The Greatest Knight

by Thomas Asbridge

  The earl, who was generous, gentle and kind towards his wife the countess, said to her: ‘Fair lady, kiss me now, for you will never be able to do it again.’ She stepped forwards and kissed him, and both of them wept.

  His daughters, who were also present, were said to have ‘stood round him in deep grief’, and eventually had to be ushered outside. Once the ritual was complete, Aimery apparently offered William some parting words of comfort, saying: ‘you have known higher honour in this world than ever any other knight had, both in respect of your valour [and] your wisdom and loyalty.’ He then went on to assure the earl that God ‘wishes to have you for his own’.

  The end came near midday, on Tuesday 14 May 1219. John of Earley had been trying to ease Marshal’s position in his bed, when ‘the final throes of death, against which he had no defence, took him in their grip’. William implored Earley to open the doors and windows of his room, and to call his family. John ‘took the earl in his arms’ and watched as his ‘face grew paler, and became livid because death was pressing him and wounding him to the heart’.

  Young William, Isabel and Marshal’s knights arrived, and the earl spoke his last words, saying: ‘I am dying, and commend you to God. I am no longer able to think of your needs, for I cannot fight against death.’ Young William then took his father in his arms and ‘wept tears of pity, as was natural, quietly and openly’. A cross was brought to the bed and placed before the earl and then, as the abbot of Notley performed a final rite of absolution, William Marshal set his eyes upon the crucifix, ‘joined his hands together’ and died. The author of the History confidently declared that: ‘we believe he is saved and sits with God and His company [because] he was a good man in death as in life.’

  Later that day, the earl’s body was embalmed, prepared for burial and covered in Marshal’s treasured silken cloths. On 15 May, his corpse was transported to Reading Abbey, where it was carried in solemn procession and the ritual of full Mass was sung. Lady Isabel followed the remains of her late husband, but it was said that her grief rendered her unable to walk. Marshal’s body was then carried towards London. On 18 May a large crowd of barons escorted the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey for a further vigil and Mass, performed amid a ‘magnificent display of candles’. Finally on 20 May 1219, two years after his famous victory at Lincoln, the earl was laid to rest in the round Temple Church in London – the space that evoked Christ’s own Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The archbishop of Canterbury presided over the funeral, alongside the bishop of London, and in his oration, Stephen Langton was said to have described William Marshal as ‘the greatest knight to be found in all the world’. And there, the tomb effigy of this peerless warrior – the architect of England’s salvation – can still be seen to this day.

  AFTERMATH

  Lady Isabel did not long survive her husband. She died in 1220, in her mid-forties, and was buried at Tintern Abbey, north of Striguil. Together, she and Earl William had established the Marshal dynasty as one of the leading baronial families in England. Yet for all their efforts and dedication, the fortunes of the Marshal house were broken within a quarter of a century. In part, the dynasty fell prey to the upheavals of King Henry III’s tumultuous reign. England was saved from the immediate renewal of French aggression by King Philip Augustus’ own demise in 1220. When his son and successor, Louis VIII, passed away just six years later, his young son and namesake acceded to the Capetian crown, leaving France to endure its own period of regency government. Even so, under Henry III, England continued to struggle with the consequences and aftershocks of the baronial rebellion. Magna Carta was re-issued once again in 1225 (achieving its definitive form) and the young king’s minority finally came to an end in 1227. But the early years of Henry III’s reign were disrupted by power struggles as Hubert of Burgh and then Peter des Roches sought to exploit their influence over the crown for personal gain.

  The fall of the Marshals

  Responsibility for the collapse of the Marshal dynasty cannot be laid solely at the feet of any one family member, nor can it be explained by grave deficiencies of character. William Marshal’s heirs were neither indolent, nor foolish, but they did lack their father’s inimitable ability to navigate the fractious world of medieval politics. Most crucially of all, they proved unable to sire heirs. The earl’s first successor, his eldest son, William II, enjoyed considerable success and continued to benefit from John of Earley’s loyal service to the Marshal family, until the latter’s death in 1229. William II was responsible for commissioning the History of William Marshal in celebration of his father’s extraordinary career. An Anglo-French scribe working in England, named John, wrote this account – the first known biography of a medieval knight. He drew upon written evidence and the oral testimony of those who had known Earl William in life, including most notably John of Earley, and the text was completed soon after 1226.

  William II recovered territory in west Wales, consolidated his family’s hold over Leinster and presided over a significant period of castle-building in the Marshal domains, with major extensions made to fortresses such as Striguil and Cilgerran. Following the precipitous death of his first wife Alice (the daughter of Baldwin of Béthune) after barely a year of marriage, William II wed King Henry III’s own younger sister, Eleanor, in 1224, but their union proved childless. On 6 April 1231, while in London to attend the second marriage of his widowed sister Isabella, William II died suddenly of unknown causes in his early forties. He left no heir, and was buried in Temple Church alongside his father.

