What these “matters” were is nowhere stated. Later indications, however, point to a probability that all these obscure proceedings resulted in a ratification of the treaty as a whole, but with a modification of one article. William the Lion had given the wardship and marriage of his two daughters, Margaret and Isabel, to John, with fifteen thousand marks which were, seemingly, intended to form their dowries. The only copy of the treaty of Norham which we possess says nothing more on the subject than this; but from other sources we have reason to infer the existence in the original text of a further stipulation, that the elder girl, Margaret, was to become the wife of John’s heir, or if the boy should not live long enough, of the next heir, the baby Richard; and also of a formal surrender, made on the express condition of this marriage, of all the Scot King’s claims upon Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland.[601] When this treaty was made, in August 1209, Henry’s age was one year and ten months; Richard’s was seven months. Margaret of Scotland was fourteen years old at the least.[602] By 1218 Margaret’s brother and Henry’s guardians must all alike have begun to feel that this clause as it stood was doomed to prove impracticable. Henry’s great-grandfather Geoffrey of Anjou had, indeed, at the age of fifteen, married a woman ten years older than himself; and the difference of age between Henry II and Eleanor was probably not much less. But Eleanor was Duchess of Aquitaine, and Geoffrey’s bride was heiress of Normandy and England; while Margaret could bring to her husband nothing beyond her share of the fifteen thousand marks. The guardians of the reigning King of England might fairly expect to have no difficulty in finding for him in due time a matrimonial alliance fraught with greater advantages, personal and political, than were offered by a marriage under these circumstances with a sister of his own vassal; and Henry himself, when old enough to decide, was almost certain to repudiate the engagement so lightly made for him by his father. On the other hand, unless some steps were taken in anticipation of this contingency, Scotland might find that she had given England fifteen thousand marks for nothing: the non-fulfilment of this unlucky clause would invalidate the whole treaty, and might lead to a rupture between the two countries, which both parties desired to avoid. After Henry’s final coming of age in 1227, we are told, he had to give the King of Scots two hundred pounds worth of land for the quit-claim of the three northern counties, “because the former agreements[603] were not observed”—that is, because Henry had not married Margaret.[604] This compensation for his failure to marry her may have been agreed upon between the two Kings when she was betrothed to Hubert de Burgh in 1220 or 1221. Possibly, however, and even more probably, it may have been settled in Pandulf’s presence in November, 1219.

From Scotland the Legate turned to Wales. Throughout the winter of 1219–1220 he was in the west of England, negotiating with Llywelyn for the settlement of a dispute between the Welsh prince and Hugh de Mortimer about certain manors on the Welsh border.[605] On 2nd December Llywelyn was invited, or summoned, to meet the Legate at Worcester to discuss the matter on 7th January, 1220.[606] The King’s letter, however, contained a summons to answer complaints as well as to make them; and it may have been for this reason that Llywelyn was unwilling to obey it. At his request Pandulf postponed the meeting till the octave of Candlemas.[607] {1220} It seems to have had a successful result thus far, that Llywelyn was induced to refrain from open hostilities throughout the spring. On Rogation Monday, 4 May, he met the King, the Legate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester, and the Justiciar, in conference at Shrewsbury,[608] and gave what was understood on the English side as a promise that he would surrender the lands in dispute between himself and Hugh de Mortimer.[609] An attempt was also made to check the perennial strife between the men of the Welsh prince and those of the English Earl in Pembroke, by a truce on the understanding that the Marshal and the other Marcher lords “should be restored to their rights” before 1st August.[610] On the strength of these promises David, Llywelyn’s eldest son by Joan, was formally taken under the King’s protection, and the subject princes of Wales were bidden in the King’s name to be loyal to both Llywelyn and David.[611]

