Between this northern belt of rebel strongholds, however, and the southern one which stretched from Chester to Axholm, there lay along the river-valleys of Cumberland and Northumberland a cluster of royal castles. Nicolas de Stuteville held Liddell, on the river of the same name. Burgh[751] stood on the Solway Firth, nearly opposite Annan; the whole valley of the Eden was guarded by Carlisle, whose castellan was Richard de Vaux,[752] and Appleby, which like Burgh was held by Robert de Stuteville for the king.[753] The course of the Tyne was commanded by Wark, under Roger de Stuteville,[754] Prudhoe, under Odelin de Umfraville,[755] and by the great royal fortress of Newcastle, in charge of Roger Fitz-Richard;[756] further north, between the valleys of the Wansbeck and the Coquet, stood Harbottle, also held by Odelin, with Roger Fitz-Richard’s Warkworth[757] and William de Vesci’s Alnwick[758] at the mouths of the Coquet and the Alne. This chain of defences William of Scotland, when at the expiration of the truce he again marched into England, at once set himself to break. While his brother David went to join the rebel garrison of Leicester,[759] he himself began by laying siege to Wark. This fortress, held in the king’s name by Roger de Stuteville—apparently a brother of the sheriff of Yorkshire—occupied a strong position in the upper valley of the Tyne, on the site of an earlier fortress which under the name of Carham had played a considerable part in the Scottish wars of Stephen’s time, and had been finally taken and razed by William’s grandfather King David in 1138.[760] William himself had already in the preceding autumn besieged Wark without success;[761] he prospered no better this time, and presently removed his forces to Carlisle,[762] where he had also sustained a like repulse six months before.[763] Carlisle, as well as Wark, was in truth almost impregnable except by starvation; and William, while blockading it closely, detached a part of his host for a series of expeditions against the lesser fortresses, Liddell, Burgh, Appleby, Harbottle and Warkworth, all of which fell into his hands.[764] His brother’s arrival at Leicester, meanwhile, seemed to have revived the energies of its garrison; under the command of Earl Robert of Ferrers they sallied forth very early one morning, surprised and burned the town of Nottingham, made a great slaughter of its citizens, and went home laden with plunder and prisoners.[765]

Meanwhile the king’s representatives in the south were not idle. Knowing however that he was powerless to rescue the north, Richard de Lucy made an attempt to draw off in another direction the forces both of the Scot king and of his brother by laying siege to David’s castle of Huntingdon.[766] Huntingdon had been held ever since 1136 either by the reigning king of Scots or by one of his nearest kinsmen, in virtue of their descent from Waltheof, the last Old-English earl of Huntingdon and Northampton, through his daughter Matilda, the wife of King David. In each case, however, the fief seems to have been held not as an hereditary possession but by a special grant made to the individual holder for his life. The house of Northampton, sprung from an earlier marriage of the same Matilda, were thus enabled to maintain a claim upon it which had never been entirely barred, and which Earl Simon of Northampton now seized his opportunity to urge upon the king.[767] Henry answered that Simon might keep Huntingdon if he could win it;[768] thus securing for Richard de Lucy his support and co-operation in the siege, which began on May 8.[769] Three days before this, however, a severe blow had been dealt at the northern rebels. The king’s eldest son Geoffrey, who a year before had been appointed to the bishopric of Lincoln, gathered up the forces of Lincolnshire, led them into Axholm and laid siege to Kinardferry. Robert of Mowbray, who was commanding there, seeing his garrison threatened with the want of water, slipped out to seek aid of his friends at Leicester, but was surrounded and made prisoner by the country-folk at Clay.[770] On May 5 Kinardferry surrendered; after razing it, Geoffrey marched northward to York; here he was joined by the forces of the archbishop and of the shire; with this united host he took Mowbray’s castle of Malessart,[771] closely menaced that of Thirsk by erecting a rival fortification at Topcliff, and having intrusted the former to Archbishop Roger and the latter to William de Stuteville, marched back to Lincoln in triumph.[772] His victory was scarcely won when a new peril arose in East-Anglia. Three days after Pentecost some three hundred Flemish soldiers, forerunners of a great host with which Count Philip of Flanders had sworn to invade England at Midsummer on behalf of the young king, landed at the mouth of the Orwell.[773] Hugh Bigod, whose truce with the king’s officers, made when he dismissed his other Flemish troops in the preceding autumn, expired four days later, at once received them into his castles.[774] For a whole month, however, no further movement was made save by the garrison of Leicester, who after the close of Whitsun-week made a successful plundering raid upon the town of Northampton.[775] On June 18 Hugh Bigod and his Flemings marched upon Norwich, took it by assault, committed a vast slaughter of men and women, and finally sacked and fired the city.[776] They seem to have returned to Framlingham by way of Dunwich, which was still a flourishing seaport, of sufficient wealth to tempt their greed; but its stout fisher-folk met them with such a determined front that they were compelled to retire.[777]

