The fullest account of the quarrel of King John and William de Braose is contained in a document printed in Foedera, vol. i. pt. i. pp. 107, 108. This is a letter or manifesto addressed by John, after the fall of De Braose, “to all who may read it,” witnessed by the justiciar (Geoffrey Fitz-Peter), the earls of Salisbury, Winchester, Clare, Hertford, and Ferrars, Robert Fitz-Walter, William Brewer, Hugh de Neville, William d’Aubigny, Adam de Port, Hugh de Gournay, William de Mowbray “and others,” and evidently intended as a public defence of the king’s conduct towards William. Coming from John, and under such circumstances, its truthfulness is necessarily open to suspicion; but it is hardly conceivable that so many witnesses of such rank and character as those enumerated should have set their hands to it if it contained any gross misrepresentations of matters which must have been well known to most of them; one of these witnesses, indeed, the earl of Ferrars, is stated in the letter itself to have been De Braose’s own nephew, and another, Adam de Port, his brother-in-law. The only point on which the letter seems to be at variance with any other contemporary authority is the amount of the debt owed by De Braose to the king at the end of 1207 or beginning of 1208. John says ([l.c.] p. 107), that William then owed him the whole of the 5000 marks due for the honour of Limerick, and had only paid him one sum of 100 marks for the ferm of the city “which he had held for five years” (strictly speaking, it was, at the utmost, four years and a half). The Pipe Rolls of 1206, 1207, 1208, 1209, and 1210 (8–12 John), however, all state the sum still owed by William for the honour of Limerick as £2865: 6: 8 (= 4298 marks), thus implying that £468, or 702 marks, had been paid before Michaelmas 1206. In the Roll of that year the city of Limerick is not mentioned; but in each of the later Rolls William is said to owe £80 for its tallage, and 100 marks for its ferm for one year (Sweetman, Calendar, vol. i. pp. 46, 55, 58, 68). This does not necessarily imply that the ferm for the other years had not been paid; for the original grant of the custody of the city of Limerick to De Braose in July 1203 and the writ ordering its restoration to him in August 1205 both specify that he is to pay its ferm “to our exchequer in Dublin” (Rot. Chart. p. 107 b; Rot. Claus. vol. i. p. 47). As there are no remaining records of the Dublin Exchequer of so early a date, we cannot certainly know what was or was not paid in there. The strange thing is not that the English Exchequer should claim only one year’s ferm for Limerick, but that it should have any claim at all in the matter. The restoration of the city to De Braose in August 1205 was ordered to be conditional on his finding security, within forty days, for the payment of the arrears of the ferm. That the restoration was actually made, and therefore that he gave the security, is plain; but there is nothing to show that he ever redeemed his pledge, or that he paid the ferm for the succeeding years.

The story of John’s vengeance on the family of De Braose appears, in slightly varied forms, in almost every chronicle of the period. Ralph of Coggeshall (p. 164), Roger of Wendover (vol. iii. p. 235) and the Brut y Tywysogion (a. 1209) say the victims were “slain in Windsor castle”; the Annals of Dunstable and of Oseney (a. 1210), that they “died in prison,” without specifying where or how. The Barnwell Annalist (W. Coventry, vol. ii. p. 202) and the Annals of Margan, Tewkesbury, Waverley, Winchester, and Worcester (a. 1210) say they were starved to death. The Hist. des Ducs de Normandie (pp. 114–115) says they were imprisoned “el castiel del Corf,” with no food save “une garbe d’avoine e i bacon cru,” and describes with gruesome minuteness the attitudes in which, on the eleventh day, they were found dead. Ralph of Coggeshall makes the victims William de Braose’s wife and “sons” (filii); Roger of Wendover, his wife, eldest son, and that son’s wife; the Ann. Winton., wife and “younger” son; the Ann. Tewkesb., wife and “children” (liberi); while the Ann. Dunst. say: “Cepit [rex] Willelmum de Lacy, et Willelmum de Brause juniorem, et sororem ejus, et Matildem matrem ejus; qui in carcere post modum perierunt.” All the other writers speak only of the wife and one son, whom the Ann. Osen. call “Willelmus primogenitus ejus,” and the Ann. Wigorn. “haeres.” This latter version is undoubtedly the correct one as to the last point; of De Braose’s three sons, the eldest, William, alone was in John’s power; Giles, the second, was bishop of Hereford and safe beyond the sea, while the third, Reginald, had escaped capture, and lived to recover the greater part of the family heritage. One of the daughters—the wife of Hugh Mortimer—had been taken prisoner with her mother and eldest brother (Foedera, vol. i. pt. i. p. 107); but she did not share their fate, for she was set free in 1214 (Rot. Pat. vol. i. p. 122); and Roger of Wendover is certainly wrong about the younger William’s wife, who was still living in July 1220 (Royal Letters, ed. Shirley, vol. i. p. 136). The elder William died, an exile in France, about a year after this tragedy (R. Wend. vol. iii. p. 237).

