The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  This communication was sent to all courts and to the monasteries, where the chronicles of the day were written. It seems absurd to credit this statement to the Old Man of the Mountain, to whom the spires of Notre Dame and the battlements of the Tower of London were as remote as the spots on the sun, but no one challenged the authenticity of the document.

  And now the King, having nothing more to detain him in England, hurried off for France to settle accounts with Philip the Truant. He never saw his native land again. Except that he kept demanding more and ever more money from Hubert Walter, he gave his kingdom no further thought. It is stated that within the space of two years he drained the country of the enormous sum of one million and one hundred thousand marks, and that the primate had to devise more and more exactions in wringing revenue from the groaning people. Although the amount stated is an obvious exaggeration, there can be no doubt that England, once the milch cow of the Crusade, was to continue playing that part to the demanding King.

  The primate contrived new laws which, though drafted for no other purpose than extortion, contained the germ of an important principle. He realized that taxes could not be levied so continuously save by consent and representation. In all counties juries were chosen by a committee of four elected knights to pass on the amounts assessed against each owner of property. He then took another step forward and in 1195 issued an ordinance for the election in each “hundred” of four knights to act as keepers of the peace. In 1198 he accomplished his final piece of legal pioneering by putting a carucage tax on land which was to be assessed by a sworn and elected jury. This was done to satisfy Richard, who was growing more arrogant and unreasonable all the time.

  This new form of tax was, however, a failure. The people were no longer capable of carrying on their weary backs these more and more excessive burdens. The money secured by the juries was too small to suit the rapacious King. At the same time the Council refused to raise an army to assist him in making war, and the primate received the blame for that as well. Although he had served his master with conspicuous success, he was forced to resign his secular office. It was a thankless task to serve a chivalrous king.

  2

  The third man to share in the domination of the last years of Richard’s reign was a citizen of London named William Fitz-Osbert. As the leader and the very heart and soul of a secret society which planned an uprising of the people, Fitz-Osbert was the symbol of resistance to the King’s oppression.

  The man himself has been presented by most of the writers of the period, who considered any change to be evil, as a demagogue, an irresponsible troublemaker. His appearance is derided and he is said to have worn a beard for the sole purpose of concealing the peculiar vulgarity and villainy of his features. It is difficult to obtain a real look at this twelfth-century leader under the diligently applied coating of abuse, but his actions stamp him definitely as a man of great courage and character and a patriot.

  Fitz-Osbert is spoken of as an Anglo-Saxon in most of the chronicles, but his name makes it certain that he was, at least, of mixed blood. He was a lawyer and he had followed Richard to Palestine; a tall man with a beard so long and black that, when he stood up to speak, he looked like a prophet out of the Old Testament. The Norman authorities set him down on their records as Guillaume Longe-berde. In history he is mostly referred to as William Longbeard.

  The citizens of London had many grievances, but the one which weighed most heavily on them at the time when Longbeard played his tragic role was a tax called taillage. A certain sum had been levied on the city and, in line with the theories which Walter was fathering, the amounts to be contributed by each citizen had been left to a jury. This jury was made up of the wealthier merchants (not all Norman, by any means), and they arranged it so that the rich paid a small share and the poorer people the greatest part of the burden. The men of London had never remained silent under injustice, and the whole city seethed and rumbled with dissatisfaction. The leader who rose to lend voice to the unrest was Fitz-Osbert. He fought the division before the London Council and, when they called him a traitor to the King, he declared, “The traitors to the King are they who defraud his exchequer by exempting themselves from paying what they owe him, and I myself will denounce them.”

  As good as his word, he traveled to Richard’s headquarters in France and was granted an audience. Kneeling before the King, he poured out the grievances of the people in impassioned words. Richard’s head was full of his campaigning and he paid little attention to Longbeard’s plea. He promised to consider the matter, and promptly forgot all about it.

  Hubert Walter, who was still in full control when this happened, was enraged that a mere citizen had dared go direct to the King. He promptly issued an ordinance that any Londoner who left the town would be guilty of treason. What is more, he put this arbitrary enactment into practice, throwing into prison some merchants who went to Stamford to sell their goods at a fair. This was the seed which yielded fruit of sedition in the great city on the Thames.

  The people of London were ripe for rebellion. Meetings were held in secret in all parts of the town. Groups got together in the cellars of inns, in cemetery corners behind the hospitals, most frequently in the warehouses along the river. A revolutionary society was formed in which the membership, it is estimated, reached a total of fifty thousand. All the members, obviously, were not from London. Many belonged in nearby towns where the heavy hand of the tax extortioner was being felt also. Few details of this girding for action are available, but it is safe to assume that the stout burghers of London followed the usual procedure: district leaders, passwords, means of secret communication between districts, and behind all this a general plan.

