Scarcely had he set out on the Monday morning when he was met by a report that his enemies were marching upon London.[1552] The report was true in substance; John and the barons, instead of waiting for him at the Lodden bridge, crossed it, and then divided their forces into two bodies; the smaller, consisting of the bishops and barons with John himself, proceeded towards Windsor to meet the chancellor; the larger, comprising the men-at-arms and the servants in charge of the baggage, was sent on by the southern road to Staines.[1553] Such a movement was quite enough to justify William in hurrying back to Windsor and thence on to London as fast as horses could carry him.[1554] Before he could reach it he met John’s men-at-arms coming up by the other road from Staines; a skirmish took place, in which John’s justiciar Roger de Planes was mortally wounded, but his followers seem to have had the best of the fight,[1555] although they could not prevent the chancellor from making his way safe into London. Here he at once called a meeting of the citizens in the Guildhall, and endeavoured to secure their support against John.[1556] He found, however, a strong party opposed to himself. On the last day of July[1557]—three days after the second award between John and William at Winchester—the citizens of London had profited by the king’s absence and his representative’s humiliation to set up a commune. They knew very well that, as a contemporary writer says, neither King Henry nor King Richard would have sanctioned such a thing at any price;[1558] and they knew even better still that Richard’s chancellor would never countenance it for a moment. With John they might have a chance, and they were not disposed to lose it by shutting their gates in his face at the bidding of William of Longchamp. William, seeing that his cause was lost in the city, shut himself up in the Tower.[1559]

By this time John and his companions were at the gates; a short parley ended in their admittance.[1560] Next morning barons and citizens came together in S. Paul’s.[1561]. One after another the chancellor’s victims, with the archbishop of York at their head, set forth their grievances.[1562] Archbishop Walter of Rouen and William the Marshal then produced the king’s letter of February 20, addressed to the Marshal, and accrediting Walter to him and his fellow-justiciars, and bidding them, in case of any failure of duty on the chancellor’s part, follow Walter’s direction in all things.[1563] John and the barons agreed to act in accordance with these instructions; they won the assent of the citizens by swearing to maintain the commune;[1564] the whole assembly then swore fealty to Richard, and to John as his destined successor.[1565] According to one account they went a step further: they appointed John regent of the kingdom, and granted him the disposal of all the royal castles except three, which were to be left to the chancellor.[1566] Upon the latter they now set out to enforce their decision at the sword’s point. His forces were more than sufficient to defend the Tower; they were in fact too numerous; they had had no time to revictual the place, they were painfully overcrowded, and before twenty-four hours were over they found their position untenable.[1567] On the Wednesday William tried to bribe John into abandoning the whole enterprise, and he very nearly succeeded; Geoffrey of York and Hugh of Coventry, however, discovered what was going on, and remonstrated so loudly that John was obliged to drop the negotiation and continue the siege.[1568] In the afternoon, at the chancellor’s own request, four bishops and four earls went to speak with him in the Tower.[1569] Five days of intense excitement had so exhausted his feeble frame that when they told him what had passed at the meeting on the previous day, he dropped senseless at their feet, and when brought to himself could at first do nothing but implore their sympathy and mediation.[1570] The brutal insolence of Hugh of Coventry,[1571] however, seems to have stung him into his wonted boldness again. With flashing eyes he told them that the day of reckoning was yet to come, when they and their new lord would have to account for their treason with Richard himself; and he sent them away with a positive refusal to surrender either his castles or his seal.[1572] Late at night, however, as he lay vainly endeavouring to gain a little rest, his friends came and implored him to abandon the useless struggle with fate; and at last his brother Osbert and some others wrung from him an unwilling permission to go and offer themselves as hostages for his submission on the morrow.[1573]

On the Thursday morning the barons assembled in the fields east of the Tower,[1574] and there William of Longchamp went forth to meet them. The instant he appeared Hugh of Coventry stepped forward, recited the whole indictment against him, and pronounced with brutal bluntness the sentence of the assembly.[1575] William was to be deposed from all secular authority, to keep nothing but his bishopric and the castles of Dover, Cambridge and Hereford; he must give hostages for his future good behaviour; then let him begone wherever he would. The assembly broke into a chorus of approval which seemed intended to give William no chance of reply; but his dauntless spirit had by this time regained its mastery over his physical weakness; he stood quietly till they had all talked themselves out, and then they had to listen in their turn. He denied every one of the charges against him; he refused to recognize either the moral justice or the legal validity of his deposition; he agreed to surrender the castles, because he no longer had power to hold them, but he still lifted up his protest, as King Richard’s lawful chancellor and justiciar, against all the proceedings and the very existence of the new ministry.[1576] Walter of Rouen was at once proclaimed justiciar in his stead.[1577] The keys of the Tower and of Windsor castle, and the hostages, were delivered up next morning, and William was then allowed to withdraw to Bermondsey, whence on the following day he proceeded to Dover.[1578] Thence, apparently in a desperate hope that his men might yet be able to hold the castles till he could gather means to relieve them, he twice attempted to escape over sea, first in the disguise of a monk, then in that of a pedlar-woman. His lameness, however, and his ignorance of English were fatal to his chances of flight; he was detected, dragged back into the town, and shut up in prison till all the castles were surrendered. Then he was set at liberty, and sailed for Gaul on October 29.[1579]

