The Conquering Family

by Thomas B. Costain

  The situation came to a head amid a scene of great magnificence. The Fourth Lateran Council, summoned by the Pope, marked the apex of apostolic power which had been achieved during his pontificate and which would never again be equaled. The heads of the Church attended from all parts of Christendom, from as far east as Antioch and as far west as Iceland, coming by ship when possible and laboring over mountain passes and rocky roads to reach the center of the world, the Eternal City. When this brilliant assembly opened, there were present all the cardinals and apostolic officers, 412 bishops, 800 heads of monastic orders, as well as innumerable priors and sub-priors, and representatives from every ruler in Europe. John had sent the abbot of Beaulieu, Thomas de Huntington, and Geoffrey de Crowcombe as his deputies, with very special instructions to look well after his interests. Never before had so many miters been seen at one time, and so many wise and kindly faces under them (and some that were harsh and dictatorial and simoniacal and nepotistic), nor such a combination of the rich vestments of the high churchmen with the simple brown and gray robes of the monkish heads.

  Stephen Langton, under the disgrace of suspension, was not allowed to attend as a delegate. He sat among the spectators and, having human weaknesses as well as other men, suffered much distress of mind because of his exclusion. Letters that he wrote at the time to friends in England show how low he had fallen in spirit. He thought seriously of surrendering his high rank as cardinal and archbishop and joining the order of the Carthusians, one of the most rigid of all monastic orders. If he had joined the English Charterhouse at Witham, he would have spent the rest of his life in seclusion and contemplation, existing in poverty and in tattered garb, eating one meal a day and never tasting meat. The opportunity that eremitical life offered for writing no doubt appealed to the disillusioned primate. He was much in the street of the Saxons, where the faces of fellow countrymen were often seen. Here stood St. Mary’s Church which a Saxon king had built.

  He was present when the situation in England came up for action but was neither allowed to speak nor to introduce any explanation of what had happened. Crowded among the spectators at one side, he heard himself denounced as a troublemaker and the barons scored as disobedient vassals.

  The assembled leaders of the Church had come to Rome with certain grave problems to solve, particularly the growth of heretical opinion. The creeds of the Cathari and the Waldenses were to be crushed, the crusade against the Albigenses in southern France to be strengthened, the first development within the Church of a form of inquisition to be declared. With all this on their hands they paid little attention to the trouble in the island over which the Pontiff had assumed suzerainty. They did not have the least inkling that something sublime had happened in England, that the spirit of liberty, after lying in chains through the long, icy centuries of the Dark Ages, had begun to stir. With unanimity they confirmed the suspension of Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury and voted into effect the excommunication of the barons who had not obeyed the Pope by laying down their arms.

  Pope Innocent presided over this famous Council with the mark of death on his face and wasted figure. He was so ill that for many days he had not been able to eat any food but oranges, and it was doubted if his strength would carry him through. The exultation of this official climax to his supreme pontificate, however, enabled him to stand the fatigue. With glowing eyes he voiced his belief in the temporal superiority of the Church, in the words of the prophet, “Lo! I have set thee this day over the nations and over the kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down, and to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” His thin face was transfigured as he thus expressed his faith, and the Council stirred as one man and gave him its fervent approval. It did not enter the heads of the great leaders of the Church that, in their willingness to march behind his blazing chariot, they had stamped on the one constructive movement for the benefit of downtrodden humanity which had been started in centuries.

  They created additional monastic orders, they decreed a new crusade, they agreed to pay a tithe of their revenues for this final effort to redeem the Holy Sepulcher, they reformed marriage laws and the rules of pilgrimage and appointment procedure. All this was proof of the firm will for progress which had brought them together. It was perhaps the fault of the age in which they lived that they condemned Magna Charta without any serious consideration.

  The excitement of the Lateran Council had been a heavy tax on the small store of strength left in the worn frame of the Pope. He survived the winter months, but when the heat of summer began, he found it necessary to seek some amelioration of his sufferings in the hills. He went first to Viterbo, then to Orvieto, and finally reached Perugia. Here word came to him that Louis of France had landed with an army in England. Perhaps he realized then that the ambitions of kings could not be curbed and bridled by apostolic decree and that the walls of power he had been raising were doomed to tumble as soon as his firm hand was withdrawn. He fell into a coma and died within a few days.

  In the meantime the man who had been chiefly responsible for Magna Charta remained under suspension and could not leave Rome. He existed in the shadow of papal disapproval, compelled to watch developments in England from afar. He continued to fret in exile while the cause of liberty passed through many stages of serious crisis.

  2

  John threw off the mask as soon as his reinforcements began to pour into the country. He came out of his hiding place, roaring for revenge on the men who had humbled him. He struck first at Rochester, which William d’Aubigny, a descendant of beautiful Queen Adelicia, was holding for the barons. The routiers were nominally under the command of John, but the generalship of the siege was supplied by Savaric de Mauleon who, as has been made clear before, was as deft at composing a chanson as cracking a skull. The royal force was a rare collection of cutthroats, all of them boasting such names as Mauger the Murderer, Ivo the Iron-hearted, and Dennis the Damned. Their work won for them collectively the title of Satan’s Guards.

