while the ‘Gesta’ distinctly state that Longchamp only set out against Lincoln “after Midsummer.” If this were so, the discrepancy would be obvious. But leaving aside, for the moment, the question of the Pope’s death, we find, on reference, that William of Newburgh, so far from placing the campaign, etc., before the archbishop’s arrival, actually places it after that event.[443] The one real discrepancy, therefore, is found to have no existence.[444]

As to the date of Longchamp receiving the news of the Pope’s death, it must first be observed that William of Newburgh does not assert categorically that it reached him shortly after the fall of Lincoln. What he says is that the chancellor “learned that his office of legate had expired through the death of the pope.”[445] If this merely meant that he heard of the Pope’s death, it would be irreconcilable with William’s own statement that all this happened after, and some time after, the archbishop’s arrival (April 27). Those, therefore, who would take the words in this sense, must admit that William has blundered, for he contradicts himself. This would be sufficient for my argument; but I think we may hold, in fairness to William, that what Longchamp heard, after withdrawing from Lincoln, was that Pope Cœlestine had not renewed his legation, and, therefore, that it had expired with the death of the late Pope.[446] Great mystery surrounds, it is admitted, the date of the eventual renewal; and one point, it seems to me, may have escaped notice. According to the envoys’ report in Hoveden, Pope Cœlestine himself had been earnestly entreated by Richard to make Longchamp legate. But Cœlestine was not elected Pope till four days after Richard had left Sicily for the East. If, therefore, the renewal was granted at Richard’s instance, there must have been considerable delay before the grant was obtained.

Moreover, those who uphold the view at present accepted have to explain a difficulty they hardly seem to have realized. The ‘Gesta’ assigns the Pope’s death to April 10 (1191), but so uncertain is the date that we find Dr. Stubbs writing:

Clement III. died about the end of March, and the news of his death would reach England about three weeks later (‘Gesta,’ p. 208 note).Pope Clement dies April 10: the news would reach England in a fortnight or perhaps less. The chancellor, trembling for his legation, makes a hasty peace (Rog. Hov., iii. 135 note).

If Clement died April 10—the date adopted by Mr. Howlett and Miss Norgate[447]—the difficulty is that the news must have reached not merely England, but Lincoln (ex hypothesi) in time to allow of preliminary negotiations between John and Longchamp, of a conference at Winchester being agreed to, and of their both reaching Winchester in time for that conference on April 25. For this the news must have reached Lincoln hardly later than April 20. Could it possibly have done so?

Those who have thus far followed my argument will have seen that I hold there to have been only one “campaign,” followed by a conference at Winchester, which “campaign” did not begin till after midsummer. The spring campaign, with the alleged conference of April 25 at Winchester, I hold to be wholly imaginary.

In case any one should still be in doubt, I now bring up my reserves. The undisputed statement that Longchamp was at Winchester on March 24 was supported, we saw, by record evidence that he was there on March 28. Of more importance is the record evidence that he was at Lincoln on July 8,[448] for it strongly confirms the statement in the Gesta that he set out “after midsummer,” and, having rapidly reduced Wigmore, laid siege to Lincoln Castle. Although I have been trying for years to collect evidence of Longchamp’s movements in this eventful year, I have not been able to secure many fixed points. It is certain, however, that he was at Cambridge on April 21.[449] This affords welcome support to the crowning discovery I made, in a document preserved in France, that he was there on April 24.[450] It will, I presume, not be disputed that if the chancellor was at Cambridge on April 24, he cannot have devoted the following day to a conference with John at Winchester.

I have purposely refrained as yet from discussing a distinct question, namely, the terms of the agreement, or agreements, between Longchamp and John. For they do not affect the question of the sequence of historical events. We have (a) in Hoveden what purports to be an actual recital of the agreement made after the chancellor’s enforced withdrawal from Lincoln; (b) in Richard of Devizes a résumé of such an agreement effected, according to him, at a conference on July 28, also, it would seem, consequent on the chancellor’s retreat.[451] Dr. Stubbs has argued as against Palgrave, and apparently with complete success, that two distinct agreements are in question. But this does not establish their date (or respective dates), nor even their right sequence. I have already disposed of the alleged conference on April 25, and both agreements, therefore, must be later than the Lincoln business in July. Now, it is singular that William of Newburgh distinctly speaks of two agreements, and implies that the second was the less unfavourable to the chancellor’s claims. This is, at first sight, in striking harmony with Dr. Stubbs’ conclusion that the agreement recited by Hoveden is the later of the two, and that in it “the chancellor gave way somewhat more than was wise, but less than he had done in April”[452] (i.e. in the agreement described by Richard of Devizes). But a more minute examination than Dr. Stubbs could give reveals a serious difficulty. According to him, the earlier agreement “engages the chancellor to support John’s claim to the crown in case of Richard’s death”;[453] while the later one contains no such provision. On this distinction he lays stress because “the succession of Arthur,” he holds, was a “main point” of Longchamp’s policy;[454] while the archbishop of Rouen also, he urges, would have “sacrificed other considerations to ... obtaining the omission of any terms which would have openly asserted John’s claim to the succession.”[455]

But on turning to the ‘Gesta’ and to William of Newburgh, we find that the former, in what is admittedly, and the latter in what he explicitly makes, the later of the two agreements, declare the recognition of John as heir, in case of Richard’s death, to have been the feature of that later agreement, in which, according to Dr. Stubbs, it was conspicuously omitted.[456] This grave discrepancy would seem to have escaped notice.