Haeres ... cum sit dominus omnium ... sub tutoribus et actoribus est, usque ad praefinitum tempus a patre.
When Pandulf resigned his offices in England the King was within three months of his fourteenth birthday. Whether his minority was to terminate then, or how much longer it should continue, was still undecided. It seems to have been considered as terminable at any time after October 1st, 1221, at the discretion of the Pope; and this may have been the reason why no provision was made for a continuance, in the hands of any person or persons whatever, of the special authority in temporal matters which had been vested in the Legate. The Council which had carried on the administration of affairs under him was, so far as we can see, simply left to carry it on without him.
The government thus constituted had no reason to anticipate any immediate difficulties. The realm was at peace within its own borders, and at peace with its neighbour lands, Scotland and France. The Welsh princes were as usual not only quarrelling among themselves but also dragging the barons of the English border into their quarrels; but a new agreement among the princes, and a truce between Llywelyn on the one part, and the Marshal and Reginald de Breuse on the other, had just been patched up by Pandulf at Shrewsbury.[807] The alliance with Scotland was further cemented by another marriage before the end of the year; in fulfilment of Henry’s promise that the Scot King’s sisters should be provided with husbands in England, Margaret—once the destined bride of Henry himself—became the fourth wife of his Justiciar, Hubert de Burgh.[808] In Ireland, Geoffrey de Marsh had so misused his day of grace, by neglecting to fulfill the promises which he had made to the King a year before, that his removal could no longer be avoided; and just before Pandulf’s resignation letters in the King’s name were sent to the native princes of Ireland and the barons of the March, setting forth Geoffrey’s misdeeds and proclaiming that in consequence of them, “we, being justly provoked thereto that we should suffer him to rule our land of Ireland no more, do by the common counsel and assent of ourself and of the magnates and faithful men of England ordain that Henry Archbishop of Dublin shall have the custody and care of that land till we shall determine otherwise.”[809] The letters patent appointing the Archbishop Justiciar in Ireland had in fact been issued a fortnight before;[810] but a formal surrender of the office by Geoffrey was necessary before they could take effect. This surrender Geoffrey made on October 25th.[811]
A new seneschal of Poitou and Gascony, Hugh of Vivonne, had been appointed on 4th January.[812] He undertook the office with evident reluctance and forebodings—or hopes—of a speedy return;[813] and at the end of nine months he seems, like many another before him, to have found himself unequal to the difficulties of the situation. A Gascon noble of greater fame and a more highly trained and widely practised diplomatist were sent both at once to relieve and supersede him. The first was Savaric de Mauléon; the second was Pandulf. On 6th October the prelates, barons, and people of Poitou and Gascony were informed that the King had committed those two counties and their appurtenances to Savaric,[814] and also that he was sending Pandulf—now described as “bishop elect of Norwich, and chamberlain to the Pope”—into Poitou “for great and difficult matters,” in which the inhabitants of the land were exhorted to give the ex-Legate every assistance in their power.[815] Pandulf seems to have set out on his mission immediately, and in the full expectation that it would be one of considerable duration; on 12th October he had letters of protection for a year from All Saints’ day.[816] The primary purpose of that mission was, seemingly, to negotiate with Hugh of La Marche. Hugh and Isabel were still clamouring for Isabel’s Aquitanian dower-lands; the English government was determined not to restore these till Hugh had performed his homage and surrendered the lands given him by John in pledge for the dowry of Joan; which lands Hugh was equally determined to keep until his wife’s claims were satisfied. By the end of September Hugh’s aggressions had become so intolerable that the English Council retaliated by seizing into the King’s hand all the lands held in England by Hugh and Isabel as part of Isabel’s dower.[817] But to retaliate in Aquitaine itself was not so easy. One great difficulty was, as usual, the want of money. The mayor and commune of London stood surety for the King to the mayor and commune of La Rochelle for the repayment of two loans, which the last-named city was requested to make “for the safe-keeping and defence of our land of Poitou,” the one of a thousand marks to Pandulf, the other of five hundred marks to Engelard de Cigogné and Emeric de Sacy, who were despatched at the same time as Pandulf, also on business “touching our land of Poitou.”[818] On 1st November letters were addressed to the mayors and good men of Cognac, Saintes, Angoulême, and Oléron, bidding them withdraw from all further allegiance to the count of La Marche, and recognize no commands save those of the King’s seneschal of Poitou.[819] No name was given to the seneschal in this letter. The acting seneschal was still Hugh of Vivonne; Savaric, it seems, was even more reluctant than Hugh had been to undertake the office—he was probably more fully aware of its difficulty—and made his acceptance of it dependent on the fulfilment of certain conditions, whether political, military, or financial, there is nothing to show. The English Council, in fact, at the very moment when they were thus writing brave words to the Aquitanian towns, knew that their only hope of dealing successfully with either Hugh de Lusignan or Savaric lay in the diplomacy of Pandulf; and on 2nd November they commissioned the ex-Legate “to procure in whatever way he could the making of a prolonged truce between the King and the count of La Marche, and, having obtained this, to persuade and exhort Savaric de Mauléon to hasten into the presence of the King, who would (God willing) do what was right concerning his (Savaric’s) requests. If, however, the elect of Norwich could not make a truce with the Count, then let him devote his care and diligence to the carrying on of the King’s business according to what had been determined in the King’s presence; and let him deliver the care and custody of those parts to Savaric, inducing him thereto as best he could, and causing him to be efficiently provided with money for the defence of the land, according to the form which had been given to him.”[820] The Council’s trust in the dexterity of Pandulf was not misplaced. That he succeeded in making with La Marche a truce which lasted through the winter and was succeeded in the spring by some more definite agreement, may be gathered from the fact that nothing more is heard of either Hugh or Isabel till April, 12221222, and then the Queen’s English dower-lands were restored to her.[821] He was equally successful in “inducing” Savaric de Mauléon to undertake the seneschalship of Aquitaine; an office for which Savaric was, probably, by far the fittest man to whom it had ever been given, or offered, since the recall of Hubert de Burgh.