  The earldom of Pembroke thus passed to his younger brother Richard, who had inherited the Marshal estates in Normandy in 1219 and spent twelve years serving as a noble in the French court. After returning to England to lead the Marshal dynasty, Richard gained renown as a warrior – being described by one contemporary as ‘the flower of chivalry in our time’ – but he also became embroiled in an armed insurrection against Henry III’s increasingly unpopular regime. Richard fought on the March in alliance with the Welsh Prince Llewellyn ap Iorwerth, then sailed to Ireland, where the king’s justiciar had sought to seize Leinster, with the connivance of the Lacys.

  Earl William Marshal had survived just such an attack, but his son proved less fortunate. Richard was persuaded to a parley with the justiciar near Kildare, on 1 April 1234, but this turned out to be a trap. Rather than discuss terms of peace, the justiciar launched an attack with 140 knights, and Richard’s Irish vassals betrayed him by refusing to fight in his defence. Forced to mount a hopeless last stand alongside fifteen loyal members of his household, Richard fell beneath a torrent of blows. He was carried to Kilkenny Castle and died of his wounds two weeks later, like his brother before him, leaving no heir.

  As a result, Gilbert Marshal was forced to renounce his clerical orders and take up leadership of the Marshal dynasty, but he never prospered at royal court. Ironically, he met his end during a tournament held at Hertford in 1241, trying to emulate his father’s legendary feats of prowess. Gilbert lacked skill as a horseman and found himself struggling to control his spirited warhorse. Unfortunately, the members of his retinue had ridden off in pursuit of glory and plunder, so there was no one to assist him. Gilbert was thrown from his mount, but his foot became stuck in a stirrup, and he was dragged along the ground for a considerable distance, sustaining mortal injuries. He was succeeded by his two remaining brothers. Walter was appointed as earl of Pembroke in 1242, and briefly fought in a royal campaign in southern France, but passed away in 1245. The youngest brother, Ancel, died barely one month later. Neither left legitimate heirs.

  As a result, the Marshal estates – so carefully accumulated during Earl William’s career – were broken up and parcelled out among the heirs of his daughters. In 1246, the title of Marshal of England passed to Roger Bigod, the son of William Marshal’s eldest daughter Matilda. Through lack of luck, long life and fertility, the male line of the Marshal dynasty was brought to a desperately premature end.

  Medieval Eng
land and knighthood

  The English monarchy remained enfeebled through much of the thirteenth century. Henry III faced a second full-scale baronial revolt after 1258 and was forced to accept the imposition of consultative, parliamentary government. This was one of the most significant consequences of King John’s reign and William Marshal’s involvement in Magna Carta: nobles and knights were no longer the mere agents of royal will, they now served as the check and balance against crown authority.

  The loss of Normandy and the other Angevin territories on the Continent, and Earl William’s defeat of the French in 1217, also contributed to the emergence of a far more pronounced and pervasive sense of English identity in the course of the thirteenth century. By the end of Marshal’s life, English was already emerging as the dominant language of the aristocracy. The days of the hybrid, cross-Channel society drew to a close. The ruling elite no longer regarded themselves as Anglo-Normans, or Angevins, but as English – not least because they continued to find themselves pitted against the Capetian French.

  The kings of England and their leading nobles remained haunted by memories of the ‘glorious’ Angevin realm throughout the Middle Ages. Little progress was made on the Continent in the thirteenth century, but the obsession with re-conquering France proved inescapable and eventually prompted the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War in 1339. While locked into this seemingly perpetual struggle, the ‘Plantagenet’ dynasty founded by Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine finally came to an end with the overthrow and death of King Richard II in 1399.

  The knightly class, which William Marshal had come to epitomise, endured throughout this period, yet its ideals and practices underwent dramatic changes. Many facets of chivalric culture were increasingly defined. Knightly training became more sophisticated and regimented, and the ritual of dubbing was formalised. Techno logical advances in metallurgy and smithcraft also meant that the mail hauberks worn by William Marshal and his contemporaries were first augmented, and then wholly superseded, by plate armour – giving rise to the burnished suits of elaborate, full-plate worn by knights from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. The extraordinary level of protection afforded by later medieval armour meant that the type of slashing or concussive weaponry popular in Earl William’s heyday as a tournament champion came to be replaced by sharper-pointed swords, daggers and spears, capable of targeting and piercing vulnerable joints. Heavier armour, in turn, produced the need for larger and stronger warhorses.

  All of this changed the way in which knights fought, but it also significantly increased the cost of equipment. Even towards the end of William Marshal’s life, the expense associated with becoming a knight and then maintaining that station was prohibitive. This process of inflation, combined with the gradual shift in emphasis from the warrior aristocracy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to the land-holding nobility of the thirteenth (of which Earl William was himself a part), made knighthood an increasingly rarefied profession. Before long, the expenditure and responsibilities involved left many wondering why they should bother to become knights when they could be better served by holding and administering estates as members of what would later be termed the ‘gentry’.

