The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  The English King was seen to considerable advantage at this stage. He was so concerned with his preparations that he gave little thought to anything else. Even his need of a wife seemed to mean less to him than the proper method of stabling the horses on the voyage. He was thorough and painstaking about every conceivable detail. He drew up a special code to enforce good conduct during the time when his troops would be confined on board ship. As might be expected, he was unnecessarily severe in the matter of penalties. A soldier convicted of slaying another on board ship was to be cast into the sea, lashed to the body of his victim. If the killing occurred on shore, the offender was to be buried alive with the body. The loss of a hand was the penalty for drawing knife on a comrade. Striking with the fist but not drawing blood was to be punished by dipping the offender in the sea three times. A thief was to be shaved on the top of his head and boiling pitch poured on the bared poll, after which a feather pillow would be shaken over it. Richard, as will be recognized, was a disciplinarian.

  Much to the surprise of the harried monarch, William Longchamp put in an appearance at Rouen. As Hugh de Puiset was with the court at the time, England had been left without either of the heads Richard had appointed. The visit of the misshapen chancellor was not due, however, to any trouble at home.

  He became angry because Hugh de Puiset sat close to the King while he, Longchamp, was seated a very short distance above the salt. To watch his rival talking to the King with the ease of complete intimacy while he, Longchamp, dipped his fingers in the dishes of meat so far away that he could not hear a single syllable of what was being said disturbed the spleen of the lowborn minister and ruined his appetite. He was realizing that Richard would make use of him but would never overlook his vulgarity of origin.

  After the meal, while Hugh de Puiset lingered over the wine with his friends, the King summoned Longchamp to the royal apartments. Here was another distinction which the King would always draw between his two lieutenants and which should have eased the mind of the jealous chancellor. When affairs of state were to be settled, he would be summoned to share the royal confidence. Hugh de Puiset would be allowed to stay at table and enjoy his wine.

  Longchamp had two matters on his mind. First, he saw a way of using the York massacre in raising funds, a very great deal of money. Second, he was disturbed by the fact that England was to be left without a church head, since Archbishop Baldwin was going on the Crusade and Geoffrey of York was barred from his native shores. Note the order in which the two matters were introduced to the attention of the King. The scheme to make money out of bloodstained York was explained first and won the royal approval. While the mind of the warrior King was still filled with the pleasant prospect of a further fattening of the war chest, the wily chancellor proposed his solution of the church problem. Apply to the Pope for legatine powers for him, Longchamp, so that he could act when necessary in lieu of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Not realizing that this would place Hugh de Puiset under the thumb of Longchamp, or not caring, Richard agreed to the plan and promised that the request would be sent to the Vatican at once.

  And then the chancellor came to the crucial point. He explained first that York was in the northern half of the kingdom, over which the Bishop of Durham had jurisdiction. The good bishop might not agree to the proposal. Even if he agreed, he would hardly be thorough enough in carrying it out. He, Longchamp, was the only one—if his royal master would forgive him for thus tootling his own horn—who could extract the last ounce of gold out of the already bleeding veins of the northern capital. How, then, could the plan be put into operation?

  Bowing his head over his shrunken chest and nervously twining and untwining his fingers, this man of low degree who aspired to rule all England by himself began to explain what was in his mind. Perhaps he would be accorded the royal permission to return at once—that very night, in fact—to set the wheels turning. If, on the other hand, the King in his wisdom saw fit to detain Hugh de Puiset for several weeks more, the draining of York could be attended to in his absence. The worthy bishop would undoubtedly be disturbed when he realized what had happened, but even the anger of so great a man could not undo a fait accompli.

  Richard nodded his head in assent. Longchamp had obtained everything he had crossed the Channel for, and he lost no time in starting back.

  The dwarfish chancellor was missed at the royal table the next day. Hugh de Puiset, a man of decency and honor, was probably not disturbed at all. He would have no suspicions of the devious reasons which had brought his co-administrator to Normandy so unexpectedly and had then taken him back so suddenly. Certainly he was pleased when Richard said he wanted him to stay for several weeks more. Was this not an evidence of kingly esteem and confidence?

