In the middle of January 1205 John called the bishops and barons of England to a council in London.[455] His nominal reason for so doing was that he feared Philip might attempt an invasion of England, and desired to concert measures for its defence; but it is clear that what he really dreaded and sought to guard against was not invasion, but treason. The precautions which he induced the council to support him in taking against the imaginary danger were, if insufficient to save him from the real one, at least as good a safeguard as could be contrived against it at the moment. The oath of fealty to the king was taken anew by all present, and afterwards re-administered throughout the country. “It was also decreed that, for the general defence of the realm and for the preservation of peace, a commune should be made throughout the kingdom, and that all men, from the greatest to the least, who were over twelve years of age, should swear to keep it firmly.” The ordinance to which they swore established constables in every shire; and in every hundred, city, and group of lesser townships, subordinate constables who were to lead the men of their respective “communes” to the muster whenever they were summoned by the chief constables, whose orders these local levies were to obey “for the defence of the realm and the preservation of peace against foreigners or against any other disturbers of the same”; and whosoever should neglect the summons was to be held guilty of high treason.[456] At the beginning of February John issued letters patent to the bailiffs of the east and south coast, giving orders that no ship or boat should be allowed to issue from or pass by the harbours under their jurisdiction, unless by special licence from him.[457] Besides the obvious purpose of hindering treasonable communications with his enemies on the continent, this order had probably another object; the vessels thus detained were most likely appropriated to the king’s service and made to form part of a fleet which he was gathering from various quarters[458] throughout the next two months. The want of confidence between king and barons was openly revealed in a council at Oxford, March 27 to 29; the barons made oath to John “that they would render him due obedience,” but John was first “compelled to swear that he would by their counsel maintain the rights of the kingdom inviolate, to the utmost of his power.”[459] On Palm Sunday, April 3, John issued letters patent from Winchester, ordering that in all the shires of England every nine knights should “find” a tenth, and that the knights thus provided should come to meet him in London three weeks after Easter (that is, on May 1), “ready to go in his service where he should bid them, and to be in his service in defence of the realm as much as might be needful.”[460] The muster seems, however, to have been postponed, possibly to await the result of an attempt which the king had been making in the field of diplomacy, under somewhat peculiar circumstances.
Of all John’s ministers, the one whom he most disliked and mistrusted was the one whose constitutional position made him absolutely irremoveable from the royal counsels—the archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter. That John’s suspicions of Hubert’s loyalty were unjust there can be no doubt; but there are not wanting indications that Hubert, whose temper was extremely masterful, and who for the six years preceding John’s accession to the throne had governed England for Richard practically at his own sole discretion, was inclined to press his views of policy upon Richard’s younger brother in a fashion more dictatorial than deferential, and to magnify his own office as chief adviser of the Crown, and his personal capabilities as a statesman and a diplomatist, with more emphasis than tact. Hubert had on several occasions tried to act as mediator between John and Philip, and his mediation had failed. In Lent 1205 John, while pushing on his military preparations in England, resolved to set on foot a new diplomatic negotiation with France which seems to have had a twofold object—first, to keep Philip occupied so as to hinder him, at least for a short time, from proceeding against the few fortresses north of the Dordogne which still held out for their Angevin lord;[461] and secondly, to make game of the archbishop of Canterbury. This latter object was to be attained by keeping the project a secret from Hubert, and carrying on the negotiations not only without his assistance or advice, but even without his knowledge. The envoys whom John selected for this mission were his vice-chancellor, Hugh of Wells, and Earl William the Marshal. Apparently it was given out that their journey to France was on business of their own; an assertion which in the Marshal’s case was true, though not the whole truth. When John had communicated to them his private instructions, William spoke: “Now, sire, listen to me. I am not sure of obtaining peace; and you see that my term of truce for my Norman land is nearly expired. Unless I do homage for it to the French king, I shall lose it; for I see no hope of recovering it otherwise. What am I to do?” “Save it for my service by doing the homage,” answered John. “I know you are too loyal to withdraw your heart’s homage from me, come what may, and that the more you possess to serve me with, the better will be your service.”[462] He seems to have given—though scarcely with equal willingness—a like permission to some of his other vassals who were in the same plight as the Marshal,[463] and who may perhaps have been allowed to accompany the latter partly for the sake of still further obscuring the main object of his mission.
