William scoffed. ‘I am past fifty summers, Geoffrey. Besides, I would be seen by those whose claim on such a position is far greater than mine by blood, office and title as an upstart, even perhaps a pretender to the Crown, a usurper… No, it must be John, John with my support as long as I may render it.’
FitzWalter sighed and for a few moments seemed plunged in deep thought. William waited patiently, aware that FitzWalter’s decision was crucial, that the influence he commanded and could bring to bear upon the opinion of the Barons of England, who had no love for John, would be critical. Eventually the Archbishop looked up and nodded. ‘Very well, William, but I must warn you that you will never come to regret anything you ever did as much as what you are doing now’.
‘I have no alternative,’ William replied grimly. ‘Loyalty binds me.’
‘To John then,’ the Archbishop said, raising his wine-cup. ‘And may he be wisely governed and govern wisely.’
‘Amen to that at least.’
PART THREE: JOHN LACKLAND 1199 - 1205
CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE KING’S CLOAK 1199 - 1202
‘My Lord Archbishop…Marshal…’
John slumped in his chair, his left hand clasped about the stem of a silver goblet. FitzWalter made his obeisance, followed by William, who – displeased with John’s demeanour – was further repulsed by the nails of the man’s right hand: they were bitten to the quick. The formalities disposed of, John came to the point:
‘You have secured England, eh?’
‘We have obtained a sufficient promise of fealty as warrants you crossing the Channel, Your Grace,’ FitzHubert said smoothly, ‘but Your Grace is not popular…’
‘Pah!’ John waved the Archbishop’s concern aside. ‘I have an army and the treasury here, at Rouen,’ he added with a satisfied expression, as though increasing the pay of his late brother’s mercenary routiers and seizing Richard’s war-chests at Chinon was the answer to everything.
‘And,’ said FitzWalter, summoning assistance with a glance at William, ‘we understand that, although no opposition was raised to that, Your Grace, the Barons of Touraine, Anjou and Maine are already in league with those of Brittany in supporting Geoffrey’s boy, Arthur.’
‘By the Christ!’ snapped John, suddenly sitting upright, ‘do you brook my claim to the Crown, Archbishop?’ By God’s bones I shall…’
‘Do not make the mistake that your father made, my Lord,’ said William, speaking for the first time. John was nineteen years his junior and unprepossessing with it. Moreover, during the exchange between him and FitzWalter, William had suffered a profound sense of weariness. In referring to Henry Curtmantle’s ill-judged remark that had caused the death of Archbishop Becket, he had subconsciously avoided the form of address John might have felt himself entitled to expect; nor had William’s tone been conciliatory.
‘Who ever said my father made a mistake,’ sneered John, half-smiling at his own wit but deceiving no-one: he stood in awe of the Marshal for his prowess as much as the Archbishop for his intelligence.
John sat back in his chair and began chewing the nails of his right hand. ‘But you have secured England?’ he asked again, betraying his anxiety no less than the value he placed upon the services and influence of the two men before him.
‘Aye, Your Grace. At Nottingham we proclaimed you rightful King as named successor of Richard, as son of Henry, the Second of that name, and grandson of the Empress Matilda and Count Geoffrey of Anjou. A promise of fealty was forthcoming from most of the Barons…’
‘Most?’
‘Most,’ said William. ‘Those that were not attending to the defences of their castles.’
‘Hell’s teeth!’ John swore.
‘But I think that you may safely pass over the sea into England, Your Grace,’ added FitzWalter in the honeyed tones of the real diplomat. ‘You already wear the Ducal coronet of Normandy,’ he pointed out, John having wasted no time in appearing in Rouen cathedral where he had assumed the Dukedom. ‘As for the rest,’ FitzWalter went on, referring to the rebellion said to have broken out to the south and west, ‘you must, I fear leave all to chance until after your coronation at Westminster.’
John nodded. The brief weeks FitzWalter and William had spent in England soliciting sufficient support for John had been exhausting and neither wanted to be delayed by the resumption of a war over the Angevin provinces.