  In the meantime Longchamp reached London, where he hastily assembled a considerable force under the command of his two precious brothers. A march to York followed. His mission, he announced on arriving, was to inquire into the massacre and take such steps then as the facts would seem to make necessary.

  His first move was to depose the royal officers, all of whom were appointees of the bishop, and to put in his own men. His brother Osbert was made sheriff. The clergy were bludgeoned into a stunned silence when he announced himself papal legate, although he did not produce his letters patent.

  Having thus seized complete control, this skillful ferret began to follow out the plan he had proposed to the King. He imposed fines right and left, giving consideration only to the size of a man’s purse and none at all to his share, if any, in the riots. The last penny which could be squeezed from the citizens was taken in these levies. The lands of the barons who had assisted in the massacre of the Jews were confiscated to the Crown. Up to this point Longchamp had done nothing which might not have occurred to any equally unscrupulous administrator, but he now proceeded to display his genius for despoliation. He announced that the Crown was the heir of the slaughtered Jews. To protect the interests of the King, therefore, he had a search made for the ledgers of the victims and found legal evidence here and there of large sums which had been owed to them. These debts were rigorously collected. Those who had taken a hand in the riots to escape payment of money they owed found that they had spilled innocent blood to no avail. Flambard himself had never thought of a more ingenious scheme than this.

  The relatives of the dead ockerers, as moneylenders were called in the north, were not allowed a penny of what was collected on these debts.

  Again the indispensable Longchamp had demonstrated that the schemes he hatched in his oversized head could be carried out. Not only had he scooped up more money than he had dared to estimate, but he had successfully checkmated his rival. When word of what had happened reached Normandy, Hugh de Puiset asked at once that he be allowed to return to investigate. Richard was graciously pleased to consent. It did not matter now. The money was in the royal coffers, and there was nothing the good bishop could do about it.

  It would have been better for the well-intentioned but not very aggressive Bishop of Durham if he had not returned to England at this point. He met Longchamp on the latter’s invitation at the royal castle of Tickhill in Yorkshire. The bishop had a letter from the King which had seemed, when handed to him, to establish his authority clearly enough. When he came face to face with Longchamp, however, he began to doubt if it would suffice. The venomous little man said, “It is now my turn to talk.” He had papers also; a commission, in fact, to represent the King with full power in all England. The commission carried the Great Seal.

  The bishop, puzzled and reluctant, had to give in. He was told he must relinquish everything, his properties as well as his offices. On pain of his life he must not take any further part in state affairs.

  Longchamp’s flag was hoisted over the keep at Windsor.

  5

  Power thrust into new hands is almost certain to go to the head. Never in all history has there been a more spectacular demonstration of this than in the case of Richard’s upstart deputy. The one
-time clerk at the chancellery began to behave as though he thought himself King of England. He imposed his will in everything, he assumed all the trappings of royalty, he tossed men out of office to make room for his own relatives and creatures. Even harder to bear was the way the little man conducted himself. He strutted, he threw out his puny chest, he stormed, he glowered, he snarled. He attired his meager body in the handsomest of clothes and rode on a magnificent charger, looking like one of the monkeys Thomas à Becket chained to the saddles of his horses on his famous ride to Paris.

  He pursued his beaten rival with a peculiar degree of malignance. Hugh de Puiset had done him no harm, but he was punished by being sent to a small monastery at Howden. Here he remained in seclusion as long as Longchamp’s power lasted.