The Marshal and the vice-chancellor found the French king at Compiègne, and communicated to him their errand from John. Philip seemed disposed to entertain John’s proposals—we are not told what they were—and promised to give them an answer a week later at Anet.[464] Meanwhile he reminded the Marshal that the time of their “covenant” was nearly up, adding, “You may find it the worse for you if you do not at once do me homage.” The Marshal assented and performed the homage then and there, apparently regarding it as a mere form necessary for the redemption of his plighted word, but destined to be rendered void by the peace which he trusted to conclude between the two sovereigns in a few days. By this time, however, Archbishop Hubert had discovered the fact of the secret negotiations, and was extremely wroth that the king should have “plotted such a plot” without consulting him. He therefore sent a certain Ralf of Ardenne to tell the count of Boulogne that the two English envoys had no power to conclude a treaty. Boulogne at once communicated this information to Philip, and when the meeting at Anet took place, the taunt was flung in the Marshal’s face, and the negotiations were broken off. Ralf of Ardenne had already hurried back to England and told John that the Marshal had done homage and fealty to the French king and made alliance with the latter against his own sovereign. When the unlucky envoys came home, they met with a sorry greeting. John at once charged the Marshal with having, “against him and for his damage,” sworn allegiance to his enemy of France. The Marshal denied the charge, and asserted that he had done only what John had given him leave to do. On this John, in his rage, practically denied his own words, and declared that “his barons and his men” should judge between him and the Marshal—a judgement which William retorted that he was quite ready to face.[465]
The fleet and the host were finally summoned to assemble at Portsmouth at Whitsuntide.[466] The land forces had probably received some increase by means of an order issued by the king on April 15 that, “for the good of his mother’s soul,” all prisoners, except those charged with treason, should be set at liberty.[467] No doubt every prisoner capable of bearing arms was, as he issued from confinement, made to take the oath of allegiance and enrolled for military service under the constable of his district. On the Tuesday in Whitsun week (May 31) John arrived at Porchester; there he stayed ten days, on the last five of which he made daily excursions to Portsmouth,[468] probably to watch the gathering of the fleet in its harbour.
It is doubtful how far the troops were aware of the king’s real purpose in calling them together. The whole country was in a state of excitement, hourly expecting an invasion. It was reported that the duke of Louvain, in return for the French king’s good offices in recovering for him from the count of Boulogne the share of the revenues of the latter county to which he was entitled in right of his wife, had done homage to Philip, and that the duke and the count had sworn in Philip’s presence to be ready, each at the other’s call, to proceed to England with all their forces and reclaim from John at the sword’s point the English lands of which their wives—the grand-daughters of King Stephen and Maud of Boulogne—had been disinherited by Henry II.; whereupon Philip had sworn that he himself would follow them with his host within a month after their landing in England.[469] John, in calling his people to arms, seems to have purposely expressed the object of the armament in general terms—“for the defence of the realm”—“for the king’s service”[470]; terms which did not necessarily imply that he wanted his men to do anything more than stand on the defensive, ready to meet the expected invasion. He probably suspected that had he at the outset demanded more than this, he would have met with a flat refusal in certain quarters; and the issue proved the suspicion to be correct. The rank and file of the host, indeed, were ready and willing not only for defence but for defiance, eager to carry the war into the enemy’s country before the enemy could set foot in their own. To them John, at this stage of his career, was still the “king of the English,” who had lost his continental possessions through the wiles of his foreign enemies and the disloyalty of his “French” subjects, and whom they, his faithful Englishmen, would gladly help to win those possessions back again. The heads of the baronage, however, and some at least of the innermost circle of the royal councillors, were of another mind. Those of the greater barons who had deserted or betrayed him in Normandy probably saw, or thought they saw, the possibility of serving two masters, one for their continental lands and the other for their English lands, and of profiting by this division of service to make themselves practically independent of both masters alike. This, indeed, was not a motive which could sway such a noble soul as William the Marshal; nor could it influence Hubert Walter, to whom the continuance or the severance of the connexion between England and the rest of the Angevin dominions made, either as an individual or as archbishop, no difference at all. Yet when the critical moment came, these two men, who a few weeks before had been in political as well as personal opposition to each other, forgot their rivalry and united all their influence to defeat the king’s project of an expedition over sea.
