Oh, let me still sustain this kind captivity!”—
but certainly he did find his prison infinitely less intolerable than it had been when he first entered it, cursing the fate that had sent him thither. At times, however, the old spirit seized him, and he stamped about like a caged lion, and startled the sullen gaoler by his explosions of rage.
“On my faith,” said he to himself one day in April, after having worn himself out by the intensity of his ravings, “never did the hart pant for the water-brook more than I pant for freedom and air and exercise, and yet the chance seems as far away from me as ever. I marvel how long I have been here. Ha! I have lost count. By St. Edward, I fear me that ere long I shall lose my senses!”
As Oliver thus soliloquised he went to the window, and, seating himself on the broad sill of stone, looked out on meadows and woodlands which spring, “that great painter of the earth,” had once more robed in green, and on the ploughed fields to which, in spite of war and rumours of war, the husbandmen were committing the seeds, with every hope of reaping in due season. Almost as he did so, his ear caught the sound of a musical instrument and of a voice singing a Castilian ballad in very indifferent Spanish, but in accents which were so familiar that his heart leaped within him. Oliver listened, and as he listened the singer sang—
And they have bound him sorely, they have bound him hand and heel;
The tidings up the mountains go, and down among the valleys—
To the rescue! to the rescue, ho! they have ta’en Fernan Gonsalez!”
Interrupting without ceremony, and taking the ballad out of the singer’s mouth, Oliver repeated the verse at the top of his voice, so emphasising several of the words as to leave little room for mistake as to his meaning. As he did so he observed a figure climb slowly but without difficulty up a parapet, at such a distance from him that there was no possibility of communicating by words; but the figure, on reaching the top of the parapet, reared itself and stood in the form of a boy dressed in crimson, holding some musical instrument in his hand, and looking scrutinously from window to window, and from casement to casement, apparently with the object of discovering from which had come the voice of the person who had caught up his song. Oliver, to aid him, took his cap, put his hand between the bars of the window, and dexterously tossed the cap in the air. The signal was observed and had the desired effect. The singer returned it, and having dropped nimbly to the ground disappeared, while Oliver, withdrawing into the interior of his chamber, began to marvel what consequences would flow from this unexpected incident.
But days and weeks elapsed, and nothing came to alter his situation; and Oliver, thinking he was forgotten by those on whom he had been relying, was musing over the song that had raised his hopes, and ever and anon asking himself with a smile whether or not it would be possible to persuade De Moreville’s daughter to play the part of the infanta who bribed the alcaydé with her jewels to set free the great Count of Castile, and who then fled with him to his own land, when there occurred an event which changed the aspect of his affairs.
It was somewhere about the middle of May, 1216, and Oliver had been nearly eleven months in captivity, and Hugh de Moreville, with Ralph Hornmouth in attendance, had been many months absent from Chas-Chateil, being, in fact at the court of Paris; and the castle, which was well garrisoned, was under the command of a Norman knight who had seen about fifty winters, and who rejoiced in the name of Anthony Waledger. He was a man of courage and prudence, Sir Anthony Waledger, and had married the “lady governess” of Beatrix de Moreville, she being a distant kinswoman of the house. And Hugh de Moreville had the most implicit confidence in her husband’s fidelity and discretion. It is true that the old knight was a man of violent temper and intemperate habits, and much given to brimming goblets and foaming tankards. Besides, he had the character of having sometimes in moments of danger shown too much of the discretion which is the better part of valour. But De Moreville overlooked his weaknesses, believing him to be incapable of betraying his trust or failing in his duty. Moreover, the knight had faith in his garrison, and felt so secure that he would readily have staked his head on holding out Chas-Chateil against any army in England till the arrival of succour; and his confidence was all the greater because he knew that he had the means—no matter how closely the castle might be invested—of communicating with the baronial party in time to be rescued, for there was a subterranean passage, the existence of which Waledger believed to be known to none save himself and the baron whom he served. In this he was partly wrong, inasmuch as Styr, the Anglo-Saxon, from his residence at Chas-Chateil in the days of Edric Icingla, was aware that there was this underground passage, and even knew the chamber that communicated with it. But he knew no more, and if put into it could no more have guessed where it was to lead or where it was to terminate than De Moreville’s horse-boy, Clem the Bold Rider, or Richard de Moreville, the baron’s nephew, who were equally ignorant that such a passage existed. Everything, however, tended to inspire the governor of Chas-Chateil with a feeling of security. Indeed, over his cups he was in the habit of talking big to De Moreville’s knights and squires, and especially to De Moreville’s nephew Richard, about his engines of war, and what he could do with their aid.
“Sirs,” he was wont to say at such moments, “let who will tremble at a false tyrant’s frown, I defy his malice. Let him do his worst, and, by the head of St. Anthony, if King John makes his appearance before the castle of Chas-Chateil, the said king will be the luckiest of Johns if he can escape from before it alive and at liberty.”