From Shrewsbury King, Legate, and council hastened to London for an important public ceremony. Early in April the Legate and the Primate had received letters from the Pope ordering that Henry “should be a second time raised to the office of king, with due solemnity, according to the custom of the realm; because his first coronation, on account of the disturbed condition of his realm, had been performed less solemnly than was right and fitting, and in another place than that which the usage of the kingdom required.” This, of course, meant that the boy was to be re-crowned at Westminster, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Stephen was delighted, “for he loved the King dearly on account of his innocency.” He and Pandulf agreed that the ceremony should take place on Whit-Sunday, 17th May, and all the prelates and nobles were summoned to be present.[612] On the preceding day the young King himself had another solemn function to perform. Henry came of a family who for two hundred years past had been known as “great builders”; he was a lad of refined, artistic temperament, as well as of a pious disposition; and it seems that he had already undertaken the work which was to be the great architectural glory of his reign, the rebuilding of the abbey church of Westminster. On Whitsun Eve he laid the first stone of the new Lady Chapel.[613] Next morning for the last time a king was crowned in the old church of S. Edward the Confessor. In Pandulf’s presence Henry renewed under the dictation of Archbishop Stephen the oath which he had sworn in Gualo’s presence at Gloucester—to protect the Church of God, and to preserve inviolate the peace of both clergy and people and the good laws of the realm; then the Archbishop placed in his hands the insignia of the regal office, and set upon his head “the crown of the most holy King Edward.” “And this crowning of the King was done with such great peacefulness and splendour, that the oldest men among the nobles of England who were present asserted that they never remembered any of his predecessors being crowned amid such concord and tranquillity.”[614]

Concord and tranquillity did indeed, to all outward seeming, reign at that moment over all the dominions of the English Crown, except the Duchy of Aquitaine. One of the most difficult of the many difficult problems with which the regency had to deal was the problem of how to retain Poitou and Gascony for Henry. The heritage of his grandmother Eleanor had descended to him almost complete. Philip Augustus had never made any attempt to conquer Gascony; he had seized Poitou, but the greater part of it had been regained by John in 1214 and left in his possession by the terms of the truce with which the war between him and Philip had ended. John’s seneschal in Gascony at that time was one of his chamberlains, Geoffrey de Neville[615]; another chamberlain—Hubert de Burgh—soon became seneschal of Poitou.[616] At the end of the year 1214 or the beginning of the next Geoffrey de Neville was succeeded by a baron of Saintonge, Reginald de Pons;[617] in June 1215 Hubert de Burgh became Justiciar of England; before that year closed, the seneschalship of Poitou was united with that of Gascony in the hands of Reginald[618]; and thenceforth the two offices were always granted together and became practically one. Reginald resigned it a few months after John’s death, and was succeeded by Archbishop William of Bordeaux.[619] A year later William gave it up likewise, and in May 1218 Geoffrey de Neville was again sent across the sea to be Seneschal of Poitou and Gascony.[620] Reginald and William had resigned ostensibly for the same reason—because they wanted to go to the Holy Land. Possibly the layman and the prelate may both of them have been glad of an excuse for ridding themselves of an extremely disagreeable office. The loyalty—such as it was—of Poitou and Gascony to the English Crown was of very recent growth; it had sprung up since the expulsion of the Angevins from their other continental dominions. The one persistent political aim of the men of the South was to escape as much as possible from all external control, no matter whence it came. Their land was full of thriving cities and towns, each with a highly developed administrative organization of its own, almost like so many miniature republics; and of high-spirited, hot-tempered barons who were perpetually quarrelling among themselves. Moreover, towns and barons were mutually jealous of one another; and all were alike jealous of any interference with their respective privileges, corporate or individual, on the part of a higher power. They were also all alike shrewd enough to see that their chances of independence were greater under the rule of a sovereign beyond the sea than under the direct rule of the King of France. But they were also, all alike, fully alive to the advantages of their position between two rival overlords; and the possibility of some turn in Aquitanian politics which might furnish a plea, an excuse, or a temptation for French intervention was a danger never absent from the minds of Henry’s counsellors in their dealings with his transmarine dominions.

