The Magnificent Century

by Thomas B. Costain

  The castle had seemed amply stocked when the siege began, but a garrison in excess of one thousand men can consume huge quantities of food. Gradually the stores diminished and the Disinherited had to go on short rations until they became weak and thin. Time, the unbeatable weapon, was making itself felt. When the legate finally persuaded the King to save the face of the besieged by holding Parliament in the neighborhood of Kenilworth for the sole purpose of arriving at a peaceful solution, the garrison professed themselves willing to co-operate.

  The Parliament selected a panel of twelve members to discuss the situation. These commissioners finally arrived at a basis on which peace could be made, not only at Kenilworth but throughout the country as well. This measure became known as the Dictum, or Ban, of Kenilworth, and because of its definition of the relationship between the King and his subjects it is worth studying. It provided first that all confiscated lands could be redeemed in whole or in part on payment of fines running as high as five years’ rental in accordance with the degree of culpability established in each individual case. It then went on to “beseech the King, and respectfully press on his piety, that he appoint such men to administer justice as, seeking not their own but what is of God and justice, may duly settle his subjects’ business according to the laws and customs of the realm.” The most important clause read as follows, “Let the King establish on a lasting foundation those concessions which he has hitherto made of his own free will and not under compulsion, and those needful ordinances which have been devised by his subjects and by his own good pleasure.”

  This reinstatement of what the barons had been fighting for was accepted by the King. The temper of the people’s demands had, of course, changed. The King was beseeched to act according to the Great Charter and the Provisions and to select good ministers, whereas it had been Simon de Montfort’s contention that he must govern according to rules duly established and laid down. The dead leader had been far ahead of the times in his conception of constitutional safeguards, too far for any chance of permanent acceptance at that early stage. The Dictum of Kenilworth is chiefly important, therefore, because it established the fact that the will of the people had not changed, that the King was expected, in spite of the triumph of the royal arms, to adhere to the new basis of good government. The vanquished had not fought in vain. Simon de Montfort was dead, but out of defeat had come this recognition of the essential justice of the people’s demands.

  The garrison accepted the terms and marched out in December, a much-depleted and emaciated band. Meager rations for two days only were left when this peaceful termination of the spectacular siege was reached.

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  Even after the Dictum there was no peace. Properties were withheld from men who had surrendered and paid their fines. On the other hand, many of the Disinherited refused to consider themselves bound by what had happened at Kenilworth. The Marcher barons, for their part, were furious at the prospect of having to disgorge what had been given them in the first flush of victory and returned to their distant strongholds in high dudgeon.

  Toward the end of March 1267, Alice of Angoulême sent word secretly to the King that her husband, the Earl of Gloucester, was planning to seize London. No serious attention was paid to this warning at first because it was known that Ottobuoni had invited the earl to come to London. His visit there, it was believed, could have no more serious purpose than a discussion with the papal legate.

  The unfaithful wife had been correct, nevertheless. Earl Gilbert had been an unhappy man since the battle of Evesham, conscious of the hatred in which he was held by the old comrades he had abandoned, aware also that the King was seeking ways of escaping from the pledges to which he was committed. The young earl, it may be taken for granted, had a sincere belief in the principles which had led him into the baronial camp in the first place. Now, seemingly, he was prepared to lift the mantle which had fallen from nobler shoulders and wear it himself. When he reached London it was with a sizable army in fighting order.

  Gilbert the Red camped at Southwark but was unable to hold his men in hand. Terror gripped London, a state which was added to by the unexpected appearance of John d’Eyvill, Nicholas Segrave, and William Marmion, who had been holding out on the Isle of Ely. Was another civil war in the making?

  The legate now found himself in a very awkward position. His invitation to the earl had been the cause of all this trouble. Not knowing just what to do under the circumstances, the legate took what was probably the wisest course. He locked himself up in the Tower of London.

  It is doubtful if the young earl intended to lead a second rebellion. His occupation of London was intended more likely as a warning to the King that the will to oppose him was not dead. He carried his gesture to a dangerous extreme, however, digging a ditch around the city walls and permitting his men to raid Westminster. The raid resulted in much looting and the killing of some royal servants.

  After two months of occupation Gloucester found himself facing an army under the command of the King. Ottobuoni had been at work, however, and had convinced Henry of the wisdom of a pacific attitude. As a result a settlement of all outstanding points of dispute was reached. The terms of the Dictum would be carried out promptly and to the letter. The rights of London would be restored. On June 18 the King rode into London with the earl in his train.

  The violent gesture of Gilbert the Red seems to have had the desired effect. The air cleared. The turmoil throughout the country died down. The civil war had come to a final end.

  One effect of Gloucester’s drastic move was a widening of the rift with his wife, leading shortly thereafter to a divorce.