Never had Sir Anthony Waledger boasted more loudly of the impregnability of the fortress he commanded than as he sat at supper in the great hall on the evening of the day to which allusion has been made; and never did the garrison retire to rest with a better prospect of reposing undisturbed till the return of daylight. But it appeared, as Ralph Hornmouth remarked, that “his confidence did not rest on quite so firm a foundation as the Bass rock.” About three hours after sunset, when the moon afforded but a faint light, shouts suddenly resounded through Chas-Chateil, and gradually swelled into such an uproar as if all the fiends had congregated within its walls to fight out the quarrels they had been fostering from the beginning of time.
Oliver Icingla, roused from his repose, started from his couch and rushed to the window; but as there was nothing visible in the direction towards which it looked to explain the uproar, that grew louder and more alarming, he hastily donned his garments, and stood calm, though greatly curious, to await the issue. As he did so, voices were heard; the gaoler opened the door, and as the door opened in rushed, pell-mell, De Moreville’s daughter with her two maidens and the wife of Waledger, all in the utmost trepidation, weeping and wringing their hands, and showing signs of hasty toilets.
“Gentle sir,” said Beatrix, coming towards him, “I implore you by our kindred blood and for the sake of your mother to save us from these cruel men.”
“Assuredly, noble demoiselle,” replied Oliver very calmly, as he took his fair kinswoman’s hand and kissed it most gallantly by the moonlight. “I am under the vows of chivalry, and albeit I wear not the spurs of knighthood, I am bound to save imperilled ladies or to die in their defence. But I marvel who they can be?”
“Oh,” cried the spouse of Waledger, whose consternation increased every moment, “who should they be but your own friends, the ravening wolves whom the false king has brought into the realm—Falco the Cruel, Manlem the Bloody, Soltim the Merciless, Godeschal the Iron-hearted? Woe is me that I should live to be in their power!”
“On my faith, madam,” said Oliver, who had listened to her vehemence and the names and epithets with amazement, “I am more puzzled than ever. Beshrew me if I ever heard of the men before. In truth, their names sound as strange to my ear as if you had called the roll of the Ethiopians who kept guard over the caliph’s palace at Bagdad.”
But at that moment steps sounded in the gallery, and a loud knock at the door made Beatrix de Moreville tremble and the three other women shriek with terror.
CHAPTER XXII
HOW THE KING BIDED HIS TIME
ROBIN GOODMAN, mine host of The Three Cranes, did not speak without good information when he gave the chapmen of Bristol intelligence as to the attitude which public affairs had unexpectedly assumed in the metropolis. In fact, the position of the baron was, for the time being, almost ludicrous.
Great was the exultation, high the excitement, of Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates as they left Runnymede and marched towards London. On the way they were met by the mayor, with the sheriffs and aldermen in scarlet robes, and many citizens, all dressed in violet and gallantly mounted, who, headed by Constantine Fitzarnulph, escorted the heroes of Runnymede along the bush-grown Strand, and over the Fleet Bridge, and through Ludgate to St. Paul’s, where the assembled multitude hailed their return with cheers that rent the sky.
It was a stirring spectacle as the procession moved along the narrow streets, with banners waving and trumpets sounding, and everybody was too much interested to ask what the morrow might bring forth. It was enough that they had won a great victory over the king, who had been in the habit not only of treating them with hauteur, but of making them pay their scutages; and they resolved to celebrate their victory by holding a grand tournament, on the 2nd of July, at Stamford, where so recently they had, at all hazards, set up the standard of revolt, and vowed to dare all and risk all in vindication of their feudal pretensions.
And so closed Friday, the 15th of June, 1215, every man well satisfied with himself and with his neighbour; and on the morning of Saturday Hugh de Moreville entered London by Bishopsgate, bringing full assurance of aid from Alexander, King of Scots, in case of need. The royal Scot, however, stipulated that he was to have a large reward in the shape of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland—a noble addition to his kingdom, it must be admitted, if the Northern counties had been the barons’ to give. But even at this price they seemed to consider his alliance cheaply purchased, and luxuriated for the time in the success of their revolt. But ere Saturday’s sun set, messengers, breathless with haste, came to tell Fitzwalter that King John had secretly departed from Windsor under cover of night, no one knew whither; and when the barons immediately afterwards met in council, every countenance was elongated and every brow heavy with thought, and the boldest quailed as he reflected what a king, goaded and rendered desperate, might have it in his power to do if he turned savagely to bay. De Moreville shared the apprehension of his friends, but gave vent to no nervous ejaculations.