Besides Poitou and Gascony, the Duchy of Aquitaine included four counties whose rulers owed homage and obedience to the Duke as their suzerain: Angoulême, La Marche, Limoges, and Périgord. Two of these stood, during the early years of the thirteenth century, in relations to each other and to their common overlord which gave them a special importance in the politics of the Duchy. The county of Angoulême was the heritage of Queen Isabel, John’s wife and Henry’s mother. La Marche belonged to Hugh of Lusignan, to whose eldest son Isabel had been betrothed in her infancy, under whose care she had been brought up, and from whose house her own father had literally stolen her, a child scarce twelve years old, {1200} to marry her to the King of England. Between the houses of Lusignan and of Anjou there was already, even at that date, a smouldering feud of some years’ standing, which this outrage, of course, aggravated, but which was allayed for a time in 12141214 by John’s promise of little Joan, his eldest daughter by Isabel of Angoulême, as wife to the younger Hugh in her mother’s stead. Joan was then four years old. Her bridegroom—known simply as “Hugh of Lusignan,” his father being Hugh, Count of La Marche—was a young man in the prime of life,[621] gifted with an ample share of the stirring, ambitious, acquisitive spirit which characterized his race. That race was famous alike in legend and in history, and had reached the height of its greatness within the lifetime of the reigning count of La Marche, two of whose brothers had been crowned and anointed Kings.[622] Another brother, Ralf, was in right of his wife count of Eu in Normandy and owner of some lands in England. In 12181218 the elder Hugh went to the Crusade; and thus when Geoffrey de Neville took up the government of Poitou and Gascony, the younger Hugh was for practical purposes count of La Marche, and the most important personage in northern Aquitaine. He and Joan were still only betrothed, not married; but she was in his custody, and he was officially treated as “brother” to King Henry; he had claims against the English Crown respecting certain lands which John had promised to him at his betrothal;[623] and when his uncle Ralf of Eu died childless in the spring of 12191219, he seems to have also—no doubt on behalf of his father—laid claim to Ralf’s estates, and taken a high-handed method of enforcing his demand, by picking a quarrel with the King’s town of Niort. Geoffrey de Neville tried to mediate, and promised to procure him satisfaction for any complaint that he might have against the town, “but,” writes Geoffrey to the King, “he answered that he would not cease from infesting your land for us or for anybody else.” Geoffrey had now been seneschal for a year, and was confessedly at his wit’s end and eager to be rid of an office in which he foresaw nothing but failure and disgrace. “He”—that is, Hugh—“and others can see how poor we are both in men and money.” “We greatly fear that unless speedy and effectual counsel be taken for the defence of your land, the said Hugh and the magnates will usurp it, and it will pass to the rule of a stranger. And we do you to wit that unless you take strong measures for its defence, we (Geoffrey) intend to set out for Holy Land on Midsummer day, for we will on no account stay here to your and our own damage and disgrace; because the said Hugh has let us know that he will not cease from molesting you until you give up the English lands of the count of Eu. For the love of God, write back quickly what you wish us to do.”[624] Apparently the answer to this letter was an order to remain at his post; and he did so, though complaining bitterly of the impossibility of the task laid upon him. “We have already urged you,” he writes again, “to take some counsel for the defence of your land of Poitou and Gascony, not so much against the King of France as against your own barons, who ravage your land and capture and put to ransom your townsfolk, and behave themselves towards your men in such fashion that it appears, and we believe, they are not well affected to your service. We, by reason of our poverty, cannot defend the land, nor subdue them; and they make no more account of me than if I were a foot-boy. Wherefore we do you to wit that unless you take other counsel without delay, you will soon see us in England. And do not say that the King’s land is lost through us; you are casting it away yourselves for lack of counsel.”[625]

At this juncture a new complication arose. Queen Isabel had in 1218 returned to her own county of Angoulême, received in its capital city the homage of its barons, and taken its government into her own hands.[626] She had some trouble at the outset with Reginald of Pons, the ex-seneschal of Poitou, who seems to have owned some castles in the Angoumois, and for some unexplained reason held them against her, but was soon overcome by her superior forces.[627] A matter of more consequence was her quarrel with Bartholomew of Puy. In the early part of John’s reign Bartholomew had been provost, or mayor, of the city of Angoulême;[628] from July, 1214,[629] if not earlier, he was seneschal of the county for John, and after John’s death for Henry. Isabel was minded to govern for herself; rightly or wrongly, she asserted that Bartholomew was plotting mischief against her with some of the Poitevin barons, especially Ralf de Lusignan the count of Eu, and also with the King of France; she therefore deprived him of his office and all his possessions, and made him give her his two sons as hostages. Bartholomew, apparently, appealed to the English government and the new seneschal of Aquitaine, and fled for shelter to Hugh de Lusignan.[630] Just then {1219} Hugh and the seneschal had suddenly become friends. Geoffrey wanted to go to England, but he was so absolutely penniless that on reaching La Rochelle he found it impossible to proceed any further, or even to leave the city,[631] till a loan of a hundred and sixty marks from some local merchants was negotiated for him by Hugh de Lusignan, who offered himself as surety for its repayment by the English government. This simple but timely stroke of policy made Hugh master of the situation in Aquitaine. The letters in which he and Geoffrey notified the transaction to King and Council were carried to England by Bartholomew of Puy. Geoffrey excused his acceptance of Hugh’s help on the plea that “the trouble in your land is so great that ruin would have followed if I had withdrawn”; Hugh modestly remarked that “your land of Poitou was greatly disturbed, but by God’s grace we have put it into a better state.” Both requested that the money should be given to Bartholomew in the presence of Ralf of Saint-Samson, who accompanied him, and who “knew that these things were true”; and Geoffrey added a warning—“If it be not paid, and if Sir Hugh should be compelled to pay it for me, you will never again find anybody who will make any loan to your order or to you.”[632]

