He was a verray perfight gentil knight.
The coronation of Henry III had brought England face to face with a problem which was practically new in her history: the problem of a royal minority. In the days before the Norman Conquest, indeed, three English kings had been crowned before they reached the age which for men of lower degree was counted as that of legal majority; and the last of these three, Æthelred the Redeless, had come to his throne at almost the same age as Henry. But these cases were all too remote to furnish precedents for the guidance of the statesmen into whose hands the task of carrying on the government of England was thrown by the death of John. They could not even furnish a precedent for the choice of a regent; and the choice actually made was the result of circumstances which may without exaggeration be called unique. None of the known rules of English law concerning wardship were altogether applicable to the case of the Crown. As the law of England then stood, the wardship of a free tenement held by other than military tenure, and of its infant heir, belonged to the infant’s next-of-kin who was not capable of inheriting the tenement; the wardship of an infant tenant in chivalry, and of his land, belonged to his overlord. If the analogy of the former case were to be followed, the regency would have fallen to the King’s mother, Isabel of Angoulême. Not only, however, was the task, in the circumstances then existing, far too weighty to be laid upon a woman and a foreigner, but it was obviously impossible to treat the crown and realm of England as a mere ordinary socage tenement. Wardship in chivalry, on the other hand, would until little more than three years before Henry’s accession have supplied no analogy at all; for the King and kingdom of England had no overlord upon earth before John’s homage to the Pope in May, 1213. By virtue of that homage England became a fief of the Roman see, and consequently on John’s death the wardship of his youthful heir and his distracted realm vested legally in Pope Honorius III. It might therefore have been expected that the regency would be at once assumed by the Pope’s representative in England, the Legate Gualo. But Gualo was an Italian who had been scarcely fifteen months in the land, and he was a priest. The needs of the time imperatively demanded that the acting head of the state, whose first task must be to drive out an alien invader and bring back rebels to allegiance, should be an Englishman and a warrior; and Gualo’s conduct showed that neither he nor Honorius ever contemplated any other arrangement. In all the transactions connected with the crowning of the new King and the organization of the new government the Legate seems to have purposely kept himself as much as possible in the background, guarding the rights of the Pope and the interests of the Pope’s ward not by direct intervention but rather by his mere presence, and putting forth his official powers only when their exercise was required to confirm, by the Papal sanction given through him, the measures agreed upon by the great men of the land, on whom the actual responsibility of appointing a regent thus devolved. If in undertaking that responsibility they were guided by any precedent or analogy at all, it must have been one drawn from a land far remote from England, but probably better known to many Englishmen in the days of Richard Cœur-de-Lion’s nephew than most of the countries nearer home; a land, too, which for fifty years in the preceding century had been ruled by kings of the same blood as Richard and Henry themselves. The “Assizes of Jerusalem” in which the jurisconsults of Cyprus, towards the end of the thirteenth century, embodied the traditions of law and custom said to be derived from a code originally compiled by the first King of the Latins in Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, and modified by his successors down to Saladin’s capture of the Holy City in 1187, contain an ordinance about minor heirs which runs thus: “If he” (the minor) “is a lord of land”—that is, a sovereign or suzerain lord—“his body and his fortresses ought to be guarded as shall be agreed by the community of his men.”[327] This provision had been acted upon in the case of King Baldwin III, on whose accession, at the age of thirteen, the princes and barons of the realm claimed and exercised the right to elect a regent.[328] What the magnates of Palestine thus did in 1174 the magnates of England did as freely in 1216. Not only did Gualo make no claim to the regency for himself, but he did not even attempt to dictate their choice. If indeed that choice was influenced by any one outside their own circle, that one was the late King. John’s commendation, however, could scarcely have been needed to point out the man for the office.