On one of those days of waiting at Porchester, while the host was gradually assembling, John, seated on the shore, with his court around him, called the Marshal to his presence and renewed his demand for “judgement” on the question of William’s alleged treason. William quietly repeated his former answer, that he had only acted upon the king’s own orders. “I deny it,” again said John. “You will gain nothing in the end; but I will bide my time; and meanwhile I will have you come with me to Poitou and fight for the recovery of my heritage against the king of France, to whom you have done homage.” The Marshal remonstrated; he could not fight against a man to whom he had done homage. On this John declared his treason to be manifest, and appealed to the judgement of the barons present. William faced them boldly, pointed to his own forehead, and said: “Sirs, look at me, for, by my faith! I am this day an example for you all. You hear what the king says; and what he proposes to do to me, that, and more also, will he do to every one of you, if he can get the upper hand.” The enraged king at these words called for instant judgement upon the speaker; but the barons “looked at each other and drew back.” “By God’s teeth!” swore John, “I see plainly that not one of my barons is with me in this; I must take counsel with my bachelors about this matter which is beginning to look so ugly”; and he withdrew to another place. The barons seemingly followed him, as did the “bachelors,” and the Marshal was left alone, save for two personal followers of his own. The bachelors as a body, when John appealed to them, gave it as their opinion that there could be no essoign for failing to serve the king on such an occasion as the present; but one of them, named Baldwin, added that there was in the whole assembly no man worthy to judge such a good knight as the Marshal, nor bold enough to undertake the proof (by ordeal of battle) of the charge brought against him by the king; and Baldwin’s remark “was pleasing to many.” Finding that neither baron nor knight would challenge the Marshal for him, John ended the scene by going to dinner; and after some further ineffectual endeavours to obtain a champion he let the matter drop, and began once more to treat the Marshal with civility, if not cordiality.[471]
By June 9 the tale of men and ships was complete. It was a splendid array; never before, folk said, had there come together a greater host of brave fighting men, “all ready and willing to go with the king over sea,” nor had there ever been assembled in any English harbour so large a number of ships equipped for the crossing.[472] To each of the leaders of the host was assigned, by the king’s orders, a vessel or a number of vessels sufficient for the transport of his following. Each vessel had received her lading of arms and provisions, and only the troops remained to be embarked, when the archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl Marshal went to the king and “used every possible argument to dissuade him from crossing. They represented what great mischief might arise from his going over sea;—how perilous it would be for him to thrust himself among so many battalions of enemies, when he had no safe place of refuge in the transmarine lands;—how the French king, being now master of nearly all his territories, could bring against him a force far outnumbering the English host;—how great was the danger of putting himself into the hands of the false and fickle Poitevins, whose wont was to be always plotting some treachery against their lords;—how the count of Boulogne and his confederates would speedily invade England if they heard that its chief men and its brave army were away;—and how it was much to be feared that, while endeavouring to regain his lost dominions, he might lose those which remained to him, especially as he had no heir whom he could leave behind him to take up the reins of government in case any misfortune should befall his own person in the lands beyond the sea. And when he could not be moved by these and other like arguments, they (the archbishop and the Marshal) fell down before him and clasped his knees to restrain him from leaving them, declaring that of a surety, if he would not yield to their prayers, they would detain him by force, lest by his departure the whole kingdom should be brought to confusion.” Such opposition as this, from two such men, implied a great deal more than is expressed in their words as reported by Ralph of Coggeshall. John saw at once that his six months of elaborate preparation had been wasted, and that his hopes were ruined. “Weeping and crying” with shame and grief, he passionately demanded what, then, did the archbishop advise as best to be done for the realm and for the king’s honour, as well as for the supporters who were looking for him to join them beyond the sea? After some consultation, his counsellors agreed that a force of picked knights should be sent, under the command of some English noble, to the help of John’s continental friends. All the rest of the host were bidden to return to their homes.