“I deny not,” said he calmly, “that this is an awkward circumstance, and one against which precautions ought to have been taken. But John is no Arthur or Richard, nor even such a man as his father Henry, that we should much fear the utmost he can do, if he is mad enough to challenge us to the game of carnage. St. Moden and all the saints forbid that I should ever blanch at the thought of battle with a man who, even his own friends would confess, is so much fitter for the wars of Venus, than those of Bellona, and whose wont it has ever been, even while blustering and threatening the powerful, to strike at none but the weak! Come, noble sirs, take heart. By my faith, the game is still ours if we play it with courage, and imitate not the cowardly heron, which flies at the sight of its own shadow.”
“But think of the pope,” said a dozen voices. “How are we to contend with the thunders of the Church, before which the Kings of France and England have both of late been forced to bend their heads in humble submission?”
“By St. Moden,” replied De Moreville, “I fear not, if the worst comes to the worst, to trust to stone walls, and the arm of flesh, and gold. We have strong castles, and fighting men, and the wealth of London at our backs. Nevertheless, I freely own that a king’s name is a tower of strength in the opinion of the unreflecting multitude, and, since such is the case, I opine that it becomes us to counteract the influence of the king’s name and fortify our cause by taking possession of the queen and prince, who are now at the palace of Savernake. It is a bold measure, but this is no time to be squeamish. Speak the word, and I myself will forthwith summon my men and mount my horse, and ride to make the seizure. Falcons fear not falcons; and beshrew me if any but liars shall ever have it in their power to tell that Hugh de Moreville shrank cravenly from a contest for life and death with such a kite as John of Anjou!”
At first the proposal of De Moreville met with little support; but his eloquence ultimately prevailed, and he lost no time in setting out to execute his mission. But the scheme of seizing the queen and the prince was, as the reader already knows, baffled by the king’s precaution; and when the barons who were in London became aware that De Moreville had failed, their alarm became greater than ever, and they resolved to take measures for ascertaining in what danger they really stood, and what chance there was of the king playing them false.
It was now about the close of June, and intelligence reached London that John was at Winchester, and the barons determined to have some satisfactory understanding. Accordingly they sent a deputation to Winchester to inform him of their doubts, and to demand whether or not he really intended to keep the promises he had made at Runnymede. The king received the deputation with apparent frankness, ridiculed their suspicions as being utterly without foundation, and appointed a meeting with them in July, at Oxford, to which city he was on the point of removing.
The barons were neither deceived by the king’s manner nor deluded by his words. They had lost the last lingering respect for his good faith; and they felt instinctively that he was exercising all his duplicity and all his ingenuity to free himself from their wardship and bring about their destruction, and vague rumours that mercenaries were being levied on the Continent added to their alarm. It was even said that John intended to take advantage of their absence at the tournament at Stamford to seize London; and, though he was without any army capable of taking a city, this report influenced them so far that they postponed the tournament, and named a distant day for its taking place at Hounslow.
Ere long affairs reached a new stage, and caused more perplexity. It suddenly became known in London that John, regardless of his promise to hold a conference with the barons at Oxford, had left that city suddenly, ridden to the coast, and embarked in a ship belonging to one of the Cinque Ports, but with what object could not be divined; and though from that time the wildest stories were told on the subject, his movements were shrouded in such mystery that nothing certain was known. Even in the month of September, when the barons met in London and held a council at the house of the Templars, they were utterly at a loss to imagine what had become of the sovereign whom two months earlier they had browbeaten at Runnymede, and bound in chains which they then believed could never be broken.
“He is drowned,” said one.
“He has turned fisherman,” said a second.
“No,” said a third; “he is roaming the narrow seas as a pirate.”
“Doubtless he is living on the water,” said a fourth, “but it is in the company of the mariners of the Cinque Ports, whom he is, by an affectation of frankness and familiarity, alluring to his side in case of a struggle.”
“Such fables are wholly unworthy of credit,” said a fifth. “For my part, I doubt not the truth of what is bruited as to his being weary of royalty and the troubles it has brought with it, and that he has abjured Christianity and taken refuge among the Moors of Granada, whose alliance he formerly sought.”
“Noble sirs,” said Hugh de Moreville, who had recovered from his attack of gout and returned to London, “suffer me to speak. You are all wrong. Pardon me for saying so in plain words. King John is not drowned; nor has he turned fisherman; nor pirate; nor gone to Granada; albeit he may have been more familiar with the mariners of the Cinque Ports than consists with our interest and safety. I had sure intelligence brought me, when I was on the point of coming hither, that he is now in the castle of Dover.”
“The castle of Dover!” exclaimed twenty voices, while a thrill of surprise pervaded the assembly, each man looking at his neighbour.