  D’Aubigny held out bravely. He stayed the arm of an archer who was aiming at the King and who protested that he wanted to rid the country of “our bloody enemy.” “Hold thy hand,” said the commander. “Strike not this evil beast whose fate is in God’s decision.”

  The garrison did not give in until the food had been consumed. John, more savage in victory than in defeat, would have hanged them all, starting with the fair Queen’s descendant, but Savaric de Mauleon pointed out the folly of such a course. The war had but started and there were many more battles to be fought, some of which they might lose. If the garrison were hanged, the King’s own mercenaries might expect the same fate in the event of a reverse. If the King wanted to keep them under his banners, he must not initiate a policy of mutual extermination. Grumblingly the King gave in.

  The barons seemed incapable of organizing themselves again. The action of the Pope had been a serious blow to them and had resulted in many defections. The absence of Langton left them as rudderless as a ship adrift. They did nothing to stop the ramping, triumphant King when he swept England from the Channel to the borders of Scotland. John carried fire and sword with him and turned the green countryside into a blackened wilderness. It was his amiable habit to apply the torch himself each morning to the house where he had spent the night. This unbalanced ruler, who had earned the name of John Softsword when fighting the French, became a regular lion when he faced scattered levies. How bold he was, how sharp and vicious the sword he now wielded!

  The barons, bold enough as individuals, were a futile lot in combination. Lacking leadership, they were unable to check the monarch they had humbled at Runnymede. The best they could think of doing in this crisis was to appeal to France for help! The request was made to Prince Louis because his wife, Blanche of Castile, was next in line to the English throne if John and his brood were thrown aside. As Louis was heir to the throne of France, the ultimate result of this step would have been the union of the two countries and the further subjugation o
f the English people. That the barons were able to contemplate and even favor such a result is an indication of the panic into which they had fallen.

  This was late in 1215 and Pope Innocent was still alive. He thundered protests and threatened to place an interdict on France if the invitation of the barons was accepted. The young prince listened to his wife, who was urging him to support her pretensions to the throne of England, and refused to listen to the papal threats. King Philip, however, could not afford to antagonize Rome, and a council was called to debate the matter.

  The papal legate, Gualo, was invited to attend and he protested against French interference in a country which was a fief of Rome. He made much of the fact that John had taken the cross, declaring that the English King would lead an army to the Holy Land as soon as the trouble with his barons had been settled.

  Philip was a model of discretion all through the deliberations. Wearing a surcoat of the sky blue he seemed to prefer, and with his arms crossed on his gigantic chest, he chose his words with the utmost care, keeping a wary eye on the legate the while. He avowed himself a devout subject of His Holiness and unwilling to do anything hostile to Rome. At the same time, he said, his son had an undoubted claim to the English crown and his right to accept the invitation of the barons must be given due consideration.

  As though this were a signal, various knights in the train of the prince took the floor in turn and argued that the murder of Arthur had disqualified John and that accordingly the throne of England was vacant. The prince followed with an impassioned speech in which he expressed himself as free in so far as England was concerned to make his own decision. It had already been made, it seemed, for the young man declared his intention of sailing against John with or without his father’s permission. This brought Philip into the lists. Father and son had a heated dispute, at the end of which the prince turned and stalked from the council.

  The proceedings smack of play-acting, as though the King had decided he must make a show of obeying the Pope while secretly in accord with his son. The chief actors in the farce had been so carefully coached, however, that the breach between father and son seemed real. For a very short time: almost immediately the masks were removed and the work of preparation for the invasion of England began.

  Innocent knew he was being tricked. With the signs of death on his face and frail form, he preached in Rome from the text, “The sword, the sword is drawn!” He was bitter in his denunciation of France and equally critical of father and son. Stephen Langton sat in the church and listened to the words which condemned England to more civil war, realizing that the people would be the losers no matter which side won. Perhaps, being human, he felt some sardonic satisfaction at the situation in which the Pope found himself involved.

  Louis proceeded to assemble a large army and to gather in the ports of northern France a fleet of nearly one thousand vessels to transport the troops across the Sleeve. Such preparation would not have been possible without the approval and cooperation of the King. The knights of France rallied to the cause, swearing the usual oaths—to abstain from cutting their hair or beards, from bathing, from the favors of women—until the conquest of England had been completed. Eustace the Monk was secured to command the naval operations, and this was a costly appointment. Eustace was a monk turned pirate and a villain of such deep dye that he deserves to rank among the greatest freebooters of all time, with Barbarossa, no less, or with Avery, Morgan and Madame Ching. The flag of France waved over the camps and fluttered at the mastheads of the ships. The period of play-acting was over.

