Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

by John G. Edgar

It was a stirring spectacle as the procession moved along the narrow streets, with banners waving and trumpets sounding, and everybody was too much interested to ask what the morrow might bring forth. It was enough that they had won a great victory over the king, who had been in the habit not only of treating them with hauteur, but of making them pay their scutages; and they resolved to celebrate their victory by holding a grand tournament, on the 2nd of July, at Stamford, where so recently they had, at all hazards, set up the standard of revolt, and vowed to dare all and risk all in vindication of their feudal pretensions.

And so closed Friday, the 15th of June, 1215, every man well satisfied with himself and with his neighbour; and on the morning of Saturday Hugh de Moreville entered London by Bishopsgate, bringing full assurance of aid from Alexander, King of Scots, in case of need. The royal Scot, however, stipulated that he was to have a large reward in the shape of Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmoreland—a noble addition to his kingdom, it must be admitted, if the Northern counties had been the barons’ to give. But even at this price they seemed to consider his alliance cheaply purchased, and luxuriated for the time in the success of their revolt. But ere Saturday’s sun set, messengers, breathless with haste, came to tell Fitzwalter that King John had secretly departed from Windsor under cover of night, no one knew whither; and when the barons immediately afterwards met in council, every countenance was elongated and every brow heavy with thought, and the boldest quailed as he reflected what a king, goaded and rendered desperate, might have it in his power to do if he turned savagely to bay. De Moreville shared the apprehension of his friends, but gave vent to no nervous ejaculations.

“I deny not,” said he calmly, “that this is an awkward circumstance, and one against which precautions ought to have been taken. But John is no Arthur or Richard, nor even such a man as his father Henry, that we should much fear the utmost he can do, if he is mad enough to challenge us to the game of carnage. St. Moden and all the saints forbid that I should ever blanch at the thought of battle with a man who, even his own friends would confess, is so much fitter for the wars of Venus, than those of Bellona, and whose wont it has ever been, even while blustering and threatening the powerful, to strike at none but the weak! Come, noble sirs, take heart. By my faith, the game is still ours if we play it with courage, and imitate not the cowardly heron, which flies at the sight of its own shadow.”

“But think of the pope,” said a dozen voices. “How are we to contend with the thunders of the Church, before which the Kings of France and England have both of late been forced to bend their heads in humble submission?”

“By St. Moden,” replied De Moreville, “I fear not, if the worst comes to the worst, to trust to stone walls, and the arm of flesh, and gold. We have strong castles, and fighting men, and the wealth of London at our backs. Nevertheless, I freely own that a king’s name is a tower of strength in the opinion of the unreflecting multitude, and, since such is the case, I opine that it becomes us to counteract the influence of the king’s name and fortify our cause by taking possession of the queen and prince, who are now at the palace of Savernake. It is a bold measure, but this is no time to be squeamish. Speak the word, and I myself will forthwith summon my men and mount my horse, and ride to make the seizure. Falcons fear not falcons; and beshrew me if any but liars shall ever have it in their power to tell that Hugh de Moreville shrank cravenly from a contest for life and death with such a kite as John of Anjou!”

At first the proposal of De Moreville met with little support; but his eloquence ultimately prevailed, and he lost no time in setting out to execute his mission. But the scheme of seizing the queen and the prince was, as the reader already knows, baffled by the king’s precaution; and when the barons who were in London became aware that De Moreville had failed, their alarm became greater than ever, and they resolved to take measures for ascertaining in what danger they really stood, and what chance there was of the king playing them false.

It was now about the close of June, and intelligence reached London that John was at Winchester, and the barons determined to have some satisfactory understanding. Accordingly they sent a deputation to Winchester to inform him of their doubts, and to demand whether or not he really intended to keep the promises he had made at Runnymede. The king received the deputation with apparent frankness, ridiculed their suspicions as being utterly without foundation, and appointed a meeting with them in July, at Oxford, to which city he was on the point of removing.

The barons were neither deceived by the king’s manner nor deluded by his words. They had lost the last lingering respect for his good faith; and they felt instinctively that he was exercising all his duplicity and all his ingenuity to free himself from their wardship and bring about their destruction, and vague rumours that mercenaries were being levied on the Continent added to their alarm. It was even said that John intended to take advantage of their absence at the tournament at Stamford to seize London; and, though he was without any army capable of taking a city, this report influenced them so far that they postponed the tournament, and named a distant day for its taking place at Hounslow.

Ere long affairs reached a new stage, and caused more perplexity. It suddenly became known in London that John, regardless of his promise to hold a conference with the barons at Oxford, had left that city suddenly, ridden to the coast, and embarked in a ship belonging to one of the Cinque Ports, but with what object could not be divined; and though from that time the wildest stories were told on the subject, his movements were shrouded in such mystery that nothing certain was known. Even in the month of September, when the barons met in London and held a council at the house of the Templars, they were utterly at a loss to imagine what had become of the sovereign whom two months earlier they had browbeaten at Runnymede, and bound in chains which they then believed could never be broken.

“He is drowned,” said one.