The Council perceived that the only thing to do with Sir Hugh was to make a friend of him, if possible, by enlisting him as a sort of unofficial colleague to the luckless seneschal. In July Bartholomew of Puy came back, in the character of “the King’s messenger.”[633] He seems to have brought letters from the King and Council to Isabel, directing her to reinstate him in his property. Almost at the same time negotiations were set on foot in the King’s name for a loan of a thousand marks from the mayor and citizens of La Rochelle, and another thousand from those of Bordeaux, “to be used and expended by the hands of our very dear brother, Hugh of Lusignan, in defence of our land, if it should be needful.”[634] The possible danger against which it was thought that defence might be needed was an attack from Louis of France. He had been for some months past in the county of Toulouse, fighting against the Albigensians, and some of Henry’s subjects in Aquitaine feared that the French host, when its work at Toulouse was done, might be used against their sovereign and themselves.[635] These suspicions of Louis were, however, without justification. There is not the least indication that Louis ever thought of using, or allowing his followers to use, the opportunity which certainly lay within his reach for intervening at this time in the troubles of Poitou and Gascony. The truce between France and England, however, was now within nine months of its term;[636] and Pandulf was growing very anxious to secure its prolongation. In September a month’s safe-conduct was given to some envoys from the King of France to come over and discuss this matter.[637] In January, 12201220, the Legate wrote urgently from the west of England, where he was detained by his negotiations with Llywelyn, to the Bishop of Winchester and the Justiciar, begging them to send some trusty messenger, “secretly, privately, and without delay,” to ask Philip for a renewal of the truce; he himself drafted for them a letter such as he deemed advisable for the envoy to convey; and he impressed upon his colleagues the importance of taking the matter in hand at once and insisting upon a decisive answer from the French King.[638] Three envoys were accordingly despatched on 26th January;[639] and on 3rd March the truce was renewed for four years from the ensuing Easter.[640]

Hugh of Lusignan meanwhile {1219} had thrown himself at once into his new part, posing as the zealous protector of the interests and loyal executor of the mandates of his little “brother,” even in opposition to the Queen-mother, who complained bitterly to Pandulf of the “maintenance” which Hugh and Geoffrey de Neville, acting under instructions from the royal Council, afforded to Bartholomew of Puy against her.[641] In August, 1219, the countess of Eu went to England, to claim her share of her late husband’s possessions there. As she was a kinswoman of the Earl of Warren and a niece of the Justiciar, a conflict between her claims and those of her husband’s brother bade fair to stir up a good deal of trouble.[642] By the middle of November Bartholomew of Puy seems to have been in England again;[643] and before that time Geoffrey de Neville was there also.[644] Geoffrey appears to have left Poitou and Gascony under the charge of a knight named William Gauler, who presently wrote a pathetic letter to Hubert de Burgh, complaining that he had been left without any revenues save those of the ports, which were only worth fifty pounds, “for all the affairs of the Poitevins and of Bordeaux”; moreover, his friends were telling him that the King had ordered him to be arrested, he knew not why. With strong protestations of loyalty William declared himself ready to settle his accounts, “willingly and truthfully,” with any one whom Hubert might send to Gascony as seneschal, “whether it were the chamberlain or some other man.” “Gascony,” he added, “is in a good condition up to the present; but I greatly fear it will quickly fall back into worse ways unless you send us good counsel and reinforcements.”[645]

Meanwhile the towns were protesting their loyalty, and complaining of one another, and also of the intrigues of the French party and the lawless doings of the local barons.[646] About this last grievance they grew more clamorous than ever in the winter of 1219–1220. “The King’s burghers” of La Rochelle, Niort, and S. Jean d’Angély lived in perpetual terror of the lord of Parthenay, William Larchevêque, who with the lord of Rancon “and with the consent of others whom we will not at present name,” persecuted them “daily and unceasingly.” “He seizes your burghers and holds them to ransom; he carries off their beasts of burden,” wrote the mayor and commune of Niort. “He has put out the eyes of the bearer of this letter, and those of two other men, without any offence or fault of theirs, and though they were not even on his land when he captured them. And all this evil he does to us, so he declares, because of a hundred marks of silver which the late King promised him, and on account of a certain traitor whom you, Sir Hubert de Burgh, hanged when you were our seneschal.” With one voice the towns entreated that an efficient governor might be sent into Poitou {1220 (March)}; and they gave it clearly to be understood that they did not want Geoffrey de Neville back again. “Our former governors have been somewhat slack in their dealings with your enemies.” “When Sir Geoffrey was here, he could not protect us; he was not sufficient for these things, nor for other things either. If he were here now, he would be of no use. Send us some one more useful, more competent to manage this country, and to provide for the welfare of its people and uphold the rights and interests of the Crown.”[647]