“Yes, in the castle of Dover,” continued De Moreville, raising his voice; “and he is in daily expectation of the arrival of mercenary troops from the Continent, under the command of Falco, and Manlem, and Soltim, and Godeschal, and Walter Buch, men of such cruel and ruthless natures, that I can scarce even mention their names without the thought of their being let loose in this country scaring the blood out of my body.”
A simultaneous exclamation of horror rose from the assembled barons, and several prayed audibly to God and the saints to shield them and theirs from the terrible dangers with which their homes and hearths were threatened. And when the news became public and spread through the city, the terror proved contagious, and the citizens began to quake for the safety of their wares and their women. Joseph Basing cursed the hour in which he had, even by his presence, sanctioned the entry of the barons into London; and even the countenance of Constantine Fitzarnulph was overcast, and his voice husky. Meanwhile, however, Hugh de Moreville rather rejoiced than otherwise at the danger; and Robert Fitzwalter maintained his dignity, and stood calmly contemplating the peril which he had defied.
“One word more,” said De Moreville. “It is the king’s intention, so far as can be learned, to commence operations by an attempt to take the castle of Rochester.”
“William of Albini is already in command of the garrison, and will do all that a brave man can to defend the castle,” said Fitzwalter. “But forewarned is forearmed; and it were well instantly to despatch a messenger to tell him of the danger that approaches. Where is Walter Merley?”
“Here, my good lord,” answered the young Norman noble, who had figured among the guests of Constantine Fitzarnulph when the chief citizens decided on inviting the “army of God and the Church” to take possession of London.
“Mount without delay, and carry to the Earl of Arundel the intelligence my Lord de Moreville has just brought us.”
“Willingly, my good lord,” replied the stripling; “but ere going I make bold to offer this suggestion, that, since we have been restoring the ancient laws of this land, it would be politic to restore a time-honoured custom which was wont to do good service in the days of the Confessor—I mean, publish the ancient proclamation of war, which used to arouse every Englishman capable of bearing arms—‘Let each man, whether in town or country, leave his house and come.’”
Few listened; nobody answered; and the youth withdrew to ride on his errand, too ardently enthusiastic for the baronial cause even to feel galled that his suggestion had not been deemed worthy of notice, or to perceive the absurdity of asking the grandsons of the conquerors of Hastings to appeal to the vanquished and down-trodden race. But De Moreville both heard and understood it; and laying his hand on Fitzwalter’s arm, he said in a low tone—
“My noble friend, I wish we had among us more of the enthusiasm that glows at that stripling’s heart. By St. Moden, my young friend—albeit of Norman lineage—has strange notions, being English on the spindle side; for his mother, Dame Juliana, is sister of Edgar Unnithing. She has inspired him with a dangerous sympathy for the English race, and would have had him and his elder brother take the king’s side if her counsel had availed. Mort Dieu! I hold it lucky that John has not by his side our young Walter, with his keen eye and scheming brain, whispering such suggestions in his ear as that which was hazarded but now. The false king might, with wit enough, in such a case, have saved himself the trouble of sending for warriors from beyond sea; for he might have found them at his door. But, trust me, resolution, and the determination to act with a strong hand, are much wanted in this emergency. And hearken. The king brings foreigners into this country to fight his battles, forgetting that both parties can play at that game if needs be. Nay, start not; you will ere long come to view this matter in the same light that I do; and I swear by my faith, that rather than be beaten by that anointed, craven, and perjured king, I would not only consent to bringing a foreign army into the kingdom, but to placing a foreign prince on the throne. Tush! what matters it who is the puppet, so long as we, the barons of England, pull the strings?”
“By my halidame, De Moreville,” said Fitzwalter, gravely, “I much marvel that a man so skilled in statecraft, and accounted so sage in camp and council as you are, can indulge in talk so perilous to our enterprise, encompassed as it is with dangers. Credit me that when the cession of the three northern counties to the King of Scots is bruited about, and the condition of his friendship becomes matter of public notoriety, that of itself will be sufficiently difficult to vindicate. Make not the aspect of affairs more repulsive to our best and most leal friends, the citizens of London, by defying their prejudices. Credit me, such a course, if persisted in, will ruin all, and leave us at the mercy of an adversary whose tender mercies are cruel. No more of it, I pray you, as you value all our lives and fortunes, and the welfare of the army of God and the Church.”
“Fitzwalter,” replied De Moreville, earnestly, “be not deceived. Much less easy is it than you think to startle the citizens of London, who care nothing for traditions or love of country. Behind that old Roman wall which you see to the east are men from every clime and of every race, mongrels almost to a man, who have no feeling, no motive in this quarrel, save their aversion to the monarchy and their dislike of the king. Be not deceived. Besides, as I am a Norman gentleman, I swear to you, on my faith, that I do not value their opinion or their support at the worth of a bezant.”
Fitzwalter started, and looked round as if fearing that any one might be within earshot.