Pandulf’s mission to Poitou has a significance beyond its actual results. It indicates how large and disinterested was the view taken by him and by Honorius of what the papal overlordship of England and guardianship of its young King should involve. The foreign churchman who for two years and a half had been, alike in right and in fact, supreme head of the government in England had no sooner laid down his office there than he—of course with the sanction of the Pope, whose chamberlain he still remained—placed himself at the disposal of the English ministers of State, so lately his subordinates, and accepted from them a diplomatic commission which could bring no advantage of any kind either to himself or to the Roman See, solely for the purpose of helping them and their young sovereign out of a difficulty. On the other hand, the fact that these ministers, when no longer under any necessity of admitting him to a share in their counsels, were so ready to make use of his help and placed in him so much confidence as is implied in the latitude of the powers with which they entrusted him on this occasion, is a strong testimony to the estimation in which their previous relations with him had led them to hold his character, his abilities, and his devotion to the welfare of King and kingdom. As under William the Marshal, so under Pandulf, we cannot tell whether the inner working of the royal Council had been really as harmonious as its outward action appears, nor how much of its harmony, inward or outward, was due to the regent. Some indications of rivalry between certain of the King’s councillors seem to be discernible before the close of Pandulf’s rule; but so far as we can see, no open breach among them showed itself till some two years and a half after his controlling hand was removed.
It is difficult to define precisely the composition, during the minority of Henry III, of the body known as the King’s Council. That body included, besides the Primate of all England, the justices, and the great officers of State—justiciar, chancellor, treasurer,—certain persons who were called to be members of it on personal rather than official grounds, such as Bishop Peter of Winchester, Philip d’Aubigné, the Earl of Chester, and the King’s uncle, Earl William of Salisbury. Since the spring of 1219 the most onerous and important part of the work of government had been shared, under Pandulf, between Hubert de Burgh and Peter des Roches; Hubert, as Justiciar, naturally taking the more prominent part. Among our materials for the history of the time we find no suggestion anywhere that they were other than true yoke-fellows, till at Whitsuntide, 1221, there occurred the mysterious affair of Peter de Maulay.[822] The only two chroniclers who record De Maulay’s arrest say nothing more about its grounds than that he was “accused of treason.” Falkes de Bréauté, four years later, asserted that Peter de Maulay after dining at court was called into the King’s chamber as if for some private discourse, and there denounced as a traitor who had made a compact with the King of France to deliver into his hands the Lady Eleanor of Brittany, Henry’s cousin, who had been a State prisoner in Corfe castle for many years; moreover, according to Falkes, a greater personage than the castellan of Corfe was involved in the accusation; it was asserted that a ship to convey the lady over sea had been made ready by the Bishop of Winchester, who at the time of the arrest was absent from England on a pilgrimage to Compostella, and that the bishop was really gone not to pay his devotions to S. James, but to talk over the plot with Philip Augustus. Falkes declared that the only real plotters in the case were the Justiciar and his “accomplices,” who for their own private ends had planned the arrest of Peter de Maulay in the absence of Peter des Roches, and invented this story against both; and he adds that they overwhelmed De Maulay with insults, blows, and other indignities, and loaded him with chains, before they cast him into prison.[823] Falkes’s story is almost certainly correct thus far, that no real plot existed; for, whatever ill-treatment Peter de Maulay may have undergone at the time of his arrest, his innocence was implicitly acknowledged within less than a week, by his release as soon as he had surrendered Corfe; and the accusation against the other Peter, if ever really made, was clearly dropped at once and never revived. The whole plot seems to have been a sheer fiction; but we can hardly accept Falkes’s account of its origin. Hubert and Peter des Roches may have been jealous of each other; and they may have differed on some questions of policy—perhaps, amongst other things, as to the expediency or the justice of requiring compliance with the letter of the recent oath about the surrender of castles, in a case where a previous oath sworn to the late King could be pleaded against it.[824] We should, however, require a more impartial authority than Falkes to make us believe that Hubert’s jealousy and self-will goaded him into an attempt to ruin his rival by a device at once so monstrous and so clumsy as that which Falkes ascribes to him. He is far more likely to have been duped into believing a story invented by some unscrupulous subordinate who hoped that it might bring promotion to himself by serving (as, no doubt, it did serve) to the attainment of an end—the surrender of Corfe—which he knew the Justiciar had at heart, but which may not have commended itself to the judgement of the Bishop of Winchester.
In his capacity of personal guardian, “master,” and instructor to the young King, Bishop Peter had an assistant in Philip d’Aubigné, a man whose valour and loyalty had been proved both on land and sea, and who bore a high character alike in public and private life.[825] It seems to have been in Philip’s charge that the boy had been left while the bishop made his pilgrimage to S. James;[826] much against the will of Philip, who had taken the Cross at the beginning of the year and was anxious to fulfill his vow.[827] He started as soon as he was set free by the bishop’s return.[828] The Christian host besieged in Damietta was known to be in great straits, and many volunteers from Europe were eager to reinforce it. On 19th September Bishop Peter also took the Cross;[829] Falkes did the like about the same time; and at the close of the year or beginning of the next they were both preparing to set out, seemingly together, when they were stopped by the tidings that Damietta had been surrendered.[830] The fact that Peter contemplated such an expedition is significant. It shows that his tutorship of the young King was at an end. Falkes says that it was pronounced—seemingly by the other members of the Council under Hubert’s influence—on Peter’s return from Spain, to be at an end, on the ground that Henry was now beyond the age of pupilage.[831] The boy’s personal emancipation from his tutor’s control, however, did not imply any emancipation from wardship or tutelage in the legal sense; Henry’s school-days were over, but not his minority.
