John had, in fact, at one stroke cut the ground from under the feet of all his enemies both at home and abroad. The people resumed their ordinary attitude of loyalty on Pandulf’s assurance that it was once more, and more than ever, sanctioned by the Church. The traitor barons found themselves without a cloak for their treason, and were reduced to send out letters patent repudiating all connexion with the French king.[810] Philip found himself without an ally, and without an excuse for his enterprise. The believers in Peter of Wakefield, indeed, still looked forward with a vague expectation to Ascension Day {May 23}. But the king himself could meet its dawn without fear. He had ordered his royal tent to be set up in a large open field, and caused his heralds to proclaim a general invitation to all who were within reach, to come and spend the festival day in stately festivities with him. “And a right joyous day it was, the king taking his pleasure and making merry with the bishops and nobles who had come together at his call.”[811] Still Peter’s disciples were not convinced; some of them took up the idea that the prediction might refer not to the ecclesiastical but to the civil anniversary of John’s coronation, May 27, which in 1213 was four days after Ascension Day. This anniversary, however, passed over likewise without any mishap. Then the wise and the foolish alike began to see that John had prevented a literal fulfilment of the prophecy by lending himself to a figurative one. He had “ceased to be king” by laying his crown at the feet of Pandulf, to take it back again on conditions which unquestionably helped to fix it, for the time at least, more securely than ever on his brow. The scapegoat of all parties was the unlucky prophet himself. Next day he and his son, who had been imprisoned with him, were tied each to a horse’s tail, dragged thus from Corfe to Wareham, and there hanged.[812]
Pandulf meanwhile had returned to France, and commanded Philip, on pain of the Pope’s displeasure, to lay aside all thoughts of invading England and go home in peace. Philip at first indignantly refused to abandon a scheme which, he said, he had planned at the Pope’s instigation, and for which he had already spent more than sixty thousand pounds.[813] But he dared not go on in the teeth of the papal prohibition; so he turned his wrath upon the one great feudatary of his realm who had refused to take part in the projected invasion, Count Ferrand of Flanders. Ordering his fleet to sail round as quickly as possible to Swine, the king dashed into Flanders at the head of all his forces. Ferrand besought help of John, with whom he was already in alliance; and John at once despatched five hundred ships, carrying a large body of horse and foot under the command of his half-brother Earl William of Salisbury and the counts of Holland and Boulogne.[814] They sailed on Tuesday, May 28, intending to land at Swine and march across the country to join Ferrand; but a contrary wind delayed them so that they did not reach Swine till Thursday, the 30th; and then, to their amazement, they found the harbour occupied by the French fleet, which, however, they soon discovered to be unguarded save by a few seamen, all the troops having gone ashore to ravage the neighbourhood. Salisbury at once ordered an attack; the French sailors were speedily overcome; three hundred ships laden with provisions were set drifting towards England, a hundred more were rifled of their contents and then set on fire. “Never came so much wealth into England since King Arthur went to conquer it,” says a contemporary poet.[815] Next day Count Ferrand came to meet his allies, and renewed his league with John.[816] On the Saturday—Whitsun Eve—the earls disembarked their troops and advanced to attack the French at Dam. The overwhelming numbers of the enemy, who were headed by King Philip himself, compelled them to retreat. Salisbury, however, not only escaped to his ships, but brought all his prizes safe to England;[817] while Philip was so mad with rage at the disaster to his fleet that he ordered the remnant of it to be burnt.[818] So far as England was concerned, his expedition was at an end.
John at once resolved that the fleet and the host which had been gathered for the defence of England should be used for an attack upon France. His plan was, while strengthening Ferrand’s hands so as to keep Philip busy in Flanders, himself to land with an army in Poitou, and thus place the French kingdom between two fires. At the end of June he reassembled his forces at Porchester, and again despatched William of Salisbury to Flanders with further reinforcements and large sums of money. The magnates, however, refused to accompany the king over sea till he was absolved from excommunication.[819] Their excuse was transparently false; his public absolution was indeed committed to Archbishop Stephen, and therefore deferred till Stephen’s arrival in England; but Pandulf had, in the Pope’s name, declared him reconciled to the Church. It could only be from political motives that men who had without protest marched with the excommunicate king against Scotland, Ireland and Wales, and gathered year after year at his festival banquets, now suddenly became more punctilious about a matter of ecclesiastical discipline than Innocent III. himself. It was, however, no moment for quarrelling with them openly; and their excuse, such as it was, soon ceased to exist.
