THE CAREER OF GEOFFREY DE MANDEVILLE (1143.)
Source.—William of Newburgh, Historia rerum Anglicarum, ed. Howlett, vol. i., p. 44. (Rolls Series, Chronicles of Stephen, Henry II., and Richard I.)
At the same time king Stephen seized Geoffrey de Mandeville in his court at St. Albans, not indeed honourably and according to the law of nations, but for his deserts and out of fear, with an eye rather to the expedient than to the chivalrous. For Geoffrey was a man of consummate daring and of equal strength and cunning, strengthening his hold on the famous Tower of London with two noteworthy added fortifications, and achieving great ends by an ingenious subtlety. For these reasons he inspired fear in the king himself, who, however, was at pains to conceal his sense of wrong suffered at the other’s hands, and watched for a convenient season to take his revenge.
Some years before the king had acquired the treasures of the bishop of Salisbury, and, despatching a large sum of money to Louis, king of the French, had married his son Eustace to Constance, Louis’ sister, planning by a match with so great a prince to strengthen his son’s chance of succession against the count of Anjou and his sons; and Constance was in London with the queen, her mother-in-law. When the queen would have gone elsewhere with her daughter-in-law, the aforesaid Geoffrey, then master of the Tower, prevented her, and seizing her daughter-in-law out of her hands, in spite of her stout resistance, kept her, permitting the queen to depart with ignominy. Afterwards at the king’s demand he reluctantly resigned his noble booty to her father-in-law, who for the time dissembled his just indignation. Now this wrong seemed to have been at length forgotten, when the barons assembled at the royal summons at St. Albans, and among them appeared this bandit; whereupon, forthwith seizing the opportunity, the king gave vent to his righteous anger and putting Geoffrey in bonds, extorted from him the Tower of London with the two other fortresses which he held. Stripped of his defences, but released, his incapacity to rest, his mighty spirit, his almost incomparable resource, and his extraordinary genius for evil, led him to gather together an impious crew, at whose head he burst into the monastery of Ramsey; without fear, he drove out the monks, and turned the famous and holy place into a den of thieves, and the sanctuary of God into the home of the devil, ravaging the country round with constant sallies and expeditions. Success increased his confidence, and going further afield, he harassed and menaced king Stephen with the boldest assaults. During this wild outburst it seemed as if God was asleep and took no thought for human affairs, or even his own, that is, the church; and pious men cried out of their trouble, “Arise, why sleepest thou, O Lord?” But, as the apostle says, after God endured with much patience vessels of wrath fit for destruction, “he arose,” as the prophet says, “as from sleep, and smote his enemies in their hinder parts,” that is, in the latter years of those whose earlier career seemed prosperous. In a word, shortly before the destruction of that impious wretch, as is proved by the true testimony of many, the walls of the church into which he had burst, and of the adjacent cloister, sweated with real blood, by which, as afterwards appeared, was signified both the enormity of his crime and the now imminent judgment upon the enormity. But since the evil men, given over to a reprobate mind, were in no wise frightened by a portent so horrible, their abandoned leader, while storming a castle of his enemies among the serried ranks of his followers, was struck on the head by the arrow of a common footman; and from that wound the reckless fighter, though at first he made light of it, died after a few days, and took with him to hell the burden of the church’s anathema, from which he could never be absolved.
His two most cruel followers, of whom one was over the knights and the other over the footmen, are reported to have perished by diverse mishaps. The one died by a fall from his horse, his head being crushed on the ground and his brains scattered; the other, Rainer by name, the chief destroyer and burner of churches, when crossing the sea with his wife, brought the ship to a standstill in mid ocean by the weight of his sins. The sailors and others who were crossing at the same time were reduced to stupefaction, but, following the ancient example, cast lots, and the lot fell upon Rainer; and when, to prevent the possibility of accident, they cast lots a second and a third time with the same result, it was declared to be the judgment of God. So, in order that all might not perish with him and on his account, he was put out in a boat with his wife and his ill-gotten wealth. The ship immediately leapt forward and was borne on its usual course. But the boat sank under the weight of the sinner, and was overwhelmed in the waves.