  One detail only survives in the records. They were collecting arms and storing them in the city. Weapons were brought in, concealed in bales of hay and wool and under straw in farm conveyances. Members from outside carried small arms into town under their tunics or cloaks. In addition to the regular weapons such as battle-axes, swords, and bows and arrows, they collected everything which might be used in an emergency—hatchets and iron crows and even quarterstaves. These stores were concealed at strategic points throughout the city.

  There was a tension in the air while this was going on. Men refused to make way when the nobility appeared on horse or foot on the streets, and sometimes there were loud altercations and the men of blue blood beat at the rabble with their whips. While thus preparing for a resort to arms, if forced to that extremity, the citizenry continued to agitate in the open for reform. Meetings were held in the markets and on the streets. Longbeard, the acknowledged leader, was always the speaker.

  A report has come down to us of one such gathering. The spot where it was held is not mentioned, but it would probably be in the western end of town where more space was available, perhaps not far from St. Paul’s Cross. It was at night and, when William Fitz-Osbert rose to speak, he could not see far in front of him, but he knew that every foot was occupied with men who were heart and soul for action. He knew also that scattered throughout the packed audience would be a few informers and spies for the man who was ruling England for the absent King, Hubert of Canterbury.

  Longbeard began his speech with a text. His eyes burning with zeal, he gave it out in a loud voice, “With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.” He looked about him and raised a hand above his head. “I am the savior of the poor! Do ye, O Poor, who have experienced the heaviness of rich men’s hands, drink from my wells the water of knowledge and salvation. I will separate the people who are humble and faithful from the people who are proud and perfidious. I will divide the elect from the reprobate, as the light from the darkness.”

  There was the rant of the demagogue in this, but, when he went on to deal with their grievances in specific terms, he carried their breathless interest with him. It might then have been John Ball talking to the people, that humble but divinely eloquent monk who led the peasants to London for redress of their wrongs two h
undred years later. There is something of the same flavor about his words, the same approach to incoherence which can be the very essence of eloquence. He was above everything direct and outspoken, telling the truth and sparing no one. There was not any hint of forces gathering under the surface, any threat of immediate action, in what he said; but the men of London returned to their small homes with the assurance that the day was near.

  Hubert Walter was certain of this also. His spies had discovered all about the secret meetings and the smuggling in of arms. He probably could have made a very close guess as to the number of men involved. Always a believer in direct action, the archbishop decided he must lose no more time. The first step he took was to get his hands on William Fitz-Osbert. Longbeard was stopped on the streets when accompanied by a few only of his close followers. A scuffle ensued in the course of which he drew a dagger and killed the leader of the squad. He and his friends then succeeded in getting away and taking sanctuary in the church of St. Mary le Bow. Here they barricaded the doors and refused to give themselves up. Longbeard expected, without a doubt, that his peril would serve as the signal for a general uprising in the city, and that soon a large part of his fifty thousand followers would be marching to his rescue.

  But the shrewd primate had laid his plans with too much care. The streets were filled immediately with armed troops who had been brought in secretly from other parts of the kingdom. They took possession of all street corners and saw to it that no one issued out from the houses. The plans that the men of London had hastily improvised for the uprising fell to pieces in the face of this quick coverage.

  Although they soon realized they could not count on help, Longbeard and his friends decided to fight to the end. They paid no attention to repeated demands that they drop their arms and surrender. They battled on with the greatest bravery for hours.

  Walter then proceeded to take steps which cost him the respect even of those who wanted the disturbance quelled and the spirit of the stirring masses broken. The right of sanctuary, for which Thomas à Becket would have laid down his life, meant so little to this iron-willed archbishop that he sanctioned a plan to heap straw around the church and set it on fire as a means of forcing Longbeard into the open. The plan succeeded. There was still some fight in the doomed men as they came out from the church, but, when their leader went down with a sword-thrust in the stomach, they gave in and surrendered.

  All London, and later all England, was aghast at this violation of sanctuary. The cool archbishop, who had taken up his quarters in the Tower, was not concerned at all. He ordered that the prisoners be put on trial at once. This was done, and the members of the party were found guilty of fomenting rebellion and sentenced to death on the gallows. The next day the sentence was carried out. Impotent to aid the unfortunate prisoners, the people of London looked on in stunned grief while Longbeard was stripped to the skin and tied to the heels of a horse. He was dragged to Tyburn. The sharp stones of the road cut his bare frame to pieces, and he was in a dying condition when his mangled body was trussed in chains to hang on the Tyburn elm. All of his party died at the same time and in the same way.

  Then London came to life. During the night the bodies were cut down and carried away. The chains were broken into small pieces which people kept as relics of the brave leader who had given his life for them. By the end of the first day there was a deep hole under the tree where Longbeard had swung, made by the scooping hands of those who felt the ground had become sacred. The secret society no longer existed, and the chance to assert themselves had been lost, but London continued to flock to the site of the hangings in such numbers that Walter had to station his soldiers around Tyburn with orders to allow no one near.

