Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

by John G. Edgar

Fitzwalter remonstrated, but Louis curtly refused to listen longer to the proposal; and the Anglo-Norman baron grew purple with rage. A violent quarrel ensued; and it looked as if the French prince was about to lose an adherent whose value in calm moments he could hardly fail to recognise. Fitzwalter, however, had linked himself too firmly with the Frenchman to have it in his power to break his chains, and the matter was accommodated. But the friends of the Anglo-Norman baron, exposed to frequent insults of the kind, grew sullen and discontented; and Louis began to perceive that it would not be prudent to rely too far on the fidelity of men born on English ground, and to concert measures for surrounding himself with a force of foreigners sufficient to render him independent of aid from the natives. With this view he consented to a truce with the Protector from Christmas to Easter, and resolved to employ the interval in a voyage to France, and to make a great attempt to persuade his crafty sire to furnish a force formidable enough to overawe all his enemies, and to terminate his successes as a conqueror with a crowning triumph.

Accordingly, Louis, having appointed the Lord De Coucy as his lieutenant in England, set out for the coast of Sussex to embark at Shoreham for the Continent, dreading no interruption. This time he found himself wrong in his calculations. There was a serious obstacle in the way, in the shape of a small but very formidable body of men, headed by a warrior in his teens, wearing a long white jacket, and wielding a very formidable battle-axe, who rushed to the assault with very little respect for persons—whether royal or knightly—under a white silken banner on which figured a fierce raven with open beak, and spread wings, and outstretched neck.

CHAPTER XL
A CAMP OF REFUGE

IMMEDIATELY after his exploit at Chas-Chateil, William de Collingham, as if a great idea had been suggested to him, repaired with Oliver Icingla to an islet deep in the forests of Sussex, overgrown with willows and rushes, and surrounded by marshes which regularly in autumn overflowed with water and became a large lake, with the islet rising in the midst. This islet had at one period been inhabited, and the ruins of a fortress, of which the origin and history were lost in the obscurity of ancient days, were still visible; but now it had no inhabitant save an anchorite, who dwelt among the ruins in a rude hermitage built of timber and overgrown with moss, and who appeared to be cut off from communication with mankind, occupying himself much with the study of the stars, and enjoying the reputation of being able to predict events, as if he had been privileged to read what was written in the book of fate.

It was in this islet, situated in the recesses of what remained of the great forest which before the Conquest extended all over Sussex, that Collingham determined to establish a camp of Refuge for Englishmen who, like himself, would not bow the knee to Prince Louis and his myrmidons, and he had several reasons for selecting the place; some of these he frankly stated, but the principal reason, which was a very strong one, he, like a prudent man, kept to himself. However, he proceeded to throw up intrenchments, constructed huts of earth and wood, set up his raven banner, and summoned all to come thither who had made up their minds to endure any privations and fight to the death rather than submit to the French invaders and lay down their arms.

The summons of Collingham was not disregarded. Within a fortnight some five hundred men had sworn to follow the raven banner for better or for worse, and never a day passed without some new band of outlaws, or some individual fighting man, or some ardent patriot, coming and adding to the number. No doubt there were bad as well as good among those who took refuge on the islet; but under Collingham’s discipline all were under the necessity of living decently and in order.

At this camp of refuge, on the evening of the 2nd of June, 1216, an hour after sunset, arrived William de Collingham and Oliver Icingla, riding one horse, like the old Knights of the Temple, accompanied by the russet bloodhound which Clem the Bold Rider had that morning been patting in the stable-yard of the White Hart, but which now willingly followed its old master, from whom it had been taken by Hugh de Moreville, who coveted the animal as well as the rest of the patrimony which Oliver Icingla ought to have derived from his mother. As for the knight and the squire, they were by no means in the best plight. The garments of both—the rustic garments which they had worn to disguise themselves—were spotted with blood, and their appearance indicated that they had been engaged in a desperate struggle for life or death.

All doubt on this subject, however, vanished when, after passing the water on a raft, Collingham and Oliver entered the camp and threw down their weapons. Both warriors were wounded: the sword of the knight was hacked and red; the axe of the squire was dyed dark with gore. Moreover, the strong steed that had carried them to the place of refuge was so weary and wounded that it died that night of fatigue and loss of blood. Such was the consequence to the patriotic warriors of one of their earliest conflicts with the enemy; they were to have many more equally sanguinary, but not so unequal in numbers.

But fierce as they had found the combat, neither Collingham nor Icingla was daunted. No sooner were their wounds dressed and bound up by the anchorite than, assembling the men by the light of the moon, they took a solemn oath, by the cross on the hilt of the knight’s sword, not to sleep under a roof, nor to dine in a hall, nor to drink a brimming can at a chimney corner, till Prince Louis and the French were expelled from England. At the same time, every man present—Oliver Icingla included—engaged never to decline a combat with three of the enemy, and to yield implicit obedience to the commands of their leader, upon which Collingham swore to relieve them from their promise if he was known to shrink from an encounter single-handed with six of the enemy.

And now every man understood what he was expected to do, and the work was begun with spirit, and the camp of refuge soon boasted of a thousand men, mostly archers, who attacked the French, and the Anglo-Normans who sided with them, whenever an opportunity presented itself, and, as historians tell us, made themselves particularly formidable when Louis marched into Sussex to take possession of the county.