William Marshal Guardian of England- The Complete Series

by Richard Woodman

  Watching events in England as best he might from the remote fastness of Kilkenny, William had Thomas send Edgar abroad to gather intelligence on the pretext of visiting those castellans still in the Earl’s service. He was less troubled by the news that John de Gray had suffered further defeats, though of the spiritual world. Having been nominated by John Archbishop-elect of Canterbury, De Gray had been set aside by Papal Interdict. John’s refusal to accept the Pope’s decision that Cardinal Stephen Langton should become John’s new Prelate had aroused the righteous wrath of Pope Innocent III.

  But neither the excommunication of all England nor his own personal spiritual isolation troubled William. Baptism of infants continued, as did the offices ministering to the penance of the dying, while the Cistercians were chief among a number of religious Houses claiming exemption from Innocent’s proscriptions.

  Aware that affairs in England were going ill for John, William canvassed opinion among his chief Barons and dictated a letter of support to the King, offering him men and horses, even his own lance. John responded, ordering William to stay where he was, to support De Gray and hold Ireland above all things. However, he was to send the King money, the better to equip his two sons for war in the King’s service.

  However, when he heard news of a serious uprising against John among the Barons of the north of England, news which told of a great plot to turn the whole Kingdom against the King, William stirred. At first he did not believe such an extravagant tale, for some spoke of the murder of the King, others of his being sold to the Welsh, but affairs took a more serious turn when news arrived at Waterford that the French King, Philippe Augustus, provoked by John’s repeated sallies into Poitou, and well aware of John’s weakness at home, was preparing a great fleet, and embarking troops for invasion.

  This was too much for the old man. Against Isabelle’s advice, he sent out a summons and obtained the pledges of almost the entire Anglo-Norman Barony of Ireland in support of the King and on 15 August 1213 he joined King John near Dover. William arrived at the head of five hundred knights and their mesnies, making their last day’s riding armed and accoutred for war. William, under his banner of a red lion rampant on a ground of green and gold, his surtout bearing the same device over a coat of mail and his helm upon his saddle-bow, led the column, glittering in the sunshine, into John’s encampment outside a Templar House near Dover.

  If, with this addition of power to John’s army mustering to oppose the French, he expected a warm welcome, William was to be disappointed. John’s initial greeting was cold and formal and William had been in his company for two days before he was summoned to the King’s Council. He had wisely not pressed his presence upon the King, but spent his time seeing to the ordering of his large following. When the summons came, William, dressed in mail and surtout, entered the King’s chamber with one of his close household knights, William Waleran and his clerk Thomas at his side. John’s appearance shook William; the younger man had grown bloated with easy living and indulgence. He sat, as William long remembered him, slumped in his chair at the head of an otherwise unoccupied table with a goblet of Bordeaux wine before him. Behind him were ranged those Barons still loyal to him, among them William’s own sons and his old friends Geoffery FitzPeter and William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury.

  Left hand on sword hilt, William made his obeisance and John stared at him for some moments. William stood and bore the scrutiny, he had been in the service of the House of Anjou for too long to expect anything remotely like a courteous respect for his grey hairs, while his welcome, or lack of it, had given him nothing to hope for but further exhausting service. But for once John surprised him.

  Ordering the chamber cleared, John waited until the two were alone.

  ‘My Lord William,’ he said intimately, his expression suddenly somehow fallen, exhausted, grown desperate, a sensation confirmed by what followed. ‘Tell me upon your oath that you had no part in the conspiracy among my northern Barons.’

  William was genuinely shocked at the accusation. Was this eternal suspicion how John saw him? No wonder John D’Earley suffered in Nottingham.

  ‘Upon my oath, my Liege,’ he responded with sharp, even indignant, formality, dropping to one knee. ‘Did I not offer my power to Your Grace and am I not here with the chivalry of Ireland at my back.’

