The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  It seemed at first that Pope Innocent, in making his last extreme move, had defeated his own purpose. Englishmen, fearing invasion above everything, armed themselves behind their derided and hated King. An army grew along the coast of Kent as if by some kind of magic evoked by national necessity. The main camp was at Barham Down near Canterbury, and here sixty thousand men were soon assembled. Smaller camps were located at Dover, Faversham, and Ipswich. John took up his post at the hotel of the Templars at Ewell, occupying himself largely with the need for money to pay the cost of this great rally. He ransacked the monasteries and the closed churches and emptied the pockets of the Jews. It was at this time that he enforced his demands on one Isaac of Bristol for ten thousand marks by ordering that a tooth be extracted from his jaw each day until the money had been paid. Dentistry was one of the functions of the barbers, many of whom wore strings around their necks containing all the teeth they had drawn. The royal practitioner, into whose hands Isaac was put, had six more teeth to display before the reluctant donor gave in. Everyone was giving in and paying, although not under such extreme pressure. The whole kingdom groaned under the exactions, but in the face of the emergency most men found the means to pay their share.

  A blow which might have proved decisive was dealt the French by the eldest son of the Fair Rosamonde who, as was related earlier, was known to men as William Long-Espée. The sons brought into the world by that gentle lady were stout fellows who, on any plane of comparison, measured above the legitimate issue of the great Henry. William Long-Espée had always been a favorite with John. The illegitimate half brother accompanied the King everywhere. There never seems to have been a serious rift between them, which suggests that this son of the unfortunate lady lacked the stanchness of the other, Geoffrey of York. John had made a fine match for William, marrying him to Ela, the heiress of Salisbury. Ela, a lady of beauty and high spirit, had become known as the Mystery Maiden after the death of her father in 1196. She disappeared, and it was generally feared that she had been done away with so that one of her paternal uncles could take the title and the enormous wealth of the family. A young knight-errant named William Talbot followed the example of Blondel, however, and sang English ballads under windows in all the castles of Normandy until he received a response. The rescue of the imprisoned maiden resulted, and the gallant knight had the satisfaction of seeing her restored to her family and her rights. The story did not end in the usual way. Ela did not fall in love with the devoted William Talbot and she did become very much attached to the middle-aged husband selected for her by the King; and Talbot had to content himself with remaining a close friend of the happy pair. Assuming the title of Earl of Salisbury, the son of Fair Rosamonde played an important part in national affairs and in his declining years built Salisbury Cathedral. The disconsolate Ela founded Lacock Abbey after his death.

  William Long-Espée was of a sufficiently complaisant nature to ride in the train of John. When put in command of the naval forces, however, he showed his real mettle. On May 30 he directed an attack on the French vessels in the port of Dam, now known as Dollart Bay, and scored a complete victory. Many of the French ships were captured and at least three hundred of them were burned. The doughty bastard came sailing back to a wildly jubilant country.

  But John lacked the fortitude for as stern a struggle as this. Before the victory had been scored over the French fleet he had succumbed to the arguments of Pandulfo, the papal legate. Pandulfo paid him a secret visit and frightened the King by the description he gave of the might of the French army. John capitulated without waiting to see how the first test of strength would come out.

  All credit for this sudden collapse must not be given, however, to the wily Pandulfo. John had been uneasy ever since the hermit of Pontefract had predicted the end of his power. The King of Scotland had added to his panic by informing him that a conspiracy was on foot among his barons to dethrone him. The wife of Leolin, one of the princes of Wales, had whispered the same news in his ear. The conspiracy, it was said, had grown out of the efforts of Stephen Langton, who still occupied much of his time at Pontigny by corresponding with men of importance in the kingdom. John did not doubt the truth of the story. He began to suspect every man who came near him. His temper became more violent with each passing day. His hands played nervously with the relics strung around his neck or gripped with sudden passion the hilt of his beaked dagger. Once he burst out with a furious speech which showed how firmly convinced he was that Stephen Langton was at the bottom of everything. “Never shall that Stephen,” he cried, “obtain a safe-conduct from me of force sufficient to prevent me from”—his hands clawed at the air—“from suspending him by the neck the moment he touches land of mine!”

  Surrender to the Pope, therefore, carried with it release from such fears. If he hid himself under the wing of Innocent, then all the forces of Europe would be behind him and he could laugh at the efforts of the baronage to unseat him. Perhaps also the mind of this cunning King had cast on into the future and had foreseen other advantages which a close alliance with Rome would bring. If this were true, it was with inner reserve and tongue in cheek that John gave his consent to the humiliating terms the legate had brought from the arrogant man in the Vatican.

  The day before Ascension, John appeared in the church of the Temple and a long document was loudly intoned. “Ye know,” it read in part, “that we have deeply offended our Holy Mother the Church and that it will be hard to draw on the mercy of Heaven. Therefore we would humble ourselves, and without constraint, of our own free will, by the consent of our barons and high justiciars, we give and confer on God, on the Holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, on our Mother the Church and on Pope Innocent III and his Catholic successors, the whole kingdom of England and Ireland, with all their rights and dependencies for the remission of our sins; henceforth we hold them as a fief, and in token thereof we swear allegiance in presence of Pandulfo, Legate of the Holy See.”

