The loss of Rochester was felt to be a severe blow to the baronial cause; and the pope having meantime annulled the charter, as having been exacted from the king by force, John’s star was once more in the ascendant, and after making arrangements for the safe keeping of Rochester, and little guessing the circumstances under which the fortress was to change hands within the next six months, he marched from Kent to St. Albans, his mercenary forces spreading terror wherever they appeared. But it was towards the North that his eye and his thoughts were directed; for the chiefs of the houses of De Vesci, De Roos, De Vaux, Percy, Merley, Moubray, De Brus, and D’Estouteville were conspicuous among the confederate barons; and, moreover, Alexander, the young King of Scots, had not only allied himself with the feudal magnates, but raised his father’s banner, on which “the ruddy lion ramped in gold,” and at the head of an army crossed the Tweed to make good his title to the three Northern counties with which the barons had gifted him.
At St. Albans, accordingly, about the middle of December, John divided his forces into two armies: one he placed under William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, to keep the barons in check and maintain the royal authority in Hertford, Essex, Middlesex, and Cambridge; while at the head of the other he marched northward to avenge himself on the barons of the North and the King of Scots. With a craving for vengeance still gnawing at his heart, he passed the festival of Christmas at the castle of Nottingham, and then, still breathing threats, precipitated his troops on the North.
It was on the 2nd of January, 1216, when John entered Yorkshire with fire and sword. The snow lay thick on the ground; the streams were frozen; and the cold was intense; but the king, who but recently had been branded by his foes as a tyrant fit only to loll in luxury, and averse to war and fatigue, now appeared both hardy and energetic, and urged his bravoes up hill and down dale. It was a terrible expedition, and one long after remembered with horror. Fire and sword rapidly did their work in the hands of the mercenaries who composed the royal army; men were slaughtered; houses and stackyards given to the flames; and towns, castles, and abbeys ruthlessly destroyed. Beyond the Tyne the country fared almost worse. Morpeth, the seat of Roger de Merley, Alnwick, the seat of Eustace de Vesci, and Wark, one of the castles of Robert de Roos, were stormed and sacked; and John, crossing the Tweed at Berwick, prepared to inflict his vengeance on the King of Scots.
“Now,” said he to his captains, as he found himself beyond the Marches, “we must unkennel this young red fox.”
The captains of the royal army offered no objection; and while John burned Roxburgh—a royal burgh and castle at the junction of the Teviot and the Tweed—the mercenaries pursued the King of Scots to the gates of Edinburgh, and, during their return, deliberately burned Haddington, Dunbar, Berwick, and the fair abbey of Coldingham, associated with the legend of St. Ebba and her nuns. Nothing, indeed, was spared; and John, having intrusted the government of the country between the Tees and the Tweed to Hugh Baliol and Philip de Ullecotes, with knights and men-at-arms sufficient to defend it, returned southward with such satisfaction as he could derive from the reflection that he had taken revenge on his baronial foes, and included in his vengeance many thousands who had not given him the slightest cause of offence.
But whatever may have been his feelings on the subject—and it is impossible to suppose that he had not his hours of compunction—John was destined, ere long, to find that his revenge had been dearly purchased. Scarcely had he returned to the South with blood on his hands, and the execrations of two countries ringing in his ears, when he received tidings which made his heart sink within him.
It was when the winter had passed, and the spring had come and gone, that messengers brought to John, who was then at Dover, intelligence that his baronial foes, driven to desperation, had taken a step which was likely to detach his mercenary soldiers from his standard, and leave him almost alone and face to face with an exasperated nation. It was a terrible contingency, and one on which the king, in pursuing his schemes of vengeance, had not calculated. But there was no mistake about the news; and John trembled as he foresaw how that, as soon as it spread among his mercenaries, the army which, while ministering to his vengeance, had made him odious to the nation on whose support he might otherwise have counted in case of the worst, would melt as surely as had melted the winter’s snow through which he had urged on that army to devastation and carnage.
CHAPTER XXIV
A DESPERATE EXPEDIENT
IT was the Christmas of 1215; and the barons, cooped up in London, and not daring to venture beyond the walls, were almost in despair, and listened with unavailing regret to reports of the devastation wrought by the royal army on its march northward, and with dread to the sound of the spiritual artillery which Pope Innocent directed against them. However, they, as well as the citizens, celebrated Christmas with unusual festivity, and appeared anxious to show the king and his partisans that they were not to be cast down by adversity, and to convince the pope and the legate that they did not tremble before the thunders of Rome.
Nevertheless, Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates were sadly disheartened by all that was taking place, and in mortal terror of what might take place in London, if John turned his face towards the capital; and Falco, and Manlem, and Soltim, and Godeschal had an opportunity of stabling their steeds at Baynard’s Castle and the Tower, and quartering their men among the worthy citizens who had proved such good friends in the day of need to “the army of God and of the Church.”