The Christmas court was held at Winchester. On former occasions the King, when he visited that city, seems to have been entertained by his tutor, in the episcopal palace or castle of Wolvesey; this time, however, the royal castle on the hill-top was specially made ready for his abode.[832] During the festival season {1221–1222} a quarrel broke out between Earl Ranulf of Chester on the one part and the Earl of Salisbury and the Justiciar on the other. High words passed, and Chester seems to have uttered some threat of violence, for we hear that “the Earl of Salisbury and the Justiciar, the governors of the King and kingdom, manfully prepared themselves and their followers for resistance.” Fortunately, however, there was now one member of the royal Council who was outside of and above all party or personal disputes, and whose position and character alike marked him out for the office of peacemaker. For six years the Archbishop of Canterbury had been reduced to a subordinate position, ecclesiastical and political, by the presence in England of a Papal Legate; and during the last nine months of Pandulf’s legation Stephen had been out of the country altogether. But he had now come back to his old place as the highest ecclesiastical authority in the realm and the first adviser of the Crown. “Pitying the King’s youth and lack of power,” he called his suffragans together in council in London at Hilary-tide (1222), and in concert with them threatened to “wield the spiritual sword against disturbers of the realm and assailants of the King.” This threat brought the contending parties to “concord and peace.”[833] Of the subject and origin of this quarrel we know nothing. The sole writer who mentions it tells us that “it was said, and many persons throughout England suspected and asserted, that the foreigners, who were more desirous of disturbance than of peace in the realm, were trying to stir up the Earl of Chester to give trouble to the King and disquiet the kingdom.” Who were the particular “foreigners” thus accused by rumour, who were the persons that spread the rumour, and what it was that Chester really did, or threatened to do, or was suspected of intending to do, is absolutely unknown. So far as the evidence goes, the dispute may have been a purely personal one, and the Archbishop’s strong measure may have been taken for the purpose of emphasizing the scandal and the possible danger involved in a brawl at the King’s court between men of such high rank and importance, rather than for that of checking any actual or even supposed design of political disturbance or rebellion.
There was, indeed, an undercurrent of disturbance running beneath the surface of English politics; but the disturbance, so far as can be seen, was not, as yet, of a party character, though it contained elements which might easily combine so as to form a serious danger to the government. The traces left by the war on the habits and dispositions of the classes which had been engaged in it were far from being wiped out even yet. The passion for tourneying which had seized upon Englishmen after the close of their struggle with the invader still required constant repression.[834] Moreover, the years of confusion had brought back to England another continental practice which had never been recognized as legal there since Stephen’s time, the practice of private war; and so deeply had this evil custom taken root that it seems to have been tolerated by the King’s guardians without protest, except when it brought a belligerent into direct collision with the authority of the Crown. We have seen how one magnate who was actually a member of the Council, Earl William of Salisbury, had to be prevented by Falkes, acting under a royal order, from forcibly ousting a rival custodian from Lincoln castle. He avenged himself on Falkes by stirring up against him some of the chief men of Devon and Cornwall, one of them being the sheriff of these two counties, Robert de Courtenay. These men banded themselves together in March, 12211221, for a combined plundering raid on Falkes’s lands in Devonshire, “but,” wrote Falkes to the Justiciar, “that day they received letters from the Earl of Salisbury bidding them not move, on account of a truce made between him and me till the quindene of Easter; to which truce—so he told them—he had consented in order that he might make use of the interval in Lincolnshire.”[835] Robert de Courtenay, nevertheless, not only forcibly prevented the shipping of corn from Falkes’s manor of Exminster to revictual Falkes’s castle of Plympton, but seized the corn, and flogged and imprisoned one of Falkes’s boatmen, alleging that he had orders from the King to let no corn go out of the harbour of Exminster. Falkes asked the Justiciar to put a stop to this flagrant violation by a sheriff of the rights of private property; but the tone of his letter shews that he regarded, and expected Hubert to regard, his struggle with Longsword as quite another matter, one in which each of the belligerents was free to act as he thought good, without reference to the government.[836] Another illustration of the same evil occurs fifteen months later {1222}. The castle of Dinas Powys, in Glamorgan, was in the hands of the Earl Marshal, but belonged of right to Gilbert Earl of Gloucester. The Marshal surrendered it to the King in Gilbert’s presence in London, that it might be delivered to a representative of the King, who in his turn should restore it to its owner. Gilbert, instead of waiting for the completion of this quite ordinary procedure, gathered his followers and prepared to march upon the castle, if he did not actually lay siege to it, in July, 1222. He was officially told that the King was “greatly astonished,” not, it would seem, at his taking the law into his own hands in any case, but merely at his doing so after the transfer of the castle had been agreed upon in the King’s presence and undertaken by the King himself.[837] The crowning instance of lawlessness occurred a fortnight later; and this time the offenders were neither foreign soldiers of fortune nor English earls, but citizens of London.