The task of selection devolved upon Hubert de Burgh. Pandulf, a total stranger to Aquitaine and its affairs, seems to have declined to take any part in the matter beyond promising to ratify Hubert’s choice, on whomsoever it might fall.[648] Hubert was the one man then in England who knew by experience what were the most essential qualifications for the vacant post. Before he could find a man to his mind, however, another sudden change occurred in the political situation. In February or March, 1220, tidings came from Damietta that the count of La Marche was dead;[649] and before the middle of May Isabel of Angoulême wrote a startling announcement to her son. “We do you to wit that the counts of La Marche and Eu[650] being both dead, Sir Hugh de Lusignan was left, as it were, alone and without an heir, and his friends would not allow him to marry our daughter on account of her tender age, but counselled him to make such a marriage that he might speedily have an heir; and it was proposed that he should take a wife in France; which if he should do, all your land in Poitou and Gascony, and ours too, would be lost. We therefore, seeing the great danger that might arise if such a marriage should take place, and getting no support from your counsellors, have taken the said Hugh count of La Marche to be our lord and husband.”[651]

This letter probably reached England shortly before the coronation; on 22nd May Henry wrote to his step-father, expressing his approval of the marriage.[652] At the same time he desired Hugh to escort Joan to La Rochelle and there deliver her to two persons (Ralph Gernon and Joldewin of Douai) who were charged to take care of her till they received further orders from England.[653] A new use for the little girl’s hand had already been devised by the royal Council; they offered it to the young King of Scots. He was invited to meet Henry at York on 10th June;[654] and there, on 15th June, the treaty of marriage was arranged. Henry pledged himself to give Joan to Alexander to be his wife, at the ensuing Michaelmas, “if he could get her”; if he could not, his second sister, Isabel, should be given to Alexander in her stead, within fifteen days of the time appointed. Henry also promised that he would either cause Alexander’s two sisters to be honourably married in England within a year from S. Denys’s day (9th October), or restore them to their brother within a month after that term should have expired.[655] All thought of a marriage between Margaret of Scotland and Henry himself had evidently been given up by mutual consent.

Henry’s doubts whether he could get his eldest sister back in time for her to be married at Michaelmas proved well founded. Queen Isabel, when she announced her own marriage, had assured him that she was ready to let Joan go home as soon as he liked to send for her. At the same time she had requested that her own dower-lands, and a sum of three thousand five hundred marks which she alleged had been bequeathed to her by John, should be handed over to Hugh;[656] and it soon became apparent that she and Hugh intended to hold Joan in pledge till this was done. The English Council, however, were equally determined not to give up the Queen’s dowry until that of Joan, and Joan herself, were safely restored. On 20th June letters were written in Henry’s name to the Pope, asking him to bid the bishops of Saintes and Limoges compel Hugh to restore Joan and her dowry and right the wrongs which he had done to Henry in other matters;[657] and also to the cardinals, requesting that they would bring their influence to bear upon the count of La Marche, who, “regardless of his plighted vow, having taken our mother to wife instead of our sister, now refuses to give our sister back to us, wishing by his detention of her to compel us to buy her back.”[658]

