somehow or other, in a more lofty and
independent position than a younger son was fairly entitled to expect.
The strange thing is that Henry never perceived how hopeless were his
efforts, nor Richard how groundless were his fears; neither of them,
apparently, realizing that the substitution of John for Richard as heir
of the Angevin house was an idea which could not possibly be carried
into effect. The utter selfishness of John, however, rendered him, mere
lad of one-and-twenty as he was, proof against illusions where his own
interest was concerned; and it was he who pricked the bubble. On July 4
Henry, sick unto death, made his submission to Philip and Richard, and
received a list of the traitors who had transferred their homage to the
latter. That night, at Chinon, he bade his vice-chancellor read him the
names. The vice-chancellor hesitated; the king insisted; at last the
truth which was to give him his death-blow came out: “Sire, the first
that is written down here is Lord John, your son.”[111]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _I.e._ Henry II.
[2] The place comes from the prose addition to Robert of Gloucester,
ed. Hearne, vol. ii. p. 484; on the date see Stubbs, pref. to W.
Coventry, vol. ii. p. xvii.
[3] R. Torigni, a. 1155; Gerv. of Canterbury, vol. i. p. 162.
[4] R. Torigni, a. 1160.
[5] R. Diceto, vol. i. p. 306.
[6] _Ib._ p. 311.
[7] R. Torigni, a. 1159.
[8] R. Torigni, a. 1166.
[9] “Quartum natu minimum Johannem Sine Terra agnominans,” W. Newburgh,
l. ii. c. 18. Cf. W. Armor. _Philippis_, l. vi. vv. 591, 592, who says,
addressing John--
“Antea quam fato fieres ludente monarcha,
Patris ab ore tui Sine-Terra nomen habebas.”
The name seems to have been commonly used as if it were a part of
John’s proper designation: “Johannes ... quem vocant Sine Terra,
quamvis multas et latas habet possessiones et multos comitatus,”
says R. Torigni, a. 1185. So the writer of the _Estoire de la Guerre
Sainte_: “Johan sanz Terre ot nom li mendres,” v. 179; “Johan sanz
Terre, Por qui il ot tant noise e guere,” vv. 101, 102.
[10] Cf. R. Torigni, a. 1169; Gerv. Cant. vol. i. p. 208, and
Robertson’s _Materials for Hist. of Becket_, vol. vi. pp. 506, 507.
According to the writer of this last account, young Henry’s homage to
Louis was only for Anjou and Maine, and he adds: “In hac autem honorum
distributione Franci regno suo arbitrantur plurimum esse prospectum; eo
quidem magis quod cum acerbiori dolore meminerant Henricum filium regis
Angliæ regi Francorum pro omnibus hominium fecisse, quando inter ipsum
et filiam regis Francorum sponsalia contracta sunt.” But R. Torigni’s
account of young Henry’s homage to Louis in 1160, when compared with
his account of the settlement in 1169, seems distinctly to imply that
the former was for Normandy alone.
[11] Robertson, _Materials_, vol. vi. p. 507.
[12] “Tradidit ei [_i.e._ Henrico] Johannem fratrem suum minimum ad
promovendum et manutenendum,” _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 7. The charge
cannot have been given personally, for though John may have been with
his father, the young king was in England.
[13] R. Howden, vol. ii. p. 6.
[14] See Bishop Stubbs’s notes to R. Howden, vol. ii. p. 6, and vol.
iii. p. xxiv., note 1.
[15] R. Torigni, a. 1168; Stapleton, _Mag. Rot. Scacc. Norm._ vol. i.
introd. pp. lxiii., cxxiii.
[16] R. Torigni, a. 1171.
[17] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 35.
[18] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 35–39.
[19] _Ib._ p. 41.
[20] Cf. _ib._ p. 41, and Gerv. Cant. vol. i. p. 242.
[21] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 77–79; R. Howden, vol. ii. pp. 67–69,
and _Foedera_, vol. i. pt. i. p. 30.
[22] R. Torigni, a. 1175.
[23] _Art de Vérifier les Dates_, vol. xvii. p. 165.
[24] John and Isabel of Gloucester were cousins in the fourth degree
according to the canon law; _i.e._ they were what is now commonly
called second cousins, being both great-grandchildren of Henry I.
[25] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 124, 125; R. Diceto, vol. i. p. 415,
giving the date, September 28, 1176.
[26] Gerv. Cant. vol. i. p. 243.
[27] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 131.
[28] _Ib._ pp. 161–5.
[29] Eyton, _Itin. of Henry II._ p. 210, from Pipe Roll 1177.
[30] _Ib._ p. 222, from Pipe Roll 1178.
[31] R. Torigni, a. 1178.
[32] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 221.
[33] Eyton, _Itin. Hen. II._ p. 226, from Pipe Roll 1179.
[34] _Foedera_, vol. i. pt. i. p. 40. For date see Eyton, p. 246.
[35] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 304, 305.
[36] _Ib._ pp. 304, 305, 307, 308.
[37] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 308.
[38] R. Diceto, vol. ii. p. 21.
[39] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 311.
[40] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 200.
[41] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. pp. 199, 200.
[42] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 319.
[43] R. Howden, vol. ii. p. 288.
[44] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 320, 321.
[45] _Ib._ p. 334.
[46] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. pp. 362, 363.
[47] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 336; R. Diceto, vol. ii. p. 34.
[48] Treaty in _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 102, 103.
[49] Charter in Lyttelton, _Henry II._ (ed. 1767), vol. iv. p. 295;
_Song of Dermot_ (ed. Orpen), vv. 2725–32; cf. _Rot. Chart._ p. 178.
The statement in _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 163 (copied by R. Howden, vol.
ii. p. 134) that the service was that of a hundred knights is clearly a
mistake.