Bitter was the disappointment and vehement the indignation of the troops, especially the sailors, and loud and deep were the curses which they hurled at the ministers whose “detestable counsel” had thwarted the aspirations and shattered the hopes of king and people alike.[473] The ministers hurried the unwilling king away to Winchester (June 11); but next day he made his way back to Portsmouth, went on board a ship with a few comrades, and crossed into the Isle of Wight, probably hoping that when he was found to have actually set forth, the sailors and the troops would compel the barons to follow, or intending to throw himself alone, if need were, upon the honour of his Aquitanian adherents. At the end of two days, however, his companions persuaded him to abandon this desperate venture, and on June 15 he landed at Studland near Wareham.[474] His first act on landing was to claim “an infinite sum of money” from the earls, barons, prelates and knights, on the ground that they “had refused to follow him over sea for the recovery of his lost heritage.”[475] In so far as this exaction fell upon the shire-levies and the country knights, it was unjust, for the majority of these were clearly in sympathy with the king, and as eager for the expedition as he was himself. But it was impossible for him, in the actual circumstances, to distinguish between the willing and the unwilling; and there can be little doubt that so far as the barons were concerned, his assertion was practically correct. The gathering of the mightiest armament that had ever been seen in England had ended, not in a vigorous effort to regain the lost dominions of England’s sovereign, but in the despatch of a handful of knights under the earl of Salisbury to reinforce the garrison of La Rochelle.[476] That it had so ended was directly owing to the action of the primate and the Marshal. But it would obviously have been impossible for two men, however influential, to prevail against the king, if his policy had been supported by the whole body of the baronage on the spot and in arms. The most probable explanation of the matter is that Hubert and William knew the majority of the barons to be, at best, half-hearted in the cause. Whether, in a military and political point of view, the moment was really favourable or unfavourable for the undertaking which John contemplated and from which they shrank, is a question on which speculation is useless. All we can say is that if an opportunity was thrown away, the responsibility for its rejection does not lie upon John.
John’s own feeling about the scene at Portsmouth came out, brutally indeed, but very naturally, in the exclamation with which he received the tidings of Archbishop Hubert’s death on July 13: “Now for the first time I am King of England!”[477] He took up afresh the plan which Hubert had foiled. Ten months, indeed, had to pass before he could bring his forces together again; but when at last “a great host” gathered at Portsmouth once more, ready to sail on Whitsun Eve {May 27}, 1206,[478] not a voice was raised to oppose its embarkation. The year had passed without disturbance in England; nothing had been seen, nothing further had even been heard, of the dreaded Flemish and French invasion. But on the other side of the sea the delay had told. The fall of Loches, shortly after Easter 1205,[479] had been followed on June 23—scarcely a fortnight after the break-up of the English muster—by that of Chinon,[480] and this again by the submission of the viscount of Thouars to the French conqueror.[481] Thus the last foothold of the Angevins in Touraine and on the northern frontier of Poitou were lost. There remained to John only two fortresses on the northern border of Poitou—Niort[482] and La Rochelle, the “fair city of the waters,” whose natural position made it almost impregnable even in those days, whither John had twice sent reinforcements,[483] and whose harbour offered a safe and commodious landing-place for him and his troops.
On June 7 John arrived at La Rochelle,[484] and met with an eager welcome; the vassals of the duchy of Aquitaine flocked to the standard of Eleanor’s heir. Six days after his landing he could venture as far into Poitou as the abbey of St. Maixent, half-way between Niort and Poitiers. The Poitevin counts had for centuries been benefactors to the abbey, and their descendant was no doubt sure of a welcome within its walls. He made, however, no further advance northward; it was needful, before doing so, to be quite sure of his footing in the south. From St. Maixent he went back to Niort, and thence southward through Saintonge[485] into Gascony. Here there was known to be a hostile party whose leaders had congregated in the castle of Montauban, a mighty fortress which Charles the Great was said to have besieged for seven years in vain.[486] In the middle of July, John formed the siege of Montauban, and then himself withdrew to Bourg-sur-Mer, a little seaport at the mouth of the Garonne, while his engines hurled their missiles against the fortress, till on the fifteenth day a sufficient breach was made, when “the English soldiery, who are specially admirable in this work, rushed to scale the walls, and to give and receive intolerable blows. At last the Englishmen prevailed, the besieged gave way, and the castle was taken.” John had probably come back to direct in person the assault thus successfully made by his brave “Englishmen,” for he was at Montauban on the day of its capture, August 1.[487] With it there fell into his hands, besides horses and arms and countless other spoil, a number of prisoners of such importance that we are told he sent a list of their names to his justiciars in England.[488] They evidently included all the Gascon barons whose hostility he had had reason to fear; and with them in his power, he could turn his back upon the south without further anxiety.