The union of La Marche and Angoulême, instead of making for the peace and safety of Aquitaine as Isabel had pretended, was in fact no sooner accomplished than it made matters worse than ever. Hugh openly threatened the towns and barons who opposed him with a renewal of hostilities, and so great was their terror that “all the bishops, very many of the barons, and other good men of the King’s towns of Bordeaux, Niort, La Rochelle, and S. Jean d’Angély went to him in a body at Angoulême, desiring him that before he made war upon them he should approach the King and the Council with reference to the matters in dispute between him and the King.” The joint efforts of the bishops and of the King’s envoys, who seem to have arrived in the midst of the colloquy, wrung from Hugh a promise to stay his hand for a while.[659] But his promises were worthless; and the complaints of the towns continued to pour in upon Henry’s guardians. To the town of Niort Hugh had granted a truce of seven weeks; “but,” wrote the mayor and commune, “as we had no security except his word, we put it to Sir William Maingo the younger whether he would keep us safe, so far as he and his men were concerned, and maintain the truce. He wrote back to us that if we would render to him one hundred marks a year, which King John had promised him, he would keep us in safety; otherwise we must guard ourselves against him and his men; and he has already done us some injury. We likewise sent letters to Sir William Larchevêque, that he might certify us whether he would keep the truce or not. And he wrote back that he would not keep the truce, but would do us all the evil and damage that he could; and he is oppressing us so that we dare not get our harvest in; and he sets traps for us daily, and so do many others”—Hugh’s own men-at-arms among the number.[660] “When the truce was begun between us and the count of La Marche,” they write again, “the count by one of his knights declared us deprived of all rights within his fiefs”; he and his men were guarding all the roads so that neither corn, nor wine, nor wood, nor any necessaries could be got into the city, “and what is your own property he declares to be of his fee.” Again “with tears” they implored Henry to send them such a governor as should extricate them and all Poitou from these perils.[661]

The men of Bordeaux on the other hand were urgent that Hugh should be appeased. “He has promised,” they wrote, “to maintain and defend the towns, from himself and his, and all other living men, faithfully to the utmost of his power, for your benefit and honour. And since his defence and maintenance is, above that of all others, most useful and necessary to your faithful men of Poitou, and molestation from him is equally perilous and injurious to them, we entreat your royal majesty, by every means we can, to take such counsel that a man of such importance, such a useful defender of your land, and so pious and humble a protector of peace and tranquillity, may not through any other’s fault withdraw from your service; for he has promised that so long as he lives he will, unless you give him cause to do otherwise, remain faithfully in your service against all men living. All these things,” they add, “have been communicated to us by the good men of La Rochelle.”[662] But meanwhile the good men of La Rochelle had learned something of the value of Hugh’s fine promises. Threatened by him with “all the harm that he could do” to them, surrounded by enemies who persecuted them for their loyalty, and without any protector save the Bishop of Saintes, they again pleaded—as did also the men of Bordeaux[663]—for the appointment of an efficient seneschal: “Send us quickly a strong man, who will bring back the barons to allegiance, and with their aid rout the enemies and restore the royal authority.”[664] A rumour that the King was about to make the viscount of Thouars seneschal of Poitou struck panic into Niort. “God forbid it! for the viscount is our mortal foe, and in your father’s time, with the counsel of the King of France, he did us all the evil that he could. As you love your land of Poitou, and us, and your own honour, we beseech you on no account to venture on making him seneschal; moreover, make not anyone from these parts seneschal of Poitou. If you do, they will take your land for their own advantage, as much as they can, as some did in your father’s time. And we and the other faithful men shall have to go out of your land, unless you take diligent care and good counsel in this business. May it therefore please your excellency to send some noble, discreet, wise, and powerful man from the parts of England, to be your seneschal—such a man as will know how to deal with your affairs in Poitou, and be able to hold your land.”[665] Another rumour—this time in England—as to the Council’s intentions with respect to the vacant office drew forth a trenchant protest from Earl William of Salisbury. “I am given to understand,” he writes to Pandulf, “that you, together with the King’s Council, proposed to send the count of Aumale into Poitou to keep the land. And as it seems to me that the count is less obedient than he should be to the King’s commands concerning the things which he holds in England, which are small, I doubt he would be less obedient still if he had the seneschalship and government of Poitou which is a great thing. And therefore I give notice to your holiness that you will in no wise commit the custody of that land to him by my counsel or assent.”[666]

Oddly enough, the man finally chosen by Hubert was Philip of Ulecote, who also had given the government some trouble about the restitution of a castle to its rightful owner.[667] When the choice was at last made, in August, some difficulty arose before it could be carried into effect; the sequel suggests that Philip’s state of health may have been the obstacle. “I never felt any confidence,” wrote Pandulf to Hubert on 25th August, “that Philip should go there; though you seemed mighty certain about the matter, rambling over seas and mountains in quest of things that are not to be had.” In a more serious strain he warned the Justiciar that some decision must be made at once. “You must provide for that country, which plainly appears to be perishing through the fault of the King’s Council. The matter has been already shamefully delayed, and I greatly fear lest grave damage should come of it.”[668] In the middle of September Philip of Ulecote was formally appointed seneschal of Poitou,[669] and went across the sea.

