John Lackland

by Kate Norgate

1210–1211

Within a year, however, Pope and Emperor had quarrelled, and Otto was excommunicated.[745] This was, of course, an additional bond of union between him and John. At the same time, a kinsman of both princes was setting the Pope and the French king alike at defiance. Count Raymond of Toulouse, the husband of John’s sister Joan, had from the outset favoured the heretics who for the last two years had kept southern Gaul in turmoil; in 1211 he openly allowed them to concentrate in his capital city, and headed their resistance to the forces which Innocent and Philip had sent against them under Simon de Montfort. Toulouse was besieged, but John and Otto kept their kinsman so well supplied with the means of defence and sustenance that the “crusaders” at last grew hopeless of taking it and raised the siege. Otto had answered the Pope’s excommunication by conquering Tuscia, Apulia and Calabria; whereupon Innocent published another sentence, deposing him from his imperial office and his German kingdom, and bidding the princes of the empire elect a new sovereign in his stead.

1211–1212

John, “with such a comrade,” grew bolder than ever.[746] The common interest of the three excommunicate kinsmen obviously lay in crushing France, the ally of the Pope; and the moment seemed at hand for the fulfilment of John’s highest hopes. John and Raymond in the south, John and Otto in the north and east, might hem in Philip Augustus completely, if the princes of the border-land of France and Germany—Boulogne, Flanders, the Netherlands, Lorraine—could be so won over as to insure their co-operation in the plans of the uncle and nephew for the conquest and dismemberment of the French kingdom. To this end John’s utmost powers of diplomacy had been devoted for many years past; and in the case of most of these princes the end was now gained. In the autumn of 1211 Reginald of Boulogne, whose policy had long been wavering, quarrelled openly with Philip and took refuge with his kinsman the count of Bar;[747] in May 1212 he was in England, pledging his homage and his service to John. By the middle of August the counts of Bar, Limburg, Flanders and Louvain were all pledged to John’s side.[748] John himself was meanwhile preparing for an expedition to Gascony; on June 15 thirty-nine English towns were ordered to furnish contingents of men “ready to cross the sea with the king in his service when he should require them.”[749]

1212

A month later, however, the destination of his armament was changed. Just as his plans were ripe for an attack upon France, they were checked once more by the necessity of guarding his realm against the Welsh. Before the close of 1211 Llywelyn—provoked, as he declared, by “the many insults done to him by the men of the king”—had leagued himself with his former rivals in South Wales and taken “all the castles which John had made in Gwynedd, except Dyganwy and Rhuddlan.”[750] And this time the league was more likely to hold together than was usually the case with alliances formed by the Welsh princes either with their neighbours or with each other; for a new hope had dawned upon the Welsh people. The tidings of John’s excommunication and deposition by the Pope had penetrated into Wales; and in this matter the Welsh, although of all Christian nations probably the least amenable to ecclesiastical discipline and the least submissive to ecclesiastical authority, became full of zeal to do the utmost that in them lay towards carrying out the Papal sentence against their overlord and conqueror. “They with one consent,” says their own chronicler, “rose against the king, and bravely wrested from him the midland district which he had previously taken from Llywelyn.”[751] The version of the English chroniclers is that the Welsh invaded the English border, took some castles and beheaded their garrisons, carried off a mass of plunder, and then burned everything and slew every man that they could lay their hands on.[752]

It was clear that an end must be made of this Welsh trouble before John could venture across the Channel. He changed his plans with his usual promptitude. In July the king’s escheators throughout England were ordered to see that the escheats in their custody should furnish each a certain number of carpenters and other labourers provided with proper tools, and with money enough to carry them to Chester. Writs were also issued to Alan of Galloway bidding him send a thousand of his “best and bravest men,” to William the Marshal, Bishop John of Norwich, and others of the king’s liegemen in Ireland, and to the tenants by serjeanty throughout England, requiring their personal attendance; the place of muster for all alike being Chester, and the appointed date Sunday, August 19.[753] On August 16, however, the king sent out from Nottingham a notice that he was unable to be at Chester on the day fixed, and that the muster would not take place.[754] The orders which he issued next day indicate that he was contemplating a diversion by sea, part of the fleet being ordered to sail from Chester, coast along North Wales, and “do as much harm to the enemy as possible,” while another part was to assemble at Bristol.[755] He probably meant to await the result of these movements, as well as of some negotiations which he was carrying on with the South Welsh chieftains,[756] before deciding whether his main advance should be made by way of North or South Wales.

The host finally mustered at Nottingham in the second week of September.[757] The chivalry of England gathered {Sept. 9–15} round the king “in such array and in such numbers,” says a contemporary, “that no man of our day remembers the like.”[758] John’s first act on reaching the muster-place, “before he tasted food,” was to hang twenty-eight of the hostages whom he had taken from the Welsh in the previous year.[759] But “suddenly God brought his counsel to nought.”[760] As he sat at table there came to him a breathless messenger from the king of Scots, followed by one from the Princess Joan of Wales, John’s daughter and Llywelyn’s wife. Both messengers brought letters whose contents, they said, were weighty and secret. When the two letters were read, their purport proved to be almost identical. William and Joan alike warned the king that his barons were preparing to act upon the papal sentence which absolved them from their allegiance, and, if he persisted in leading them to war, either to turn and slay him themselves, or deliver him up to death at the hands of his Welsh enemies.[761] Such a warning, coming at the same instant from two such different quarters, was not to be lightly put aside. It was emphasized by the sudden disappearance of two barons, Eustace de Vesci and Robert FitzWalter, who at once secretly withdrew from the host.[762] John could hardly doubt the significance of their departure at such a moment. He dismissed his army and moved by slow stages back to London.[763]

The month which had elapsed between John’s order countermanding the muster at Chester and his return to Nottingham had been spent by him in a progress through the north;[764] and it was probably during this time that there came to his ears a prediction concerning him spoken by one Peter, variously described as “of Pontefract” or “of Wakefield.” This Peter was “a simple countryman,” who lived on bread and water, and was counted among the people for a prophet. He foretold that on the next Ascension Day John should cease to be king. Whether John was to die, or to be driven from the land, or to abdicate, Peter could not say; he only knew that it had been revealed to him in a vision that after the king had reigned prosperously for fourteen years, neither he nor his heirs should rule any more, “but one who is pleasing to God.”[765] John, on hearing of this prophecy, laughed it to scorn; but when Peter was found to be wandering all over the north country publishing his supposed vision wherever he went, some of the king’s friends deemed it prudent to take the prophet into custody.[766] He was brought before John himself, who asked for more explicit information as to his own impending fate. Peter only replied, “Know thou of a surety that on the day which I have named, thou shalt be king no more; and if I be proved a liar, do with me as thou wilt.” “According to thy word, so be it,” answered John; and he sent the man to be imprisoned at Corfe.[767] This precaution, however, defeated its own end; Peter’s captivity in a royal dungeon gave to him and his prophecy a new importance in popular estimation; his words were repeated far and wide, and believed “as if they had been spoken by a voice from Heaven.”[768] The dread which they are said to have inspired in the king himself[769] proves nothing as to whether, or how far, he shared the superstitious credulity of his people. Apart from all such questions, he had obviously a sufficient reason for alarm in the fact that the general acceptance of a political prophecy naturally tends to work its fulfilment.