The Magnificent Century

by Thomas B. Costain

  “Old traitor!” cried the King, turning on his justiciar. He drew his sword and rushed at Hubert, swearing that he would have his blood.

  The Earl of Chester, who was one of the few leaders with something to gain if Normandy came back to the English Crown and who therefore favored intervention, was wise enough in spite of that to interfere. He placed himself between the two men and persuaded the King that Hubert was not to blame. Henry cooled down but only after an agreement had been reached, to which all his ministers, including the justiciar, subscribed, that a more powerful thrust would be organized in the spring. Hubert’s consent was wrung from him because he now saw the danger of opposing the wishes of the King. He was convinced in his own mind, however, that a thrust at France could be nothing but a costly failure. England lacked everything for a successful war against the more powerful nation across the Channel, men, money, arms, ships, the will to fight.

  The invasion took place with great pomp and circumstance. A large army had been gathered and there were adequate supplies. In May 1230 the King set sail with a fleet of 230 vessels, a truly magnificent armada. The treasury had been depleted, but there was no thought of this in the mind of the proud young monarch when he landed at St. Malo and was given a wildly enthusiastic welcome. It was a glittering and magnificent start. All the great nobles of England were with him, their banners making a brave show when elevated over the walls of St. Malo. Henry himself had come ashore like a conqueror, decked out in shining armor and looking very handsome in a mantle of white silk.

  But the results fell dismally short of expectations. The rising in support of the English King did not take place except in Brittany, where Peter of Dreux was irrevocably committed to the cause. The appearance of a foreign army on French soil had cooled the resolution of the French nobility. Some of them broke their promises by rushing to arms under the banners of Louis.

  Henry rode at the head of his troops through Poitou. He captured one small castle in the Gironde and made a triumphal entry into Bordeaux. The French paid him the sorry compliment of ignoring him. A thrust into French territory would have been met sharply and decisively, but as long as the dilettante soldier was content to parade through the safe reaches of the territory which still remained under English control, Blanche of Castile was content to leave him to his own devices.

  Henry became ill with dysentery and decided that he had done as much as could be expected of him. Leaving the eldest son of the Good Knight, who had become marshal in his father’s stead, to command the forces which were being left behind, he sailed back to England in October. The most inglorious of campaigns had come to an absurd end.

  If Henry’s pride smarted from his lack of success, he had a ready excuse to offer himself. He had received no more than halfhearted support. His knights had spent their time drinking and wenching and had shown no sign of honest martial ardor. An evil influence had been at work to account for this pusillanimous attitude. The King knew the answer to that because there were plenty to whisper it in his ear: Hubert de Burgh.

  2

  Peter des Roches returned to England late in 1231, and the King went to Winchester as his guest at Christmas. The dismissal of Hubert de Burgh was decided on during the visit.

  Henry was as variable as a weathercock in his likes and dislikes, and the suave bishop had no difficulty in winning him back. The latter was full of the stimulating talk for which the young King hungered, news of the capitals of the world, what was being said in Paris and Rome and the East, the state of affairs in Poitou and Gascony, which the bishop had visited, the great movements beginning in all the arts. Henry succumbed again to the charm of the polished churchman, and it became very easy to convince him that all the difficulties under which he had been laboring, most particularly his poverty, was the fault of Hubert de Burgh. The wars in Wales, which had cost the Crown so much and had been so ineffective, had been controlled by lukewarm hands. The French campaign had been a failure for the same reason. Get rid of the incubus, urged the bishop. Make a clean sweep of the leeches and fortune hunters brought in by Hubert and now serving him as master. Henry listened eagerly and agreed.

  Not sufficient has been said about Peter des Roches to give an adequate picture of this man who was plotting to rule England. He was in every respect remarkable. It was not because he had felt called to a spiritual life that he had taken holy orders, but because he was realistic enough to see that the path to preferment led through churchly portals. A fiercely combative man, he was a soldier rather than a priest, and at various stages of his career he had shown himself not only an able leader of troops but a most capable military engineer; this, in addition to his more useful gifts as a diplomat and administrator. With all his brilliant parts, however, he failed of greatness, and this was due to his lack of integrity. Back of his suavity and charm, he was venal, grasping, devious, and unscrupulous. There was not a shred of generosity or inner grace in him.

  History supplies no picture of him and no hint of his outward guise. So much is known of the manner of man he was, however, that the imagination may be allowed some latitude in picturing him, this first-class villain who held the center of the stage through the first scenes of Henry’s reign. Having lived the life of a soldier and traveler and not the sedentary existence of a churchman, he would be lean and hard rather than paunchy and soft. Discipline and hardship make the soldier clean of body and habit, so it may be assumed that Peter of Winchester had acquired this addiction to a well-scrubbed austerity of body, a claim which could not be made for some high-ranking figures in the Church, even the saintly Edmund of Abingdon being somewhat careless in his ablutions if not actually averse to water. It is certain that Peter had not fallen into the ways of lavishness in dress, being both too intelligent for such display and too well versed in the ways of the world. Still, his vestments would be of the cleanest and finest of linen; the orphreys he wore (bands of velvet down the front of the priestly cope) would be of modest black and in the best condition; the ring on his thumb (common men called this a thumbstall, after the sheath of the tailors, or even a poucer) would be set with a handsome and costly stone.