Yet that man was one who had not only passed the age of three score years and ten,[329] but had passed it without ever having held any office, in court, camp, or administration, of sufficient importance to give scope for the display of any special capacities for generalship or government, or for the acquisition of special knowledge and experience in the conduct of politics or of war. Neither by birth nor by origin was William the Marshal a magnate of the highest rank. The founder of the Marshal family, one Gilbert, who seems to have been either a cadet or a connexion by marriage of the Norman house of Tancarville, was marshal to Henry I; that office became hereditary in his family, and furnished a surname to all his race. The office of the King’s Marshal was in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries a grand serjeanty and nothing more; the military duties and responsibilities originally involved in it had long since passed into other hands, and the material advantages attached to it seem to have been of small extent and importance; it gave to its holder little more than a position of honour and dignity in the royal household, the right of carrying the sword of state on certain public occasions, and, possibly, a sort of inchoate right to the custody of the royal castle of Marlborough. William was a younger son; at the age of twelve years or thereabouts {c. 1155} he was sent, with a companion and a serving-lad, to seek his fortune abroad, in the household of his father’s cousin William of Tancarville, the chamberlain of Normandy. There he shewed so little promise of distinction that the other young squires declared “William Waste-meat”[330] to be good for nothing but eating, drinking, and sleeping. The chamberlain, however, had a better opinion of his young kinsman. He knighted him at a moment when Henry II and Louis VII were at strife and some partisans of Louis were threatening the Norman Vexin: and Sir William in his first fight—in defence of the castle of Drincourt—proved himself well worthy of his spurs.[331] But immediately afterwards the two Kings made peace; and it was not in war, but in the tournaments which on the Continent (they were as yet unknown in England) furnished at once a school of arms and a means of subsistence for the younger members of the baronial houses in time of peace, that William first made himself a name.[332]
By 1170 William had acquired such a reputation that he was chosen by Henry II not only to be a member of the household of the “young King”—Henry’s eldest son—but was specially appointed to watch over and direct the lad’s military training.[333] Three years later {1173} young Henry himself, when offered knighthood at the hands of some of the noblest and most illustrious among the chivalry of France, declared that he would receive it only from “the best knight that ever was or will be,” and handed his sword to William the Marshal.[334] After nearly twelve years of close companionship {1182} slanderous tongues parted William from the young King, shortly before the latter’s final revolt against his father.[335] The slander was, however, detected and William was recalled[336] in time to watch over his young lord’s death-bed {1183} and receive his dying charge to fulfil in his stead a vow which he had made of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.[337] On William’s return to Europe, early in 1187, Henry II took him into his own service as a knight of his household;[338] and thenceforth till the hour of Henry’s death he was the King’s best counsellor and closest friend.[339]
The first act of Henry’s successor was to confirm a grant which Henry had promised to William, of the hand of the greatest heiress in his realm, Isabel de Clare.[340] Her heritage included the English earldom of Pembroke or Striguil, the Norman barony of Longueville, and a fief in Ireland comprising nearly the whole of the ancient kingdom of Leinster. William’s marriage suddenly raised him from the position of a portionless younger son, “without a furrow of land, and with no fortune but his knighthood,” to that of a magnate of high rank, great wealth, and considerable territorial importance, and thus gave him, as a matter of course, a permanent and definite place in the royal council; but he showed no disposition to take a prominent part in politics. As one of the subordinate justiciars appointed by Richard to assist in the government of the realm during the King’s absence on Crusade, he at first supported John against William of Longchamp, and afterwards, when John’s treason was made manifest, supported the new justiciar, Walter of Coutances, against John. After Richard’s return William was almost constantly with him in Normandy, taking his full share in the warfare with Philip Augustus which occupied the last five years of Richard’s life; but his share was that of a devoted follower and a brave knight, not of a great noble holding an independent command. It was only at Cœur-de-Lion’s death {1199} that William the Marshal came to the front of affairs. The dying King had appointed him constable of the castle of Rouen, which contained the ducal treasure; it was he who won for Richard’s chosen successor, John, the support of the Norman primate, and thus largely contributed to secure for John acceptance in Normandy as duke.[341] The FitzGilbert patrimony had come to him in 1194, on the death of his elder brother.[342] The earldom of Pembroke or Striguil, which he had held by courtesy since his marriage with the young countess, was granted to him by formal investiture on John’s coronation day;[343] a few months later the office of Marshal was conferred by royal charter on him and his heirs for ever.[344] Throughout the greater part of John’s reign {1200–1216} he was sheriff of Sussex and Gloucestershire, and he was also an assistant justice and baron of the Exchequer. For some years after John’s accession he seems to have been in almost constant attendance on the King; during the Interdict he resided chiefly on his Irish lands. From 1213 onwards he was again John’s constant companion and his most trusted counsellor; and in that capacity his name stands in the preamble of the Great Charter first among the lay magnates in the list of the persons by whose advice the Charter was granted. Throughout the troubles of the succeeding year he adhered quietly but steadily to the King, whose dying testimony has been quoted already—“He has always served me loyally; in his loyalty, above that of any other man, I put my trust.”