  John expelled his breath; it was none too sweet. He motioned William to rise and draw a camp stool forward so that he might take a seat at board. ‘Draw close. You will rejoin my Council,’ he said, his voice low, confidential, ‘and I shall release John D’Earley, and place your son William in his charge. Your boy Richard I shall place with Thomas de Sandford. Besides the displeasure of that gang of traitors I have nursed in my bosom here in England, Philippe of France has Papal blessing to seize my throne if I do not submit and accept that dog Langton in the See of Canterbury. The Papal Legate Pandolpho is here to press upon me submission to Papal authority…’

  John was clenching the stem of his goblet and almost grinding his teeth as he confided in William.

  ‘Christ’s bones,’ he went on, ‘I would fain pass over again into Poitou to strike at the bastard’s under-belly, but he has troops in Flanders and a great fleet assembled there to carry them hither. The Dauphin Louis will rule England under his father, once I am deposed and,’ and here John beat the table with his other fist, clenched like a hammer-head, ‘my northern Barons, God rot them, refuse service and simmer and plot against me.’

  The intensity of John’s feelings was plain; sweat now poured off his brow and William observed an Angevin Prince uncharacteristically mastering his prodigious rage. The King suddenly let go of the goblet, leaned forward and dug his fingers into William’s shoulder, gripping him with a ferocity that betokened a fear of losing William. William dropped his eyes.

  ‘Look at me,’ John hissed and William felt the spittle and the stink of John’s breath upon his face. He looked at the King.

  ‘Thou wast ever faithful to my House, William Marshal, and owe all that you have to my father and my brothers…’ John’s appeal, clear though it was in implication, petered out and William was quick to fill the void, so that there could be no doubt, for he was thinking fast.

  ‘My Liege,’ he said, braving the King’s breath, ‘you can have no cause to doubt me, ill-used though I have been at time if it is that that gives you anxiety.’

  ‘Your lands in Normandy give me anxiety.’

  The King’s grip on William’s shoulder grew fiercer. William’s Norman estates were held enfeoffed under Philippe Augustus and the question of divided loyalty had caused a schism with the King of England before, but William saw now a slender hope of securing a greater legacy than those first acquisitions. John had made him an Earl, a great Marcher Lord, even though he had also stripped him of much of his Welsh lands after his falling-out with the King. Greatly desirous as he was of recovering his fiefdoms in south Wales, to ask directly for them at such a moment would not mollify John in such a mood but William knew the chalice John offered him held both gall and wine, if not outright poison. Yet he must not lose the initiative this moment gave him.

  Before responding directly to the King he asked in a low voice to match the King’s:

  ‘Before you go over into Poitou, Your Grace, what measures can we put in train to oppose the present threat of the French invasion?’

  Perceiving that he had won his man, John relaxed his grip and answered. ‘I have called a Council for this afternoon. William de Salisbury has a fleet ready to sail against them, they lie in The Downs awaiting the order to sail against the French ships at Damme.’

  ‘Then give it, Your Grace, without delay, without the Council, if needs be and,’ he paused, ‘if I may speak freely?’ John inclined his head. ‘Submit to Pope Innocent; half of Philippe’s justification for war will be removed at a stroke and the people of England will rejoice. You have the Legate here…’

  ‘Innocent will demand an indemnity.’

  ‘Pay it, Sire
. Submit England to the Pope, obtain his protection, Philippe will be out-manoeuvred, send an embassy to the Emperor, for I hear there is little love lost between Otto and Philippe, the King of France being engrossed to the Empire’s detriment…’

  John nodded. He seemed both to deflate from the tension of the moment and drew fresh breath for the future.

  ‘Aye, aye, your counsel is wise…’ A flicker of possibility was lit in John’s eyes and he drew himself up in his chair, but William had not finished with him yet.

  ‘As for the allegiance I owe Philippe of France for my lands in Normandy, My Liege,’ he pressed on, knowing he had the King’s ear as he had not had it for years, ‘I am made Earl of Pembroke and Leinster by your gracious hand…’ William deliberately let the sentence hang.

  ‘Go on,’ John prompted.