Pandulf and Peter des Roches, meanwhile, had enlisted the services of the Dean of Poitiers, who visited England in August, to negotiate with Hugh of La Marche for a truce.[670] A carucage “for our great needs, most urgent debts, and the preservation of our land of Poitou” had been agreed upon in a council at Oxford on 9th August.[671] Negotiations with the communes of La Rochelle and Bordeaux for a loan “for the safe keeping of Poitou and Gascony” were begun in September.[672] These two towns, with Niort and S. Jean d’Angély, had now resolved upon sending representatives to England to lay their complaints before the Council; the Preceptor of the Temple, Gerard Brochard, at their request undertook to accompany these envoys, and begged the Council to give him and them an audience in London in the week after Michaelmas, “to hear the proposals of the count of La Marche, and of others, on all sides.” Gerard, it is clear, was in the confidence of all parties, and he declared positively that if the Council would listen to him, the damsel Joan would be restored to them in honour and freedom; “she would have been delivered to me,” he said, “if I would have stood surety that the King would do to the count what he ought.”[673] Probably Gerard received in London, and thence transmitted to Hugh, a formal assurance that Henry would “do what he ought”—in other words, surrender his mother’s dowry. At the same time the Pope took up the matter; and a letter from him, on 20th September, threatening that if Hugh did not within fifteen days after its receipt deliver Joan, together with the city of Saintes and the Isle of Oléron (which had been pledged to him by John as security for her dowry) to Henry’s appointed representatives, he should be excommunicated and his lands placed under interdict,[674] was followed by Hugh’s submission, so far as the surrender of Joan herself was concerned. In obedience to an order from England issued on 6th October that he should either himself bring Joan to England, or deliver her at La Rochelle to certain persons appointed to receive her there,[675] he set out with the child; but he fell sick at Oléron, where the Dean of Poitiers and the new seneschal of Aquitaine, Philip of Ulecote, had been ordered to meet him. The Dean waited for the seneschal in vain, and at last learned that he was dead.[676] At the beginning of November Hugh, being too ill to proceed, delivered Joan to the commissioners—the Dean and two other envoys—who escorted her to La Rochelle.[677] The term fixed for her marriage was past, but at its expiration, on 13th October, Henry and Alexander had met again at York,[678] and Alexander had evidently consented to wait for her with patience; he waited in fact till the following Midsummer. Her stepfather, when he gave her up to Henry’s commissioners, assured them of his intention to go and perform his homage for La Marche and Angoulême as soon as his health should permit him.[679] Thus for a few months Aquitaine was—comparatively—at peace.

Meanwhile, however, the “concord and tranquillity” in England had not been altogether unbroken. At first glance the Pope’s selection of the spring of 1220 for the re-crowning of the young King appears unaccountable. Since the ceremony had not taken place immediately after the Primate’s return, two years ago, it would have seemed more natural to delay it for seventeen months longer, till the boy should have reached the completion of his fourteenth year, the earliest age which could, on any known principle, be reckoned as that of legal majority. A clue to the purpose for which the matter was hurried on may possibly be found in certain steps which were taken immediately after the coronation. On its morrow (18th May) “the barons who were present swore that they would resign their castles and wardenships at the will of the King, and would render at the Exchequer a faithful account of their ferms; and also that if any rebel should resist the King, and should not make satisfaction within forty days after being excommunicated by the Legate, they would make war upon him at the King’s bidding, that the rebel might be disinherited without the option of a fine.”[680] A week after this, on 26 May, the Pope wrote a letter to Pandulf. He began by expressing his distress at the reports that reached him of his royal ward’s extreme poverty; this, he said, was imputed chiefly to the archbishops, bishops, and other prelates in England, some of whom had usurped the King’s castles, manors, and other domains, and were detaining the same “on the frivolous pretext that they wish to keep them safe till the King should be of age; and so meanwhile the King must be a beggar, while they run riot, against his will, on what belongs to him.” The Pope therefore ordered that they should surrender all such castles and lands to the King, and make restitution of all the proceeds thence derived since the war, and bade Pandulf enforce their compliance with penalties both spiritual and temporal. In a second letter, written two days later, Honorius instructed the Legate not to suffer any man, howsoever faithful or closely attached he might be to the King, to hold in his custody more than two of the King’s castles, on pain of ecclesiastical censure without appeal.[681]