By August 21 John was back at Niort; after spending a week there, he proceeded to Montmorillon, on the borders of Poitou and Berry.[489] At this critical moment Almeric of Thouars reverted to his old allegiance.[490] John at once struck right across Poitou to Clisson,[491] on the borders of Anjou and Britanny; Almeric joined him either there or on the way thither, and they marched together into Anjou. A chronicler writing in the abbey of S. Aubin at Angers, which had always been under the special patronage and protection of John’s ancestors, tells how “when the king came to the river Loire, he found no boats for crossing. Therefore, on the Wednesday before the Nativity of the Blessed Mary {Sept. 6}, coming to the Port Alaschert, and making the sign of the cross over the water with his hand, he, relying on Divine aid, forded the river with all his host; which is a marvellous thing to tell, and such as was never heard of in our time.” With fire and sword the host fought its way into Angers, and for a whole week the heir of Fulk the Red held his court in the home of his forefathers.[492] He then marched up to Le Lude, on the border of Maine. On September 20 he was at Angers again, but left it next day.[493] On the two following days he was at Coudray, a few miles south of Saumur; there, probably, he and Almeric divided their forces, Almeric moving westward through his own land to attack Britanny,[494] while John seems to have gone southward again.[495] On October 3 he was at Thouars, where he stayed a week,[496] perhaps to await Almeric’s return.
Meanwhile, however, Philip Augustus had assembled the host of France, and led it as far as the Poitevin border.[497] With Philip’s personal appearance on the scene of action, John knew that his own successes were at an end. Neither Almeric of Thouars, nor the many barons in the English host who had taken the oath of allegiance to Philip, would fight against that monarch in person. While John went on to secure his retreat over sea by another visit to Niort and La Rochelle,[498] therefore, negotiations were set on foot; and when he came back to Thouars once more, on October 26, it was to proclaim a truce which had been made between himself and Philip, to last from October 13 for two years. By its terms each sovereign was to retain during that period the homage and services of all those who had attached themselves to him during the recent war; and any disputes which might arise about the allegiance of such persons were to be decided by the judgement of four barons named, two to represent each of the kings.[499] Trade, and intercourse of every kind, between the dominions of John and Philip was to be free, save that no man, unless he were either a priest or a “known merchant,” might go to the court of either without special licence, if he were a subject of the other. Thirteen sureties swore to the truce on behalf of John, and thirteen on behalf of Philip, who further undertook that it should be kept by four other barons whose oaths John had wished to have on his side, but had apparently been unable to obtain.[500] Philip’s sureties were headed by “the count of Britanny,” a title which can only represent Constance’s widower, Guy of Thouars, and thus shows that Arthur’s death was now, at any rate, regarded as certain. The first of John’s sureties was Guy’s brother, Almeric, the viscount of Thouars, whose action had for several years past generally turned the scale between the rival sovereigns in Poitou, and who by the terms of the truce was pledged to his present allegiance for the next two years at least. The other sureties on both sides were nearly all of them barons of Aquitaine;[501] those of the Angevin counties seem for the most part to have stood aloof. It is clear, however, that John had secured a firm hold on the southern provinces, and to a considerable extent regained a hold upon Poitou. On the whole, therefore, his expedition had been successful. The best proof of its success lies in Philip’s readiness to accept such a truce, without making any attempt to regain the ground which he had lost in Poitou, though he was actually in the land with an army at his back. As for John, he was going home to his island realm to prepare for a fight of another kind, and with an adversary of a character very different from that of Philip Augustus.