To Llywelyn, as to King Alexander, the treaty of Kingston was duly notified by Louis.[446] The new Bishop of Hereford and the Bishop of Coventry were, it seems, empowered by the Legate to receive the submission of all the Welsh princes and absolve them from excommunication at Hereford on 18th November; when this was done, Hugh de Mortimer[447] and some other barons were to escort them to Northampton for a meeting with the King.[448] Henry and the Marshal were at Northampton on 17th and 18th December;[449] but evidently the Welsh princes did not come. It may have been to keep guard on the Welsh border that the Marshal took his young sovereign to keep Christmas at Gloucester,[450] and lingered with him in the west of England throughout the first four months of the new year {1218}. In February, 1218, a safe-conduct was issued to Llywelyn that he might come and do homage to the King at Worcester.[451] No date is fixed in the letter, and no record of the homage appears to exist; but there can be no doubt that it was performed at the appointed place on or before 17th March, for on that day, at Worcester, the castles of Cardigan and Caermarthen with the lands appertaining to them were committed by the King and his council to his “beloved brother-in-law Llywelyn, Prince of North Wales,” that he might hold them till the King’s coming of age, maintaining them out of their own revenues, and administering justice within their territories in the King’s name.[452]
1218
Two days before, a safe-conduct had been issued to all the magnates of both North and South Wales to come and do homage at Worcester at the close of Easter (22nd April).[453] It does not appear whether any of them came, except Llywelyn, who seems to have come for a special purpose. Morgan, the lord of Caerleon-upon-Usk, had taken no notice of repeated admonitions from Louis to observe the treaty of Kingston, and had deliberately broken truce by slaying in one day no less than ten Anglo-Normans of gentle birth, and also burning twenty-two churches.[454] The Marshal had put an effectual stop to such proceedings on Morgan’s part; he “fought against Caerleon and took it”[455]—that is, according to his own biographer, his bailiff “called up his men and his friends and besieged Caerleon, and it was taken.” At the “parliament” at Worcester Llywelyn asked that Morgan should, like the other allies of Louis, be formally reinstated in the right to hold his land “according to the terms of the treaty,” that is, as he had held it before the war. The regent, acting on the advice of “his council”—defined as “all those who were in fealty to him”[456]—refused, on the ground of Morgan’s flagrant infraction of the peace; and the “parliament” adjudged Caerleon and its appurtenances to its conqueror.[457] The general homage of Welsh magnates seems to have been postponed from the close of Easter to the morrow of Ascension day, 25th May.[458] On that or the following day, at Woodstock,[459] it at last took place, so far at least as concerned Deheubarth; the Welsh chronicles themselves tell us that “young Rhys went himself, and all the princes, by the advice of Llywelyn, to the court of the king, from South Wales, to do him homage.”[460]
The homage of King Ragnald “of the Isles”—that is, the Isle of Man and the Orkneys—took longer to win, probably because he was geographically more difficult to reach. On 16th January, 1218, he was summoned to come over and do homage “and make amends for the excesses committed by his men against King Henry’s men, both in England and in Ireland,” and a safe-conduct was given him, to last till 30th April,[461] but he did not come; on 1st May another safe-conduct was issued to him, till 1st August,[462] again with no result; and it was not till September, 1219, that he actually came.[463] Neither his personal contumacy nor the piratical “excesses” of his seafaring subjects, however, constituted a real danger to the peace of the realm.