  With no one to stand in his way, Longchamp proceeded to rule like a king, and a very absolute and arbitrary king. He issued dooms and writs, signed with his own signet ring instead of the Great Seal of England. Governing from Windsor Castle, he had a corps of guards of his own who wore a special uniform. Anyone seeking audience of the haughty manikin had to pass through many files of these guards, who questioned them sternly, before they reached a magnificent apartment where Longchamp sat in all his glory. When he made a journey he was accompanied by fifteen hundred armed men, most of them mercenaries from abroad. He would quarter himself in a castle or monastery and demand the best of everything and the utmost deference. He summoned the nobility of the district to attend him. There were expensive jeweled rings on his skinny fingers when he dined in state, and the sons of the local baronage fetched and carried for him as pages.

  The hatred he created in the country was so great that he needed his guards about him at all times. No one, from the haughtiest baron to the meanest fripperer on the streets of London, could swallow the insult of his pre-eminence. Everyone seemed to be waiting for a signal, in readiness to spring to arms and deal with this treacherous ape in the guise of a man. Longchamp realized this and, being of some learning, he took a leaf from the book of the Roman emperors. To mask their tyranny, the heads of the Roman state built amphitheaters and amused the people with spectacles and the death grapple of gladiators. Longchamp imported singers, jesters, and jugglers from France and sent them around the country to give the public free entertainment. He thought that, if these mummers were to sing his praises at the same time, the people would come to admire and love him.

  At this point Queen Eleanor appears on the scene. The mother of the King had been watching things with eyes which had learned much in seventy years of living. She realized that her beloved son had made a great error and that all the glory he might win at the Crusades could be dimmed by the extraordinary behavior of this deputy he had left in England. Richard was still camped back of Marseilles, waiting to get his fleet assembled and his army loaded. Eleanor went to him and finally convinced him that he must curb the power of the malicious Longchamp. The King responded by instructing Walter of Coutances, Archbishop of Rouen, to visit England and study the situation, giving him sealed authority to take any steps he found necessary. In addition he appointed a committee of four barons to act as advisers to Longchamp. This did not satisfy the Queen. She felt that Geoffrey of York should be freed of the three-year prohibition which Richard had laid on him and allowed to return to England so that the Church would have proper leadership in Baldwin’s absence. This suggestion, coming from his mother, who had never felt anything but antagonism for the son of the Fair Rosamonde, surprised Richard. The King had a robust dislike for Geoffrey, and it took a great deal of persuasion to make him give in on this point. However, he finally agreed and signed a paper, releasing his half brother from the three-year arrangement. Eleanor then saw to it that Pope Clement sent the pall for Geoffrey’s consecration and that the ceremony was performed promptly by the Archbishop of Tours.

  Content with what she had done, Eleanor set out for Navarre to arrange the marriage with Berengaria. It had been planned between them, mother and son, that she would bring the princess back with her so the wedding could take place before the ships sailed for the East. Failing this, the Queen and the princess would go by sea and join Richard at Messina. The mountainous road across the Pyrenees and on to Pampeluna, where Sancho the Wise, Berengaria’s father, held court, was a long and fatiguing one for a woman of her years, especially as the sea voyage to Sicily seemed the inevitable sequel. Eleanor set off without a moment’s hesitation, her back as straight and her spirits as high as when she herself had ridden to the Crusades some fifty years before. Nothing her golden son could need or desire was too much for the silver-haired woman who had been once the toast and the scandal of Europe.

  Longchamp had his spy system, of course, and he learned that Geoffrey of York was returning to England. He decided to prevent him from landing.

  His sister Richenda, whose husband was constable of Dover, was the feminine counterpart of the chancellor, a small, dark, determined, and vituperative creature. Longchamp sent instructions to her, ignoring her easygoing husband, that the Archbishop of York was to be stopped at any cost. When Geoffrey arrived off Dover in an English smack, he was met by a boat filled with troops from the garrison.

  “Deliver him up to us, Master Skipper,” shouted the officer in charge.

  The captain of the smack knew what was meant and pointed out the archbishop. The latter demanded to know what this was about.

  “It means that you go with us,” declared the officer. “Madame de Cleres will answer your questions.”