From time immemorial the fields around the Tower had served as a holiday resort for the younger citizens, who spent their leisure time there in wrestling and other athletic sports. A trial of strength and skill in wrestling was arranged to take place hard by Queen Matilda’s Hospital, between the young men of the city and those of the suburbs, on S. James’s day, 25th July. The citizens won the match. Among their antagonists was the Abbot of Westminster’s steward; and he brooded over his own defeat and that of his comrades till he devised a way to avenge it. First, he sent out a general notice inviting all who would to come to a wrestling match at Westminster on the next holiday, the feast of S. Peter in Chains, 1st August; the prize was to be a ram. Next, he gathered on his own side a picked band of strong and expert wrestlers, and secretly provided them with arms. The unsuspecting citizens came in crowds; for a while the wrestlers seemed equally matched; suddenly the Westminster side produced their weapons. The unarmed Londoners were soon overcome; beaten and wounded, they fled helter-skelter into the city. A mighty tumult arose; the common bell was rung, a mass-meeting was held, schemes of vengeance were proposed. Serlo the mayor, “a prudent and peaceable man,” advised that a complaint should be laid before the Abbot of Westminster, and urged that if the abbot would make a fitting compensation on behalf of himself and his men, “all ought to be satisfied.” The angry citizens, however, were more inclined to listen to a certain Constantine Olaveson, “a great man in the city,” who proposed that “all the abbot’s buildings” and his seneschal’s house should be pulled down;[838] and next morning an armed mob made a raid upon Westminster. Their first intention was to attack the church; but from this “some wise man” dissuaded them,[839] and they contented themselves with pulling down the steward’s house and doing as much damage as they could to his property and that of the abbot.[840]
The Justiciar was at this time in the west of England.[841] It chanced, however, that Philip d’Aubigné on his return from the East reached London a few days after the riot had taken place; and to him the Abbot of Westminster went to complain of the violence which he and his men had suffered. The Londoners at once came “like bees” about the house where Philip and the abbot were, forcibly carried off twelve of the abbot’s horses, beat his servants, ill-treated the knights who accompanied him, and tried to capture the abbot himself. Philip d’Aubigné vainly endeavoured to quell the tumult; the abbot was obliged to slip out by a back-door and escape in a boat, in peril of his life from the stones which the citizens flung after him.[842] On 12th or 13th August Hubert reached London.[843] He at once called together the mayor and aldermen and demanded the names of the ringleaders. Constantine boldly answered for himself, asserting that he “would give a warrant” for his action, and openly expressing regret that he “had done less than rightly should have been done.”[844] His boast of a warrant was disquieting; for in the midst of the attack on Westminster he had shouted aloud “Montjoie! Montjoie! God and our lord Louis be our aid!” and his nephew and another citizen, Geoffrey by name, had echoed the cry.[845] Hubert had taken the precaution to bring with him to the Tower a band of men-at-arms under the command of Falkes. He caused Constantine, his nephew, and Geoffrey to be imprisoned for the night; next morning, by his order, Falkes and his men secretly led them out to be hanged. Constantine, when he found a rope round his neck, offered fifteen thousand marks for his life, but in vain; “You will stir up no more seditions in the King’s city,” was the grim reply of Falkes.[846] Having thus got the execution over without the citizens’ knowledge, Hubert rode with Falkes and his soldiers through the city, seized as many as he could of those who had been concerned in the riot, flung them into prison, caused their hands or their feet to be cut off, and then let them go; the rest were so terrified by this severity that many “fled never to return.” The hapless mayor and aldermen who had been incapable of controlling the populace under their charge were deposed; the city had to give hostages for its good behaviour, and was only after long deliberation on the part of the Council admitted to reconciliation with the Crown on payment of a heavy fine.[847] Hubert’s drastic measures were effectual in preventing further disturbance in the capital; but of course “it seemed to some persons,” as a chronicler says, that Constantine had been tried and executed “more hastily than was fitting.”[848]
In Aquitaine the respite from trouble won by the diplomacy of Pandulf at the beginning of 1222 lasted through the summer. A safe-conduct to the count of La Marche to come and speak with the King in England was issued in June,[849] and another in August.[850] He was evidently thought to be really coming this time, for the Bishop of Winchester was sent across the sea to meet and escort him;[851] but he did not come. The sentence of excommunication issued against him two years before had never yet been published, but it had never been withdrawn, and the Pope seems to have now directed his commissioners, the Bishops of Saintes and Limoges and the Dean of Bordeaux, to publish it on S. Andrew’s day. The royal Council, however, shrank from driving Hugh to extremity; and early in November they sent Philip of Aubigné and the Abbot of Boxley to make another effort for a peaceful settlement with him and Isabel, and begged the papal commissioners to give him a further respite till the result of these negotiations should appear.[852] Meanwhile the new seneschal of Poitou had taken up his task with a firm and vigorous hand; but he was hampered by the want of money, like his predecessors, and also by the hostility of the towns, which disliked him doubly because he was not only a baron of considerable social and political importance in the land, but also a man of independent character and determined will. He stuck to his post for ten or eleven months, and then, in September or October, went to England. A full discussion of Aquitanian politics and administration seems to have taken place between him and the royal Council, in the presence of representatives from La Rochelle, Niort, S. Jean d’Angély, Bordeaux, the viscount of Thouars, and possibly some other towns and barons; a whole bundle of letters patent and close, issued in consequence of these deliberations, indicate that the Council, conscious of having at last secured a fit man as governor, was now ready to give him all the moral support in its power.[853] Unluckily it had little other support to give him. It was not till February (1223) that Philip d’Aubigné and his fellow commissioner succeeded in coming to any agreement with Hugh of Lusignan; and then the result of their labours was merely another truce, to last till 1st August.[854] Four more months passed; Hugh and Isabel continued impenitent; so on 25th June the Pope again threatened them with excommunication.[855] Three weeks later, however, an event took place which led to another change in the policy of the English government towards the count of La Marche. This was the death, on 14th July,[856] of King Philip Augustus of France.