Fifteen years earlier, Richard Cœur-de-Lion had repelled in similar words a charge of treason insinuated against the Marshal: “God’s Feet! I have always held him for the most loyal knight in all my realm. I do not believe he has ever been false.”[345] Three years later, when the death of the aged regent of England was announced at the court of France, the flower of the French chivalry vied with each other in extolling the knightly virtues of their dead enemy, and Philip Augustus spoke the crowning word of praise: “You have well said—but what I say is that he was the most loyal man I ever knew in any place where I have been.”[346] In the epithet unanimously chosen by three men so unlike each other as Richard, John, and Philip, to sum up their opinion of William the Marshal, lies the key to his whole career, and to the peculiar place which he held in the estimation of his contemporaries. What they admired and reverenced in him was not genius but character; the character, as a modern French critic has truly said, of the typical knight without fear and without reproach. One of William’s friends, Aimeric de Ste.-Maure, the Master of the Temple, expressed the general verdict in another way; when he and William were both on their death-beds, he said: “Bury me beside William the Marshal, the Good Knight, who has won that surname by his probity on earth and will carry it with him to Heaven.”[347] To be thus known as pre-eminently “The Good Knight” was to have won the highest title of honour that the medieval world could bestow. The “probity,” or “prowess,” which constituted the essence of the ideal knightly character, was a complex quality, hardly to be expressed by any single word of modern speech; it included valour and skill in arms; and it also included, above all else, what the men of the Middle Ages called “loyalty.” Primarily, to them, loyalty meant the faithful discharge of the obligations legally involved in the relation between vassal and lord; obligations, indeed, often disregarded and violated in practice, but theoretically acknowledged as sacred no less in the days of John Lackland and Philip Augustus than in the days when they inspired one of the noblest outbursts of feeling in the noblest epic of ancient France.[348] This principle of “loyalty” in the medieval sense was the rule by which the Marshal walked, with a rare steadfastness and consistency, throughout his life. The very passages in his career which seem at first glance most difficult to reconcile with modern ideas on the subject are in reality illustrations of the simple and literal way in which he followed his rule, and were thoroughly understood as such by the sovereigns against whom they brought him temporarily into opposition.[349] He never concerned himself with abstract politics; in any given circumstances, his sole concern was to do his own duty to his own lord, whoever that lord might be. He knew neither doubt nor fear. He was, indeed, constitutionally fearless; personal danger of any kind was a thing of which he seems to have remained through life almost as unconscious as when in early childhood, a hostage in the power of Stephen and condemned to be hurled like a stone from a mangonel into the castle which his father was defending for the Empress Maud, he had disarmed the King’s wrath by running up to the deadly engine and begging for a “swing” in it. But his courage never degenerated into rashness; he was never eager to fight (except in a tournament) merely for fighting’s sake, nor willing to countenance violent measures unless they were imperatively called for by necessity or honour. His temper was cool and practical. He was no pioneer of reform or of revolution; he accepted without question the ordinary standards of public opinion in his day.[350] His ideal was strictly the ideal of his own time; an ideal, therefore, which all his contemporaries could understand and appreciate, and which they could see to be fulfilled in his person more completely than in that of any other man then living, at any rate in England. As he was true and just in the fulfilment of his duty as a vassal, so he was true and just in all his dealing. When he was but a landless knight, living by the ransoms of the prisoners and the sale of the horses captured by him in tournaments, men already knew that his word was his bond. His lord the “young King,” Henry II’s son, habitually “spent so much in every place where he went, that when the hour of departure came, he knew not how to get away” from his creditors. “Counts, barons, vavassours” vainly offered to stand surety for the payment of his debts; the shrewd tradesmen would accept no such security; but when the Marshal pledged his word that the accounts should be settled within a month, they exclaimed, “If the Marshal warrant us, we are as good as paid.”[351] Even so Louis of France, when from the treasury of England, exhausted by years of confusion and war, an indemnity was promised him for his losses and expenses in the invasion, suffered this important item in the terms of peace to be left without mention in the written treaty, and trusted for its fulfilment solely to the regent’s plighted word. Jealousy, suspicion, party-spirit, could find no occasion against a character so simple, so unpretending, so honest and straightforward as that of William the Marshal. Thrice in his long life—once by some dastardly comrades who envied the esteem in which he was held by the two Henrys, twice by King John—an attempt was made to cast aspersions on his honour. Each time he met the calumny in the same way; he offered to disprove it by ordeal of battle. Each time his challenge, uttered in the King’s presence and in the midst of the court, was answered by a general silence more significant than words. No man dared encounter William the Marshal in the ordeal, because every man believed it impossible for the “judgement of God” to go against the Good Knight who was without fear because his conscience was without reproach.
