In this year, on the feast of St. James the Apostle, July 25, the inhabitants of London and those of the neighbouring country, having challenged one another to a wrestling match, met near the hospital of Queen Matilda, outside the City (St. Katherine’s Hospital, near the Tower) to decide who were the stronger in this sport. The contest was long, and after great efforts on both sides, the citizens of London had the best of the contest, to the chagrin of their adversaries. He who took the defeat most to heart was the seneschal of the abbat of Westminster, who devised means to avenge the defeat of his party. Having formed in his mind a plan of vengeance, he issued a fresh challenge for the feast of St. Peter’s Chains (August 1st), and sent word for everyone to come to Westminster to wrestle, promising a ram as a prize. That being done the said seneschal got together strong and practised wrestlers, so that the victory might be thus gained. The citizens of London, wishing to distinguish themselves a second time, came in great numbers to the appointed place. The contest began, those on one side and the other trying to throw their opponents to the ground, but the seneschal of whom mention has been made, having brought up people from the neighbourhood and from the country, turned the contest into a fight which would satisfy his revenge. He took up arms without provocation and furiously charged, not without bloodshed, the unarmed citizens of London. The citizens, wounded and insulted, fled in disorder to the City. There ensued a great tumult: the common bell was rung and brought the people together. The story went about, every one gave his opinion, and proposed his plan of revenge. At last the Mayor, Serle, a man prudent and peaceful, advised that complaint should be made to the abbat of Westminster, and said that if he would consent to make suitable reparation, every one should then be satisfied. But Constantine, who had great power in the City, declared amid great applause that it would be better to throw down all the houses belonging to the abbat of Westminster, as well as the seneschal’s house. Forthwith an order was drawn up, enjoining the immediate execution of Constantine’s project. A blind multitude, a mad populace, entrusted Constantine with this civil war, flung itself in a tumult on the possessions of the abbat, demolished several houses, and did great damage. In the midst of this scene was Constantine, continually reciting the order, and crying with all his might, “Montjoie! Montjoie! God and our lord Louis be our help!”
This cry, more than anything else, provoked the king’s friends, and made them determine to exact punishment for this sedition, as we will now tell. The facts soon got about, and came to the ear of Hubert de Burgh, the justiciar, who, having got together a number of knights, put himself at their head and went to the Tower of London, from which he sent a message to the elders to come to him without delay. When they were before him he asked who were the principal movers in the sedition; who were they who had dared to trouble the royal city, and break the king’s peace? Then Constantine, constant in his presumption and pride, answered otherwise than was either becoming or prudent. “It is I,” he said, “what wilt thou?” He declared that he was protected by treaty, that he could justify what he had done, which was even less than he ought to have done. He trusted to the oath taken by the king as well as by Prince Louis, by the terms of which the friends and partisans of one or the other were to be left in peace.
The justiciar, hearing this avowal of Constantine, detained him and two of his abettors, without exciting any disturbance. The next morning he sent Fawkes de Bréauté (known to him as a man ready for any cruelty) with an armed force to carry Constantine by way of the Thames to be hanged at The Elms. Quickly and secretly they carried him thither, and when Constantine had the rope round his neck, he offered fifteen thousand marks of silver if his life might be spared. To whom answer was made that never more should he get up a riot in the king’s city. Hanged therefore he was, together with Constantine, his nephew, and a certain Geoffrey, who had proclaimed the order in the City.