When the treaty between Henry and Louis was made, in September, 1217, both parties, as we have seen, bound themselves by oath to certain conditions which are not mentioned in the copies of that treaty which have come down to us. Henry swore to maintain inviolate those liberties of the English barons and people which had served as one of the pretexts for Louis’s invasion; Louis swore that he “would do his utmost to induce his father to restore the English King to all his rights in the parts beyond the sea.”[857] Naturally the English Council construed this as binding Louis, if the restoration were not effected in his father’s lifetime, to make it himself as soon as it was in his own power. They at once took the matter up with a high hand. Pandulf, now Bishop of Norwich,[858] urged the Pope to forbid that any one should crown Louis until the promised restitution to Henry was made.[859] The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of London and Salisbury undertook the double duty of presenting to Louis himself a formal demand for the fulfilment of his promise, and to the Archbishop of Reims a protest against his coronation if the demand were not at once satisfied.[860] Letters patent had already been issued in the King’s name to the barons, knights, and good men of Normandy, calling on them to return to their allegiance, “since the opportunity is now at hand,” and promising, if they did so, restitution to each man, according to his rights, of the lands in England which they lost when the King’s father lost Normandy, and such further rewards as their service should deserve.[861] Preparations were made for collecting a fleet; all ships coming into English ports were ordered to be seized, emptied of their contents (which were to be stored up safely for return to the owners), and sent to Portsmouth for the King’s service.[862] The Forest districts of the southern counties were bidden to send to Porchester large supplies of “hurdles for the ships,”[863] and on 9th August the barons of the Cinque Ports were summoned to come to Portsmouth “with the whole service which they owe to the King, and with their ships, with the first favourable wind, to go with the King in his service.”[864]
All this was a practical defiance of Louis. But to set Louis at defiance without endeavouring to secure the adherence, or at any rate the neutrality, of La Marche and Angoulême would have been simply to court defeat. Two days before the King’s truce with Hugh expired, therefore, two of the places in dispute between Hugh and the King—the city of Saintes and the castle of Merpins—with the town of Cognac and the castle of Belmont, were committed to Hugh to hold “till the King’s coming of age,” “as he held them on the Saturday before the feast of S. Peter in Chains” in the preceding year; two envoys (of whom one was Geoffrey de Neville) were despatched to take security from him “for his good and faithful service, and that he would faithfully do his utmost to advance the King’s interest and procure his honour till the term before mentioned”;[865] and on 4th August the holder of the papal mandate for Hugh’s excommunication was desired to deal with it only as the same two envoys should direct.[866]
Contrary winds detained Archbishop Stephen and his fellow-ambassadors in England[867] for more than a week. When they reached the French court, Louis was already crowned.[868] He seems to have declined to make any immediate answer to their demands, and adjourned the matter to the octave of All Saints.[869] The delay was probably not unwelcome to Henry’s counsellors, who at that moment had their hands full with a Welsh war. The pacification at Shrewsbury in July, 1221, seems to have been followed by an unusually long period of comparative tranquillity on the Marches of Wales. It was probably this condition of affairs which, when it had lasted for sixteen months, encouraged the King’s representatives to venture on what looks like a very bold step in the prosecution of their schemes for asserting the royal authority over the castles. On 11th November, 12221222, the Earl Marshal was informed by letter patent that “as the castle of Caerleon with its appurtenances, which is in your hand, ought to be held of us in chief, it is provided by our common council that that castle shall be delivered into our hand; and therefore we strictly command that you, without delay or excuse, surrender that castle with its appurtenances to us, and afterwards we will cause full justice to be done in our court to you and to any others who may have aught to say about it.”[870] For this demand it is hardly possible to conceive any motive save one: a desire to obtain from the Marshal, by way of example and precedent, a practical acknowledgement of the King’s right to take into his own hands, when he pleased, a castle held of the Crown not merely in custody, but in fee. If, however, this was the purpose the Council had in view, they were ill-advised in their choice of a time for making the demand; the Marshal, if not already in Ireland, was on the point of setting out to spend the winter there.[871] Possibly the King’s letter never reached him; if it did, he had a fair excuse for not acting upon it till his return. A second letter, written on 26th January, 1223, desired him to surrender Caerleon before the close of Easter “because we do not deem it advisable that you should hold it beyond that term.”[872] But when he came back, in Passion Week, the Welsh March was in turmoil from one end to the other, and the Council were only too glad to make the utmost possible use of his ready co-operation in restoring the English supremacy in South Wales. Such a moment was clearly inopportune for taking an important border stronghold out of the hands of a defender at once so capable and so loyal; and more than three years passed away before the King ventured to renew his demand.