  The plot against Hubert de Burgh was carefully prepared before any outward moves were made. Peter des Bivaux was appointed treasurer of the royal household and was confirmed in that position for life. He was given custody of the King’s personal seal and his authority was quietly broadened. Hubert’s own right-hand man, Stephen Segrave, was drawn into the plot and was found quite willing to betray the master who had made him. Segrave began to work secretly for the enemies of the justiciar, bringing to them proofs of maladministration and the diversion of funds. They were all ready to proceed when something happened to put into their hands the kind of weapon which they could use best.

  In December 1231 a band of masked men made an attack on a group of foreign churchmen as they emerged from an ecclesiastical council at St. Albans. It was completely unexpected, and there was much shouting and protestation and a hurried scramble back within the church portals. One foreign churchman, an Italian named Censius, failed to reach shelter, however, and was carried off a prisoner. He was not released until he had paid a ransom to his captors.

  The reason for the raid was soon made clear. A band of men, mostly from the North and calling themselves the Brotherhood, had been organized to drive the Italian holders of benefices out of the country. They proceeded to ride about at night, masked and disguised, and won the immediate approval and support of people everywhere. The willingness of the populace to applaud was easily understood; the hatred of the interlopers who waxed fat on English livings had been growing more intense all the time and, as an additional reason, the raiders carried letters which indicated they had the sanction of the Crown.

  The attacks on foreigners began to take on a nationwide character. It developed later that the original Brotherhood had consisted of no more than eighty members, most of them audacious young men under the leadership of one Robert Tweng, a bachelor knight from Yorkshire
who had assumed for the purpose the name William Wither. It was soon apparent that raids were being carried out by men who did not belong to Tweng’s band, most of them men of ill will who took advantage of the situation to ride out masked and who cloaked their activities under the pretense of belonging to William Wither and his group. Italians with prebends or other profitable benefices who had been rash enough to take up residence in the country which paid them their fat yearly fees were visited at night and robbed. The grain was taken from their barns and distributed to the poor, or kept for the personal use of the raiders as the case might be. Some Italians went into hiding and some fled overseas. Papal messengers were waylaid and relieved of all papers to prevent bans of excommunication from being brought in and issued. It became certain that all the incidents reported could not have been the work of the original band.

  The bishops held a council in February 1232 and excommunicated everyone connected with the depredations. This does not seem to have had any effect. At any rate, the raids went on.

  Word reached Rome in June. Gentle Honorius was dead and had been succeeded by Ugolino of the counts of Segni, a relation of Innocent III, under the name of Gregory IX. The new Pontiff was a man of great firmness of character and of very great learning, although he failed to attain in the pontificate the full stature of his illustrious relative. Being embroiled with Frederick II of Germany at the time, and finding that versatile and violent monarch as much as he could handle, Gregory does not seem to have taken the situation in England with any particular seriousness. The note he sent to Henry was, at any rate, surprisingly mild. He rebuked the King for allowing such things to happen and he chided the Church in England. Naturally, of course, he commanded the excommunication of all whose part in the raids had been proven, but adding that they should be sent to Rome for his absolution. The impression is left that Gregory entertained a secret suspicion that the Brotherhood had some right to voice their dissent with conditions in this illegal but forthright way.

  By this time the truth was out in England. It had been discovered how small the original Brotherhood had been and the identity of the leader had been revealed. Robert Tweng was excommunicated and then packed off to Rome. The Pope, discovering that the young knight’s actions were due to his pique over the giving of a church, to which he held the right of presentation, to an alien without his consent, treated the culprit most kindly. Tweng was not only absolved but was allowed to continue holding the right of presentation.

  In England the activities of the Brotherhood had ceased and masked men no longer rode the highways by night. The investigation had been dropped, however, and the whole nation knew the reason. Preliminary inquiries had uncovered the fact that many prominent men both in Church and State had either been involved personally or had given the ringleaders the sanction of support; so many, in fact, that the crown officers shied away at once and reported the case closed.

  Neither the actual participants nor the men of prominent rank who had lent support to the movement paid any form of penalty. Punishment was reserved for the one man mentioned who unquestionably was innocent. It had been known from the start that the documents of royal sanction were forged, and the whisper had gone out that Hubert de Burgh had either supplied these false credentials or had winked at their use. The whisper originated without a doubt in the fertile brain of Peter des Roches, who could not fail to see at once the splendid possibilities in what was happening. It was inconceivable that Hubert de Burgh could have been guilty of such an absurd mistake. He had earned the name of a stern and relentless upholder of the law and, if he had seemed lax in following up its prosecution of the Brotherhood, it undoubtedly was because he also knew the prominence of the men involved. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain through the activities of Tweng and the Brotherhood.

  When the investigation was dropped, however, it was given out that the involvement of the justiciar in the plot had been established.