“For the rest,” continued De Moreville, conclusively, “I have well considered what I have spoken, and am prepared to abide by it, let William Longsword or the Nevilles do their worst. We are Normans, and not Englishmen, as you well know—none better. You start. Yet a little while, and others will cry out loudly enough in the market-place what now I hardly dare to whisper; for clearly do I see, and confidently do I predict as if I had read it in the book of fate, that matters must be worse before they can be better. I have for some time only thought so; but I have known it ever since I learned that this cowardly yet bloodthirsty king has turned to bay.”
“May the saints in heaven shield this afflicted land,” said Fitzwalter, with a sigh, “and grant us a happy issue out of all our troubles!”
And they parted: Fitzwalter, in no enviable frame of mind, to enter his gilded barge, and go by water to Baynard’s Castle; De Moreville, his brain peopled with conflicting projects, to walk eastward to his hotel outside of Ludgate.
CHAPTER XXIII
TURNING TO BAY
IT soon appeared too clear to be doubted, even by the most incredulous, that the King of England was bent on having his revenge on the Anglo-Norman barons at all hazards and at all sacrifices, and that the feudal magnates who had confederated to humble their sovereign in the dust had too good grounds for the alarm with which the news of his preparations inspired them. Ere October (then known as the wine-month) drew to a close, and the vineyards and orchards yielded their annual crop—indeed, almost ere the corn was gathered from the fields into the garners and barnyards—the torch of war was lighted, and an army of mercenaries was let loose on “merry England.”
The knights despatched by John as early as the middle of June to raise fighting men on the Continent had executed their commission with a zeal and fidelity worthy of a better cause; and all the bravoes and cut-throats of Flanders, France, and Brabant, attracted by the hope of pay and plunder, came to the trysting-places on the coast as vultures to the carnage, headed by captains already notorious for cruel hearts and ruthless hands. Falco, and Manlem, and Soltim, and Godeschal, and Walter Buch, were men quite as odious—unless they are belied by chroniclers—as Hugh de Moreville had represented them to be. Falco was known as “without bowels,” Manlem as “the bloody,” Soltim as “the merciless,” Godeschal as “the iron-hearted,” and Walter Buch as “the murderer,” and none of them knew much more of humanity than the name and the form. All of them were not, however, destined to reach the land which was to be made over to their tender mercies. A large number, under the command of Walter Buch, were caught in a gale and wrecked and lost, as if even the elements had interfered between England and her king’s wrath. But the others weathered the storm and gradually reached the English coast; and early in October John found himself at the head of a force so formidable and so fierce that he intrusted the castle of Dover to the custody of Hubert de Burgh, a valiant warrior and a Norman noble of great note in his day, and led his hireling army towards Rochester.
Rochester Castle—the stately ruins of which, hard by the Medway, still attest its ancient grandeur, and recall the days when it stood in feudal pride, guarded by moat, and rampart, and lofty battlements—was deemed a place of immense importance; and Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates had intrusted it to the keeping of William Albini, Earl of Arundel, a great noble whose family had long maintained feudal state at Castle Rising, in Norfolk, and whose ancestor had acquired Arundel with the hand of Adelicia of Louvaine, the young widow of Henry Beauclerc. Albini was a brave warrior, and quite equal to the duties of his post under ordinary circumstances; but the castle was without engines of war, and very slenderly furnished with provisions, when, about the middle of October, John, with his army of foreigners, appeared before the walls, and summoned the place to surrender.
No doubt William Albini was “some whit dismayed.” Perhaps, however, he expected some aid from the barons, who were with their fighting men in London. Accordingly, he prepared for resistance; and the barons, on hearing that John had left Dover, did march out of the city with some vague idea of relieving the imperilled garrison. On drawing near to the king’s army, however, they began to remember that the better part of valour was discretion, and after their vanguard was driven back they quickly retreated to the capital and took refuge behind the walls, leaving Albini to his fate.
Meanwhile, John laid siege to Rochester, and, impatient to proceed with his campaign before winter set in, hurried on the operations, and, by making promises to the besiegers and hurling threats at the besieged, did everything in his power to bring the business to a close. But, with all chances against him, Albini made an obstinate resistance, and weeks passed over without any clear advantage having been gained by the king. Even after his sappers had thrown down part of the outer wall, matters continued doubtful. Withdrawing into the keep, the garrison boldly resisted, and for a time kept the assailants at bay. At length, by means of a mine, one of the angles was shattered, and John urged his mercenaries to force their way through the breach. But this proved a more difficult matter than he expected. Every attempt to enter was so bravely repulsed, that the king, under the influence of rage and mortification, indulged in loud threats of vengeance. At length, on the last day of November, when his patience was well-nigh exhausted, famine, which had been for some time at work among the besieged, brought matters to a crisis, and William Albini and his garrison threw themselves on the royal mercy.