‘Howsoever, there is one thing, Your Grace, that must be dealt with first,’ FitzWalter said, and William wondered what required any further priority than to get this idle, pleasure-seeking and heartless youth off his arse and invested with the trappings of kingship. Whatever it was, it went beyond the points he and FitzWalter had agreed upon.
‘You have great need of the Marshal’s services, the Archbishop went on. ‘He has made conspicuous his loyalty to you as his liege lord for his Irish lands in the face of Richard’s claim to unreserved homage. It is necessary that you recompense him…’
Both John and William were staring at the Archbishop, the former quizzically, the latter with astonishment. It was John who blinked first.
‘What would you have me do, Archbishop?’
‘An Earldom for those lands he has by way of his wife, Isabelle de Clare, daughter of Strongbow, and further lands direct from your own hand.’
‘Have you instigated this?’ John asked William, his tone sharply vicious. ‘is that your price for your loyalty?’
‘No, Your Grace,’ William responded, genuinely surprised and quickly turning over in his mind how such an honour as was now in John’s gift might compromise him if things ran ill.
‘The Marshal must have authority before you cross the sea, Your Grace,’ FitzWalter explained reasonably, ‘otherwise he will be challenged by all those opposed to you.’
John curled his lip and responded, looking from one to the other. ‘Do you not think they will see this as my buying favours? If my kingship is in doubt, will that not invalidate such entitlement that the Marshal achieves from my hand, eh?’
‘Not at all. The late King, your brother, was minded to elevate the Marshal in regard of his wife’s lands. I can swear to that, Your Grace, and like Richard’s choice of you as his heir, it is deserving of respect and may be presented thus.’
John suddenly chuckled. ‘You churchmen are devious. Richard never made any such declaration in my hearing.’
‘What of, Your Grace, your right to succeed him, or of the Marshal to be belted an Earl?’
John looked shocked. ‘You mean…?’
‘I mean, Your Grace,’ FitzWalter ran on soothingly, ‘that if you require the one to be confirmed on oath, then the other must follow.’
John again looked from FitzWalter to William and back again and both men saw the same calculating train of thought. Without such powerful allies bound to his cause, John knew very well, all support might fall away at the first sign of trouble.
‘But I have Wolfscar and his mercenaries,’ John responded after pondering matters for a moment, referring to the leader of his routiers others called Lupescar.
‘True, Your Grace,’ smiled Fitzwalter, ‘just as long as you have money, but I submit that Your Grace needs to look beyond the immediate…’
John blew out his cheeks in submission. FitzWalter was right, of course, and he knew it. There was no point in protesting further. Besides, to alienate the Marshal would be a stupid thing to do and John knew he needed allies and friends, the more powerful and the more bound to him the better. He nodded.
‘Very well, my Lords, it shall be so…’
‘And lest you forget in the haste of departure, you shall attest to it now, before we depart from this place. I have a patent…’
‘You would command me, Archbishop?’ John said, leaning forward, an unpleasant look upon his face.
‘Aye, Your Grace, I command thee as I would command thee to confess your sins.’
‘But this is a temporal matter…’
‘Which Holy Church most devoutly
desires, my Lord King,’ FitzWalter said tellingly. John sighed and called for goose-feather and ink, whereupon the Archbishop made his obeisance and withdrew. William followed him outside the chamber where FitzWalter made off at high speed with William following. Once out of the immediate ears of any sycophantic and self-serving courtier, the Archbishop slowed and William fell into step.
‘By God, Hubert, but you have bound me hand and foot to him now.’
FitzWalter stopped abruptly and turned to William. ‘It is the only way, William. Once you had made to me your declaration of support for John, I could see no other way. All the weeks we were in England proclaiming John as rightful successor I was troubled by a lack of authority, not for my own part, but for yours. The English dogs will tear you apart when that foolish turd reveals his true nature and Philippe begins playing his games, yet I see no other solution for England’s peace now that John has been proclaimed… Besides, few will object to your assumption of the title in regard of your wife’s lands; you are already Lord of Striguil. Let John rule well for a year and grant you more lands in the Welsh March and you will leave something for your sons.’