  It was true that four of the great barons of the realm had been consulted—the earls of Salisbury, Boulogne, Warenne, and Ferrars—but to everyone else this announcement was a complete and overwhelming surprise, a thunderclap which left the nation aghast. England a fief of Rome! It was not to be believed. Why had the King, after rejecting much easier terms, decided suddenly to give everything to the Pope?

  These thoughts filled the minds of the barons as they saw Pandulfo, a man of great slyness and, some say, of a mean and slinking appearance, take possession of the royal chair. John knelt before him, lifted up his hands and placed them in those of the legate, and swore fealty to the Pontiff. The King then offered money as a token of submission, and the legate refused to accept it as a sign the Church scorned earthly wealth. When John, who seemed willing to go to the farthest limits of abasement, tendered him the crown the minister of the Vatican (a lowly minister, for Pandulfo was no higher than a deacon) accepted it. He kept it five days, moreover, before giving it back.

  Directly after the ceremony it was learned that, in addition to thus surrendering himself to Rome, John had agreed to all the papal terms. Stephen Langton was to be received, all the exiled churchmen were to be reinstated, all losses sustained by the Church during the years of the interdict were to be made up in full, and the Vatican was to be paid one thousand marks a year, seven hundred for England, three hundred for Ireland. It was such an abject surrender that men looked at each other blankly, asking themselves if the King had been under some malign influence.

  The amazement grew when it was learned that no promise had been received from Innocent of an immediate raising of the bans.

  John had one consolation left him for this bitter moment of capitulation. Ascension Day passed and he still sat on his throne. He sent word to Corfe that Peter of Pontefract was to be questioned further. The hermit proved much bolder than he had been before, declaring that the ceremony in the Temple had been the fulfillment of his prophecy, inasmuch as the King now ruled as a vassal. When this was reported to him, Joh
n fell into one of his most extravagant rages and ordered that the hermit and a son who had been imprisoned with him be executed at once. Accordingly the two humble men from Yorkshire were tied to the heels of horses and dragged all the way to Wareham. Here the broken bodies were hoisted up to the gallows and hanged.

  On July 20 a second ceremony was observed. Cardinal Langton had landed in England to take up his duties as head of the Church. John was at Winchester and sent word to the primate to join him there. It was in early morning when the two antagonists met for the first time. The King rode out with his usual train to Magdalen’s Hill, a gold circlet on his head in place of a helmet, a look in his eye which was half defiance, half derision. The archbishop was wearing his full canonicals, with all the bishops of England riding in his train. They studied each other for a moment, the massive, violent King and the spare, composed cardinal. John then dismounted and prostrated himself at the feet of the archbishop. This should have been followed by the kiss of peace, but John was still under the ban of excommunication and so it was forbidden for Langton to embrace him. The King, realizing the difficulty, sprang from his kneeling position, laughed loudly, and threw the primate a kiss with his hand.

  There was more to this gesture than John’s usual sense of the comic at moments of gravity. The kiss was a token of derision. He was laughing at the farce they were playing in the bright sunshine of Magdalen’s Hill. There was defiance in it, defiance of Innocent, of Stephen Langton, of the barons of England. There was in it a hint of future purpose, a message which said, Wait, this is not the end, the time will come when I, John of England, will undo all this which is being done!

  Nevertheless, with every outward sign of amity, Sang and archbishop turned their horses and rode back into Winchester, the bishops and knights following after. All joined in the Fifty-first Psalm, the high voice of the King chiming in with the resonant tones of the cardinal.

  “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Thy loving kindness …

  Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow …

  Hide Thy face from my sins …”

  6

  In Winchester Cathedral, Stephen Langton laid the train for further trouble, for himself and for the whole kingdom of England; but it was done out of his desire to see the country free of her woes and his belief that at last the rift had been closed between Church and State. He absolved John of his sins and then performed the Holy Eucharist in thanksgiving. For this he was never forgiven in Rome. Innocent was a stern victor and a stickler for his own rights. He had humbled John and become the actual head of the kingdom. Only when he, the Pope, saw fit to raise the ban would England be freed. The archbishop had exceeded his authority, and from that moment the face of the Pontiff was turned away from his own appointee, the man for whom he had entered on this bitter struggle. Never again was Stephen Langton to know favor.

  Innocent had many things to settle before the interdict would be lifted. First he had to inform Philip of France that, as the insurgency of John had been quelled and England was now a fief of Rome, there could be no invasion of the country. Philip naturally was amazed and outraged. Had he then raised a great army and fleet, at unprecedented expense, and all for nothing? Must he now disband his forces without compensation or reward? He fumed bitterly because he had been sure that the decisive defeat of his English rival had been imminent. He did not enjoy serving as cat’s paw to the Pope.

  This blow to his ambitions, his dignity, and his purse rankled so deeply that the French King turned like a wounded animal and struck at the nearest victim, which happened to be Flanders. The French armies, equipped for immediate fighting, invaded the provinces of the Count of Flanders, who had allied himself with England. It was to help the count that William Long-Espée was sent to attack the French fleet. The victory he scored saved the Low Country and might also have saved England if it had been won a few weeks earlier, or if John had possessed more fortitude.

