John Lackland

by Kate Norgate

1215

John was at S. Edmund’s on November 4;[971] it is possible therefore that his meeting with the barons may have been held there, and that the scene described by Roger may have taken place after the king’s departure. He kept Christmas at Worcester, and returned to London at the opening of the new year.[972] There, at Epiphany, the confederate barons came to him in a body, “in somewhat showy military array,” and prayed him “that certain laws and liberties of King Edward, with other liberties granted to them and to the English Church and realm, might be confirmed, as they were written in the charter of King Henry I. and the laws aforesaid; moreover they declared that at the time of his absolution at Winchester, he had promised those ancient laws and liberties, and thus he was bound by his own oath to the observance of the same.” John cautiously answered that “the matter which they sought was great and difficult, wherefore he asked for a delay till the close of Easter, that he might consider how to satisfy both their demands and the dignity of his crown.”[973] He then seems to have tried to persuade them—no doubt each man singly—into giving him a written promise “never again to demand such liberties from him or his successors”; but to this no one would consent except the bishop of Winchester, the earl of Chester, and William Brewer.[974] At last the proposed adjournment till the close of Easter was agreed upon, but not till the king had, “against his will,” pledged himself by three sureties to fulfill his promise by giving reasonable satisfaction to all parties at the date thus appointed.[975]

The king’s sureties were the archbishop of Canterbury, the bishop of Ely, and William the Marshal. The choice of the archbishop as one of them was good policy on John’s part; and Langton’s acceptance of the office implies no wavering or double-dealing on his side. In so far as it was his inspiration that gave a new force to the enterprise of the barons, by raising it from a struggle for their own privileges into a struggle for the liberties of the English nation, he was in truth, as Roger of Wendover says, their “chief ally”;[976] and for the achievement of its end as he himself conceived it, he did indeed “give them his most faithful help to the utmost of his power.” But the help which he gave them was not that of a partisan; Stephen Langton was at once too true a churchman and too great a statesman, and held too lofty a conception of his proper constitutional functions as primate of all England, to identify himself with any party. The right and the duty of the archbishop of Canterbury was to be the partisan of neither king nor people, but the guide and monitor of both, so far as they would accept his guidance and listen to his admonitions, and the mediator between them whenever mediation was needed. He was by virtue of his office the first adviser of the Crown as well as the guardian of the nation’s rights; and it was only by standing firmly at his post by the king’s side in the former capacity that he could be truly efficient in the latter. Langton’s attitude was evidently understood by both parties at the time. From the moment when the northern barons first asked the king to confirm his great-grandfather’s charter, if not before, John must have known that the hand of the primate was with them in the matter. But he was quite as much alive as they were to the value of such a helper; moreover, he seems to have had the somewhat rare gift of being able to recognize in another man qualities which were conspicuously absent from his own character. Much as he hated Langton, he evidently trusted to his honour and loyalty as implicitly as he trusted to that of William the Marshal. He therefore continued to the end the policy which he had pursued ever since the archbishop’s coming to England. He treated Langton with every mark of confidence and respect; he carefully avoided any step which might have forced him into opposition on ecclesiastical grounds; and in his diplomatic dealings with the barons it was Langton whom he employed as his chief commissioner and representative.