In point of fact, the Legate and the magnates at Gloucester in October, 1216,1216 had set up what we now call a regency; but the idea which that word conveys to us was to them so entirely new and strange that they seem to have been at first unable to find a name for it. Immediately after the coronation Earl William the Marshal began to exercise the functions of a regent, and among them that of issuing letters patent and close in the King’s name. In these letters he, at first, sometimes styles himself simply “William Marshal Earl of Pembroke”; but on six occasions he calls himself “Justiciar.”[352] His assumption of this title is puzzling in more ways than one. The chief justiciarship of England was not vacant; it had been given by John in 1215 to Hubert de Burgh, whose fidelity to John and to his heir is as unquestionable as that of the Marshal himself, and was being demonstrated by his defence of Dover against Louis at the very time of the Marshal’s appointment to the regency. In the thirteenth century an office granted, as was that of the Justiciar, by letters patent,[353] to be held during the King’s pleasure, was not vacated by the King’s death, but belonged of right to the grantee until he was superseded by means of a new appointment.[354] Twenty years later Hubert himself declared that he had been Justiciar “without contradiction” ever since his appointment by John;[355] it is clear, therefore, that the Marshal’s assumption of the title was not regarded by Hubert as implying any design of ousting him from his office. There was indeed one precedent, dating from the time of Richard, for the appointment of two chief Justiciars at once. But Earl William’s position was from the outset not that of a Justiciar at all. The Justiciar was the King’s second in command—the foremost minister of the Crown when the sovereign was present, his lieutenant and vicegerent when he was absent from the realm; in either case, his delegate and nothing more. Earl William was not the King’s delegate; he had not been appointed by the King and was not removable at the King’s pleasure; he had been called by the Legate and the magnates to govern the realm during the King’s minority, as guardian of the King himself. He was, in modern phraseology, not Viceroy but Regent. Still, there was just sufficient analogy between his functions and those which, under certain circumstances, appertained to the Justiciar, to suggest his adoption of that title, in a tentative sort of way, until a better one could be devised.[356] In a word, as his office was a novelty and an experiment, so its earliest appellation seems to have been a makeshift. Before the end of November, 1216, that appellation was replaced by a loftier and more comprehensive one—“Governor of the king and of the kingdom.”[357] No attempt seems to have been made at any further definition either of the limits of his powers, or of his relation to the royal Council; there was in fact no means of defining either, nor any authority capable of so doing. In one sense he was above the council; but in another sense he was merely its most important member; its other members acted in subordination to him, but he was not independent of them; they were the King’s councillors, not his; nay, more—it was from them that he had received his authority, and he was thus in some sense responsible to them for his exercise of it. He was also, and above all, in theory at least, responsible to the Legate and, through the Legate, to the Pope.[358] It is thus impossible to determine precisely how much of the credit of the policy which freed England from her invaders and restored peace and order to the distracted country and the ruined administration is due to the Marshal himself, and how much to his colleagues, Gualo, Hubert, Peter des Roches, and the other ministers of the late King. A large share of credit must in any case belong to them for a steady, faithful, and intelligent co-operation without which the Marshal obviously could not have carried on either war or government at all. But it is certain that for two years and a half after the coronation no act was done in the King’s name without the Marshal’s consent; for, except on a very few special occasions, all the royal letters during that period were attested by him and sealed with his seal.[359] It may therefore fairly be said that whatsoever they did in England, he was the doer of it.
One thing there was which, it was clearly understood from the outset, could not be done at all during the King’s minority. No grant in perpetuity made by, or in the name of, a person under age was valid by English law. The application of this rule to the case of an infant King seems not to have been expressed till more than two years after Henry’s coronation, but it was effectually secured during that time by an expedient whose simplicity and practicality are eminently characteristic of the Marshal. A grant in perpetuity on the part of the Crown was invalid unless sealed with the King’s seal. No great seal was made for Henry till two years after he was crowned; the seal of the regent served in its stead.[360] On several occasions during the first year of the regency grants were made in the King’s name to hold good “till the fourteenth completed year of our age.”[361] {1216–1217} There was as yet no fixed rule for the determination of a King’s majority; but the reigning King of France, Philip Augustus, had been crowned as his father’s colleague shortly after his fourteenth birthday, and had exercised the functions of royalty from that time forth. This was the origin of the rule which fixed the coming of age of later Kings of France at fourteen years; and Henry’s guardians seem at first to have contemplated taking Philip’s case as a precedent for that of their own boy-sovereign.[362] There was no English precedent to guide them. Nine years later it was asserted that one castellan—Peter de Maulay—had bound himself by an oath to John not to give back the castles of which he had charge till Henry should be of legal age.[363] It is possible that John may have demanded and received such an oath from more than one of the wardens of the royal castles; but evidently neither they, the Marshal, nor any of the council knew what was John’s idea—if he even had one—of what should constitute legal age in the case of his successor; the definition tentatively suggested at the beginning of the reign was clearly not based upon any direction left by him. At the close of 1217 it was abandoned, and its place was taken by a vaguer formula—“till our coming of age.”[364] The question of when that was to be could not become urgent for three years at least; it was therefore wisely put aside for solution at a more convenient season.