Llywelyn had taken advantage of the Marshal’s absence to organize an attack on the English border. Early in 1223 he besieged, took, and utterly destroyed two castles in Shropshire, Kinnerley and Whittington.[873] The Justiciar, taking the King with him, went at the beginning of March to Shrewsbury, seemingly to demand or compel satisfaction from Llywelyn. The Earl of Chester came forward as mediator, offering himself as surety for Llywelyn’s compliance with the demand within a given time; and the intended punitive attack on Wales was suspended accordingly.[874] But meanwhile tidings of Llywelyn’s outbreak had reached the Marshal in Ireland, and in the middle of April[875] he “came up to land” somewhere in South Wales “with a vast fleet,” carrying “a multitude of cavalry and infantry.”[876] Hubert seems to have expected his arrival, and sent a messenger to meet him with a request that he would keep truce with Llywelyn for another fortnight, in the hope that Llywelyn might yet fulfill the promise made for him by Chester, although the time fixed for its fulfilment had already expired.[877] The delay proved useless; and on Easter Monday (24 April) Earl William marched upon Cardigan. “On that day the castle was delivered to him, and on the Wednesday following he drew to Caermarthen, and obtained that castle also.”[878] Llywelyn, on hearing what had occurred, sent his son Gruffudd “with a very numerous army to oppose the Earl”; they met at Kidwelly and fought “for the greater part of the day”; Gruffudd seems to have been worsted, and “for lack of provision returned back to his country.”[879]
The Marshal hereupon busied himself with the repair of Caermarthen castle[880] till at the end of May a royal letter patent bade him, “forasmuch as it is determined by our Council that the castles of Caermarthen and Cardigan, which you have taken, should be retained in our own hand,” deliver both places to Robert de Vaux to hold during the King’s pleasure.[881] Llywelyn had certainly proved himself utterly undeserving of the confidence in his loyalty which had induced the regent Earl Marshal to entrust him with the custody of these two important strongholds; and if the regent’s son was not actually commissioned by the Council to recover them by force, it could at any rate have no scruples in approving his action and reaping its fruit for the benefit of the Crown. A day in July was next appointed for Llywelyn and the Marshal to lay their mutual complaints before the King and Council. The meeting took place at Ludlow, seemingly between 6th and 10th July,[882] but the parties “could not be reconciled.”[883] The Council had apparently not expected a reconciliation, and had come prepared for war. On the 11th the sheriffs of Devon and Herefordshire were bidden to take care that no men of their respective shires should send (by sea in the case of Devon), any supplies to, or hold any communication with, Llywelyn and his Welsh adherents, but that all merchants and markets should follow the King’s army to South Wales, “that is, to our lands of Caermarthen and Cardigan, and to the lands of our faithful Earl William the Marshal.”[884] An effort was made to detach the Welsh of Deheubarth and Powys from obedience to their North-Welsh lord; the Earls of Pembroke and Salisbury were empowered to receive into the King’s grace “all the Welsh of South Wales who would return to the King’s fealty and service”;[885] the sons of Gwenwynwyn of Powys, who since Gwenwynwyn’s death in 1216 had been living in England as wards or prisoners of the Crown, and were now in Bridgenorth castle under the care or in the custody of Earl Ranulf of Chester, were brought to the King’s court at Gloucester, and all men of the lands which had belonged to their father were invited to “come to the sons of Gwenwynwyn and to the King’s fealty and peace”;[886] a host of English barons and knights marched into Wales under the command of the Marshal and his friend Longsword.[887]
The King and the Justiciar were recalled to London, partly, no doubt, by the weighty news from France, and partly by the necessity of receiving the titular King of Jerusalem, John of Brienne, who was travelling through western Europe to collect forces and funds for the recovery of his kingdom from the Turks. An “aid for the Holy Land,” of three marks from every earl, one mark from every baron, twelve pence from every knight, and one penny from every free tiller of the soil and every free man who had no land, but had chattels to the value of half a mark, had been agreed upon by the great Council of the realm in 1222,[888] but had never been collected.[889] No Christian sovereign, however, could evade the duty of giving at least a personal welcome, even if he gave nothing more, to the successor of Godfrey of Bouillon. John seems to have crossed from France to England at the end of August.[890] On 1st or 2nd September the English King and Primate received him “solemnly and with great honours” at Canterbury, and escorted him to London.[891] His visit was a brief one, and the hospitality which he received in England was probably amply requited by the gift of four large sapphires—“than which we never saw finer,” says Matthew Paris—which he, “out of his innate munificence,” on his way back offered at the shrine of S. Thomas at Canterbury.[892]
As soon as their royal guest was gone, King and Justiciar hurried back to the Welsh border. The English host under the Marshal and the Earl of Salisbury had apparently set out with the intention of joining the Marshal’s other forces in Pembrokeshire. It was caught by Gruffudd in one of the intricate passes of the Welsh hills, and narrowly escaped destruction,[893] but it seems to have cut its way through; and the Marshal set to work to fortify “the lands which he occupied,”—that is, doubtless, the districts of Caermarthen and Gower—by founding new castles and repairing old ones.[894] Llywelyn’s next diversion was to lay siege, early in September,[895] to Reginald de Breuse’s castle of Builth, with such a numerous force that Reginald immediately applied to the Crown for help.[896] On 12th September the host was summoned to meet the King “with all haste” at Gloucester,[897] and march with him to the relief of Builth. The expedition probably set out from Hereford on the 19th or 20th. Its mere approach sufficed to raise the siege; on the 23rd King and Justiciar were back at Hereford.[898]