[Note II]
EUSTACE DE VESCI AND ROBERT FITZ-WALTER

Eustace de Vesci and Robert Fitz-Walter have long figured in history as typical examples of the way in which individual barons were goaded into hatred and vengeance against John by his invasions of their domestic peace, and also as foremost among the “patriots” to whom England is supposed to be indebted for her Great Charter. On both aspects of the lives of these two men—especially of the life of Fitz-Walter, whom Professor Tout has glorified as “the first champion of English liberty”—a few considerations may be offered here.

1. The earliest mention of John’s unsuccessful attempt to entrap the wife of Eustace de Vesci is in an addition made by a chronicler at Furness Abbey, writing c. 1270–1298, to the Stanley chronicler’s continuation of the history of William of Newburgh. This Furness writer (Howlett, Chron. of Stephen, etc., vol. ii. p. 521) merely states the bare fact, without any details, in the briefest and simplest way, and without any clue to the date. Walter of Hemingburgh, who was living in 1313, tells the story in an elaborate form which is certainly not impossible, perhaps not even very improbable, although it somewhat resembles a story in Procopius (see Dic. Nat. Biogr. “Vesci, Eustace de”). Walter gives it as an illustration of John’s character, of which he inserts a picture—painted in the most frightful colours—between the coming of the Franciscans in 1212 and the rising of the barons in 1215; but he connects the incident directly with the latter event, representing Eustace as inducing those of his fellow-barons whom the king had injured in a similar way to join him in a common effort for vengeance, which widens into the struggle for the Charter (Hemingburgh, vol. i. pp. 247–9). The affair would thus seem to have occurred some years after Eustace’s desertion from the king’s host and flight from England in 1212; a desertion for which, therefore, it cannot serve as an excuse.

2. The legend of Robert Fitz-Walter’s daughter which became famous in prose and verse in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is based upon a passage in the Chronicle of Dunmow, printed in Monasticon, vol. vi. pt. i. p. 147. This chronicle, written in a monastery of which the Fitz-Walters were patrons, begins with the year 1054, but the MS. (Cott. Cleopatra C. iii.) is of the end of the fifteenth century; it ends at the year 1501. The story is placed in 1216, and is briefly this: John demands Robert’s daughter, the fair maiden Matilda; her father refuses to give her up to him; the civil war breaks out, and the city of London joins the barons; afterwards they are worsted, whereupon the king destroys Robert’s fortress in London—Castle Baynard—and causes Matilda to be poisoned at Robert’s manor of Dunmow. Meanwhile Robert has fled to France. War continues on both sides of the Channel. Presently John goes to France, and has a conference with Philip Augustus; Robert Fitz-Walter displays his prowess in a single combat in presence of both the kings; John admires his valour, they are reconciled, and remain friends from that time forth.