  3

  On August 8, while the King was at Shrewsbury, the blow fell. Hubert was commanded to surrender all the royal castles in his possession to Stephen Segrave, and the latter was appointed chief justiciar in his place. Henry, who tended to swing fiercely from one extreme to another, was no longer content to dismiss his minister and let matters rest; he was determined to ruin Hubert as well. On August 13 a second order was issued which took away all the personal possessions of the latter. The royal offices at Westminster were swept clean of Burgh men. Stephen Segrave and one Geoffrey of Crowcomb, the steward of the royal household, went to work on the papers which had been seized.

  Hubert de Burgh was not surprised. He bad been realizing for some time that forces were working to bring about his dismissal from office. He was dismayed, however, at the unexpected ferocity of the attack. At first he did nothing, sitting disconsolate in the Tower. This inertia changed to active consternation when he found that London had turned bitterly and turbulently against him. From the narrow windows of the White Tower he looked down on streets packed with angry, jeering people, on bonfires blazing in open spaces, on torches carried exultantly to celebrate his fall.

  Hubert had made the grievous mistake of offending London. Some years before there had been an occasion when a group of apprentices had set up a quintain outside the walls of the city. A quintain was a wooden target at which knights practiced tilting in preparation for the time when they would face live opponents in the lists. The apprentices were trying their skill with homemade lances when some youths of the court happened to see them. Taking umbrage at this open aping of their betters, the scions of gentility returned in a body to teach the sons of common men a lesson. In the melee which followed the young courtiers got the worst of it and were driven off with broken heads and torn clothing. The incident grew into a riot when the court elected to punish the youth of London. It was asserted that one bold citizen named Constantine Fitz-Arnulf incited the townspeople to destruction of property by raising the French battle cry of “Mont joy and St. Denis!” an indication that London sympathies had been with Louis of France and not Henry. Fitz-Arnulf was arrested and brought before Hubert de Burgh.

  Hubert had always been a stern administrator of the law, quick to punish, quick to call on the services of the executioner. He ordered that Fitz-Arnulf be hanged without giving him the privilege of trial, and the sentence was carried out immediately. Not content with this, he punished a number of other ringleaders by having their feet cut off.

  London had never forgotten. From that time forward the head of the state had encountered in the great city on the Thames a steady and undeviating opposition, an unceasing dislike. Hubert de Burgh was a brave man, but he was unnerved now when he saw below the tossing of angry torches and realized, for the first time fully, that any man who incurred the enmity of London would come to rue it someday. The trained bands of the citadel of wool had forgotten his heroic war record and remembered only the body of Constantine Fitz-Arnulf dangling on a gibbet. They thought no longer of the sea battle off Sandwich but recalled the arbitrary way in which he had punished Londoners for a disturbance forced upon them by the young gentry of the court.

  The deposed minister decided that it would be wise to get away from London and he departed stealthily at night. He made his way to Merton Priory, a famous institution behind a high triangular wall where Thomas à Becket and many other great men had gone to school, and settled down to the urgent task of preparing his defense. There was little time for this, a hearing having been set for September 14 and the demand made on him that he be prepared to account for all funds which had passed through his hands during his long term in office.

  All England was now in a ferment. The nobility shared the jubilation of the Londoners and clamored for the punishment of the upstart. The common men of the kingdom, whose opinions in this crisis were of no weight, however, were disturbed and unhappy. They had been dazzled and alienated somewhat by the magnificence of the man during his days of power, but this had not obliterated their memories of his h
eroic stands at Chinon and Dover and the sweep of his sails over the Channel in pursuit of the ships of Eustace the Monk. They were stunned and apprehensive over the dislodgment from the high wall of authority of this first great Humpty Dumpty of humble origin. Did it mean a return to baronial supremacy and the sharp medicine of feudal justice? The common men waited anxiously, certain that Hubert had been their friend, fearful of the consequences of his sudden fall.

  Henry was like an excited boy over his success. Directing the moves from Westminster, he drank in the ugly rumors which were circulating about Hubert and perhaps came to believe them himself, even though he had had a hand in the concocting of them. It was not only being said that the justiciar had looted the treasury and that he had mismanaged the military operations. Darker things were now being openly charged. The fallen minister had removed opponents from his path by the hand of the assassin and the cup of the poisoner. He had administered a lethal dose to stout old William Long-Espée after the return of the latter from abroad. He had encompassed the deaths of William the Marshal, son of the Good Knight, and of Archbishop Richard, who had succeeded Stephen Langton at Canterbury. He had seduced the Princess Margaret and then married her in the hope of succeeding to the throne of Scotland.

  The campaign of calumny went even farther and spread tales of black magic which he had used to gain his ends. It was said that his hold over the King had been the result of evil charms. He had stolen a precious stone from the royal treasury which had the power to render anyone who wore it into battle safe from all harm and had given it to Llewelyn of Wales. The last tidbit was circulated avidly, although no attempt was made to explain why no one else had known of the existence of this magic stone or why Hubert had given it to his most active opponent instead of keeping it for his own use.