  When Louis landed on the Kentish coast, John retreated from his camp back of Dover. The French by-passed Dover, where stout Hubert de Burgh was in command, and marched up to London. Here many of the barons swore fealty to Louis.

  England was now in a sorry plight, for the contest offered no choice of sides to the people. They lost either way. The French prince made no effort to conceal the chains he held behind his back. Every castle taken by this worthy son of the grasping, insatiable Philip was promptly given to one of his own followers. He paid no attention to the barons on whose invitation he had come and was quite prepared to confiscate all their holdings. One of his followers, the Vicomte de Melune, confessed on his deathbed that Louis had sworn to drive into exile every man who had been at Runnymede as traitors to a king.

  The difficulties of the situation had become painfully clear to Englishmen.

  3

  It was in mid-October. A wind was blowing from the north and driving the rack across the sky so briskly that the small, hurrying clouds changed shape each moment. Whenever this kind of weather came, people would look up and say, The Abbot of Abbots is calling the Gray Monks home, meaning that there would be a storm.

  All day long John and his troops had been moving up from Weisbeck with the intention of crossing the sands where the Welland River, then known as the Willestrem, emptied into the Fossdyke Wash. The impatient King, in spite of his gout which made it necessary for him to ride with one leg in a sling, had stayed in the van, waving his followers on to greater efforts and cursing the snail’s pace with which they responded. He had forgotten that an armed force can travel no faster than the slowest of its supply wagons. He had not only insisted on a long train of them for the conveyance of arms and provisions and, it was whispered, of his gold and treasure, but he had refused to allow the wagons to be separated from the main body.

  As he had grown older the King had become more and more like his father in one respect. He could not stay still. He wanted always to be on the move, never remaining anywhere longer than one night. With his kingdom in danger, he was more restless than ever.

  John had some of the qualities of generalship which he called upon when hard pressed. His position now was desperate and he had been attempting its betterment with bold strokes. The proper strategy of defense was to contain the French army within the small corner it held of the southeast. To do this he had broken his army into units and placed them in garrison along the line of the Thames, at Windsor, Wallingford, Oxford. His next objective was to break communications between the invaders and the strong counties of the north, where the opposition to him was most marked. He had daringly struck north of London, leaving the land behind him, as always, black and desolate. He had scored some successes, and now here he was, marching with a relatively small body of troops along the approaches to The Wash.

  No matter how insistently the King might ride ahead, he never allowed himself to get out of sight of the lumbering vehicles. He cantered or galloped with his head cocked aslant so that he could keep them in view. Sometimes he waited for them to come up so he could ask questions of the drivers and demand increased vigilance of the rear guard. It was clear that he was uneasy and suspicious.

  He had the best of reasons for his uneasiness. Being cautious as well as parsimonious, he had never believed it safe to leave his treasure in one place. His gold and precious jewels had been entrusted to the care of monasteries in different parts of the country. Late in June he had sent letters to sixteen bishops and abbots, instructing them to forward at once everything they had been holding for him. From Rufford and Bindon and Merton and Waltham had come well-guarded stores. The King had carried his treasure with him from that time on, even on his campaigns.

  Although the royal regalia was legally supposed to be stored in the vaults at Winchester, John had preferred to keep the outward symbols of his kingship with him; and so, on this raw and windy day as he progressed slowly toward the crossing of The Wash, the crown and scepter and orb of England were concealed somewhere in that long tail of creaking wagons. Also there was the regalia which the Empress Matilda had smuggled out of Germany, including the crown she had worn and the sword of Tristan. It has been estimated from lists supplied by the monasteries that he had in addition a great accumulation of costly articles. There were cups of gold and white silver to the number of nearly two hundred, many of them richly jeweled. There were goblets and flagons and standing cups and
mazers. There were rings, jeweled belts, pendants (one containing a pregnant stone, so called because there was a smaller stone inside it), and a seemingly endless assortment of gold crosses, clasps, thuribles (ornamented with towers and castles in the Gothic manner), bedewin stones, unset rubies and emeralds and sapphires.

  It is not to be wondered at that his journeyings were a constant torment to the King and that he supervised personally the packing and unpacking of the canvas-covered wagons.

  The tide had not started to rise perceptibly when they reached the sandy shallows where the river flowed into The Wash. John was convinced they could cross safely and he was the first to urge his horse into the water. He had decided to spend the night at Swineshead, a Cistercian monastery more than ten miles to the north, and nothing else would suit him. Accordingly he gestured impatiently for his men to follow him. The guards came first, splashing through the water and then galloping up the sands to the higher ground beyond. The rest of the troops crossed as briskly as they could, and it seemed certain that the whole train would get over before the tide imposed any serious barrier.

  What the King did not know—and none of his advisers seemed aware of it either—was that the twice-a-day meeting of fresh and salt water sometimes became a struggle of homeric proportions. The pleasant bickering sound of the river would turn into a furious roar when it encountered the inward thrust of the sea. There would be threshing and tossing and angry whirling, converting the ford into a maelstrom.