  In the decades that followed Marshal’s death, England faced an increasingly severe shortage of knights. The crown took to imposing fines (known as ‘distraint’) upon aristocrats who refused to join the warrior class, but it also had to lower the numbers of knights that lords and barons were expected to put into the field at times of war. Estimates indicate that there were approximately 4,000 knights in England in the later twelfth century; this total had fallen to 1,250 by the end of the thirteenth. This drastic reduction was partially reversed under Henry III’s militaristic son and heir, King Edward I – known to history as the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ – but even he was forced to use a system of direct payment for knightly service by contract.

  Yet, though the number of knights fell, aristocratic culture harkened back to the supposed ‘golden age of chivalry’ witnessed during William Marshal’s lifetime. Notions of shame and honour came to hold even greater importance, while the lavish pageantry of tournaments and jousts reached its apogee in the fourteenth century, under King Edward III. His famous son, Edward the Black Prince, sought to rejuvenate the ideals of chivalry by introducing a new elite cadre of knights – the Order of the Garter – and the French followed suit with their Order of the Star. But this could not arrest the slow decline and eventual disappearance of the knightly class in the centuries that followed. The mounted, armour-clad warriors like William Marshal, who had done so much to mould the history of medieval Europe, would have no part to play in the dawn of modernity.

  WILLIAM MARSHAL: IN LIFE AND LEGEND

  In many respects, William Marshal was the archetypal medieval knight. His qualities epitomised, perhaps even defined, those valued in late twelfth- and early- thirteenth-century Western European aristocratic culture. His storied career stood as testament to what knights could achieve: the heights to which they could rise and the extent to which they could shape history. In spite of Archbishop Stephen’s reputed pronouncement at his funeral, Marshal was not the only great knight of his generation. Other warriors, such as William des Barres and William des Roches, could match his prowess and reputation. Yet they never reached such astonishing heights. William Marshal’s life represents both a model of knightly experience and a unique example of unparalleled success, for in the end, his story transcended the normal boundaries of his warrior class.

  William’s remarkable achievements can be explained, to an extent, by his personal qualities. In the military arena, his unusual physical strength and resilience lent him a natural advantage. Masterful horsemanship helped him to dominate the tournament circuit, while the experience of war gleaned under leaders such as Henry II and Richard the Lionheart enabled Marshal to emerge as a highly skilled battlefield commander and strategist. Unlike many of his knightly contemporaries, William was able to temper his martial ferocity in the setting of the royal court. He possessed a rare ability to exercise ironclad emotional restraint and knew enough of politics to avoid confrontation, and engage in a measure of calculated machination.

  William’s behaviour was also informed (and, at times, conditioned) by the precepts of chivalry. But his actions did not always conform to our modern fantasies of knightly gallantry. Marshal lived in an age when the public display of prowess and the acquisition of honourable reputation were paramount. He was naturally materialistic – especially in his younger days – because visible wealth served to affirm status in his society. Similarly, his decision to pursue an honourable course of action was often grounded in an acute sense of social expectation. William’s capacity for steadfast loyalty might be laudable, but it was also self-serving, in that it safeguarded his good name and allowed him to avoid the potent stigma of public shame.

  Marshal was a driven and deeply ambitious individual. At certain moments, the surviving evidence allows us glimpses of his abiding appetite for wealth and power, or his capacity to promote his own interests. Before the summer of 1188, William lobbied King Henry II incessantly for rewards. During Richard the Lionheart’s reign, he danced around the issue of his relationship with John so as to preserve his claim to Leinster. And in 1205 Marshal equivocated over the oath of homage to King Philip Augustus, hoping to protect his rights to the Norman lordship of Longueville. Even so, these moments have to be balanced against William’s unusual willingness to risk his own fortunes in service to the crown: most notably, the faithfulness shown to Henry II in 1189; and his defining decision to support the future King Henry III in 1216.

  By the end of his long life, contemporaries recognised the scope of William’s achievements – not least his defence of the Angevin dynasty and defeat of the French. For many, he was the peerless knight; Lancelot brought to life. Marshal seems to have served as an inspiration for writers of medieval Arthurian literature. Indeed, the Comte Guillaume (Count William) to whom the elusive, but highly influe
ntial, Marie de France dedicated her translation of Aesop’s Fables may well have been William Marshal. It is little wonder that, while grounded in fact, his biography, the History of William Marshal, was fashioned in Anglo-French verse to resemble an Arthurian epic. With the fracturing of the Marshal dynasty, however, that text fell out of circulation, and the associated celebration of his exploits gradually subsided. By the end of the Middle Ages, the History had been forgotten and William became merely another name in the dusty annals of the distant past.

  William Marshal never dropped out of memory entirely. He appeared in Shakespeare’s play King John as the minor figure Pembroke – though the text borrowed little from historical fact. In the early modern era, he was recalled as a leading figure behind the forging of Magna Carta and a champion of the royalist cause. When the Palace of Westminster was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1834, a special Fine Arts Commission (chaired by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert) was established to coordinate its decoration. A series of statues of those involved in the drafting of Magna Carta were commissioned for use in the House of Lords, and on the advice of the historian Henry Hallam, William Marshal – as a ‘a very eminent man’ – was given a prominent place, to the left of the royal throne: quite literally represented as the figure behind the crown.