On a tale so monstrous and so nonsensical as this, comment is needless. There is, however, a much earlier and more rational account of the quarrel between John and Fitz-Walter. According to the contemporary Histoire des Ducs de Normandie, Robert Fitz-Walter, “qui estoit uns des plus haus homes d’Engletierre et uns des plus poissans” (he was lord of Dunmow in Essex, of Baynard’s Castle in London, and also, by his marriage with an heiress, of large estates in the north), had two daughters, of whom the elder was married to Geoffrey de Mandeville, eldest son of Geoffrey Fitz-Peter, chief justiciar of England. “Une fois” when the king was visiting Marlborough, a quarrel for lodgings arose between the servants of this young Geoffrey and those of William Brewer; they came to blows, and Brewer’s chief “sergeant” was slain by the hand of Geoffrey himself. Geoffrey, fearing the wrath of the king, whom he knew to be jealous of his father’s power and wealth, fled to his wife’s father, who went to intercede for him with the king; John, however, “jura les dens Diu que non auroit (merchi), ains le feroit pendre, se il le pooit tenir.” Robert in return swore “Par Corpus Domini, non ferés! ains en verriés ii. m. hiaumes laciés en vostre tierre, que chil fust pendus qui ma fille a.” At last John promised a “day” for agreement between himself and Geoffrey at Nottingham, intending to seize him at his coming; but Robert, “ki le roi connissoit à moult gaignart,” came with his son-in-law, and with five hundred knights at his back. The king then proposed another “day,” and the same thing happened a second time. Then John began to plot vengeance upon Robert; he sent secret orders to “ses bourgois de Londres, qui se faisoient apelier baron,” to pull down Castle Baynard; and they, not daring to disobey him, did as they were bid. Robert, knowing very well that they had acted on an order from the king, fled over sea with his wife and children. On reaching the Continent “il fist à entendre par tout que li rois Jehans voloit sa fille aisnée, qui feme estoit Joffroi de Mandeville, avoir à force à amie, et por chou que il ne le vaut soufrir, l’avoit il chacié de sa tierre et tout le sien tolut.” This was the tale which he also told to King Philip of France, at whose court he—after staying some time at Arras—presented himself just as Philip was preparing to invade England. When the invasion had been checked by John’s submission to Pandulf and Pandulf’s prohibition to Philip, Robert went to “Pandoufle le clerc” and to him told another tale: “li dist que il s’estoit partis d’Engletierre por le roi qui escumeniiés estoit, car il ne voloit pas estre en la compaignie des escumeniiés; et por chou li avoit li rois toute sa terre tolue”; wherefore he begged Pandulf, now that the king was excommunicate no longer, to make peace for him and get him back his land, which Pandulf accordingly did (Hist. des Ducs, pp. 115–25).

Here, at any rate, it is clear that the date of the quarrel cannot have been later than the spring of 1213; perhaps, as we are not told how long Robert stayed in Flanders before going to France, it might be some months earlier. This agrees with the date assigned to Robert’s flight from England by the Barnwell annalist, Ralph of Coggeshall, and Roger of Wendover, all of whom place it in the latter part of 1212 (see below, [p. 292]). The cause of the flight, however, still remains doubtful. It will be observed that the writer of the Histoire des Ducs, speaking in his own person, makes the quarrel between John and Robert arise out of John’s enmity to Robert’s son-in-law, Geoffrey de Mandeville, and also makes that enmity originate in the king’s jealousy of Geoffrey’s father (the Justiciar), without a word about Geoffrey’s wife; but that he represents Robert Fitz-Walter as having given to different persons two different accounts of the matter, both of which are quite distinct not only from the account given by the writer himself, but also from each other. To the third of these three accounts—the assertion which Robert is said to have made to Pandulf, that he left England because he would not keep company with an excommunicate sovereign—it is hardly possible for any one who has read the story of the years of interdict to attach any weight. Robert’s appeal to Pandulf, moreover, is chronologically out of place; it is represented as having been made after John’s agreement with Pandulf, whereas in reality the restoration of Robert Fitz-Walter, and also of Eustace de Vesci, was one of the conditions of that agreement. The statement which Robert is said to have made “everywhere,” on the other hand, is only too likely to be true, and may well contain the true explanation of John’s designs against the husband of Fitz-Walter’s daughter; while none of the three versions is incompatible with either of the others. Still the fact remains that three different versions are thus given—two on the alleged authority of Robert Fitz-Walter, one on his own authority—by a writer who was strictly contemporary, and who ranks as one of the best, and certainly the most impartial, of our informants on the closing years of John’s reign; and this fact leaves a somewhat sinister impression as to the opinion which that writer, at least, entertained of the truthfulness of the “first champion of English liberty.”