Some indications seem to point to another possible restriction on the powers of the king’s guardians, in the shape of a theory that their “pleasure” was not legally equivalent to “the King’s pleasure”; in other words, that appointments made by the late King were not revocable (except for some special reason) during the minority of his successor. There is however no evidence that this theory was ever put into explicit words or formally recognized;[365] and nothing of the kind is needed to account for the fact that the great majority of the Crown officers appointed by John were left undisturbed by the Earl Marshal in their several bailiwicks.[366] Thirteen counties were at John’s death under sheriffs of foreign birth. Falkes de Bréauté was sheriff of Northamptonshire, Rutland, Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Bedfordshire, Buckinghamshire, and Oxfordshire; Peter de Maulay of Dorset and Somerset; Savaric de Mauléon of Hampshire; Philip Marc of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire; Engelard de Cigogné (or d’Athée) of Surrey. The two last named were members of a family on which “the Barons” of 1215 had conferred a signal mark of distinction, by making it the subject of a separate article (the fiftieth) in the Great Charter, whereby John was pledged “to remove altogether from their bailiwicks the relations of Gerard of Athée,” several of whom, among them Engelard of Cigogné and Philip Marc, are mentioned by name, “and all their following, so that they may never more hold any bailiwick in England.” The reason for this remarkable enactment was, so far as can be made out from existing evidence, simply this: that when, after a struggle in which Gerard of Athée fought gallantly for his country and his Count,[367] the old Angevin lands were conquered by Philip Augustus, these kinsmen—sprung from a group of little villages between Tours and Loches—instead of settling down under the new ruler of Touraine, crossed the sea to seek employment in the service of their natural-born sovereign and make homes for themselves in his island realm; that he entrusted them with offices of considerable importance as well as (in some cases at least) of considerable pecuniary value, and especially with the command of some of the chief royal castles;[368] that they fulfilled the duties thus entrusted to them with fidelity and efficiency, and that they had under their control a numerous following of dependents who had accompanied or rejoined them from beyond the sea, and who were, like them, faithful soldiers and servants of the King. We need seek no further for the grounds on which the “Barons of the Charter” desired to get rid of Gerard d’Athée and his kindred;[369] nor for the grounds on which the fiftieth article of the Great Charter was omitted in the revised version issued by Gualo and the Marshal in Henry’s name. The only puzzle in the matter is why the baronial party should have singled out the members of this particular family by name[370] to be made victims of their jealousy and fear, and not included the other “alien” officers in the same condemnation (or commendation); for two at least of those others were men who by origin, class, and character differed little from Gerard of Athée and his kinsmen. The third, indeed—Savaric de Mauléon—was a noble by birth, the head of an illustrious family of baronial rank in Poitou, and a man of personal distinction in other pursuits besides that of arms; it is needless to say more of him at present, for, as he returned to his native land shortly after the council at Bristol, the military and administrative offices held by him in England were of necessity transferred to other hands. But Falkes de Bréauté and Peter de Maulay were simply soldiers of fortune from the continental dominions of the house of Anjou.[371] Together with the sheriffdom of Dorset, Peter de Maulay had been entrusted by the late king with the castle of Corfe, and in it not only the royal treasury and some important State prisoners, but also the child Richard who was, after Henry, the next and indeed the only male heir to the Crown. Since John had deemed Peter a fit person to have such a charge as this, the darkest hour of the struggle with the enemies of John’s heir was obviously not the time for removing him from his post. As to Falkes—called by Matthew Paris “the rod of the Lord’s fury”—he was a man after John’s own heart, as ruthless and reckless as John himself; but his fierceness was equalled by his daring valour, his consummate skill in military affairs, and his zeal in the royal cause. A glance at the map of England is enough to shew why John had chosen such a man as this to have charge of the particular group of counties and castles which he placed under the command of Falkes; and the story of the war is enough to justify the wisdom of his choice.[372]
The treaty of Kingston was no sooner concluded than both parties set to work conscientiously to carry its provisions into effect. “Reverted perverts” came crowding in to the King’s allegiance, and as fast as they came their lands were ordered to be restored to them.[373] On 23rd September Louis and Henry joined in summoning Alexander of Scotland to make restitution of the English lands which he had seized during the war.[374] Orders were promptly issued for the delivery of prisoners and the payment of ransoms and other moneys due according to the terms of the treaty.[375] Only two classes of men suffered any real punishment for their share in the war. The one class consisted of men of Norman birth who held or claimed lands in England, and who had taken the side of Louis; concerning these the sheriffs were warned that “no seisin is adjudged to them, till the English shall have recovered their lands in Normandy.”[376] The other class was that of the clergy who had disobeyed the bishops and the Pope by supporting Louis; and their punishment came solely from the Legate. On 27th October he went to London[377] and there meted out condign punishment to the clergy who had set his excommunication at naught. He “went to the church of S. Paul, and caused all the altars and all the chalices to be broken up, and all the vestments to be burnt, and new ones to be put in their place; and he put in new canons; and the old ones who had chanted the service in defiance of him he deprived of all their benefices; and he made the beneficed clergy of the town exchange their parishes for upland ones.”[378] “Some of the clergy he degraded; some he sent, still excommunicate, to the threshold of the Apostles.”[379] Thirteen clerks “who used threatening language to him and his” he put in ward at Westminster.[380] What ultimately became of them we are not told; but on 18th February next year {1218} all clerks under sentence of excommunication for adherence to Louis were, in the king’s name, bidden to leave England before Mid-Lent (22nd March), and warned that if found there after that date, they would be kept in ward “till the king should give further orders concerning them.”[381]
