John Lackland

by Kate Norgate

On May 9 the king—now at Windsor—proposed that the quarrel should be decided by eight arbitrators, four to be chosen by himself and four by “the barons who are against us,” with the Pope as “superior” over them; he offered the earl of Warren and four bishops as sureties for his own acceptance of the award, and promised that until it was delivered he would take no forcible measures against the insurgents, “save according to the law of the realm and the judgement of their peers in his court.”[1009] This proposal seems to have been rejected at once, for two days later John ordered the sheriffs to seize the lands, goods and chattels of “his enemies” in their several shires and apply them to his benefit.[1010] Almost immediately afterwards he seems to have commissioned the archbishop of Canterbury to negotiate a truce for a few days. On the 16th he appointed his brother, Earl William of Salisbury, to act as his representative in London.[1011] The object of William’s mission evidently was to secure, if possible, the loyalty of the “mayor, aldermen and other barons of London,” which John suspected to be wavering. His suspicion was correct; a plot for the betrayal of the city was already ripe, and on the very next morning—Sunday, May 17—the insurgents were masters of the capital.[1012] The first use they made of this success was to fill their pockets with plunder taken from the king’s partisans in the city, and from the Jews; the next was to pull down the Jews’ houses and use the stones for repairing the city walls. They then sent letters to all the earls, barons and knights who still adhered to the king, “bidding them, if they cared to retain their property and goods, forsake a king who was perjured and in rebellion against his barons, and join with them in standing firmly and fighting strongly for the peace and liberty of the realm; threatening that if they neglected so to do, they, the writers, would direct their banners and their arms against them as against public enemies, and do their utmost to overthrow their castles, burn their dwellings, and destroy their fishponds, orchards and parks.” These invitations and threats brought over to the winning side all who had been waiting to see which way the tide would turn, and they, of course, made a right goodly company.[1013]

Still the king did not lose heart. He had gone from Berkshire into Wiltshire,[1014] and was at his hunting seat of Fremantle—“a house which stands on a height, and in the heart of a forest”—when, on May 18 or 19, a party of Flemish knights under Robert de Béthune found their way to him and offered themselves for his service. He gave them a joyous welcome, and hearing that a sudden rising had taken place in Devon, despatched them under the command of the earl of Salisbury to deal with it. The insurgents were reported to be besieging Exeter, whence the earl was bidden to dislodge them; but they had, in fact, already taken it; and when Earl William reached Sherborne, he was told that they were lying hidden in a wood through which his road lay, in such numbers that he and his followers had no chance of escape if they fell into the ambush; whereupon he went back to the king at Winchester.[1015] “You are not good at taking fortresses!” said John scornfully when he heard the tale. A few days later he again bade the same party go and drive the “Northerners” out of Exeter. Again they were met at Sherborne by alarming accounts of the increased numbers of the enemy; but this time the Flemings, stung by the king’s taunt, insisted upon going forward to “conquer or die”; and the “Northerners,” though they are said by the contemporary Flemish chronicler to have been ten to one, evacuated Exeter at the mere tidings of their approach.[1016]

This second expedition to Exeter probably started from Winchester on the same day (May 24) on which John issued a notice that any persons who came to his service from over sea were to place themselves under the orders of his chamberlain, Hubert de Burgh.[1017] He had summoned a part of his forces to muster on May 26 at Marlborough; but on the 25th they were bidden to proceed to “the parts of Odiham and Farnham,” there to receive his commands; while others, who were to have come to Reading, were to await his orders sent through Jordan de Sackville. On the same day John wrote to the archbishop of Canterbury, urgently, but very courteously, entreating that he would temporarily waive his right to the custody of Rochester castle and allow the king to garrison it with men of his own.[1018] To this request Langton acceded.[1019] By this time he had negotiated another truce, and two days later {May 27} John gave him a safe-conduct for himself and for whatever persons he might bring with him to Staines “to treat of peace between ourself and our barons.”[1020]

The object of all these changes of front on the king’s part was to gain time for assembling new forces and devising a new policy. On the same day on which he gave the safe-conduct to the archbishop, he despatched an urgent appeal to all “his knights, men-at-arms, and friends who were coming to join him” from over sea, entreating them to come as speedily as possible, and promising that they should be well rewarded for so doing.[1021] On May 29 he again wrote to the Pope, complaining of the rebellious attitude of the barons, which made it impossible for him to fulfil his vow of crusade.[1022] On Whitsun Eve, June 6, he bade his favourite captain of mercenaries, Falkes de Bréauté, send four hundred Welshmen to Salisbury to meet its earl by the following Tuesday,[1023] seemingly to be ready for action on the Thursday, when the truce would expire.