  ‘What more can I say than that I was ever ready to render you and your House that service to which I was bound. What lay in your power before lays in your power today; in Normandy lies my past, in your Kingdom lies my future.’

  The two men regarded each other for some moments then John tugged at his beard and smiled wanly.

  ‘If I have your word as to your loyalty, my Lord William,’ the King said quietly, returning William a reply as hedged as his own words. ‘Let us then lay that matter aside and, against the possibility of your suffering from any ill-consequence engendered by my Cousin of France, I shall, from this day, restore to you all your lands and powers in the southern March of Wales and add, besides, Gower and Haverfordwest.’

  ‘Your Grace…’ William bowed his head in gratitude, but John was already contemplating the field of glories William’s advice conjured up.

  ‘With Otto in the field, we might attack the Capet on two fronts, the Emperor from the north and once in Poitou, I might…’ John’s voice tailed off.

  ‘And a third if you send a force directly into Normandy, while with Papal blessing, Your Grace, the consequences could be considerable.

  John sat bolt upright, raised his voice and reconvened his Court.

  ‘Come, my Lords and Gentlemen,’ he announced. ‘We are pleased to speak of a reconciliation with My Lord of Pembroke and Leinster and call upon you all to bear witness. Turning to William he said: ‘Your fealty, my Lord Earl, for all those lands I have and shall engross unto you by instrument this day and to which my Lords here assembled shall bear witness.’

  William dropped again to his knees and placed his hands together in an attitude of prayer, whereupon John, staring round at the Court, pressed William’s hands.

  Immediately afterwards John called for more wine and sealed the matter with all the Court, calling in his confidential clerk and dictating the Letters Patent that formed the instrument of William Marshal’s full restoration to the King’s favour.

  *

  ‘By my troth, John, you have been ill used!’

  ‘Aye my Lord, but I cheer myself that it was in your service.’

  William stared at John D’Earley whose emaciated figure was but a shadow of his former fine physique. Gone were the bright eyes, dimmed by the gloom of Nottingham’s dungeon, and the smile, that broad expression of a delight in life that had so heartened William, was but a sad imitation of the man’s younger self.

  ‘We must feed you John,’ William said, clapping his hands upon his friend’s shoulders, ‘and feed you well.’

  A month later and William and D’Earley had been reunited in London, whither William had gone from Dover on his way west following William de Salisbury’s defeat of the French fleet off Damme. Longsword’s victory had ended the spectre of invasion, the French vessels being set on fire so that the returning English spoke of the sea being aflame. Such an achievement had put King John in a high good humour, and with him the entire Court, including William. However, D’Earley brought William more sobering news, of the deep divisions that clove England’s Barony from the King and which were not laid to rest by one day’s success over the French. Far from it, D’Earley intimated; many were so hostile to John that they would have cheered a French triumph.

  Late one evening, when William and his old friend sat late over their wine, D’Earley told William much of what had passed in England whilst he had been in Leinster and which D’Earley had gleaned in Nottingham and after his release. He emphasised the seriousness of the deep malcontent among the Barons, the majority of whom owed money to the King, had had castles and lands stripped from them by the arbitrary justice that John had meted out. Most of these men held fiefdoms in the north of England and the term ‘Northerner’ had become synonymous with grievance and incipient revolt.

  But John’s indiscriminate decisions had been handed out not just to nobles who displeased him, but to almost any litigant whose case came before his itinerant Court. In by-passing the Courts of Law at Westminster, John’s capricious conduct had struck lower but increasingly influential layers of the feudal society of England and a growing alienation had been the consequence, a disaffection exacerbated by increases in taxes for John’s expeditions, his luxurious state and his notorious excesses.

  There were credible rumours that John had cuckolded half his Barons to which were added, for all their lack of evidence, darker tales which possessed a tenacious salaciousness that lent them a deep and believable significance when set against the revived allegations of John’s personal murder of Prince Arthur of Brittany. And besides all this there circulated a persistent and damaging link between John’s well-known contempt for the Papal Interdict, and the King’s supposed predilection for Devil-worship.