Thus was the sentence on Constantine carried out unknown to the citizens, and without disorder. That done, the justiciar made his entry into London, with Fawkes and the armed men who had gone with him. He arrested all known to have taken part in the riot, threw them into prison, and let them out only when he had caused their feet or hands to be lopped off. Numbers fled and never returned. The king took sixty citizens as hostages, and deposed the magistrates and put others in their room. Moreover, he ordered that a great gallows should be set up.[114]
1236. About this time some bold but rash nobles in England, seduced by we know not what spirit, conspired together, and entered into an execrable alliance to ravage England like robbers and night-thieves. Their design, however, became known, and the chief of the conspiracy—to wit, Peter de Buffer, one of the king’s doorkeepers—was taken prisoner, and by him others were accused. In order to whose execution a dreadful machine, commonly called a gibbet, was set up in London, and on it two of the chief conspirators were hanged, after having engaged in single combat. One of them was killed in the fight, and was hanged with his head cleft open, and the other, hanged alive, breathed forth his wretched life on the same gibbet amid the lamentations of the assembled multitude.[115]
1239. A certain messenger of the king, named William, had been convicted of manifold crimes, and lay in prison under sentence of death. He brought accusations of treason against several nobles; he also made a criminal charge against Ralph Briton, a priest and canon of the Church of St. Paul’s, London, who had for some time been a familiar friend of the king, and had held the office of treasurer. On this coming to the king’s ears he by letter ordered the Mayor of London, William Gromer (or Gerard Batt), to seize Ralph and imprison him in the Tower of London, and the Mayor obeying the king rather than God, at once carried the king’s orders into effect. He dragged the said Ralph with violence from his house near St. Paul’s, and imprisoned him in the Tower, securing him with chains, commonly called rings. The Dean of London, Master G. de Lucy, informed of this, took counsel with his fellow canons (the bishop being absent), and pronounced a general sentence of excommunication against all the presumptuous perpetrators of this enormity, and placed St. Paul’s Church under an interdict. The king, however, although warned by the bishop, did not amend his faults, but continued with threats to heap evils on evils, so that the bishop was about to place the whole of the City of London, which was subject to him, under an interdict: but when the archbishop of Canterbury, as well as the legate, the bishop of London, and many other prelates, were prepared to lay a heavy hand on the City, the king, although unwillingly, ordered the said Ralph to be released, and allowed to depart in peace. But when the king sought to add the condition that Ralph should be so kept as to be ready to give an explanation when the king required it, the churchmen replied that they would not on any account keep him in this manner, like an imprisoned man, but that the church should receive him as absolutely free, just as when the king’s attendants tore him by force from his house. In this manner then was Ralph released.
Not long afterwards, the before-named villain, who had, as above stated, calumniated the nobles and the aforesaid Ralph, was ignominiously hanged outside the City of London, on that instrument of punishment called a gibbet: and when he saw that death was certain, he, although late, openly confessed before the people and his executioners that he had made the aforesaid accusations only for the purpose of prolonging his life.[116]
1242. William de Marisco, or Marsh, was the son of Geoffrey, justiciar or viceroy of Ireland. In 1235 Henry Clement, a messenger from the Irish peers to the king, was murdered in London. William Marsh was accused of the murder, but he always protested his innocence. William was also accused of being implicated in the attempted assassination of the king at Woodstock (p. 30). His father, Geoffrey, was also suspected of being privy to the attempt, and his lands being seized on this account, he fled to Scotland, whence he was finally driven out at the king’s instance, dying friendless and poor in France. This is the chronicler’s account of the doings of William after his father’s fall:—
William sought refuge in a certain island not far from Bristol, Devon, or Cornwall, named Lundy, an impregnable retreat. Here, having drawn to himself a number of outlaws and fugitives, he lived by piracy; he gave himself up to plunder and rapine, seizing the goods of merchants trading in those parts, especially wine and provisions. He also made sudden descents on the coasts, carrying off booty, injuring greatly thereby the kingdom of England, by preying upon merchants, both native and foreign. Now, a great number of nobles, English as well as Irish, who could not honourably dwell at home while the king was engaged in war in parts beyond the sea, journeyed across the countries not far distant from the said island, and ascertained beyond doubt that the said William and his band could be taken only by stratagem. They told the king that he must proceed in the matter not violently, but cautiously, in order to capture these devastators. The king therefore gave his orders to trusted men, engaging them by the promise of a rich reward to undertake the capture of this man and the deliverance of their country. The said William was hateful to the king, because he suspected him of being privy, together with his father, Geoffrey, to the attempted assassination, and to have been wickedly guilty of treason by sending the wretch who went by night to Woodstock to cut the king’s throat; also to have killed in London, in the king’s presence, a certain messenger sent by an Irish nobleman. William’s denial of the charges was not believed, nor even listened to. Therefore he imprudently sought safety in remote places, living like an outlaw and a fugitive.
After narrating other events, the chronicler continues:—