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  Ottobuoni should not be dismissed without telling how he came to be elected Pope on his return to Italy. It had taken more than two years to choose Gregory X and, to prevent anything as harmful as this from happening again, very severe regulations had been drawn up. Gregory promulgated a new constitution by which ten days only were allowed after the death of a pope for absent members of the Sacred College to arrive. The electing members were then to be locked up in one of the papal palaces. They were to be allowed no communication with the outside world, and food was to be supplied through a closely guarded window. After three days the food would be reduced to one meal a day; after five only bread and water and a little wine would be allowed.

  Charles of Anjou, the overbearing French prince who had married Beatrice, the youngest and loveliest of the four Provençal princesses, and was now King of Sicily, had very decided views as to the choice of popes. He wanted a friendly pope so much that he decided to go even farther than the regulations prescribed in Gregory’s Ubi Periculum. He had the Lateran Palace, where the nineteen cardinals had assembled, walled up so securely that only air, and not much of that, could find its way in. He was watchful to see that, after the fifth day had passed, nothing reached the embattled cardinals but the prescribed bread and water; although it was said at the time that some way had been found to supply plenty of warm and sustaining food to the French cardinals who were striving for the election of someone favorable to Charles—one of themselves, no doubt. It is difficult to see how this could have been done, as a common existence had been decreed. The cardinals had their meals together, such as they were, and they were not allowed separate cells for sleeping.

  Days passed and still no smoke arose from the chimney to announce that a decision had been reached and the ballots burned. Finally a rather meek message was sent out for Charles of Anjou. Would he consider Ottobuoni Fiesco a suitable choice?

  Ottobuoni had not been the candidate Charles favored, but the latter gave the matter consideration. His answer was, Yes, Ottobuoni would do.

  The cardinals, weak from long fasting and the bitterness of the contest, emerged like wraiths. The most reduced of them all was the new Pope, who had taken the name of Adrian V. When his relatives came forward in a body to congratulate him, he answered in a rather dismal tone:

  “Why are you glad? A live cardinal c
ould do more for you than a dead pope.”

  It was realized later that there had been a note of prophecy in this cheerless speech. A few weeks later the new Pope was dead at Viterbo, where he had gone to escape the summer heat. There had not been time even for him to be inducted into holy orders.

  Dante charges this brief holder of the holy office with love of gain and tells of encountering him in the fifth cornice of hell where “the effect of avarice is here made plain in purging of converted souls.” This seems a harsh judgment on a man who, in the most serious labor of his life, the mission to England, strove most earnestly and successfully to achieve peace without any thought of personal advantage. The mission had the distinction of elevating three members of its personnel to the papacy. One member, Teobaldo Visconti, had already served as Gregory X. A third, belonging to the family of Gaetani, took office later as Boniface VII.

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  When Simon the younger rode back to Kenilworth on the day of Evesham and told the story of his father’s death, the castle was filled with rage and despair. The dead leader had gained such a hold on the affections of his men that they wanted to avenge his death. Richard of Cornwall was still being held a prisoner in the castle, and it required all the authority that young Simon could exert to prevent them from taking the King of the Romans and treating him in like manner. They wanted to hack him in pieces, to cut off his head and elevate it on the point of a lance, to sever his limbs from his body and roughly dandle what was left of him on the paved courtyard. Richard knew the peril in which he stood and always thereafter gave Simon credit for saving his life.

  In the meantime the newly made widow had been allowed by Edward to depart for France, accompanied by three of her children, the two youngest sons, Amauri and Richard, and her daughter, the Demoiselle. The sons took the sum of eleven thousand marks with them. It was alleged later that some of the money belonged to York Minster, where Amauri, who had entered the Church, had served as canon and treasurer. This charge was never proven.

  Eleanor hired French ships to carry her furniture and personal belongings across the Channel, fearing that she would never see England again. The vessels were attacked by pirates and everything of value was taken, so that the once proud princess arrived in France in a destitute condition. She went finally to the Dominican convent of Montargis. It was not, however, to a quiet and contemplative life that she resigned herself. Her spirit refused to be subdued by disaster. From her retreat she sent a continuous stream of demands to her brother and later to Edward. In a tone which bordered on the shrill she beseeched the championship of Louis of France and of the Pope for her claims. Henry had banished her from England forever and from this decision he would not depart, but he finally agreed to allow her a pension from her dower lands, amounting to five hundred pounds a year.

  The family of De Montfort was one of the most powerful in Europe, still centering at Montfort l’Amauri in Normandy, where the archives were kept. It was not as homeless exiles, therefore, that the sons of dead Simon lived but as scions of a famous family with influence of the most potent kind behind them. Guy, the third son, seems to have inherited much of his father’s military genius. He joined the forces of Charles of Anjou in Italy and he did so well, particularly at the decisive battle of Alba, that Charles made him vicar-general of Tuscany. He married Margherita Aldobrandescia, the daughter and heiress of the count palatine of Pitigliano.

