Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

by John G. Edgar

WHILE Pembroke was approaching Lincoln with his army, marching in the admirable order already described, with banners waving in the sunshine, a messenger, instructed by Dame Nichola de Camville, having left the castle by the postern door, took his way northward, and escaping the observation of the Count de Perche and his riders, who, having gone forth to reconnoitre, were then returning to the city, came to the protector, and doffing his cap with much deference, bent low to the great warrior-statesman.

“All hail, my lord earl!” said he, gaily. “My lady greets thee by me, and bids me say that never was young lover more welcome to lady’s bower than is thy coming to her in this hour of peril; likewise, if such be your good pleasure, you can enter the castle by the postern gate, which has been opened on tidings of your approach, and thence make your way into the city. But be that as you will, lord earl.”

Pembroke acknowledged in courteous phrase the greeting of Nichola de Camville, and mused for a moment over the message. However, he declined the invitation to enter by the postern, deeming a bolder course the more expedient. But he nevertheless resolved to profit by the postern, and instructed Falco to enter with his whole division and the crossbowmen, with the object of distracting the enemy, and, if possible, making a sortie and forcing open one of the gates. Without delay the necessary arrangements were made, and while the protector led his forces to the north gate, and caused his trumpets to sound an onset, Falco, with practised skill and characteristic promptitude, threw his mercenaries and the crossbowmen—mostly English yeomen—into the castle by means of the postern, and conveying them to the roofs and ramparts with a rapidity that seemed magical, gave the signal to shoot.

The order was obeyed to some purpose. Instantly a murderous discharge of bolts from the crossbows answered the signal and did terrible execution both among the cavalry and infantry of the French count and Anglo-Norman barons, and caused such a yell of agony from the wounded as intimated unmistakably to the protector that the foreign warrior was doing his work with zeal and determination.

In fact, the effect was terrific. Horses and their riders rolled on the ground, and while yet men were struggling to rise, and chargers were kicking, mad with the pain from their wounds, and all was confusion, Falco boldly threw open the castle gate, pushed into the city, and throwing himself into the midst of the enemy, endeavoured to clear a space around the north gate, at which Pembroke’s trumpets were sounding and his men thundering for admittance.

But Falco found that here he had terrible obstacles to encounter. Recovering from their surprise, the French and Anglo-Normans came rushing to the spot like eagles to the carnage, and answered Falco’s Poictevin war-cry of “St. George for the puissant duke!” with loud shouts of “Montjoie, St. Denis!” “God aid us and our Lord Louis!” A hand-to-hand conflict then took place, and Falco and his band were surrounded by a host of foes, and while this was going on a charge of Norman cavalry rendered their predicament quite the reverse of enviable. In vain they struggled and battled valiantly against the numerous assailants who swarmed to the spot. It was of no avail. Numbers embarrassed their movements and impeded their action. Reginald, surnamed Crocus, a brave knight of Falco’s, was killed by his leader’s side; Falco himself was carried away by the crowd of foes and made prisoner; and for a brief period it seemed that the mercenaries and crossbowmen were doomed either to yield or to perish to a man.

But, meanwhile, this scuffle had been so exciting that the French had thought less than they ought in prudence to have done of the formidable host outside the walls, and the knights and barons appointed to guard the north gate had been allured from their post. The consequence was fatal to their leader and their cause. Making a great effort as the din of the conflict within the walls reached his ears, Pembroke succeeded in forcing the gate, and no sooner was it opened than his infantry rushed in, carrying all before them, and shouting, “Down with the foreigners! Down with the outlandish men!” and Falco’s division, availing themselves of the confusion caused by the entrance of the English, charged once and again upon the enemy with such right good will that they rescued their leader, and enabled him to renew the combat which he had so bravely begun.

And now the Count de Perche had reason to discover and to repent the error of which he had been guilty when he rejected the advice of Robert Fitzwalter, and refused to march out of Lincoln and give his enemies battle in the open country. Engaged in a desperate struggle in narrow streets where cavalry could not charge, the French from the beginning had so decidedly the worst of the encounter that they fought almost without hope of victory. Horses and riders alike suffered in the conflict, and while the chargers were “mown down like pigs” by the crossbowmen, the French knights, dismounted and at the mercy of their assailants, surrendered almost in a mass. Nor did the Anglo-Norman barons display any of that high spirit with which, in later civil wars, such nobles as Richard Neville, Earl of Warwick, faced the danger that they had provoked and defied. On the contrary, they gave up their swords almost to a man, and resigned themselves sheepishly to their fate. Robert Fitzwalter yielded himself prisoner, so did the Earl of Winchester, so did the Earl of Hereford, and William de Roos, and William Beauchamp, and William Moubray, and Gilbert de Gant, who must have felt crestfallen indeed as he thought of the earldom which had been given to him by a man not entitled to grant it, and for a victory that was never to be won. All these magnates, who had talked so boastfully a year earlier, when they brought Prince Louis into England and did homage to him at Westminster, now stood with mortification in their faces, and perhaps remorse at their hearts, baffled, conquered, and captive, after having failed in their criminal endeavour to reduce the country, for whose laws and liberties they had professed such respect, under the rule of a French prince, who, they well knew, could only rule as a conqueror.

But the love of life, or the fear of death, which prompted Fitzwalter, and De Quency, and Bohun to surrender rather than fall bravely was not so contagious as to reach the heart of the Count de Perche. Never even for a moment did he show the white feather, or any abatement of the defiant courage that had characterised his career in England. Not, indeed, that there remained even a chance of redeeming the fortunes of the day. Roland and Oliver, and all the Paladins of Charlemagne, could they have come out of their graves, would have struggled in vain to rally the broken ranks of the army that had, a few hours earlier, been so confident, and which was now flying in terror through the south gate. On all sides the count was deserted. His Anglo-Norman allies were yielding before his eyes, his French comrades were endeavouring to save themselves by flight, forgetting in their haste that in order to do so they must pass through the country whose inhabitants they had recently exasperated by their outrages, and who were panting for an opportunity of avenging the wrongs that had been done to them and to theirs.

Still, so daunted were the French with the more immediate dangers that beset them, that they no sooner saw how the day was going than they bethought them of escaping, and began to move towards the south gate of Lincoln, with the idea of making for London, the Marshal of France and the Castellan of Arras heading the flight.