King and legate had been rapidly pushing on the arrangements for the return of the exiles;[820] and in June or July Archbishop Stephen and four of the bishops landed at Dover.[821] On S. Margaret’s Day, Saturday, July 20, they were received by the king at Winchester.[822] He seems to have gone forth to meet them on the crest of the hill which lies to the east of the city.[823] He threw himself at the primate’s feet, bidding him welcome, and with tears imploring his mercy; “and the prelates and all the rest, when they saw this, could not refrain from weeping.” The procession made its way to the Old Minster and entered the chapter-house; the king swore on the Gospels “that he would cherish, defend and maintain the holy Church and her ordained ministers; that he would restore the good laws of his forefathers, especially S. Edward’s, rendering to all men their rights; and that before the next Easter he would make full restitution of all property which had been taken away in connexion with the Interdict.” This oath he seems to have repeated publicly at the door of the church; Stephen then formally absolved him, led him into the church, and celebrated mass in his presence, accepting his offering and giving him the kiss of peace; “and there was great joy among the people.”[824]
Having at last made up his mind to a formal reconciliation with both Pope and primate, John showed no signs of a wish to evade any part of its terms. During the past three months order after order had been issued in his name for carrying into effect the provisions of his agreement with Pandulf. The outlawry of the clergy had been revoked at once, on May 15, and this revocation was repeated on June 13.[825] Two laymen—Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz-Walter—who had gone into exile, not in company with any of the bishops nor for their sake, but on independent grounds, in the autumn of 1212, had been specially mentioned by name in John’s agreement with the Pope, and promised reinstatement in their lands and in the king’s favour. Safe-conducts were issued to these two barons on May 27, and orders for the restitution of their property on July 17, 19, and 21.[826] For the bishops something more than mere restitution was required; they, or the Pope and Pandulf for them, claimed indemnification as well; and the terms of the indemnity were difficult to decide. John seems to have proposed that they should be decided by a kind of general inquest; on the day {July 21} after his absolution he bade all the sheriffs in England cause a deputation of four men and the reeve from each township to be at S. Albans on August 4, “that through them and his other ministers he might ascertain the truth concerning the damages suffered by the several bishops, and what had been taken from them, and how much was due to each.” Whether such an inquisition was actually held does not appear; but early in August the justiciar and the bishop of Winchester met the primate, the other bishops and the magnates in a great council at S. Albans; there, in the king’s name, peace was proclaimed to all; the observance of King Henry’s laws and the disuse of evil customs were strictly enjoined; and the sheriffs, foresters, and other officers of the Crown were warned, “as they valued their limbs and their lives,” to commit no more extortions and wrongs, “as they had been wont to do.”[827]
John meanwhile had returned to the coast of Dorset, where the host had apparently been ordered to reassemble, with the intention of sailing for Poitou. In view of his own expected absence from England, he is said to have committed the government to the justiciar and the bishop of Winchester, bidding them “order all its affairs with the advice of the archbishop of Canterbury.”[828] The king’s departure, however, now met with a new series of checks. First the knights came to him in a body and protested that the months which had elapsed since they assembled for defence against the French had consumed all their money, so that they could not possibly follow him any farther unless he would pay their expenses. This he refused to do.[829] The barons of the north were the next recalcitrants; when called upon to accompany him over sea, they “with one mind and determination refused, asserting that according to the tenure of their lands they were not bound to him in this; besides that they were already too much worn out and impoverished by expeditions within the realm.”[830] The angry king embarked with his household on August 5 or 6, and sailed to Jersey; but finding that no one followed him thither he soon came back,[831] in a mighty rage, “cursing the day and hour when he had consented to the peace, and declaring that he had been deceived, and made a gazing-stock for nothing.”[832] His mercenaries and foreign auxiliaries were still a formidable host; and with these he set out for the north, “to bring back the rebels to their obedience.”