“Hang every man of them up!” cried John, who at that moment naturally thought with bitter wrath of the delay which they had caused him when time was so peculiarly valuable.
“Nay, sire,” said Sauvery de Manlem, the captain of mercenaries, “that were perilous policy, and would lead to retaliations on the baronial side too costly to be hazarded by men who hire out their swords for money.”
John listened, acknowledged that there was reason in Manlem’s words, and consented to spare life. Accordingly, Albini and his knights were sent as prisoners to the castles of Corfe and Nottingham; the other men belonging to the garrison were pressed into the royal service.
The loss of Rochester was felt to be a severe blow to the baronial cause; and the pope having meantime annulled the charter, as having been exacted from the king by force, John’s star was once more in the ascendant, and after making arrangements for the safe keeping of Rochester, and little guessing the circumstances under which the fortress was to change hands within the next six months, he marched from Kent to St. Albans, his mercenary forces spreading terror wherever they appeared. But it was towards the North that his eye and his thoughts were directed; for the chiefs of the houses of De Vesci, De Roos, De Vaux, Percy, Merley, Moubray, De Brus, and D’Estouteville were conspicuous among the confederate barons; and, moreover, Alexander, the young King of Scots, had not only allied himself with the feudal magnates, but raised his father’s banner, on which “the ruddy lion ramped in gold,” and at the head of an army crossed the Tweed to make good his title to the three Northern counties with which the barons had gifted him.
At St. Albans, accordingly, about the middle of December, John divided his forces into two armies: one he placed under William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, to keep the barons in check and maintain the royal authority in Hertford, Essex, Middlesex, and Cambridge; while at the head of the other he marched northward to avenge himself on the barons of the North and the King of Scots. With a craving for vengeance still gnawing at his heart, he passed the festival of Christmas at the castle of Nottingham, and then, still breathing threats, precipitated his troops on the North.
It was on the 2nd of January, 1216, when John entered Yorkshire with fire and sword. The snow lay thick on the ground; the streams were frozen; and the cold was intense; but the king, who but recently had been branded by his foes as a tyrant fit only to loll in luxury, and averse to war and fatigue, now appeared both hardy and energetic, and urged his bravoes up hill and down dale. It was a terrible expedition, and one long after remembered with horror. Fire and sword rapidly did their work in the hands of the mercenaries who composed the royal army; men were slaughtered; houses and stackyards given to the flames; and towns, castles, and abbeys ruthlessly destroyed. Beyond the Tyne the country fared almost worse. Morpeth, the seat of Roger de Merley, Alnwick, the seat of Eustace de Vesci, and Wark, one of the castles of Robert de Roos, were stormed and sacked; and John, crossing the Tweed at Berwick, prepared to inflict his vengeance on the King of Scots.
“Now,” said he to his captains, as he found himself beyond the Marches, “we must unkennel this young red fox.”
The captains of the royal army offered no objection; and while John burned Roxburgh—a royal burgh and castle at the junction of the Teviot and the Tweed—the mercenaries pursued the King of Scots to the gates of Edinburgh, and, during their return, deliberately burned Haddington, Dunbar, Berwick, and the fair abbey of Coldingham, associated with the legend of St. Ebba and her nuns. Nothing, indeed, was spared; and John, having intrusted the government of the country between the Tees and the Tweed to Hugh Baliol and Philip de Ullecotes, with knights and men-at-arms sufficient to defend it, returned southward with such satisfaction as he could derive from the reflection that he had taken revenge on his baronial foes, and included in his vengeance many thousands who had not given him the slightest cause of offence.
But whatever may have been his feelings on the subject—and it is impossible to suppose that he had not his hours of compunction—John was destined, ere long, to find that his revenge had been dearly purchased. Scarcely had he returned to the South with blood on his hands, and the execrations of two countries ringing in his ears, when he received tidings which made his heart sink within him.
It was when the winter had passed, and the spring had come and gone, that messengers brought to John, who was then at Dover, intelligence that his baronial foes, driven to desperation, had taken a step which was likely to detach his mercenary soldiers from his standard, and leave him almost alone and face to face with an exasperated nation. It was a terrible contingency, and one on which the king, in pursuing his schemes of vengeance, had not calculated. But there was no mistake about the news; and John trembled as he foresaw how that, as soon as it spread among his mercenaries, the army which, while ministering to his vengeance, had made him odious to the nation on whose support he might otherwise have counted in case of the worst, would melt as surely as had melted the winter’s snow through which he had urged on that army to devastation and carnage.
