Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter
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CHAPTER LIII
AFTER THE BATTLE
No sooner did intelligence that the day was going against the Count dePerche and the Anglo-Norman barons spread through Lincoln thanconsternation prevailed among the women whose kinsmen were connectedwith the army doomed to defeat. Many of them, indeed, left their housesto avoid insult, and, embarking on the Witham in boats, endeavoured toescape with their children and servants, and such valuable property asthey could carry. Events proved that their fears were not unfounded.
In fact, notwithstanding the discipline maintained by Pembroke, and thedesire which he naturally felt to save the country from violence andspoliation, he could not, in the hour of triumph, save Lincoln from thehorrors of war. Flushed with victory and eager for spoil, the royalists,after having assured themselves that their foes were utterly beaten,assumed all the airs of conquerors, and acted as if they had a right toeverything in the shape of plunder on which they could lay hands.
At first the victors contented themselves with rifling the waggons andsumpter-mules containing the baggage of the French and the barons, andfound much booty in the shape of silver vessels and rich furniture ofvarious kinds. But this merely whetted their appetites for booty, and,spreading rapidly over the city, they began to pillage the houses,rushing from place to place with axes and hammers, and breaking openstore-rooms and chests, and seizing upon gold and silver goblets, andjewels, and gold rings, and women’s ornaments, and rich garments.
Nothing, in fact, seems to have come amiss to them that was not too hotor too heavy, and the churches were not respected any more than thehouses. Even the cathedral was not spared. In fact, the clergy ofLincoln, being, like the bishop, stanch partisans of Prince Louis, andunder sentence of excommunication, were not only odious to the king’sfriends, but looked on by the English soldiers as persons whom they, asfaithful sons of the Church, were justified in plundering.
Meantime the women who had embarked on the Witham with their childrenand domestics had not been fortunate in their efforts to escape. Muchtoo eager to leave the scene of carnage to be cautious in the mode ofdoing so, they overloaded the boats to a dangerous degree, and whenfairly afloat they neither knew how to row nor steer. As a consequence,serious evil befel them through the boats getting foul of one another,and by various causes, and many of the fair fugitives went to the bottomof the river with the property which they had been anxious to save, “sothat,” says the chronicler, “there were afterwards found in the river bysearchers goblets of silver and many other articles of value, for theboats had been overloaded, and the women, not knowing how to managethem, all perished.”
At length the riot and pillage came to an end, and the king’s peacehaving been proclaimed through the city, the conquerors ate and drankmerrily in celebrating the victory they had so easily gained againstgreat odds. Ere this, however, everything having been settled, Pembrokeprepared to carry to the king tidings of the great triumph which hadcrowned the efforts of his adherents. Having, therefore, instructed thebarons and knights to return to the fortresses of which they werecastellans, and to carry their prisoners with them, and to keep themsafely in custody till the king’s pleasure was known, the protector,without even dining or taking food, rode off to Stowe to inform youngHenry of the great victory, which made him in reality sovereign ofEngland.
Even next day the consequences began to appear. Early on Sunday morningcouriers reached Stowe with intelligence that Henry de Braybroke and hisgarrison had abandoned Mount Sorrel, and the king sent orders to theSheriff of Nottingham to raze the castle to the ground.
Of all the men of rank who fought in the battle few fell. Indeed, onlytwo are mentioned by name--Richard, surnamed Crocus, and the Count dePerche--one on the winning, the other on the losing side. Richard, whowas Falco’s brave knight, was carried by his companions to Croxton andlaid with all honour in the abbey. The Count de Perche, whosecomrades-in-arms were slain, or taken, or fled, and who, as anexcommunicated man, could not, of course, be laid in consecrated ground,was interred in the orchard of the hospital of St. Giles, founded byBishop Remigius outside the walls of Lincoln as a house of refuge fordecayed priests.
And so ended the battle of Lincoln in a victory of which Pembroke mightwell and justly be proud. It not only overthrew the army on which Louisrelied for success in his enterprise, but it utterly undid all the workwhich he had been doing in England since that June day when he rode intoLondon amidst the cheers of an unreasoning multitude.
As for the feudal magnates who had offered him a crown which was nottheirs to give, and who had done him homage as their sovereign, theywere no longer in a position to aid him, even if they had been soinclined, but captives at the mercy of a king whose father they hadhunted to death, and whose inheritance they had attempted to give to astranger. Besides Robert Fitzwalter and the Anglo-Norman earls andbarons, three hundred knights and a multitude of men holding inferiorrank were prisoners.
Moreover, the spoil was regarded as something marvellous, and theEnglish, remembering the multitudinous articles of value that fell intotheir hands that day as booty, and the ease with which they had obtainedit, though so much the weaker party, were long in the habit of talkingjocularly of that very memorable Saturday in the Whitsuntide of the year1217, and with grim humour describing the battle as “LINCOLN FAIR.”