Richard de Lucy was all this while busy with the siege of Huntingdon. Provoked apparently by a vigorous assault which he made upon it at midsummer,[778] the garrison set fire to the town; Richard then built a tower to block their egress from the castle, and left the completion of the siege to the earl of Northampton.[779] For himself it was time once more to lay down the knightly sword and resume that of justice. While the justiciar’s energies were absorbed in warfare with the barons, the burgher-nobles of the capital had caught from their feudal brethren the spirit of lawlessness and misrule, and London had become a vast den of thieves and murderers. Young men, sons and kinsmen of the noblest citizens, habitually went forth by night in parties of a hundred or more, broke into rich men’s houses and robbed them by force, and if they met any man walking in the streets alone, slew him at once. Peaceable citizens were driven in self-defence to meet violence with violence. One man, expecting an attack, gathered his armed servants around him in a concealed corner, surprised his assailants in the act of breaking into his house with crowbars, struck off with a blow of his sword the right hand of their leader Andrew Bucquinte, and raised an alarm which put the rest to flight. Bucquinte was captured and delivered next morning to the justiciar; on a promise of safety for life and limb he gave up the names of his accomplices; some fled, some were caught, and among the latter was one of the noblest and richest citizens of London, John Oldman,[780] who vainly offered five hundred marks of silver to the Crown to purchase his escape from the gallows.[781] The revelation of such a state of things in the capital apparently drove Richard de Lucy and his colleagues almost to desperation. They had already sent messenger after messenger to intreat that the king would return; getting however no certain answer, they now determined that one of their number should go to Normandy in person to lay before him an authentic account of the desperate condition of his realm.[782]

Henry had spent the spring in a successful progress through Maine and Anjou to Poitiers, where he kept the Whitsun feast. He had just rescued Saintes from a band of rebels who had seized it in Richard’s name[783] when he was called northward again by a rumour of the Flemish count’s scheme for the invasion of England. By S. Barnabas’s day he was back again on the borders of Britanny and Anjou; he took and fortified Ancenis, and then, leaving Anjou to the charge of a faithful baron, Maurice of Craon,[784] went to meet the castellans of the Norman border in a council at Bonneville on Midsummer-day. Their deliberations were interrupted by the appearance of Richard of Ilchester—now bishop-elect of Winchester—on his errand from England to recall the king.[785] Richard’s pleadings however were scarcely needed. Henry knew that his eldest son was at that very moment with the count of Flanders at Gravelines, only awaiting a favourable wind to set sail for the invasion of England,[786] and that, whatever might be the risk to his continental realms, he must hasten to save the island.[787] He at once took measures for the security of the Norman castles and for the transport of those prisoners and suspected persons whom he dared not venture to leave behind him—his queen,[788] the earl and countess of Leicester, the earl of Chester,[789] the young queen Margaret,[790] and the affianced brides of his three younger sons; besides the two children who were still with him, Jane and John.[791] The wind which thwarted the designs of his foes was equally unfavourable to him; it was not till July 7 that he himself embarked at Barfleur, and even then the peril of crossing seemed so great that the sailors were inclined to put back. Henry raised his eyes to heaven: “If I seek the peace of my realm—if the heavenly King wills that my return should restore its peace—He will bring me safe into port. If He has turned away His Face from me and determined to scourge my realm, may I never reach its shores!” By nightfall he was safe[792] at Southampton.[793]

His first care was to bestow his prisoners and hostages in safe custody.[794] That done, he set off at once on a pilgrimage to the grave of his former friend and victim at Canterbury. Travelling with the utmost speed, and feeding only on bread and water, he reached Canterbury on July 12; before the church of S. Dunstan, outside the west gate, he dismounted, exchanged his kingly robes for the woollen gown of a pilgrim, and made his way with bare and bleeding feet along the rough-paved streets to the cathedral church. Here, surrounded by a group of bishops and abbots who seem to have come with him, as well as by the monks of the cathedral chapter and a crowd of wondering lay-folk, he threw himself in an agony of penitence and prayer on the martyr’s tomb, which still stood in the crypt where his body had been hastily buried by the terrified monks immediately after the murder. The bishop of London now came forward and spoke in the king’s name, solemnly protesting that he had never sought the primate’s death, and beseeching absolution from the assembled prelates for the rash words which had occasioned it. The absolution was given; the king then underwent a public scourging at the hands of the bishops and monks; he spent the whole night in prayer before the shrine; early on the morrow he heard mass and departed, leaving rich gifts in money and endowments, and rode back still fasting to London, which he reached on the following morning.[795] The next few days were spent in collecting forces, in addition to a large troop of Brabantines whom he had brought over with him,[796] and in despatching a part of these into Suffolk against Hugh Bigod; Henry himself lingering another day or two to recover from his excitement and fatigue.[797]