On Sunday, 29th October, 12171217—a year and a day after his coronation—the young King entered his capital.[382] “He was received with glory, and fealty and homage were done to him,” no doubt by the citizens and by many other “reverted perverts.” During the ensuing week “many discussions were held by the King’s guardians and the leading men of the kingdom concerning the ordering of the realm, the establishment of peace, and the abolition of evil customs.”[383] The outcome of these deliberations was a new issue of the Charter,[384] or what seems to have been meant to be regarded as the issue of a new Charter; for the preamble (which, except for the names, is a copy of the preamble of Magna Charta) ignores all earlier documents. As a matter of fact, however, this Charter is a revised edition of the Charter of 1216, from which it differs only in the following particulars: In the article concerning widows, the amount of legal dowry is, for the first time, defined: it is fixed at a third part of all the husband’s lands, “unless she have been dowered with a less amount at the church door.”[385] The article relating to the judicial eyres and the three recognitions is modified. Recognitions of mort d’ancester and novel disseisin are to be taken in the several shires before justices who are to be sent thither once (instead of four times) a year, and who are to hold the assizes “with the knights of the shires”[386]—not, it seems, as in 1215 and 1216, with four knights specially elected for the purpose; if these assizes cannot be completed on the day fixed, the cases are to be dealt with, not as in 1215 and 1216 by a sufficient number of knights and freeholders who are to remain on the spot for that intent, but by the judges “elsewhere on their eyre,” or if the cases are too difficult they are to be referred to and settled by the judges of the Bench;[387] and the assizes of darrein presentment are to be always held and settled by these last-named judges.[388] In the article regulating the imposition of amercements the king’s villeins are excepted from the safeguard given to the villeins of other lords.[389] The article concerning the requisition of corn or cattle is modified by the extension of the limit of time for payment from twenty-one days to forty.[390] On the other hand, carts belonging to an ecclesiastical person, a knight, or a lady, are henceforth not to be requisitioned at all.[391] The unsupported accusation of a Crown bailiff is henceforth to be insufficient not only for sending a man to the ordeal, but also for compelling him to make compurgation.[392] The King’s promise to take no unfair advantage of his possession of escheats is made still more definite.[393] Of the six matters spoken of in John’s Charter which were expressly mentioned in clause 42 of the Charter of 1216 as being postponed for future consideration—the assessment of scutages and aids, the rights of Jewish and other creditors against the heirs of deceased debtors, liberty of ingress into and egress from the realm, the regulation of forests and warrens, the customs of the shires, and the river-enclosures and their keepers—the fourth was left to be dealt with in a separate Charter of the Forest; to three others as many new articles were devoted. No river-enclosures are henceforth to be kept up save those which were in existence in the time of Henry II.[394] Respecting the “customs of the shires,” the provision in the twenty-fifth chapter of Magna Charta (to which the words on that subject in the closing paragraph of Henry’s first Charter must refer), that all shires and other local jurisdictions except those on the royal domains shall be at their “old ferm” without increment, is not renewed; but in its stead there is a clause regulating the holding of the county courts and the sheriff’s tourn. The shire court is to be held not oftener than once a month, and at longer intervals where such have been customary. No sheriff or his bailiff is to make his tourn in the hundred except twice a year—after Easter and after Michaelmas—and only in the proper and accustomed place. View of frankpledge is to be made at Michaelmas term, in such a manner “that every man shall have the liberties which he used to have in the time of our grandfather King Henry, or which he has since acquired, and so that our peace shall be kept, and the tithing shall be complete as it was wont to be; and the sheriff is to seek no occasions, and is to be content with what the sheriff used to have for holding his view in King Henry’s time.”[395] Concerning the once crucial question which had furnished the original pretext for the rising of the barons against John, the guardians could now venture to reassert the rights of the Crown; and they did so, but in terms carefully chosen so as to avoid all reference to the late troubles: “Scutage shall be taken henceforth as it used to be taken in the time of our grandfather King Henry.”[396] Two other new articles were added, whose connexion with the scutage clause is not difficult to see. The one enacted that henceforth no free man should either give away or sell so much of his land as that the residue should be insufficient to furnish the service due to the lord of the fief;[397] the other forbade that any man should give his land to a religious house for the purpose of receiving it back again to hold of that house, and enacted that if any man were convicted of so doing, his donation should be void, and his land forfeited to the lord.[398] The other omissions were disposed of, for the moment, by a general saving clause: “Reserving to the archbishops, bishops, abbots, priors, Templars, Hospitallers, earls, barons, and all other persons both ecclesiastical and secular, the liberties and free customs which they had before.”[399] Lastly, it was ordained also “by common consent of the whole realm” that all adulterine castles, that is, castles which had been built or rebuilt since the beginning of the war between the late King and his barons, should be immediately destroyed.[400] This Charter has no date. It was, doubtless issued in the early days of November; probably on the 6th, for on that day there was issued a Charter of the Forest which dealt amply with the grievances connected with the abuse of Forest law.[401]