His opponents, however, were not rid of him yet. The king was now practically out of reach of his remonstrances and appeals for succour;[1580] but the Pope was not. William was a bishop; and the harshness with which he had been treated enabled him now to pose in his turn as a consecrated victim of profane violence. Celestine III. warmly took up his cause; he distinctly acknowledged him as legate, whether with or without a formal renewal of his commission;[1581] and on December 2 he issued a brief addressed to the English bishops, bidding them excommunicate all who had taken part in William’s deposition, and put their lands under interdict till he should be reinstated.[1582] William, as legate, followed this up by excommunicating twenty-six of his chief enemies by name, with the archbishop of Rouen at their head, and, with the Pope’s sanction, threatening to treat John in like manner, if he did not amend before Quinquagesima.[1583] The bishops, however, took no notice of his letters, and the justiciars retorted by sequestrating his see;[1584] they all held him bound by the sentences pronounced against him at Reading and at London for his persecution of Geoffrey of York, and their view was upheld by the suffragans of Rouen, who all treated him as excommunicate.[1585] Geoffrey was now the highest ecclesiastical authority in England; but he was not the man to rule the English Church. He had more than enough to do in ruling his own chief suffragan. As soon as he was enthroned at York,[1586] he summoned Hugh of Durham to come and make his profession of obedience; Hugh, who having been reinstated in his earldom of Northumberland[1587] felt himself again more than a match for his metropolitan, ignored the summons, whereupon Geoffrey excommunicated him.[1588] This did not deter John from keeping Christmas at Howden with the bishop; in consequence of which John himself was for a while treated as excommunicate by his half-brother.[1589] The momentary coalition, formed solely to crush the chancellor, had in fact already split into fragments. The general administration, however, went on satisfactorily under the new justiciar’s direction, and his influence alone—for Eleanor was still on the continent[1590]—sufficed to keep John out of mischief throughout the winter.

Richard’s continental dominions had thus far been at peace—a peace doubly secured by the presence of Eleanor and the absence of Philip of France. Shortly before Christmas 1191, however, Philip returned to his kingdom.[1591] In January 1192 he called the seneschal and barons of Normandy to a conference, and demanded from them, on the strength of a document which he shewed to them as the treaty made between himself and Richard at Messina, the restitution of his sister Adela and her dower-castles in the Vexin, as well as the counties of Eu and Aumale. The seneschal, rightly suspecting the paper to be a forgery, answered that he had no instructions from Richard on the subject, and would give up neither the lands nor the lady.[1592] Philip threatened war, and all Richard’s constables prepared for defence.[1593] Meanwhile, Philip offered to John the investiture of all Richard’s continental dominions, if he would accept Adela’s hand with them.[1594] That John had a wife already was an obstacle which troubled neither the French king nor John himself. He was quite ready to accept the offer; but meanwhile it reached his mother’s ears, and she hurried to England to stop him.[1595] Landing at Portsmouth on Quinquagesima Sunday,[1596] she found him on the point of embarking; the archbishop of Rouen and the other justiciars gladly welcomed her back to her former post of regent, and joined with her in forbidding John to leave the country, under penalty of having all his estates seized in the king’s name.[1597] They then held a series of councils, at Windsor, Oxford, London and Winchester;[1598] in that of London the barons renewed their oath of fealty to the king, but to pacify John they were obliged to do the like to him as heir,[1599] and the immediate consequence was that he persuaded the constables of Windsor and Wallingford to surrender their castles into his hands.[1600] William of Longchamp thought his opportunity had come. He managed to gain Eleanor’s ear and to bribe John;[1601] both connived at his return to Dover, and thence he sent up his demand for restoration to a council gathered in London towards the close of Lent.[1602] It seems plain that he had won the favour of the queen; for the justiciars, whose original purpose in meeting had been to discuss the misdoings of John, now saw themselves obliged to fetch John himself from Wallingford to support them, as they expected, in their resistance to the chancellor’s demands. To their dismay John told them plainly that he was on the point of making alliance with his old enemy for a consideration of seven hundred pounds.[1603] They saw that their only chance was to outbid William. They gave John two thousand marks out of the royal treasury;[1604] Walter of Rouen helped to persuade the queen-mother,[1605] and the chancellor was bidden to depart out of the land.[1606]