  The news of what had happened threw all England into loud protest. The outcry against the action of the archbishop was not directed, however, at the summary execution of the leader of the people. The primate was condemned instead because he had violated sanctuary, and it was on this ground that Richard agreed to dismiss his minister from his secular posts.

  Walter’s plan of taxation, by which a fixed sum was levied on a community and the apportionment of the payments was placed in the hands of the people concerned, had been the direct cause of the trouble and bloodshed in London. He probably did not realize the importance of the principle he had evolved and the form it would take later, when all control of taxation became the sole function and the chief weapon of the House of Commons. The method was no more than a sop to still some of the opposition to the ever-mounting tax burden. That great good would come out of it ultimately had not entered the mind of the man who devised it and set it into operation.

  No pair of shoulders loaded with the cares of the kingdom ever carried them with more ability and decision, but Hubert Walter was at the same time a man of the coldest calculation, with neither scruples nor humane impulses, and even of questionable honesty. The sentiments he stirred in other men were never more openly stated than by Hugh of Lincoln, who was then a very old man. He had repeatedly spoken out against the arbitrary actions of the primate but he reserved the final barb for the last moments of his life. Hubert Walter came to his bedside and declared that he forgave him all the harsh criticisms of the past.

  “Indeed, Your Grace,” said the dying man, “there have been passages of words between us, and I have much to regret in relation to them. It is not, however, what I have said to you for which I should now be pardoned but for what I have omitted to say. I have more feared to offend Your Grace than to offend my Father in Heaven. I have withheld words which I ought to have spoken and have thus sinned against you. Should it please God to spare my life, I purpose to amend that fault.”

  3

  The Bishop of Beauvais, who happened to be a near relation of Philip of France, got into armor to fight against the English. He was captured and thrown into prison, where he was loaded down with chains. The Pope heard of the bishop’s plight and sent a request to the English King for the release of his son, as he called His Grace of Beauvais. Richard’s answer was to send the bishop’s shirt of chain mail, which was covered with blood, to the Vatican. With it went a letter: “This have we found. Know thou if it is thy son’s coat or not?” The prisoner was not released until he paid his ransom the same as any other man who had taken the sword, a substantial one in this instance, for the revenues of Beauvais were fat.

  This incident is typical of the spirit displayed on both sides in the war between the two embittered kings. They harried and burned and took castles and lost castles. The only way they had of venting their mutual spleen was, seemingly, to render thousands of each other’s subjects homeless and to kill as many as they could catch.

  A peace was patched up finally—which neither of them meant to keep—and then Richard, instead of going home and giving some attention to the sorry condition of his people in England, proceeded to carry out one of the pet plans of a lifetime. On the Seine River, south of Rouen, there was an ideal spot for a great castle which would provide perfect protection against invasion. Here, where the river bends sharply and the valley of Les Andelys breaks the high line of the banks, a spur of rock juts out into the water. A minor Gibraltar, six hundred feet long, two hundred wide, and three hundred above the level of the water, it commands the river and all the surrounding country. Here the English King built his famous Château Gaillard, which has been considered the masterpiece of the age.

  At the lip of the rock he erected an octagonal fort with walls ten feet thick and a ditch hewed out of the solid stone. Behind this was the main fort, a tower-flanked structure with a great citadel which followed the conformation of the spur. Fortresses are sometimes said to frown. This one scowled, a belligerent scowl, as though daring the French King to lead his forces up against Normandy. The walls rose so unexpectedly and sharply from the river that they seemed to reach up endlessly into the sky, their impregnability obvious at a glance.

  Richard took a year in the building and poured money into it as fast as it could be squee
zed out of the English people. His pleasure in what he was doing had some of the naïve delight of a boy piling up a high tower of blocks. When it was finished, he walked to one of the ogive windows at the top of the dungeon tower in the citadel, from which he could see up and down the river and well out over the high chalk cliffs. His eyes lighted up. “How pretty,” he cried, “is this child of mine, this child of one year!”

  Philip was enraged over the erection of Château Gaillard because there was a clause in one of their many treaties forbidding the fortification of this particular point. Hate flared up between them.

  “I will reduce this castle of his,” cried Philip, “if the walls are of iron!”

  “I could hold my castle against him,” answered Richard scornfully, “if the walls were of butter!”

  Soon after this Richard became seriously ill of a distemper. It was natural that he should begin to think of his sins. One of the priests about him pointed out that he had been very unfair to his consort. The ailing King agreed that this was so and he issued orders at once for Berengaria to join him. She came with the greatest gladness and helped to nurse him back to health.

  When his health had been sufficiently restored, they went together to Aquitaine and spent a Christmas there. The weather was perfect, which means it was warm enough for troubadours to come from all over the golden provinces to amuse the King and his lady, and for gleemen to sing in the gardens. If Richard and Berengaria ever achieved any degree of happiness in each other’s company, it was during this short Christmas celebration; short, because Richard was off again almost as soon as the new year started. The struggle with Philip had broken out in its final phase.