CHAPTER XXIV
A DESPERATE EXPEDIENT
IT was the Christmas of 1215; and the barons, cooped up in London, and not daring to venture beyond the walls, were almost in despair, and listened with unavailing regret to reports of the devastation wrought by the royal army on its march northward, and with dread to the sound of the spiritual artillery which Pope Innocent directed against them. However, they, as well as the citizens, celebrated Christmas with unusual festivity, and appeared anxious to show the king and his partisans that they were not to be cast down by adversity, and to convince the pope and the legate that they did not tremble before the thunders of Rome.
Nevertheless, Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates were sadly disheartened by all that was taking place, and in mortal terror of what might take place in London, if John turned his face towards the capital; and Falco, and Manlem, and Soltim, and Godeschal had an opportunity of stabling their steeds at Baynard’s Castle and the Tower, and quartering their men among the worthy citizens who had proved such good friends in the day of need to “the army of God and of the Church.”
Moreover, it was the reverse of flattering to Fitzwalter and De Vesci, and De Clare and De Roos, and the Bigods and Bohuns, to find that, after all, they had been fooled and humbled by a king whom they had not only disliked but despised; and wounded pride and vanity whispered constantly to each that it would be better to adopt any expedient likely to lead to their relief from the perplexity of the present, than trust to the course of events and the chapter of accidents. Nevertheless, it was not very easy to discover a ready and short way out of their multitudinous difficulties, and they spent many days in anxious debate and somewhat unmanly lamentations. Naturally enough, different opinions were expressed, and there was much variance; but nobody could refuse to admit that something must be done, and that quickly; and at length they arrived at a resolution which, to say the least of it, was unpatriotic, imprudent, and unfortunate.
At that period, Philip Augustus, no longer young, was still occupying himself with the projects which he had conceived in youth for rendering France the great monarchy of Europe, and of all men he was the likeliest to lend an attentive ear to any proposal for humbling the house of Plantagenet; and it happened that Louis, the son of Philip by his first wife, Isabel of Hainault, had, in 1200, espoused Blanche of Castile, daughter of King Alphonso, the conqueror of Muradel, by Eleanor, daughter of our second Henry. Louis, who was now in his twenty-ninth year, cannot be described as one of the great princes of the Capet line, though he rated himself very highly, owing to inheriting, through his mother, Isabel, the blood of Charlemagne; and chroniclers, wishing to be complimentary, have been content to call him “the son of an able father, and the father of an excellent son.” But the barons were not in a position to be very nice when in search of a puppet, and nobody, at all events, could deny that Louis of France, the heir of Hugh Capet and Charlemagne, was also the husband of Blanche of Castile, and that her mother was a princess of the blood royal of England; so the barons, in their perplexity, seem to have considered her claim to the crown of England quite good enough to serve their purpose, and to have believed that they could not do better, all things taken into account, than call her and her husband to the throne which her maternal grandsire had occupied. It is true that some dozen persons, male and female, actually stood before Blanche of Castile in the legal order of succession; but the barons were in no humour to make nice distinctions, or to be fastidious as to genealogies; and early in the year 1216, while King John was ravaging the North with his mercenaries, they actually despatched Fitzwalter and De Quency as ambassadors to invite Prince Louis, the heir of Philip Augustus, to land in England and take possession of the crown which, with a fine disregard of facts, they represented as his wife’s rightful inheritance.
To a man of ambition the prize was certainly tempting, and had there been no more serious obstacle to encounter on the way to it than John’s army of foreign hirelings, Philip Augustus would have urged his son to grasp at it resolutely, and to hold by it tenaciously. But Philip, who had fought side by side with the English in the Holy Land, and face to face with them in Normandy in the days of Cœur-de-Lion, understood what kind of people they were, and well knew that, whatever the Anglo-Norman barons and the citizens of London might say, the English as a nation would never submit to the rule of a foreigner, and that foreigner a French prince. Besides, he could not overlook the fact that John was under the especial protection of the pope; and he could not forget that, years before, when he suffered excommunication for marrying Agnes de Méranie, and vainly attempted to resist the power of Rome, he had learned to his severe experience how good a friend and how terrible a foe the pope could be to one of the sovereigns of Europe. It was no pleasant retrospect, but it was instructive.
Much more caution was, therefore, observed in the matter by the court of Paris than the barons had expected, or than they relished; but the invitation was by no means declined. On the contrary, Louis seems to have relished the prospect of reigning over England, and to have thought his royal sire somewhat too cautious. In any case, a little fleet of French ships reached the Thames in February, with several French knights on board, who brought assurances that, by Easter, Louis would be at Calais to embark for England, and that he only asked the barons to send him their sons or nephews as hostages for the fulfilment of their part of the covenant.