It was not the first time, nor was it to be the last, that the Welsh fled before Hubert de Burgh. He now led the King and the host from Hereford to Leominster and Shrewsbury, and thence, on the last day of September, to Montgomery,[899] passing through Llywelyn’s lands and driving the flocks and herds before them as they went, to serve for the sustenance of the troops. The castle of Montgomery, originally built by one of the most famous of the followers of William the Conqueror, had been more than once destroyed by the Welsh. Its site, which had sufficed for the simple Norman keep reared by the first Earl of Shrewsbury, was probably not suited for more elaborate fortifications such as were used in the thirteenth century; it served, however, to shelter the King and the Justiciar; and some of “the wiser men of the army,” while scouring the country around it under Hubert’s orders, found “a place fit for building a castle whose position, everyone thought, would be impregnable.”[900] Urgent orders were despatched to the sheriff of Shropshire for an immediate supply of building materials and tools, and the work was begun at once.[901] Meanwhile Llywelyn had been excommunicated by Archbishop Stephen. On 7th or 8th October, at Montgomery, the Prince once more came and made submission to King and Primate, Stephen dictating the terms. Llywelyn swore that within a reasonable time, to be fixed by the Archbishop, and in a fitting place, he would make satisfaction to the King and the King’s men for all damages done by himself and his men since the day of the taking of Kinnerley. Six lesser Welsh chieftains swore with him; each of the seven embodied his engagement in a charter; and on these conditions Llywelyn was absolved.[902] Moreover, he at once gave the King seisin of Kinnerley and Whittington, that he might restore them to their former owners; and Henry gave back to Llywelyn and his men seisin of all that they had held in fee on the day of the capture of Kinnerley, subject to a trial of counterclaims at the date fixed for Llywelyn’s promised satisfaction[903]—that date being Candlemas, 1224.[904] This conditional restitution of course did not include Cardigan and Caermarthen, which Llywelyn had held merely as custodian for the Crown. On 7th November these two castles were committed to the only man in whose keeping they were likely to be safe—the Earl Marshal.[905]
The time fixed by Louis for answering Henry’s demand for the restoration of his continental heritage had now come. On 10th October an embassy consisting of Bishops Pandulf of Norwich and John of Ely, Philip d’Aubigné, and Richard de Rivers, had been accredited to France to receive Louis’s reply, and to treat with him concerning a prolongation of the truce,[906] which would expire in April, 1224. These envoys met with a very unfavourable reception. Louis declared that the whole continental possessions of the Angevin house had been by a legal judgement escheated to the French Crown;[907] that they were therefore his by right—a right which, he added, he was prepared to prove in his own court, if the King of England would come and submit to its judgement; and that moreover the agreement to which he had sworn in England was no longer binding upon him, inasmuch as it had been doubly broken on the English side, first by the exaction of heavy ransoms from his partisans who had been captured at Lincoln, and secondly in that “the liberties of the realm of England, for which the war had been waged and which at his departure had been granted and sworn to by all, had been so dealt with that not only those most evil laws were brought back into use as of old, but others still more wicked were generally established throughout the realm.”[908] He wound up his harangue to the envoys with a distinct threat, which he charged them to repeat to those who had sent them: not only would he restore nothing, but he intended, when opportunity should offer, to prosecute his claim to the English Crown, as having been taken from John by a legal sentence and granted by the barons of England to himself.[909] Although the truce had still six months to run, the cry of Constantine Olaveson must have rung ominously in the ears of Hubert de Burgh when the French King’s complaints and threats were repeated to him,[910] even if the return of the envoys did not—as it most probably did—coincide with the most alarming outbreak of baronial discontent with which the government had had to deal since Louis left England.
The abolition of the regency before the King attained his majority had inevitably resulted in giving a great increase of power to the Justiciar. Under a sovereign of full age the Justiciar was the King’s lieutenant; it was on him that the supreme powers and functions of government temporarily devolved when the King himself was absent from the realm. It followed almost of necessity that when there ceased to be a person specially set apart to exercise those powers and functions for a King under age, they fell into the Justiciar’s hands. This result of Pandulf’s resignation could not be altogether pleasing to some, at least, of the other members of the Council, or of the magnates outside the Council. It was one thing, first to accept the autocracy of a ruler whom they had unanimously chosen out of their own ranks on the score of his transcendent personal merits, and, afterwards, to yield to the dictates of one who legally represented a power acknowledged by all as superior to that of the Crown itself; it was quite another matter to be ruled by Sir Hubert de Burgh, and to be, moreover, confronted with a prospect of being ruled by him till Henry’s coming of age—an event which seemed almost as remote as ever, since, the date originally intended for it being past, it was now seemingly regarded as deferred till his twenty-first birthday.[911] Nominally, of course, Hubert governed in concert with his colleagues of the royal Council. But with the control of the executive in his hands, and no authority capable of overriding him nearer than Rome, he was practically master of the Council. There were only two other members of it who could under any circumstances have sufficient weight in themselves to act as a check upon him. Both officially and personally Stephen de Langton was a greater man than Hubert de Burgh. The Archbishop of Canterbury was not only the highest ecclesiastical authority in the land, he was also the first adviser of the Crown; and Archbishop Stephen had long ago proved himself a statesman of a far higher order than any other then living in England. But Stephen had never desired to be a leader in secular affairs; and he seems to have come home in 1221 resolved to take as little direct share in politics as possible. His one recorded public act, for more than two years after his return, was the holding, at Oseney in April, 12221222, of a great Church council[912] for the settlement of ecclesiastical discipline and administration on the basis of a set of canons which he had drawn up and on which the law of the Church of England is grounded to this day. When he did intervene in temporal matters, his character, even more than his office, gave to his intervention a special importance which all parties seem to have felt and acknowledged. The Bishop of Winchester’s position was wholly different. “Peter des Roches was as hard as a rock,” said the monks of his cathedral chapter;[913] which seems to imply at any rate that his conduct as a bishop did not err on the side of neglect or laxity in matters of order and discipline. His material benefactions to his church, and the diligence and ability with which he managed the temporal concerns of his see, were indisputable; and there is nothing to indicate that he failed in any of his episcopal duties. But Peter was ambitious of exercising his talents in a wider field than that of diocesan administration; and his talents were great enough to justify his ambition. After his death Matthew Paris declared that “the whole council of the realm of England, royal as well as ecclesiastical, had suffered an irreparable loss” in losing him.[914] Under Pandulf he and Hubert had worked together almost as equals; but before the end of the year 1221 Peter found himself Hubert’s subordinate, and found, too, that his chance of regaining at a future time his former influence in matters of state was diminishing day by day; for though the King’s ex-tutor retained his seat in the Council, the King had virtually become Hubert’s pupil instead of his.
