Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

by John G. Edgar

The nobles, who had been accustomed to the second Henry, and Richard, and John, and who had never pictured to themselves a monarch of ten, scarcely knew how to act. Never, indeed, save in the case of Edgar Atheling, had a child figured as King of England, and how he was to deal with the difficulties that beset the throne was more than they could imagine. For a time they remained silent. But Pembroke again spoke, pointed out the degradation of a foreign prince being in possession of the kingdom, and asked them earnestly to crown the rightful heir and drive out the foreigner and his myrmidons. Suddenly, as if by inspiration, they all threw off their reserve, and cried with one voice—

“So let it be: let the boy be king. Long live King Henry!”

Pembroke having succeeded so far, lost no time in bringing the business to a conclusion. On Friday, the 28th of October, Henry was ceremoniously conducted by the barons and prelates to the abbey church, placed upon a throne, and consecrated; and the crown of St. Edward not being within reach, he was crowned with the golden collar which his mother was in the habit of wearing round her neck. In the absence of Langton, the bishop of Bath performed the ceremony, and the royal boy, having taken the oaths usually taken by the kings of England at their coronation, “to bear reverence and honour to God and to his Holy Church, and to do right and justice to all his people,” did homage besides to the Church of Rome, for his kingdom of England and Ireland.

But so utterly had the public mind been poisoned against King John and all related to him, that even in Gloucester, the stronghold of royalty, popular opinion was divided, and the partisans of the young king, who were known by the white cross of Guienne which they wore on their breasts, had frays in the streets with the adherents of Prince Louis.

“By my faith,” remarked the Earl of Derby to Pembroke as they returned from the abbey to the castle, riding on either hand of the royal boy, “I much marvel to see that even in this city of Gloucester many faces frown sullenly on King Henry’s state.”

“Even so,” replied Pembroke, thoughtfully, “and the sky is dull and dismal. A little while, and the clouds will clear away and the sun shine as of yore.”

“May God and the saints so order it!” said Derby.

A few days later, Henry, at the suggestion of the papal legate, took the cross, that his cause might appear the more sacred in the eyes of both friends and foes; and Pembroke, having been appointed Protector, with the title of “Rector regis et regia,” during Henry’s minority, appointed Henry de Marisco Keeper of the Great Seal, gave notice of the coronation to continental countries, and issued a proclamation of pardon to all offenders who should make their submission within a reasonable time. In consequence, Salisbury, Warren, Arundel, Roger Merley de Merley, and William Marshal, eldest son of the Protector, broke with Louis and swore allegiance to Henry. But still the aspect of affairs appeared most gloomy, for Louis was in possession of a large portion of England, and Robert Fitzwalter and the confederate barons were still, in spite of his coldness and affronts, bent on placing the heir of France on the English throne.

And what did Isabel of Angoulême do in this emergency? Not certainly what a woman with a fine sense of duty would have thought of doing, nor what she would have done if she could have foreseen the future. But at that time clouds and darkness rested on the house of Plantagenet, and if a magician could have shown Isabel her future and that of the royal race of England in one of those magic mirrors in which Catherine de Medici was in the habit of seeing the fortunes of her descendants, she would, doubtless, either have deemed the whole a delusion or shrunk from the fate that awaited her new venture in life.

However, she consulted no mirror except that in which she had been in the habit of surveying the fair oval face and the regular majestic features which had won her so much fame throughout Christendom as “the Helen of the Middle Ages,” and she had no difficulty in learning that she still retained the charms necessary to fascinate the hearts of men. In England, indeed, she could not cherish the hope of any great matrimonial success, but there were countries beyond the narrow seas where she might yet achieve conquests, so she thought of her native land, with its sparkling rivers and its beautiful climate, and a few months after John’s death, leaving the boy-king and his infant brother Richard and his three sisters to their fate, she embarked for the Continent and repaired to Angoulême.