[833] He seems to have landed at Corfe on August 9; he began his northward march from Winchester on the 16th, reached Wallingford on the 25th, and Northampton on the 28th.[834] On the 25th Archbishop Stephen was in London, presiding over a great council in S. Paul’s Cathedral.[835] Thence he hurried away in pursuit of the king; he overtook him at Northampton, and remonstrated vigorously against John’s plans of vengeance upon the northern barons, telling him he would bring contempt upon the oath which he had sworn before his absolution if he made war upon any man without a legal sentence. John “with a great clamour” declared that he would not put off the business of his realm for the archbishop, who had no concern with matters of lay jurisdiction; and early next morning he set out, “in a furious temper,” for Nottingham. The archbishop followed him, and threatened that unless the project were at once given up he would excommunicate every man, save the king himself, who should take part in any military expedition so long as the interdict continued in force; nor could John shake him off till he had appointed a day for the accused barons to come and stand their trial in his court.[836]
Characteristically, John behaved as if unconscious of defeat. He carried out his progress through the north in peaceable instead of warlike guise, and did not return to London till the end of September.[837] His arrival there was timed to coincide with that of the papal legate who came as the specially appointed minister of England’s restoration to the communion of the Church, and whose authority would for the time supersede that of the primate. On September 27 Cardinal Nicolas of Tusculum landed in England.[838] On the 30th he met the king, bishops and barons at a council in London, to discuss plans for a pecuniary settlement between the Crown and the clergy. John offered the bishops one hundred thousand marks down, with security for the payment before next Easter of any damages in excess of that sum which might be discovered on further investigation. The legate urged the bishops to accept this offer; but they preferred to accept nothing till they had prepared their own estimate and could demand the sum total at once; and the king readily consented to the delay. Three days had been spent in the discussion. On the fourth day, October 3, the council reassembled in S. Paul’s. At the foot of the high altar, in the sight of clergy and people, the ceremony which John and Pandulf had gone through at Ewell was repeated by John and Nicolas. John resigned his crown into the legate’s hands, received it back from him, and swore fealty to him as the Pope’s representative; and the charter of homage and tribute, which had been temporarily sealed with wax and delivered to Pandulf, was sealed with gold and finally made over to Nicolas, “for the benefit of the Pope and the Roman Church.”[839]
Still the interdict could not be raised till the settlement between the Crown and the bishops was completed; and another meeting for this purpose was appointed to take place at Reading on November 3. To this meeting all the interested parties came, except the king,[840] who was at Wallingford, where it seems he had appointed the northern barons to appear before his court on All Saints’ Day. The legate was there too, and through his mediation the barons were reconciled to the king and admitted to the kiss of peace.[841] As John did not show himself at Reading, the bishops went to Wallingford in their turn. By that time John had moved on to Woodstock; but he seems to have returned to Wallingford to meet them for a few hours on November 5,[842] and repeated his former proposals. These, however, “seemed little to those who had had their castles razed, their houses levelled with the ground, and their woods cut down”; so that it was decided to refer the matter to the arbitration of four barons. But this arbitration never took place. “All the parties concerned in the matter of the interdict” came together again at Reading on December 6,[843] and each of the injured persons brought forth a schedule of the amount of his losses and damages; the legate, however, supported the king in his refusal to pay the whole sum at once; and after three days’ deliberation no one received anything at all, except the archbishop and the five bishops who had been in exile beyond the sea, to whom John on December 12 ordered the payment of fifteen thousand marks.[844] At last it seems to have been agreed that the damages should be investigated by two sets of commissioners acting together, one set appointed by the king, the other by the primate, and that the sum to be paid by the Crown should be fixed—doubtless on the report of these commissioners—by the Pope; and this scheme was carried out in the following year.[845]
1213–14