[50] _Song of Dermot_, vv. 2617–22.
[51] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 298.
[52] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 277.
[53] _Ib._ p. 348.
[54] _Ib._ pp. 321–3. Cf. _Song of Dermot_, vv. 3370 to end.
[55] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. pp. 332, 333.
[56] _Ib._ pp. 327, 328.
[57] _Ib._ pp. 333, 334.
[58] _Song of Dermot_, vv. 2733–5.
[59] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 339; _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 137, 138. Cf.
Four Masters and _Ann. Loch Cé_, a. 1177.
[60] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 346. Cf. Four Masters and _Ann. Loch Cé_,
a. 1177.
[61] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 161 with Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 347.
[62] Defined as extending “towards the Cape of S. Brendan [Knock
Brandon] on the sea-coast, and towards Limerick and other parts, and as
far as the water near Lismore.” Ware’s _Antiquities of Ireland_, ed.
Harris, p. 194.
[63] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 162–5.
[64] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 172, 173; Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 347,
with Mr. Dimock’s note 6; and _Rot. Chart._ p. 84 b.
[65] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 348. The removal of William Fitz-Audeline
from the office of viceroy seems to have involved the displacement of
the subordinate officers appointed by him, of whom Richard of London
was one.
[66] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 348. Cf. Ware, _Antiq._ pp. 194, 195.
[67] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 349.
[68] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 350. Cf. note (_e_) to Four Masters, a.
1182, and _Ann. Loch Cé_, a. 1182.
[69] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. pp. 350, 351.
[70] _Dic. Nat. Biog._ s.v. “Fitz-Stephen, Robert.”
[71] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 350.
[72] Ware, _Antiq._ pp. 196, 197.
[73] Cf. Gir. Cambr. vol. v. pp. 353–6, and _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 270.
[74] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. pp. 357, 358. Cf. _Gesta Hen._ _l.c._, where
the date is wrong.
[75] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 280, 287, and Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p.
358.
[76] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 359.
[77] _Ib._ pp. 359, 360; Four Masters, a. 1185.
[78] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 380.
[79] Four Masters, a. 1185.
[80] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 381.
[81] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 389.
[82] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 339.
[83] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 386; Four Masters, a. 1185.
[84] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 339.
[85] Four Masters, a. 1185.
[86] _Gesta Hen._ _l.c._
[87] Four Masters, _l.c._; _Ann. Loch Cé_, a. 1185.
[88] Gir. Cambr. vol. v. p. 392.
[89] In several of John’s Irish charters granted during his father’s
lifetime he styles himself simply “Johannes filius Regis”; when he does
use a title, it is “Dominus Hiberniae,” or, apparently, in one case
(_Hist. MSS. Comm._ 3rd Report, p. 231), “Dux Hiberniae.”
[90] _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. p. 161.
[91] _Ib._ p. 339.
[92] R. Howden, vol. ii. pp. 306, 307. No such bull is now known, but
there seems no reason to doubt the story.
[93] Gerv. Cant. vol. i. p. 346; _Gesta Hen._ vol. ii. pp. 3, 4; R.
Diceto, vol. ii. p. 47.
[94] Cf. _Gesta Hen._ vol. i. pp. 350, 361; Four Masters, a. 1186; Gir.
Cambr. vol. v. p. 387, and R. Diceto, vol. ii. p. 34, who gives the day
of Hugh’s death--July 25--but under a wrong year.
[95] Gerv. Cant. vol. i. p. 346; _Gesta Hen._ vol. ii. p. 4.
[96] _Gesta Hen._ vol. ii. p. 4.
[97] _Ib._ Cf. R. Diceto, vol. ii. p. 47.
[98] _Gesta Hen._ vol. ii. p. 6.
[99] _Ib._
[100] Rigord, c. 52 (ed. Delaborde, p. 180).
[101] _Ib._ Cf. Gerv. Cant. vol. i. p. 369.
[102] Gir. Cambr. vol. viii. pp. 232, 233.
[103] _Gesta Hen._ vol. ii. p. 9.
[104] _Ib._ p. 40.
[105] R. Howden, vol. ii. p. 362.
[106] _Gesta Hen._ vol. ii. p. 66.
[107] R. Howden, vol. ii. p. 363.
[108] _Hist. de G. le Mar._ vv. 8542–4.
[109] Gir. Cambr. vol. iv. p. 369.
[110] Gerald indeed (_l.c._) says: “In crastino vero ... versus
Andegaviam rege properante, fidei tamen sacramentique vinculis
senescallo Normanniae Guillelmo Radulphi filio et comite Guillelmo de
Mandeville ante constrictis, de munitionibus Normanniae cunctis, siquid
de ipso sinistrum fore contigerit, filio suo juniori Johanni reddendis,
quanquam tamen et ipse ab eodem, proh dolor! paulo _post_ discesserit.”
But it looks very much as if “post” here were a mistake for “ante,” for
the whole story indicates that John was not at La Frênaye on the night
of June 12. Cf. W. Newb. l. iii. c. 25: “Tunc” (after the flight from
Le Mans) “Johannes filiorum ejus minimus, quem tenerrime diligebat,
recessit ab eo”; and _Gesta Hen._ vol. ii. p. 72: “Johannes filius
ejus, qui mortis suae occasio, immo causa praecipua fuerat, eo quod
illum tempore guerrae, cum capta esset civitas Cenomannis, reliquerat.”
These two writers, indeed, taken by themselves, would seem to imply
that John’s desertion was open; but Henry’s charge to the two Norman
barons, and his subsequent horror at the final discovery of John’s
treason, indicate that it was managed with a refinement of duplicity
which is really more in accord with John’s character.
[111] _Hist. de G. le Mar._ vv. 9077–8.