‘I do not know whether to thank or curse you…’
‘Do not concern yourself with me,’ remarked FitzWalter over his shoulder as he resumed the brisk walk to his lodgings. ‘To be sure, you will curse yourself often enough. Now do you get John de Earley over the sea and rouse Geoffrey FitzPeter. I shall have a despatch for him within the hour, then you and I shall dine together, for I do not think His Grace is likely to invite us to sup with him this night.’
***
Out of cunning, malice and a further binding of William to his person, before he and his retinue left Dieppe for Shoreham, John informed William that he would invest him with the Earldom, but with-hold the actual grant of the Pembrokeshire lands which Richard Strongbow had lost to Henry Curtmantle in the settlement ending the Anarchy. True, there was a promise to restore these estates to the fiefdom in due course, but in terms of revenues enabling William to support his new status, little had changed.
Nevertheless, William had reason to be pleased and wished Robert de Salignac had lived to know of his rise, for he was, at long last, incrementally increasing his power. During his foray into England with Archbishop FitzWalter and the grand colloquy they had held at Nottingham Castle to obtain promises of fealty to John should he cross the Channel, although many of the Barons had declined to attend, those that did formed a powerful caucus. They had included Ranulf, Earl of Chester, Richard, Earl of Clare and David, brother to William I of Scotland.
Although William had moved in such circles before, he had never done so as an equal, only as a military leader whose skills were acknowledged to be essential. Now, however, he was able to more closely integrate, binding others to him as John bound William to himself. It was one thing to take up his elder brother’s bastard, John Marshal, and add him to his own mesnie, but quite another to augment his authority by association with other powerful men and, best of all, if such men had had a chequered rise through prowess rather than land and birth. William Longsword was the new King’s half-brother, a bastard of Henry Curtmantle, who, by betrothal to the little Lady Ela, the six-year old daughter of William Marshal’s dead cousin, the Earl of Salisbury, assumed the title of Ela’s father. A companion-in-arms of the Lionheart and William, the new Earl of Salisbury had an enviable military reputation of his own. Linked by birth to the King and by marriage to William, Longsword was a natural and unequivocal member of the loyalist party, and drew closer to William for all these reasons.
If he was apprehensive about the fulfilment of John’s promise of land, once crowned, John could not go back on his undertaking to invest William as Earl of Pembroke. On 27th May 1199, in Edward the Confessor’s great abbey church of St Peter at Westminster, the assembled Barony of England heard Archbishop FitzWalter declare John, Duke of Normandy, the legitimate King of England. John’s right rested on lineage and - FitzWalter asserted with great cunning and referring to an ancient form of elective kingship – had been chosen by the chief noblemen of the land at the great Council held at Nottingham. In short, FitzWalter stressed, His Grace possessed all the regal qualities enjoyed by his late, great brother, at which declaration there was a good deal of foot shuffling and exchanges of glances, though the ceremony passed without obvious dissent.
The chief Barons having done homage to the new monarch, William Marshal and Geoffrey FitzPeter were called forth, girded with belts and swords and declared the Earls of Pembroke and Essex respectively. Thereafter they too did homage. That evening at the great banquet William Marshal and Geoffrey FitzPeter attended the King, serving him his meat as befitted their new status.
The Lady Isabelle and her two eldest boys attended both the coronation and the banquet and in bed that night Isabelle mused upon the ironies inherent in the day.
‘I can see no resemblance to the Lionheart in the new King,’ she remarked, laying her head on William’s breast. ‘The Archbishop has a ready tongue and employs it in his cheek to good effect, do you not think?’
In high good humour William chuckled his agreement. ‘Aye, and has been made Chancellor for his pains.’
‘And FitzPeter makes a goodish Earl, though he is no knight and will have to pay scutage. Still he has had the usage of the Earldom of Essex for long enough while you, husband, get the title with no land.’
‘Not yet. The King promises it…’
‘Like Richard promised the Earldom that is yours as readily as Longsword got his by his mere betrothal to little Ela.’ Isabelle uttered the word scathingly. ‘Besides, William, the Pembrokeshire lands were my father’s…’
‘I know, my sweet Lady, but if we wait we shall get them back for our boys.’