  The northern Barons refused to follow John into Poitou. Nor would they pay the scutage demanded of them for defaulting on these obligations, nor the new taxes demanded by the King’s administrators sent among them to raise yet more money for the employment of Flemish mercenaries. That King John despoiled merchants of their wealth was of less consequence to the great majority of the Barons than that their own powers and privileges, their castles and lands were subject to the King’s whimsy, and their women were exposed to his sexual appetites.

  Beset by debt as so many were, such a situation could have only one outcome: a desire for John’s removal and since, like William, many held lands south of the Channel, submission to Louis, the Dauphin of France, as overlord of England.

  ‘They perceive it as the lesser of two evils, my Lord,’ D’Earley concluded, his brow uncharacteristically troubled.

  ‘You think me to have acted foolishly for cleaving to John?’

  ‘My Lord, it is not for me to say…’

  ‘God’s blood, John!’ William suddenly stirred, his somnolence thrown aside as he realised the full implications of D’Earley’s analysis. ‘Would you have Philippe’s son on England’s throne and see, when he dies, Louis rule over an empire stretching from the Tweed to the Pyrenees?’

  ‘Such an empire would please the Pope,’ D’Earley riposted unequivocally.

  William shook his head. ‘I am grown too old for these games,’ he said relapsing into silence, his mind a turmoil.

  After a moment, D’Earley said quietly, ‘My Lord, there is a way…’

  William looked up and shook his head. ‘No, no, John, I cannot countenance disloyalty or even dissembling. I pray you do not entertain any such idea on my account.’ Then, thinking D’Earley’s long imprisonment had turned him from William and his Lord’s insistent and blind loyalty to the King, he added, ‘if you wish to leave my service, John, you are free to do so. God knows it has cost you much…’

  D’Earley laughed, the first time William had seen his once familiar smile since his release from durance. ‘No, my Lord, that is not my meaning but there is one who would, I think, ride to the opposing camp had he the liberty to do so.’

  William frowned. ‘Who, in God’s name?’

  ‘Your son Will.’

  William was stunned. ‘He has told you this? Come, tell me.’

  ‘Not in so many words, my Lord, but he has made his inclination clear. The King’s hospitali
ty was not always pleasurable,’ he added drily.

  ‘Sweet Jesu…’ William turned away and stared out of the chamber window. William was a dubbed knight banneret with a small following of his own, married to Alice, daughter of his father’s old friend Baldwin de Béthune and entitled to act independently if he so wished. William might desire to have had him in his own camp but… He turned back to D’Earley.

  ‘If the lad saw fit to join the rebels both you and I would thereby be compromised.’

  D’Earley shrugged. ‘’Tis true there lies danger to us in such a defection, but, my Lord, there are also possibilities.’

  ‘A foot in the other camp, you mean?’

  ‘Should the King fall, yes, but if not,’ D’Earley broke off and shrugged.

  ‘My son would suffer,’

  ‘Not if he was also useful to us…’

  ‘Us?’

  ‘To the King’s party.’

  ‘You mean as a source of intelligence?’

  ‘We could pretend, even if he was as sticky about his honour as his father,’ John D’Earley ventured.

  William stared at his friend for a moment. ‘By the Christ, John, but Nottingham has changed you!’

  ‘It would change any man, my Lord,’ D’Earley responded levelly.

  William considered the matter for some moments as D’Earley poured more wine and waited. After reflecting upon the suggestion, William raised his head and said: ‘As I love honour above all things, I cannot subscribe to such dissembling…’

  ‘But if I sounded the lad out, discussed it with the Lady Isabelle…’

  ‘Not that last,’ William interrupted, ‘as for the first I have no opinion upon the matter. As I said before, the lad is free to do as his conscience tells him, though he shall have neither my blessing nor my consent, tacit or otherwise. The matter I leave to you…entirely to you. He is in your charge, given you by the King’s Grace. There is no need for you to hang upon my harness, John, you have a future of your own to forge and I would not stop so loyal a friend.’