  The terms of John’s capitulation to Rome called for payment in full of all losses the Church had sustained. Pandulfo was replaced as legate by Nicholas, the Bishop of Frascati, to whom fell the task of adjusting the claims. They began to come in at once, and John was horrified when he discovered how large they were. Canterbury alone demanded twenty thousand marks. Every bishop had claims for buildings destroyed, livestock stolen, forests burned. Every parish priest, except those who had disobeyed the Pope by continuing to officiate, had suffered losses. In addition there were the rents on church properties which had been collected by the Crown and spent long since; every penny of this vast sum must now be paid back.

  With rising wrath and the painful reluctance of a parsimonious man, the King finally brought himself to the point of making an offer. He would pay a lump sum of one hundred thousand marks and the Church could settle how the money was to be applied and divided. This amount would not cover more than a fraction of the losses which had been piling up over the years. The Church rejected the offer flatly.

  And now Innocent III did an extraordinary thing. He disregarded the decision of the Church in England and set the amount of reparations at forty thousand marks! John, delighted, accepted with the greatest alacrity. He perceived that his canny view of future developments had been right. The Pope and he were partners, and it was clear that the Pontiff would not permit anything to happen, even for the benefit of the Church in England, which would weaken the King who had become his vassal.

  The new legate proved himself most obnoxious to the people of England. Landing with such a small train that he had only seven horses, the cardinal had demanded at once that he be supplied with fifty. He gathered a stately cavalcade about him and traveled in the greatest grandeur, insisting on the best accommodations and paying nothing. He was like a bailiff who had been put in charge of bankrupt property and who forthwith proceeded to inspect everything, to taste, to pry, to ask impertinent questions.

  The offense given thus to the people was small compared to the tribulations he heaped on the churchmen. He took it upon himself to settle all disputes within the Church with ruthless disregard of everything but his own lordly will. He filled vacancies without any thought of the qualifications of the favorites he brought in.

  On one occasion this amiable Cardinal Nicholas was mobbed by priests, nuns, and hospitalers as he left St. Paul’s. They cried out to him in piteous tones that they had obeyed the Pope and gone into exile and poverty. Those who had not obeyed him had remained at home in comfort and without loss and were still in the full enjoyment of their benefices. Was it fair, they demanded, that now they should be told that nothing could be done for them and that strangers should be put in the posts they had vacated? The legate forced his way through them with impatience. He had no instructions to help them, he said. There was nothing he could do for them, nothing.

  For one reason and another the better part of a year passed before the interdict was lifted. It had continued for six years, three months, and fourteen days.

  * Based on Appendix VI, Innocent the Great, by C. H. C. Pirie-Gordon, B.A.

  CHAPTER XIV

  Magna Charta

  ON August 27 of the following year, Stephen Langton preached at St. Paul’s in London. There was nothing remarkable in that fact in itself, for the archbishops were more often in London and Westminster than in Canterbury, but two things made the service noteworthy. First, John was in France, fighting the last and least creditable of his campaigns for the recovery of his lost possessions and did not know what was going on at home. Second, the cathedral was filled with all the great people in the country, bishops and noblemen of high degree, plain knights, and even some of the rich citizens of London; and such a gathering could not have been brought together unless there was something very important in the wind.

  While waiting for John to yield, Stephen Langton had spent much of his time in the study of canon law. He had become convinced of the cruelty and injustice of the feudal system as well as the need for curbs on the power of rulers. The course he followed o
n reaching England makes it abundantly clear that he had resolved in advance to use the power of his high office to relieve the burdens of the people.

  He stood up before his august audience on this warm August day, and his eyes kindled when he saw that not one of the men he wanted present had failed him. He preached with his accustomed clarity, taking his text from the Psalms, My heart trusted in God and was helped and my flesh rejoiced. What he said has not been recorded, but it is certain that the message he delivered was a spiritual one and that the political situation was not referred to openly. Later in the day there was a secret meeting. Where it was held is not known, but it must have been in the London house of one of the great barons. Stephen Langton was the speaker and, as he rose, an air of solemnity could be seen on every face. Everyone there knew that what they would do that day would later be construed as high treason.

  The dramatic point of this historically important speech came when the primate produced a document, which was yellow with age and badly tattered. Did they remember, he asked, that a charter had been signed by Henry I in the early stages of his reign? Few of his hearers had known of the charter, which is not surprising, for a century had passed since it was signed. Still fewer recalled that one hundred copies had been made for distribution to all parts of the country, and none had heard that these copies had disappeared, presumably on the order of the King himself when his mind changed.

  It was true, went on the archbishop, that an effort had been made to call back or destroy all copies. One, however, had not been located at the time and so had continued in existence, and after a diligent search had now been found. He held up the yellowed sheet with a reverent hand, knowing it to be the most important state document in the world at that moment. Where it had been found, he did not tell; which was unfortunate, for had he done so part of the mystery at least would have been cleared up.