1217
In the Irish dominions of the English Crown the first trouble that arose under the new reign came neither from the barons nor from the people, but from the Justiciar. Geoffrey de Marsh, who had held that office in Ireland since 1215, no sooner heard of the death of King John {1216} than he despatched to Henry, or to his guardians, letters in which he assured his young sovereign of his fidelity, and asked for instructions how to act for the furtherance of his interests in Ireland. He seems to have suggested that the Queen-mother, or the heir-presumptive, little Richard, should be sent thither to represent the Crown.[464] The Marshal sent him in reply a letter in the King’s name, informing him of the coronation and the proceedings of the council of Bristol, and requesting him to receive for Henry the homage of the magnates and the King’s other subjects in Ireland; also promising to send them in return a confirmation of the same liberties which had just been granted to their fellow-subjects in England. The suggestion about the Queen and Richard was politely waived with an assurance that it should be duly considered. Geoffrey was warmly thanked for his past and present loyalty, and entreated to redouble his efforts in behalf of a King whose tender years made him the more in need of his liegemen’s counsel and aid.[465] On 6th February, 1217,1217 a copy of the Charter was sent to Ireland with a letter in the King’s name addressed to all the King’s faithful subjects in Ireland, expressing his desire that as a reward for their fidelity to his father and a motive for its continuance towards himself they and their heirs for ever should, of his grace and gift, enjoy the same liberties which his father and he had granted to the realm of England.[466] The Marshal’s policy was to bind the English March in Ireland as closely as possible to the Crown; he had already issued letters patent forbidding the election of Irishmen to cathedral dignities within the King’s land in Ireland, “because by such elections the peace of that land has frequently been disturbed,” and commanding that when such dignities fell vacant, clerks of the King and other “honest Englishmen useful to us” (the King) “and our realm” should be elected and promoted thereto by the joint counsel of the Archbishop of Dublin and the Justiciar.[467] The Archbishop of Dublin, Henry of London, was at that time in England; but on 16th April, “although,” writes the King to the barons in Ireland, “we feel his presence here is most necessary to us and our realm, and we can hardly do without his counsel,” he was sent to “visit and console” his diocese, and also expressly to assist the Justiciar with his counsel and support in ordering and amending the condition of the King’s Irish territory; while the Justiciar was bidden to “acquiesce in all things” in the counsel of the Archbishop, and to be guided by it in his expenditure of the money received at the Dublin Exchequer, “forasmuch as the King wills that nothing be done without his assent.”[468]
The position of the Justiciar of the Irish March at this time was very much more independent than that of the Chief Justiciar of England. The Justiciar in Ireland seems to have practically had the entire control of the whole machinery of government, administration, and finance, throughout the King’s Irish domains. The revenues due to the Crown, whether derived from demesne lands, or from taxes, or tolls, or from the proceeds of escheats, fines, wardships, reliefs, and the like, seem to have all passed through his hands. The fixed revenue of the Crown lands was assigned to him for the necessary expenses of government and for maintaining the defence of the land and the garrisons of the royal castles, and in remuneration of his own services; the residue he was supposed to pay into the Exchequer in Dublin, for transmission to the King when required. Moreover, it seems to have been he who appointed the wardens of the King’s castles throughout the March.[469] Such a system offered facilities for almost unlimited embezzlement on the part of a dishonest Justiciar, or mismanagement and waste on the part of an incompetent one; while it left to the English government scarcely any means of proving a charge of either dishonesty or incompetence against an officer at once so remote and invested with so much independent authority. It seems clear that the reports, and the results, of Geoffrey’s financial administration which reached England were not satisfactory to the regent, and that the Archbishop of Dublin was really sent not so much to “assist” the Justiciar as to hold him in check and keep a watch on his proceedings. Eight months later Geoffrey had to be reprimanded[470] for not having yet executed a royal order issued on Midsummer day for the restoration of Limerick to Reginald de Breuse[471]; and on 12th February, 1218,1218 a long letter of remonstrance was written to him in the King’s name. He had been bidden to come over and do his homage, and certify the King as to the state of the Crown’s Irish lands; the King is “greatly surprised” that he has not yet come, and again bids him come without fail before Easter next, and bring with him all the money that the King’s subjects and bailiffs in Ireland can be induced to furnish, for the payment of the debt to Louis, and of six hundred marks owed to the Pope, being two years’ arrears of the tribute due to him from Ireland.[472] Whether Geoffrey sent any money does not appear; he certainly did not come over in person; probably, however, he made some excuse which gave the Marshal no grounds for questioning his loyalty, for his homage was left in abeyance till after the Marshal’s death.
1218
In England itself every effort was made by the government to carry out loyally the terms of the treaty of Kingston and the provisions of the Charter. On 22nd February the two Charters—the Charter of Liberties and that of the Forest—were sent certainly to one, probably to all of the sheriffs, with instructions to publish them in the shire-courts, and to make all the men of the shire swear to the observance of them, as well as to take an oath of fealty to the King; especial stress was laid on the execution of the last clause in the Charter of Liberties, which enjoined the destruction of adulterine castles.[473] In July the chief Justiciar of the Forest, John Marshal, the regent’s nephew, was despatched on a Forest circuit to make arrangements for deafforestations to be carried out according to the Forest Charter.[474] Such of the prisoners taken during the war, and of their captors, as were dissatisfied with regard to questions of ransom were by public proclamation, made through the sheriffs each in his shire, invited or summoned to shew their complaints on 6th May before the King’s council at Westminster, for the settlement of their respective claims and the composing of their mutual differences.[475]
1217