There was only one possible means of altering this state of things: to put Henry into possession, if not of full regal powers, at least of some voice in the government of his own realm, something like a decisive vote in his own Council. If this were done, the Justiciar’s supremacy would become dependent on his personal influence over the King’s mind; and if it were done quickly, while that mind was still young and tender and had not yet had time to take the mould of Hubert’s political teaching, Peter might fairly hope to be more than a match for Hubert. A suggestion that something of this kind should be done seems to have been conveyed to the Pope from England at some time before the middle of April, 1223,[915] and to have been either coupled with, or accompanied or followed by, a request that the Pope would issue some instructions concerning the royal castles. When the result of these two suggestions appeared, the onus of responsibility for it fell upon Hubert; Hubert, however, in later days declared that the Pope’s action in the matter had been instigated by the Bishop of Winchester, against the interests of Hubert himself. Meanwhile a number of the magnates had for some time past been murmuring among themselves against the Justiciar, resenting his haughty bearing and his (in their opinion) high-handed judicial decisions in cases where they were concerned, and “saying to one another that he stirred up the King’s mind against them, and likewise that he ruled the kingdom by unjust laws.”[916] A step which he took at the beginning of 1223 aggravated their resentment and their distrust. On 30th January orders were issued in the King’s name for the sheriffs to inquire in full county court, by a sworn jury of twelve knights, what customs and liberties King John had in the shires before the war between him and the barons began; to proclaim the result of the inquest in full county court and cause it to be observed throughout the shires; and to send a report of it to the King at Westminster on 8th May.[917] These orders evidently caused some commotion in the shires, for on 9th April they were significantly modified; the King “by the advice of his faithful men” issued other letters whereby the sheriffs were bidden not to proclaim the royal liberties and customs ascertained by means of the inquest or to enforce their observance, “for the present,” and were assured that he “had no will to raise up, or cause to be observed in the realm, any evil customs”; these new letters also were to be read in full shire-court; and the date for the return of the inquest was postponed to 25th June.[918]
By that time some important letters had probably arrived from Rome. On 13th April the Pope had written four letters for England: one addressed jointly to the Bishop of Winchester, the Justiciar, and William Brewer (a well known judge, who seems to have ranked next to Hubert on the Bench); one to the Earl of Chester; one to the vice-chancellor, Ralf de Neville; and one to “the earls, barons, and other faithful subjects” of the English King. In the first of these letters Honorius, having, as he said, heard and rejoiced to hear that Henry, though still a boy in years, was already so much of a man in understanding that he “ought no longer to be debarred from disposing usefully and prudently of his realm and its affairs,” laid his commands on the three councillors whom he was addressing that they should henceforth give the young King “free and unfettered disposal of his kingdom, resign to him without any difficulty the lands and castles of his which they held in wardenship, and procure a like resignation of all Crown lands and castles similarly held by other persons.”[919] The other three letters began by informing their recipients of the orders issued in the first, as to giving Henry the disposal of his realm; after this the letter to Earl Ranulf conveyed to him individually the same command with regard to his wardenships which in the first letter had been given to its three joint addressees respecting theirs: the third letter bade the vice-chancellor, as custodian of the royal seal, use it henceforth according to the King’s good pleasure and in obedience to him only, and permit no more letters to be sealed with it save at his desire; while in the fourth letter the earls, barons, and other liegemen were bidden “henceforth to obey the king humbly and devotedly,” and support him “faithfully and firmly against any who might presume to go contrary to him,” and they were further warned that in the event of their disobedience to these injunctions they “might justly fear a sentence of excommunication.”[920]
Honorius thus conferred upon his royal ward the full powers of legal age with respect to the government of his realm in general, and to two things in particular: the custody of royal castles and demesne lands, and the issue of royal letters under the great seal. This definition implied that in some other respects Henry was still to be accounted a minor. Accordingly, the Dunstable annalist tells us that in a great council held in London after the return of the King and the Justiciar from Wales, “it was provided by order of the Pope and assent of the barons, and the provision was published, that the King should have legal age so far as concerns the free disposition of his castles and lands and wardenships, but not so that any one could maintain his right through it in a court of law.”[921] Thus Henry was still precluded from making grants in perpetuity.[922]
Shortly after these proceedings in London, two barons of high standing and approved fidelity to the King, Walter de Lacy and Ralf Musard, were called to the court, “and when they got there they were not allowed to withdraw till they had assigned to the Justiciar the castles which they held in custody.”[923] Walter de Lacy was hereditary sheriff of Herefordshire and constable of Hereford castle; Ralf Musard was sheriff of Gloucestershire and constable of Gloucester castle. For what purpose or on what grounds the assignation of these two important border fortresses to Hubert was required, we are not told.[924] A considerable party among the barons regarded the proceedings against Lacy and Musard as a flagrant act of injustice and an unwarrantable assumption of power on the part of Hubert. The three men of chief importance among these malcontents, Earls Ranulf of Chester, Gilbert of Gloucester, and William of Aumale, at once resolved to appeal to the young King in person “and show him the malice of the Justiciar,”[925] and, no doubt, urge him to exert his newly acquired right of independent action to put the usurper down. Hubert, however, prevented their design by inducing the King to go with him to the west of England—which, according to Falkes, he did by making the lad believe that the three Earls were plotting to seize him and hold him prisoner—and shut himself up with him in Gloucester castle,[926] where Hubert was now practically master. Thence he sent a message to the Earls in the King’s name forbidding them to approach him.[927] They, meanwhile, had been joined by Falkes de Bréauté, Brian de Lisle, Robert de Vipont, John de Lacy, Peter de Maulay, Philip Marc, Engelard de Cigogné, William de Cantelupe and his son, “and many others.”[928] In their fury they made an attempt to surprise the Tower of London. The attempt failed;[929] possibly its real purpose was only to alarm the Justiciar and bring him and the King back to the capital. On 28th November Henry and Hubert were in London again.[930] Their return may have been hastened by the tidings from thence; but it was probably required chiefly for the publication of some further letters from Rome.