John knew, however, that the game was lost. Four bodies of insurgents were now in the field, and none of them seem to have paid any regard to the truce. The townsfolk of Northampton had risen against the royal garrison of the castle and slain several of them. The force which occupied London was besieging the Tower; and now, in this Whitsun week, another body seized Lincoln.[1024] The king was almost deserted; at one moment he is said to have had only seven knights left in his suite; the sessions of the Exchequer and of the sheriffs’ courts throughout the country had ceased, because no one would pay him anything or obey him in any matter.[1025] He had come up on May 31 from Odiham to Windsor, doubtless to meet the archbishop at Staines; on June 4 he went back into Hampshire.[1026] On Whit-Monday, June 8, he issued from Merton a safe-conduct for envoys from the barons to proceed to and from Staines from Tuesday the 9th till Thursday the 11th. On Wednesday the 10th he returned to Windsor, and the truce was prolonged from Thursday to the following Monday, the 15th.[1027] Finally, he despatched William the Marshal and some other trusty envoys to tell the barons in London “that for the sake of peace and for the welfare and honour of his realm, he would freely concede to them the laws and liberties which they asked; and that they might appoint a place and day for him and them to meet, for the settlement of all these things.” The messengers “guilelessly performed the errand which had been guilefully imposed on them”; and the barons, “buoyed up with immense joy,” fixed the meeting to take place on June 15 in a meadow between Staines and Windsor,[1028] called Runnimead.[1029]

June 15

There, on the appointed morning, the two parties pitched their tents at a little distance from each other on the long reach of level grass-land which stretched along the river-bank. The barons came “with a multitude of most illustrious knights, all thoroughly well armed.”[1030] “It is useless,” says another chronicler, “to enumerate those who were present on the side of the barons, for they comprised well-nigh all the nobility of England.” With the king were the archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, seven bishops, Pandulf—who had been sent back to England as the Pope’s representative instead of Nicolas—the Master of the English Templars, the earls of Pembroke, Salisbury, Warren and Arundel, and about a dozen barons of lesser degree, including Hubert de Burgh.[1031] It was to these chosen few, and above all to the first of them, that John really capitulated. His declaration that he granted the Great Charter by their counsel may well have been true of them all; his most devoted adherents could, if they had any political sagacity, advise him nothing else for his own interest. The terms of capitulation, however, imply more than this. Nominally, the treaty—for it was nothing less[1032]—was based upon a set of forty-nine articles “which the barons demanded and the lord king granted.”[1033] But those articles are obviously not the composition of “the barons” mustered under Robert Fitz-Walter. Every step of the proceedings of these insurgents up to that moment, every step of their proceedings afterwards, as well as everything that is known of the character of their leaders, goes to show that they were no more capable of rising to the lofty conception embodied in the Charter—the conception of a contract between king and people which should secure equal rights to every class and every individual in the nation—than they were capable of formulating it in the minute detail and the carefully chosen phraseology of the Charter or even of the Articles. The true history of the treaty of Runnimead is told in one brief sentence by Ralph of Coggeshall: “By the intervention of the archbishop of Canterbury, with several of his fellow-bishops and some barons, a sort of peace was made.”[1034] In other words, the terms were drawn up by Stephen Langton with the concurrence of the other bishops who were at hand, and of the few lay barons, on either side, who were statesmen enough to look at the crisis from a higher standpoint than that of personal interest; they were adopted—for the moment—by the mass of the insurgents as being a weapon, far more effective than any that they could have forged for themselves, for bringing the struggle with the king (so at least they hoped) to an easy and a speedy end; and they were accepted—also for the moment—by John, as his readiest and surest way of escape from a position of extreme difficulty and peril. Thus before nightfall the Great Charter was sealed; and in return John received anew the homage of the barons who had defied him.[1035]