  Amauri went to the University of Padua and later was appointed a papal chaplain. He continued to call himself treasurer of York and, having in full measure the contentious spirit of his mother, he spent the rest of his life in litigation, petitioning for this and suing for that, getting a great deal of support in high places but achieving no substantial satisfaction.

  Richard, the youngest of the sons, disappeared from the scene early. There is no record of his death, and some writers have assumed that he passed the rest of his days in obscurity. It seems highly improbable, however, that any member of this spectacular family could remain for long unnoticed and unidentified. It is more probable that the unkind fate hanging over the progeny of the dead earl marked young Richard for an early death before he could be brought to notice in the tempestuous twilight of the family.

  Eleanor, her perturbed spirit never at rest, spent the balance of her life at Montargis. The Demoiselle had fulfilled the promise of her girlhood and had ripened into a beauty of beauties. She lived with her mother, dreaming of the day when it would be possible for her to join her lover in Wales. Llewelyn ab Gruffydd, Prince of Wales, had visited Kenilworth during the year of great power when Simon de Montfort had been head of the state, and he had been attracted instantly to the daughter of the house. It had been settled then that they would marry when the Demoiselle became old enough. The shadow of Evesham had fallen between the lovers, and it must have seemed to the pining beauty at Montargis that she would never see Llewelyn again.

  The unhappy countess died in the spring of 1275, and only Amauri and the Demoiselle were with her. It was a sad ending for the once gay and always ambitious sister of the English King. It had been her hope to establish a dynasty, to see her handsome and virile sons in high places and her beautiful daughter on a throne of her own; and it had come to this, only two of her brilliant progeny beside the narrow cot on which her last hours were spent, the austere walls of her cell close about them. Her will divided the sum of six hundred pounds between the surviving children, all that was left of her great fortune.

  After Eleanor’s death the Welsh prince took matters into his own hands, with the result that he and the Demoiselle were married by proxy. Somewhere around the close of 1275 the bride set out to join him, accompanied by her churchman brother, Amauri, and a party of French and Welsh knights; the name of De Montfort still having enough magic to make the marriage a matter of international importance. The vessel on which they sailed was captured off the Scilly Islands by four English ships which had been lying in wait. The bride was held in captivity at Windsor for three years, a great asset for Edward in the struggle he was waging with the head of the Welsh state. At the end of the three years, despairing of union by any other means with the wife he had not seen, Llewelyn made his submission to Edward. The couple were formally married at Worcester on October 13, 1278. Edward, having achieved his purpose, was in attendance in a benign mood.

  It seems to have been a happy marriage, but the same unkind fate which hovered over the sons of Simon de Montfort overtook the Demoiselle (the childhood name clung to her throughout her life) in the end. She died in childbirth in 1282, and the daughter who thus cost the princess her life was taken to England when Llewelyn died in battle shortly after. The little Princess Gwenllian now presented the same problem as the unfortunate Pearl of Brittany had in the first half of the century. The high authorities did not want the line of Simon de Montfort perpetuated nor that of the Welsh royal family. And so the infant, while still in her cradle, was taken to Sempringham and spent her life there as a nun.

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  It was at Viterbo that the most tragic scene in the story of the De Montforts was enacted. The lava-paved town, lying high above Rome on the main road to Florence, had been making history for centuries. Here it was that England’s only Pope, Adrian IV, met the all-powerful Emperor of Germany, Frederick I, and compelled that haughty monarch to dismount and hold the papal stirrup. Here popes came to spend the midsummer months in the shady gardens of the beautiful old town. Here many pontifical elections were held; here many of the popes died and were buried. Here the wars of the Guelphs and the Ghibellines surged back and forth about the high stone walls. But never had it seen anything to equal what happened on a warm morning in March 1271.

  In the center of Viterbo there was a paved square surrounded by the stone houses of the gentry and one parish church, that of San Silvestro. From the square a narrow street led to the cathedral where for more than two years eighteen cardinals had been struggling to elect a pope in succession to Clement IV. They were almost hopelessly divi
ded between two factions, the Italian and the French. At this stage Charles of Anjou, whose interests were in the hands of the French faction, arrived in the hope of breaking the stalemate. He was accompanied by his nephew, the new King of France, Philip III, and Henry of Almaine. The latter was returning from the Crusades, where he had won praise from Edward and had been entrusted with a mission to settle some new difficulties in Gascony. He had traveled through Italy in the royal train of Charles.

  At the same time also there arrived in Viterbo Guy de Montfort, riding at the head of a party of knights and accompanied by his brother Simon and his father-in-law. He came, in all probability, to consult Charles, his liege lord, on points connected with his stewardship in Tuscany. He was twenty-eight years old and at the peak of his physical powers; handsome, full of high spirits, and certain in his own mind (a conviction generally shared) that a great career lay ahead of him. Simon was three years older, less flamboyant in appearance and talent, very much sobered, moreover, by his experiences in the civil war.