From the days of Henry II, if not from a yet earlier time, the Crown had found it a hard matter to preserve its authority over castles held in private ownership. Such ownership was limited by the King’s right in three ways. The owner was bound to allow his castle to be garrisoned by the King’s own men at the King’s will; to surrender it into the King’s hand if required; and not to make any addition to its fortifications without the King’s licence. Against the enforcement of these royal rights the owners of castles had struggled, with varying success, under Henry II, Richard, and John. The civil war, and the new conditions under which the powers of the Crown had to be exercised during the minority of John’s successor, had intensified their jealousy of all restriction upon their tenure of their fortresses; and a like spirit of independence began to show itself in some of the wardens of the King’s own castles, with regard to the fortresses under their charge. The only important case of this kind, until the latter part of the year 1219, was that of Count William of Aumale. But between August, 1219, and March, 1220, trouble began to threaten in connexion with two royal fortresses of not less consequence than Sauvey and Rockingham, and from two men of far greater political and personal weight than William de Fors.

The combined offices of sheriff of Lincolnshire and warden of Lincoln castle were hereditary in the family of Haye, represented at this time by the old Dame Nicolaa, whose capability, courage, and loyalty had never failed in the service of John and his heir throughout the last twenty years. Three days after the battle of Lincoln {24 May 1217} the city and county had been committed to the boy-King’s uncle, William Longsword Earl of Salisbury, to hold during the King’s pleasure.[682] This grant was probably made with the double purpose of rewarding Longsword for his share in the victory, and relieving Nicolaa of a burden which she had, nearly two years before, declared to be too great for her.[683] Five months later, however, when peace was made, the old lady asked to be reinstated in her hereditary functions. Her request was granted, and on 31st October the Earl was bidden to deliver the castle to her and give her seisin of the sheriffdom without delay; but the latter half of this order seems not to have been enforced;[684] and at the beginning of December the county “with all its appurtenances” was again committed to William to hold during the King’s pleasure.[685] This time, however, the castle did not go with the shrievalty; for from March, 12181218, onwards we find the former once more, with the full sanction of the Crown, under the charge of its veteran castellan, Nicolaa.[686] No one seems to have ventured on molesting her till three months after the death of the old Earl Marshal. Then, on 23rd August, 12191219, “the sheriff of Lincoln”—no doubt the Earl of Salisbury’s deputy—had to be sharply told that he was to “maintain, protect, and defend the lands, goods, and men of our trusty and well-beloved Nicolaa de Haye within his bailiwick, to cause her no molestation, injury or damage, nor to meddle in any way with her debts to the Crown, or in any matters concerning her, till he received orders to do so”; and next day “all the knights and good men” of the shire were informed that the King had assigned Falkes de Bréauté (who was sheriff of two shires contiguous to Lincolnshire, those of Northampton and Rutland) to Dame Nicolaa as her assistant in the defence of Lincoln castle, “and that they should all efficaciously counsel and assist Falkes in the King’s business which Falkes would explain to them, for the preservation of the peace of the realm.”[687] It seems that Falkes, with three of his knights (and no doubt some attendant men-at-arms), at once took up his abode in the castle and made it his headquarters for the next nine months.[688] From a temporary absence in January, 12201220, when he went to meet the King at Northampton, he was recalled by an urgent message from Nicolaa; and a letter from Falkes himself to Hubert de Burgh makes it perfectly clear that the danger against which he was required to protect her was a persistent endeavour of the Earl of Salisbury, as sheriff of the county, to enter the castle. “But,” wrote Falkes, “God helping me, with the force at the Dame’s command I will take good care that he shall not get in.”[689]

William Longsword was a son of Henry II; illegitimate, but always acknowledged and treated as “the King’s brother” by both Richard and John, and by Henry as “our beloved uncle.” Richard had given him the earldom from which he took his title, together with the hand and the great possessions of Ela, heiress of an earlier line of Earls of Salisbury. He had done good service to John until the middle of 1216; then he had joined Louis, but early in 1217 he had returned to the side of little Henry, and had received back all his forfeited estates, to which in August of the same year were added the counties of Somerset and Devon.[690] His attempt to interfere with the rights of a castellan appointed by the King to the command of a royal castle certainly failed, and was probably abandoned without any open strife, for there is no sign of any breach in the friendly relations between the King and his “beloved Uncle William,” to whom the boy seems to have been really attached. But the mere making of such an attempt, by a man of such high rank and so closely connected with the King, was not without grave significance; and it coincided ominously with another incident of graver significance still.