It was Isabelle’s turn to chuckle as she snuggled down, her own shoulder in William’s great arm-pit. ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, ‘our dear sweet boys. God grant them long life.’ She paused, then raised her head to add, ‘but you, William, along with Hubert FitzPeter, William Longsword and Geoffrey FitzHubert have become the King’s cloak. For God’s sake avoid being torn off in the thorns of this life.’
Soon afterwards the Lady Isabelle lay asleep in her husband’s arms while he lay awake, staring into the darkness, her words of caution still in his ears.
***
‘There Messieurs,’ King John asked, looking around the Council board, ‘do you not think that I have done well?’
There was an awkward silence. It was the end of May 1200 and John had been on the throne for a year, a year of turbulence and upheaval in the Angevin lands but that month the King had signed a two-year truce, the Treaty of Le Goulet, with Philippe of France in which, according to his own lights at least, John had secured his continental lands.
John blew out his cheeks, called for wine and asked, prompting some reaction, ‘well, my Lords, has my diplomacy struck you all dumb?’
No-one wished to broach the subject of the King’s diplomacy; it was short-term, stupid and answered nothing. But the last year had given rise among the Barons, particularly those in England, to the exposure of the King’s essential weaknesses. Apart from his emerging moral turpitude, which could be tolerated as long as he sought his pleasures among his inferiors, his lack of judgement and unreliability combined with his vindictiveness when thwarted, to render opposition to him useless – or exceedingly dangerous. With John showing a disturbing interest in the wives and marriageable daughters of the nobility, he was rendering land-holders nervous. William, now at last granted the estates of Strongbow in Pembrokeshire and having had the Shrievalty of Gloucester restored to him, knew that John could – and would – strip him of all of it upon a whim if crossed.
‘My Lord Chancellor?’ John goaded. ‘You were part architect of our accommodation with our cousin Philippe…’
‘Indeed, my Liege,’ FitzPeter observed cautiously, ‘but I think the treaty flawed. To render homage to Philippe for your lands over the sea, as your father and b
rother did, is one thing; easy to repudiate if an infringement is precipitated by the other party. But to pay a sum of twenty thousand marks is an act of submission that any breaking thereof will detract from the lustre of your name.’
‘But we have settled the question of Arthur,’ John insisted, betraying his continuing anxiety over his right to the English Crown. ‘He holds Brittany under me…’ he cast about for some analogy, ‘just as the Marshal did homage for Leinster to me and not directly to Richard.’ John sat back with an air of satisfaction and took up his constantly refilled wine-cup.
‘All this is at the expense of Evreux and part of the Vexin,’ William pointed out. Having been directly implicated in the debate William now spoke out. ‘And at the collapse of our long-standing alliance with Flanders which I…’
‘Yes, yes, Marshal,’ snapped John testily, ‘which you negotiated three…four years ago.’ John waved the concern airily aside.
‘And, my Liege, the clause of betrothal of your niece, Blanche of Castile, to Philippe’s son Louis may prove problematical.’
‘Pah!’ John retorted. ‘My mother approved. Indeed my mother crossed the Pyrenees to bring Blanche into Aquitaine, having settled the Lusignan question by granting Hugh de Luisgnan the County of La Marche…’
John finished his wine and dismissed the Council, leaving the chamber followed by two wolf-hounds. In his wake the Councillors rose, broke up into small groups and discussed the pass to which matters had so speedily come.
‘I was about to say that I deplored the loss of the Flemish alliance as I have land at Longueville,’ protested William in an unusually peevish explosion, ‘and the region will be mine to defend should the Count of Flanders decide to invade.’
‘As he most certainly will, once Philippe is ready,’ added FitzPeter. ‘As for bringing Queen Eleanor’s initiative into it,’ the Chancellor shrugged, ‘what man – let alone a King - seeks his mother’s approval?’
‘This one does,’ growled William in a low voice. ‘I also hear rumours that, having had his marriage to Isabella of Gloucester annulled, he intends to seek the hand of Isabelle of Angoulême.’
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