It was, however, one thing to make the treaty, and quite another to carry it into effect. The framers of the Articles and of the Charter had done what they could towards that end by a carefully planned “form of security for the observance of the peace and liberties between the king and the kingdom.”[1036] Out of the whole baronage of England the barons present at Runnimead were to choose twenty-five, who should “observe, keep, and cause to be observed, with all their might,” the provisions of the Charter. If the king failed to do his part, these twenty-five were to compel him thereto by force if necessary. For this purpose they were authorized to claim assistance from “the community of the whole country,” and they were therefore to receive an oath of obedience from every man in the realm.[1037] King and barons alike swore that they would keep all the provisions of the Charter “in good faith and without deceit.”[1038] The king was made to promise that he would not procure “from any one” anything whereby his concessions might be revoked or diminished, and that if such revocation should be obtained it should be accounted void and never used.[1039] That John’s promises were worthless every one knew; it was not likely that all the pressure which could be brought to bear upon him by “five-and-twenty over-kings”—as his foreign mercenaries sarcastically called the elected barons[1040]—would more than suffice, if even it should suffice, to compel him to keep his word. Still the check thus set over him was a very strong one. It was in fact the strongest that could be devised; and it was made of indisputable authority by its incorporation in the Charter.[1041]

On the other hand, the Charter contained no provision for compelling the barons in general to fulfil their part of its obligations, either towards their sub-tenants[1042] or towards the Crown, except what might be implied in the authority given to the twenty-five; while for securing the loyalty and good faith of the twenty-five themselves it contained no provision at all. If we look at the text of the Charter alone, we can but endorse the verdict of its foreign soldier-critics: England was exchanging one king for five-and-twenty. This defect in the treaty seems to have been noticed as soon as it was passed, and a remedy was sought in the appointment of another body of barons, thirty-eight in number, chosen from both parties,[1043] and including the Earl Marshal and the other chief adherents of the king; these, after swearing obedience to the twenty-five, took another oath which bound them to compel both the king and the twenty-five to deal justly with one another.[1044] This precaution may perhaps have been suggested by Langton and the other bishops when a significant incident had shown them that the promise of the insurgent barons was worth no more than that of the king. This incident rests upon the authority of a joint statement purporting to be issued, evidently by way of protest and warning and for the clearing of their own consciences, by ten eye-witnesses—the archbishops of Canterbury and Dublin, seven English bishops, and Pandulf. In a letter-patent addressed to “all Christian people,” these ten persons (if the document be genuine) recite how in their sight and hearing the barons had made to the king—seemingly before the Charter was sealed—a verbal promise that they would give him, for their observance of the agreement between him and themselves, any security which he might choose, except castles or hostages. “Afterwards” John called upon them to fulfil this promise by giving him in their turn a charter, whereby they should acknowledge themselves bound to him by oath and homage as his liegemen, and for the preservation of his rights and those of his heirs and the defence of his realm. “But,” say the witnesses, “this they would not do.”[1045] Such, it seems, was the earnest of the loyalty to their plighted word which England, as well as John, had to expect from the men who posed as the champions of justice and right.

For ten days the nominally reconciled enemies sat watching each other, the king at Windsor, the barons still encamped in the surrounding meadows. In private, John’s feelings broke out in wild paroxysms of fury characteristic of his race; he “gnashed his teeth, rolled his eyes, caught up sticks and straws and gnawed them like a madman, or tore them into shreds with his fingers.”[1046] But to the outside world he wore a calm and smiling face, chatting familiarly and gaily with every one whom he met, and declaring himself perfectly satisfied with the settlement of affairs.[1047] Within the next seven days {June 19–22} he despatched copies of the Charter to the sheriffs, foresters and other royal bailiffs in every shire, with letters patent ordering them to make the men under their jurisdiction swear obedience to the twenty-five barons in whatever form these latter might prescribe, and cause twelve sworn knights to be elected in the next county court for the purpose of inquiring into evil customs with a view to their extirpation as promised in the Charter.[1048] He also sent to his mercenary captains {June 18} orders to desist from hostilities and amend any damage which they might have done to the barons since the peace was made.[1049] On the following Tuesday, June 23, he ordered the foreign soldiers at Dover to be sent home at once.[1050] On the 25th a number of sheriffs were removed from office and replaced by new ones.[1051] Before that date the king had appointed a new chief justiciar, Hubert de Burgh,[1052] a faithful adherent of his own, who was also an honourable man, respected by all parties, and a member of the committee of thirty-eight. On the 27th the sheriffs and the knights elected in every shire to inquire into evil customs were ordered to punish summarily all persons who refused the oath of obedience to the twenty-five.[1053]