The article concerning scutage was inserted in the Charter for an immediate and important purpose; it was the ratification of a tax which the Council had imposed a few days before the Charters were issued. Of the many problems with which the Marshal and his colleagues had to grapple one of the most urgent and most difficult was that of finance. The confused entries on the Pipe Rolls of John’s later years indicate that the financial administration of the realm had been gradually drifting towards chaos from 1212 onwards; in 1215 chaos was reached, and the machinery of the Exchequer came to a standstill. After Michaelmas, 1214, no session of the Exchequer was held, no accounts were rendered by any of the sheriffs or other bailiffs of the Crown, for more than three years. John had met the expenses of the war partly by payments out of the treasury, partly by means of writs addressed to various fiscal officers throughout the country, directing them to make on his behalf certain payments out of the ferms for which they were accountable at the Exchequer.[402] As, however, “no one”—as a chronicler says—“would pay any money to the King” or his representatives, and as a considerable part of the kingdom was in the possession of the enemy, both of these resources must have been well-nigh exhausted before the death of John, who was in fact reduced at last to sheer plunder to provide for the maintenance of his troops. The Marshal at the outset of his regency seems to have sought help towards providing the sinews of war in the levy of a hidage, carucage, and “aid,” this last word probably representing a tallage from the towns. Of the time and circumstances of their imposition there is no record, but it is most probable that the matter was decided in the council at Bristol immediately after the coronation, in November, 1216.[403] Of course none of these taxes could be collected in the districts which were under the control of Louis or his partisans. In July, 1217, the Pope ordered the prelates to contribute an aid to the King’s necessities.[404] Meanwhile wages, allowances, and other payments were made by means of jewels from the royal treasury, and in cloth of silk, samite, and baldaquin from the royal wardrobe.[405]
At the earliest possible moment an effort was made to revive the working of the Exchequer. Its records were for some time previous to the end of the war in the possession of Louis, and were restored only on the conclusion of peace in the middle of September;[406] the session seems therefore to have been appointed for Martinmas,[407] instead of Michaelmas which was the customary date. Before Martinmas came, however, it was found, apparently, that some of the sheriffs could not get their accounts ready by the appointed day; and ultimately they seem to have been allowed to bring them up at various times from November, 1217, till a fortnight after Easter, 1218.[408] The accounts thus rendered were those for the first half of the seventeenth (fiscal) year of King John, from Michaelmas, 1214, to Easter, 1215; in other words, the last fiscal half-year completed before the outbreak of war between the barons and the King.[409] For the second half of that year, and for the whole of the two succeeding years up to Michaelmas, 1217, no accounts were ever rendered or demanded; the first Pipe Roll of Henry III is the roll of his second year, from Michaelmas, 1217, to Michaelmas, 1218, and it contains no mention of arrears.[410] This arrangement was both practical and equitable. The accounts for 1215–1217 must in many cases, through no fault of the persons responsible for them, have been in a confusion impossible to disentangle; some of the shires had been entirely in the possession of the King’s enemies; to many of the sheriffs and other Crown bailiffs the King must have been really more in debt than they were to him. With a budget thus restricted and a treasury thus exhausted the Marshal had to carry on the King’s government and pay the indemnity which he had promised to Louis.
“Our faithful Earl William the Marshal has bound himself to the Lord Louis on our behalf, under no small penalty, to the payment of ten thousand marks, for the boon of peace between Louis and ourself”—such is the official statement made, a year later, in a letter written in Henry’s name to the Pope.[411] This amount was independent of the sums due to Louis, according to the terms of the treaty, from towns and individuals who had made agreement with him on condition of a financial aid or tribute which they had not yet paid; the aggregate of these latter sums appears to have been reckoned at something between five and seven thousand marks.[412] On 23rd September letters patent were issued ordering that these debts should be paid without delay to Louis’s Marshal, William de Beaumont.[413] For the receipt of the indemnity Louis appointed as his attorneys two merchants of S. Omer, Florence (or Florentinus) “the Rich” and his son William. This appointment seems to have been made for the joint convenience of Louis and Henry. Louis apparently wanted six thousand marks sterling paid down, and received them from Florence and William, who themselves supplied the amount on a promise made to them on 23rd September in Henry’s name that half the sum thus advanced should be repaid to them on All Saints’ day and the rest at Candlemas; a part of the first instalment of repayment was to be made in fells and wool; if these were not duly delivered Henry was to pay Florence and William an additional sum of five hundred marks sterling “for the profit of that merchandise.” If the whole debt to the two merchants were not paid at the term appointed, Count Peter of Brittany and Robert of Arène were authorized by the King, the Earl Marshal, and the royal Council to seize and hold on behalf of Louis “any goods belonging to the King and his realm that they could get, to the value of the amount due,” until it was paid.[414] A letter from the Marshal in his own name to the King of France at once illustrates the scrupulous honesty for which he had long been renowned, and shews that he doubted the possibility of fulfilling these promises to Florence. “If,” he writes, “our agreement with Florence be not kept, we desire and grant that you assign all the land which we hold of you to Florence and his son till the whole debt and interest due to them shall be discharged, saving only our service to you for the said lands.”[415] His doubts were justified; eleven months later the debt to Florence and William still amounted to no less than two thousand one hundred and fifty marks.[416] To bring it down to this he had had to borrow more than five hundred marks in the King’s name from various merchants of Ireland, Wales, and England, and several hundred more from other individuals, and to lend nine hundred marks out of his own purse;[417] and the financial straits of the Crown are further illustrated by the fact that the total of wool required for the first instalment of repayment to Florence had had to be made up by seizing several sacks belonging to individual merchants at Northampton fair, one of whom did not receive compensation till the end of November, 1218, while another had to wait for it till the middle of February, 1219.[418] It seems to have been originally proposed that the whole indemnity should be paid by S. Andrew’s day, 1217;[419] but this was manifestly impracticable. The account with Louis was in fact not closed till 1219 at the earliest, for the last five hundred marks needed to wipe out the debt were lent to Henry by Gualo’s successor in the legation, Pandulf.[420]