  The recurrent appearances on the scene of the son of the Fair Rosamonde have made it clear that he was a man of courage and resolution. He now proceeded to demonstrate that he possessed these qualities in a high degree. On reaching shore, he sprang into the saddle of the horse on which he was to have been taken to Dover Castle and made a dash for the road to Folkestone. There was a loud hue and cry at once. When one of his pursuers drew up abreast of the fugitive, Geoffrey kicked his spurred heel into the flank of the man’s horse. It shied and then reared away from the road. The rest came thundering along after him, however, and he had no recourse but to turn into St. Martin’s Priory, where he could claim sanctuary. It was a close-run thing at that. As he sprang from his saddle the pursuing horsemen poured into the courtyard and he was compelled to race for the chapel. A service was being held, and he heard the monks chanting as he entered:

  “He that troubleth thee shall have his judgment…”

  This sounded reassuring. The troops made it clear, however, that he would not be allowed to escape. A cordon was thrown around the priory while the officer in charge waited for instructions from the shrill little woman in Dover. They were not long in coming. Richenda demanded that they drag the archbishop out by force and bring him to the castle. She did not care what happened to him in the execution of these orders; bring him, dead or alive.

  But the memory of the martyrdom of Thomas à Becket was still too vivid in people’s minds for orders like that to be followed out. The soldiers refused to obey the command. The best they could be made to do was to stand on guard outside.

  There ensued a stormy exchange of messages between the indignant prelate and Longchamp’s termagant sister. He reminded her that his person was sacred and that, moreover, he was in sanctuary. To this she replied that others must be the judge of such matters. She insisted that Geoffrey swear an oath of allegiance to the King and produce his papers to prove his right to enter the kingdom. The archbishop responded that he had already sworn allegiance to his brother, the King, and that the papers he carried were not for her eyes. Richenda’s final word was that, if her brother so ordered, she would burn down the castle of Dover and St. Martin’s Priory as well, and even the city of London.

  Richenda, making good her threat, demanded that the archbishop be made a prisoner without any more delay. The soldiers poured into the chapel to carry out these instructions but retreated again in haste when they saw that the churchman had donned the alb and stole of his office and was holding a
large cross of gold in his hand. The situation began to resemble too closely the tragedy of Canterbury, and they left the chapel as hurriedly as they had entered.

  Two days passed, and then the determined Richenda sent some of her own servants to direct the capture. To their surprise they found that Geoffrey was still sitting at the altar and arrayed as before. His stern eyes dared them to come any closer. They turned and left. However, the cordon outside was maintained, and shrill messages still came from the castle, demanding action.

  Two more days went by, while the cordon remained around the priory and the resolute archbishop sat at the altar in his consecration robes. On the night of the fourth day a large body of soldiers, who had been bribed and supplied with a great deal of drink, invaded the chapel. Seizing Geoffrey by the arms, they began to drag him down the aisle. He was a man of considerable strength and he resisted stoutly, beating his assailants with the gold cross. His resistance could not continue long against such numbers, however, and he was finally taken out of sanctuary and to Dover Castle, where the exultant Richenda ordered him placed in one of the dungeons.

  Geoffrey was held prisoner in a dark cell for eight days, a long enough time for word of what had happened to spread over England. The storm which arose then decided Longchamp that he would have to give way. With many explanations and apologies, placing the blame on his sister, he had the prelate released. When Geoffrey rode into London, he received a tumultuous welcome. Men by the thousand came out to meet him, and the church bells rang as though for a great victory. Observing the warmth of the demonstration from his secure nook in the Tower, the not too courageous chancellor decided he would be better elsewhere. He departed hurriedly for Windsor, his guards galloping after him.

  Shortly before this Coutances had arrived in England together with the four advisers the Bang had appointed. They presented their papers to the chancellor, but, insisting that their mandates were forgeries, Longchamp had dismissed them curtly. “I, and I alone,” he declared, “know the King’s mind!” His audacity in taking this stand was due to the fact that the King had embarked at last and could no longer be reached.