The king, however, was even more prompt than the barons in preparing to back diplomacy by force. Immediately after the Epiphany meeting he ordered a renewal of the oath of allegiance throughout the country; and this time it was to be taken in the form of an oath of liege homage, binding his subjects to “stand by him against all men.” This, it is said, was an unwonted addition, which was generally opposed as being “contrary to the charter”—the standard by which all things were now tried.[977] It may have been in connexion with this matter that the king sent {Feb. 10} to the men of sixteen southern and midland shires commissioners “to explain his business” to them;[978] but he ended by withdrawing his demand, “not deeming the time opportune for exciting a tumult among the people.”[979] That tumults would nevertheless arise before long he knew full well; and to meet this danger he had already called to his aid the loyal “barons and bachelors” of Poitou.[980] The summons must have been issued immediately after, if not even in anticipation of, his meeting with the English malcontents at Epiphany, and the response must have been as prompt as the summons, for on February 8 he had already heard of the arrival in Ireland of some troops sent to him by Savaric de Mauléon, and was issuing orders to the archbishop of Dublin for the payment of their passage to England.[981] On February 19 the king gave a safe-conduct to “the barons of the North” that they might come to Oxford to speak with the primate, the other bishops and the Earl Marshal on Sunday the 22nd.[982] Whether this conference took place, or what came of it, we are not told; but on March 13 John wrote to the barons and bachelors of Poitou that the matter for which he had summoned them was now settled, and he therefore, thanking them for their readiness to obey his call, bade those of them who had not yet set out remain at home, and those who had started go home again, with the assurance that he would indemnify them for their expenses.[983]

It is possible that the barons may have asked for the conference at Oxford in order to remonstrate against the warlike preparations of the king, and that it may have resulted in some temporary arrangement which compelled him to dismiss the Poitevins. It is also possible that this dismissal may have been prompted by tidings from Rome. The prospect of some such crisis as the present one had almost certainly been in the minds of king and barons alike when John performed his homage to the Pope; and both alike now sought to make their profit out of that transaction, each side appealing to the Pope, as the common overlord of both, to use his authority in compelling the other to yield. An envoy from John, William Mauclerc, had reached Rome on February 17. Eleven days later Eustace de Vesci and two other representatives of the malcontent party arrived with letters for the Pope. In these letters—so Mauclerc reported to his master—the confederate barons besought Innocent, “since he was lord of England,” to urge and, if needful, compel the king to restore the ancient liberties granted by his predecessors and confirmed by his own oath. They recited how at the meeting in London at Epiphany John had not only refused to grant these liberties, but had endeavoured to make the petitioners promise never to ask for them again. They begged that the Pope would take measures to help them in this matter, “forasmuch as he well knew that they had at his command boldly opposed the king in behalf of the Church’s liberty, and that the king’s grant of an annual revenue and other honours to the Pope and the Roman Church had been made not of free will and devotion, but from fear and under compulsion from them.”[984] Of what John wrote, or charged his envoy to say, to Innocent in his behalf, no record remains; but Innocent’s letters show what the tenour of John’s argument must have been. With his usual dexterity the king made capital out of the secret meetings held, or said to have been held, by the malcontents; and he also brought into special prominence the one point of discussion which was quite clearly defined, and in which he unmistakeably had precedent on his side—the question of the scutage. On March 19 Innocent wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury and the other English bishops, expressing his surprise that they had not checked the quarrel between the king and “certain magnates and barons,” and reproving them for their failure to do so; he strongly condemned the “conspiracies and conjurations” which the barons were reported to have made, and ordered the bishops to quash all such conspiracies and urge the barons to proceed only by fair and lawful means. On the other hand, he besought the king “to treat the aforesaid nobles graciously, and mercifully to grant their just petitions.” On the same day he wrote to the barons, informing them of the contents of his letter to the bishops.[985] On April 1 he wrote to the barons again, avowedly in consequence of the king’s complaint of their refusal to pay the scutage for the Poitevin war; he reproved them for their contumacy in this matter, and “warned and exhorted” them to satisfy the king’s claims without further delay.[986]

April 19–26

By the middle of April the two former of these letters must have reached England, the second being probably brought back by Eustace de Vesci and his companions. The third letter was scarcely needed to show the barons that their cause was lost at Rome. John, moreover, had secured its ruin in that quarter by taking the Cross[987]—partly, no doubt, as a protection against personal violence, but still more as a means of enlisting the Pope’s strongest sympathies in his behalf, and holding up his enemies to execration as hinderers of the crusade. They grew desperate; they held another council among themselves, at which they determined, without waiting for their promised interview with the king, that they “would deal civilly with him no longer”;[988] and in Easter week they assembled at Stamford in arms.