The very first thing, therefore, to be laid before and sanctioned by the Great Council of the realm when at the end of October, 1217, it was once more gathered round the sovereign in his capital city, was a scheme of taxation for the year. This consisted of a scutage of the ordinary amount—two shillings on the knight’s fee—a tallage, a hidage, and a carucage. These taxes were imposed, as had been the practice in the time of Henry II, in the full council of the barons.[421] The formal imposition of the scutage must have taken place on the very day of Henry’s entry into London, 29th October, or at latest on the following morning. This tax was avowedly destined for the payment of the indemnity.[422] It was obviously for purposes connected with finance that an inquisition concerning the King’s demesne lands had been ordered in September;[423] and on 9th November, commissioners were despatched to assess the tallage on these demesnes, and to make searching inquiries about escheats and about all lands “into which there is no entry except through the sheriffs or bailiffs and without due warrant,”[424] and to seize all such into the King’s hand.[425] At the same time the King’s justiciars in Ireland were directed to lay a “tallage and efficacious aid” upon the cities, towns, and royal demesnes in that country, and to “beg of the Kings of Connaught and Thomond and the other kings in Ireland, and of the barons and knights who held in chief of the King, such an efficient aid that the King should evermore be thankful to them”; and they were further exhorted to send the money thus collected to England with all possible speed.[426]
The first judicial eyre of the new reign seems to have been held very soon after the second issue of the Charter, and to have had for one of its objects the administering of the oath of fealty to the King’s subjects in general. To one district, at least, there went six justices itinerant before whom the knights and other free men swore that they would keep the peace of the Church, the King, and the realm, and would help and defend all persons who were willing to keep it likewise; that they would obey all “reasonable” commands of the King, and uphold the royal rights, and hold the good laws and customs of the realm; that if any man should presume to contravene the same, they would at the bidding of the King and his council come together faithfully in force and amend the matter to the utmost of their power; that “neither for hatred, nor favour, nor fear” would they fail to keep their fealty; that they would do and receive justice according to the reasonable customs and laws of England; that no previous or subsequent oath should hinder their observance of all these things; and that “in all these things they would support the Marshal.”[427]
The various dependencies of the English Crown had next to be secured. Alexander of Scotland had taken advantage of the troubles in England to seize the town and castle of Carlisle. As early as 23rd September, 1217, the Marshal peremptorily demanded restitution of these and of the other lands and the prisoners taken by Alexander during the war; and at the same time he bade the prelates and magnates of the North, if Alexander did not immediately comply with the demand, give the sheriff of Cumberland their “efficient aid and counsel” in forcing him to do so.[428] Alexander seems to have yielded at once. The Marshal had a hold over him; the English honour of Huntingdon, which the Scot Kings had held since 1136 and which they dearly prized, was in the hand of King Henry. On 6th November an escort was ordered to meet Alexander at Berwick on S. Andrew’s day and bring him “to speak with us and do to us what he ought to do.”[429] The meeting seems to have taken place on 17th or 18th December at Northampton;[430] on the 19th Alexander, having done his homage, received seisin of his English lands,[431] and a safe-conduct till Candlemas Day for his journey home.[432]
Far more troublesome and dangerous vassals than the Scot king were the native princes of Wales. In ancient times Wales had been divided into three kingdoms: Gwynedd, answering roughly to the modern counties of Flint, part of Denbigh, Carnarvon, Anglesey, and the western part of Merioneth; Powys, stretching from the mouth of the Dee to the river Wye, and including, besides the southern part of what is now Denbighshire and the eastern part of Merioneth, the present shires of Montgomery and Radnor; and Deheubarth, which included, besides the remaining shires of the modern South Wales, the district of Monmouth as far east as the Wye. These three kingdoms had been separate and independent, although a sort of overlordship or primacy seems to have been recognized as appertaining to the Kings of Gwynedd. By the end of the twelfth century Gwynedd was the only one of these three States which remained purely Welsh in population and government. The whole of Deheubarth and the greater part of Powys were dotted over with Norman castles, every one of which was the capital of a lordship held by a baron of Norman or English race, owning allegiance to no one save the English King.[433] Neither these “marcher lords” nor their sovereign, however, had made any real progress towards conquering the country or its people; they were, so to say, detachments of a feudal host encamped here and there in a foreign land, and surrounded by a native population which still maintained its own customs and laws and recognized no authority except that of its own hereditary chieftains. Between the two peoples there was a bitter racial and national feud; but the relations between the Norman lords marchers and the Welsh princes varied greatly. It was not for the interest of the former to quarrel unnecessarily with their Welsh neighbours at any time; and when they themselves chanced to be in rebellion against their own sovereign—as was the case with some of them, notably with the great house of Breuse in south-eastern Wales, in the latter years of John’s reign—they naturally found it convenient to make alliance with the native rulers of the land. These, on the other hand, were often at feud among themselves, and did not scruple to make use of the marchers’ aid against one another when it suited them, though at other times they were ready to make common cause against the common enemy.