On hearing that Mount Sorrel was invested by Pembroke, the Earl of Winchester went to Louis, and entreated him to send an army to relieve the fortress without delay; and the prince, who deemed it politic at the time to remain in the capital, summoned the Count de Perche, and entrusted him with the command of six hundred knights and twenty thousand men in mail—a force composed of Flemings, French, and Anglo-Normans—a large proportion being cavalry. Robert Fitzwalter, the Earls of Winchester and Hereford, William de Roos, William Beauchamp, William Moubray, with many other barons, accompanied the Count of Perche on his northward expedition, and the citizens of London manifested what zeal still existed among them for the invaders by furnishing funds to pay the cost of equipping so many warriors. It was thought that the Count de Perche and the Anglo-Norman barons were certain to strike a shattering blow at the royal cause, and Louis, on parting with the leaders of the enterprise, believed that he was simply sending them forth to put his enemies under their feet.

Moving from London on the 30th of April, the French and Anglo-Normans signalised their march northward by every kind of outrage. Never had the youths and maidens of Middlesex and Hertfordshire known a May Day associated with such painful memories. The foreign invaders and their Anglo-Norman allies, indeed, celebrated the festival in a way which raised a general shout of horror, but seemed to revel in the crimes of which they were guilty. They slew men, outraged women, plundered houses, and wantonly destroyed churches and abbeys as they went, pursued everywhere by the maledictions of the English, who vowed vengeance, and prepared the means of executing it, as if admonished by instinct that the day was not very distant.

The Count de Perche, however, pursued his march in triumph, paying no attention whatever to the curses and threats of the insulted and the injured, no matter how flagrant the insult or how deep the injury, and only eager to come up with the royalists. Pembroke, however, was well informed of all that was taking place, and acted with his wonted prudence. Knowing the impossibility of contending with so superior a force as that headed by the Count de Perche, the protector raised the siege, marched to Nottingham, and summoned the king’s adherents in all quarters to come to his support; and then removing from Nottingham to Newark-on-Trent, he calmly awaited the arrival of his friends and intelligence of his foes.

Meanwhile the Count de Perche made his way to Leicestershire, and on reaching Mount Sorrel found that Pembroke had raised the siege and gone northward. Perche and Fitzwalter, however, did not follow the foe. In fact, they resolved, without delay, to march to Lincoln, where there was still work to be done for their Lord Louis. Accordingly they marched through the vale of Belvoir, and, continuing to perpetrate every enormity as they advanced, at length reached the city which had been so long and so bravely defended by the royalists.

But in the interim Pembroke was not idle. In fact, the old warrior-statesman was every day proving himself, by his sagacity and energy, worthy of the position he occupied. His efforts were even more successful than he could have anticipated, and to the royal standard at Newark gathered chiefs of great name and high reputation. Thither came Ralph, Earl of Chester, William, Earl Ferrars, William, Earl of Salisbury, William, Earl of Arundel, and William, Earl of Albemarle; thither also, from the castles which they held for the king, came William de Cantelupe, Robert de Vipont, Brian de Lisle, Geoffrey de Lucy, and Thomas Bassett; thither, with his mercenaries, came Falco, who had almost become popular by fighting very earnestly against mercenaries ten times less scrupulous than his own; and thither came Philip de Albini and John Marshal, whose crossbowmen had done such good service on the English coast. Four hundred knights, many yeomen on horseback, and a considerable body of foot, formed the army which Pembroke headed to save England from the foreigner; and though it was much inferior, especially in cavalry, to that under the Count de Perche, the old protector did not despair of dealing with his foes in a manner satisfactory to the king and country.

It was Friday, the 19th of May, the sixth day of Whitsuntide, when Pembroke, having made all his arrangements, prepared to leave Newark and put everything to the test. Before marching, however, the warriors of England took the sacrament, and received from the papal legate white crosses, to mark them as men engaged in a holy war. At the same time the legate excommunicated Prince Louis and his principal partisans by name; and, having addressed the king’s adherents in encouraging language, he sent them on their way rejoicing in the hope of a glorious victory or a brave death.

On the evening of Friday, Pembroke, too prudent to fatigue his army with long marches when about to encounter so formidable an enemy, halted at Stowe, a village with a park and a Norman church, and there the royalists passed the night. Next morning the protector entrusted the king to the care of the legate, with whom the royal boy was to remain while warriors did battle for that crown which he was destined to find so thorny, and which, after causing him half a century of trouble, would have been torn from his hoary head, had not his mighty son, breaking chains and defying difficulties, prostrated Simon de Montfort and the baronial oligarchy on the field of Evesham. Pembroke was not gifted with the genius which fifty years later guided Edward on the way to victory, nor animated, as was the greatest of the Plantagenets, by the ambition of creating a free and prosperous nation out of hostile races, and enrolling his name in the annals of fame as one of the greatest leaders in war and rulers in peace; but the good earl was guided by an instinctive sagacity which made him equal to the work he was called on to do, and albeit he coveted no reward save the ennobling consciousness of having done his duty, he was not the less anxious to perform that duty faithfully and well.

And in a cautious spirit, but with a fearless heart, Pembroke marshalled his army skilfully in seven battalions, and set his face towards Lincoln to make the great venture, Philip de Albini and John Marshal, with the crossbowmen, leading the van and keeping about a mile in advance, and the baggage waggons, well guarded, bringing up the rear. Bucklers glittered and banners waved in all directions, for each knight had on the occasion two standards, one of which was borne before him, and the other carried by the soldiers in charge of the baggage, and thus the army of England had the appearance of being a much more numerous host than it in reality was, as on that Saturday morning, in the merry month of May, Pembroke left Stowe, and, in admirable order, took his way to Lincoln.

CHAPTER XLVIII
LINCOLN

LINCOLN is situated on the summit and side of a hill that slopes with a deep descent to the margin of the river Witham, which here bends its course eastward, and, being divided into three small channels, washes the lower part of the city.