Five earls and forty barons are mentioned by name as present at the muster, “with many others”; they all came with horses and arms, and brought with them “a countless host,” estimated to comprise about two thousand knights, besides other horsemen, sergeants-at-arms, and foot soldiers.[989] “And because for the most part they came from the north, they were all called Northerners.” From Stamford they marched to Northampton, but without doing any act of violence.[990] John, who had spent Easter in London,[991] sent the primate and some other bishops and magnates to parley with them.[992] Several meetings appear to have taken place. The deliberations evidently turned chiefly on the Pope’s letters. No allusion is made by the chroniclers to the letter about the scutage, which perhaps had not yet arrived; but, on the one hand, Innocent’s condemnation of secret conspiracies could not be ignored; and on the other, the barons urged his injunction to the king to hearken to their “just petitions.”[993] At length John—secure in the consciousness that he could refuse every petition on the plea that it was not just—authorized his commissioners to demand of the barons, in his name, a categorical statement of the laws and liberties which they desired.

This message was delivered to the insurgents by the primate and the Marshal, at Brackley, on Monday April 27—the day after that originally fixed for the meeting of the barons and the king. “Then they [the barons] presented to the envoys a certain schedule, which consisted for the most part of ancient laws and customs of the realm, declaring that if the king did not at once grant these things and confirm them with his seal, they would compel him by force.”[994] This “schedule” was no doubt a kind of first draft, prepared under the direction of Langton himself in his conferences with the insurgents during the previous week, of those “Articles of the Barons” from which we chiefly learn the grievances of the time, and most of which were ultimately embodied in the Great Charter. Langton and the Marshal carried it back to the king, who was now in Wiltshire.[995] One by one the articles were read out to him by the primate. John listened with a scornful smile: “Why do these barons not ask for my kingdom at once?” he said. “Their demands are idle dreams, without a shadow of reason.” Then he burst into a fury, and swore that he would never grant to them liberties which would make himself a slave. In vain the archbishop and the Marshal endeavoured to persuade him to yield; he only bade them go back to the barons and repeat every word that he had said. They performed their errand;[996] and the barons immediately sent to the king a formal renunciation of their homage and fealty,[997] and chose for themselves a captain-general in the person of Robert Fitz-Walter, to whom they gave the title of “Marshal of the army of God and Holy Church.”[998] They then marched back to Northampton, occupied the town and laid siege to the castle.[999]

The king was not behindhand in his preparations for war. His friends were already mustering at Gloucester; on April 30 he requested them to proceed thence on the following Monday (May 3), well furnished with horses and arms, and with “all the men they could get,” to Cirencester, there to await his further commands.[1000] Orders were issued for strengthening the fortifications of London, Oxford, Norwich, Bristol and Salisbury.[1001] The earls of Salisbury, Warren, Pembroke and others perambulated the country to see that the royal castles were properly fortified and manned;[1002] help was summoned from Flanders[1003] and from Poitou.[1004] Early in May the king returned for a couple of days to London;[1005] and as fourteen years before he had won the support of its citizens in his struggle with Richard’s chancellor by granting to them the “commune” which they desired, so now he endeavoured to secure their adhesion by confirming their liberties and adding to them the crowning privilege of a fully constituted municipality, the right to elect their own mayor every year.[1006] Meanwhile the “northern” barons had found Northampton castle too strong to be taken without military engines which they did not possess; so at the end of a fortnight they had raised the siege and moved on to Bedford. Here the castle was given up to them by its commandant, William de Beauchamp.[1007] Their forces were rapidly increasing in number; the younger men especially, sons and nephews of the greater barons, joined them readily, “wishing to make for themselves a name in war”; the elder magnates, for the most part, clave to the king “as their lord.”[1008]