Probably the barons and the Londoners were not very well pleased with so much hesitation and delay. But they had gone too far to recede, and every day, while making their position more desperate, added to the aversion which the barons had always felt towards the king. Besides, the accounts which were given of the cruelties exercised by John in the North were such as could not fail to add greatly to his unpopularity, and every citizen who met his neighbour in the market-place, or gossiped with him across the street from the house-tops, had something horrible to relate of what was going on in York and Northumberland. One told how the king was in the habit, after lodging during the night in any house, of setting fire to it before he took his departure next morning; a second told how on such occasions he had not only set fire to the house, but ordered the host to be hanged at his own door-post; and a third told that in the royal army the king had a number of Jews, whom he made the instruments of his cruelties. Such stories, constantly repeated, and losing nothing in the telling, ere long made the king so odious that the citizens and populace of London began to regard the evil of calling in a foreign prince to make himself master of England as a very light evil indeed compared with that of living under a tyrant who set truth, and justice, and humanity at defiance; and they shouted loudly, “Come what may, we will not any longer have this man to reign over us.”
Meanwhile, at Poissy and in Paris, Prince Louis and his advisers were making out as good a claim for Blanche of Castile as circumstances would admit of their doing. It was, indeed, no easy matter. But what with reviving the recollection of John having been forfeited by the Great Council of England for rebellion against his brother, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, and of his having been condemned by the peers of France for the murder of his nephew Arthur, and what with pronouncing his children disqualified to succeed, and overlooking the existence of Eleanor of Brittany and of Blanche’s own brother and her elder sister, they did make out a case which satisfied themselves, and which perhaps they deemed good enough for their confederates in England; and Philip Augustus, though hesitating, or pretending to hesitate, did not offer any opposition to his son’s preparations; though Gualo, the cardinal of St. Martin and papal legate, passing through France, visited Paris, and warned Prince Louis against embarking on an enterprise of which the holy see disapproved.
So far matters went smoothly, and the barons and citizens looked longingly for the arrival of Prince Louis, whom they daily became more eager to welcome as a deliverer. But their patience was put to a trial; and Easter passed, and May Day passed, and the “merry, merry month of May” was rapidly running its course, and still the French prince lingered.
CHAPTER XXV
THE VOWS OF THE HERON
A WEEK before May Day Hugh de Moreville reached Paris, and did all that he could, on the part of the Anglo-Norman barons, to hasten the preparations, and hurry the departure of Prince Louis. Matters, however, did not go so satisfactorily as he could have wished. Philip Augustus was grave and reluctant; Louis, like his paternal grandfather, was pompous, slow, and somewhat sluggish; and the only person whose ideas on the subject moved as rapidly as those of De Moreville was Blanche of Castile, who inherited energy and intellect that would have made her, if of the other sex, quite equal to the occasion. As it was, however, De Moreville found much difficulty in persuading Louis to take the ultimate step which might expose him to the censures of the Church; and, on the eve of a great banquet, he conceived the project of surprising the prince into one of the vows of chivalry considered too serious to be broken or treated with indifference.
Now among the vows of chivalry in fashion at that period the most solemn were known as “the vow of the peacock,” “the vow of the pheasant,” “the vow of the swans,” and “the vow of the cranes.” All these birds were esteemed noble; and the peacock was, in a particular manner, accounted proper food for the valiant and the amorous; and, when the vow was about to be made the bird was roasted, decked in its most beautiful feathers, and made its appearance on a basin of gold and silver, and was carried by ladies, magnificently dressed, to the assembled knights, who with all formality, made their vows over the bird in the presence of the company. But it was neither the vow of the peacock, nor the pheasant, nor the swans, nor the cranes, with which Hugh de Moreville was about to surprise the heir of France.
On the morning before the royal banquet was to be given on May Day in the palace which Philip Augustus, while embellishing and paving Paris, had built beside the great tower of the Louvre, Hugh de Moreville rode out of the city with a little falcon on his wrist, and a spaniel running at his horse’s feet, as if to recreate himself with sport, and went fowling along the banks of the Seine till he caught a heron, which was the bird of which he was in search. Returning to Paris with the heron, he ordered it to be cooked, and placed between two dishes of silver; and, having pressed into his service two fiddlers, and a man who played the guitar, and secured the assistance of two young ladies—the daughters of a count—to carry the dishes, and to sing songs, he, at the hour appointed for the banquet, proceeded to the Louvre, and entered the great hall, where Louis and Blanche of Castile were presiding at a board, surrounded by young nobles of great name, and dames and demoiselles celebrated for grace and elegance. The prince had what is called the Capet face, with the large, long, straight nose, slanting forward, and hanging over the short upper lip, and was no beauty; but the princess inherited the features of her maternal ancestors, and was fair and fascinating to behold as in the days when, in her youthful widowhood, she won the heart and inspired the muse of Thibault of Champagne. Among the company were the Count of Perche, the Viscount of Melun, the Count of Nevers, and the young Lord Enguerraud De Coucy, one of that proud house whose chiefs had on their banners the motto disclaiming the rank of king:—