As a chronicler says, “it was difficult speedily to satisfy the desires of all men, and to allay in a moment the rancour of so many dissidents”; and it was also, after the turmoil of the last few years, difficult for men of the fighting classes to settle down to a life of peace. Some of them “found an outlet for the relics of discord” in tournaments.[476] The real war was no sooner ended {1217} than Englishmen became possessed by a rage for these military exercises, which until the time of King Richard had never been permitted in England, and were everywhere and always discountenanced by the Church. Their revival at a moment when the embers of war were still smouldering was obviously a matter of grave peril, requiring to be dealt with promptly and firmly. It was a curious turn of fate that compelled the Earl Marshal, who had spent his youth and acquired his knightly repute in the lists of France and Flanders, to use his power for the suppression of this mimic warfare in his native land; and the first letter patent in which a tournament was forbidden by him—on 4th October, 1217, little more than a week after the departure of Louis—reveals with characteristic simplicity his reluctance to commit his young sovereign to a condemnation of tournaments in general; “Know ye,” the King is made to say, “that we will and ordain that this tournament be not held, for no other reason than this, that we fear a disturbance of our realm; which may God avert.”[477] Ten months later the young King’s uncle, Earl William of Salisbury, was forbidden to hold a tournament for which he was making preparations at Northampton, “till by God’s help and the counsel of our faithful men, and of yourself” (Salisbury), “the state of peace in our realm shall be made firmer and more secure.”[478] Similar prohibitions occur again and again;[479] but they were ineffectual, by 1220 the condemned practice had become so general that, according to one monastic chronicler, “tourneyers, their aiders and abettors, and those who carried merchandise or victuals to tournaments were ordered to be all together excommunicated every Sunday.”[480]
1218
Other restless spirits seem to have found occupation in persecuting the Jews. In March, 1218, the Jews of Gloucester, Lincoln, Oxford, and Bristol were placed under the special charge of twenty-four citizens in each city, whose names were to be enrolled, and who were to guard the Jews against molestation from any one, “especially from Crusaders”;[481] and it was probably to facilitate the duties of these guardians, by rendering the persons under their charge distinguishable at a glance, that the Jews were all ordered to wear, when out of doors, two white “tablets” of linen or parchment on the front of their upper garment.[482] These ordinances were no doubt called forth by some unrecorded outrages whose origin we may, from the words about “Crusaders,” gather to have been closely connected with a matter which was now beginning to engage more worthily the militant spirits of the time. In November, 1215, a General Council assembled at Rome under Innocent III had decreed a new Crusade, in response to an appeal for succour which the King of the Latins in Holy Land, John de Brienne, had made three years before. Some English barons and knights had taken the Cross, but they had been too much occupied with the troubles in their own land to attempt the fulfilment of their vow till the civil war was ended. Whenever and wherever a Crusade was preached, the ruder and more ignorant among the votaries of the Cross, in their impatience to attack its enemies, were too apt to begin with those who were nearest at hand, and who were also most unpopular on other grounds than religious ones—the Jews. It is, however, highly probable that the general peace of the realm was the more easily preserved during the next year or two because several of the leading barons of both parties in the civil war now took themselves out of the country altogether, and went to sink their differences, for a while at least, in the common cause of Christendom against Islam. The first of the magnates who actually set out, it seems, were two steady loyalists, the Earls of Chester and Ferrers, who with Brian de Lisle, John de Lacy the constable of Chester, William de Harcourt, “and many others,” started at the end of May or beginning of June 1218.[483] Within a few months the Earl of Arundel,[484] Baldwin de Vere, Geoffrey de Lucy, Odonel the son of William d’Aubigny,[485] and the king’s half-brother Oliver,[486] all took the Cross, and so did two of the leaders of the other party—Robert FitzWalter and Saer de Quincy, Earl of Winchester.[487] Saer died {1219} in Holy Land,[488] and so did Baldwin de Vere; Robert FitzWalter came home in broken health,[489] and seems thenceforth to have withdrawn from public life.
1217
Still there remained men of both parties whom it was hard to bring or keep under control. Throughout Henry’s minority his guardians found themselves at intervals in difficulties with certain men who “presumed to keep in their hands, contrary to the King’s prohibition and the will of the owners, castles and lands belonging to some of the bishops and magnates”[490]—and, the chronicler might have added, to the King himself. The earliest case of flagrant insubordination in this respect was that of Robert de Gouy. In 1215 Bishop Hugh of Lincoln had delivered to King John the castles belonging to his see, to be garrisoned for and by the King during his struggle with the rebel barons. One of these castles, Newark, was given in charge by John to Robert de Gouy, on condition of an oath sworn by Robert that in case of John’s death he would surrender the place to no one save the bishop.[491] Two months later John died in that very castle. On 10th June, 1217, Robert was by letters patent ordered to deliver Newark to its rightful owner.[492] It seems to have been anticipated that he might plead his oath to John as binding him to surrender the place only to the bishop in person; Henry de Coleville, a knight holding land under the see of Lincoln, was sent by the bishop to Newark, accredited by letters under the bishop’s seal authorizing him to receive the castle in the bishop’s stead, and also carrying letters from the Legate certifying that he, Gualo, was responsible for the bishop’s detention in London on business of state. Robert, however, refused to deliver Newark to Henry de Coleville, partly, it seems, on the ground of his oath, partly on the plea that the Crown owed him some money. On 23rd June the Council in the King’s name promised that if this latter plea should prove to be just, Robert’s claims should be satisfied, provided that he delivered Newark to Coleville without further delay.[493] This second summons had to be followed up by a third, on 23rd July, insisting that Robert should either at once obey, or come before the King’s Court at Oxford on 5th August, to hear and do what the Council should determine.[494] The Council’s decision appears to have simply confirmed the mandate of 23rd June; on 13th August De Gouy is told that he has made himself liable to a very severe sentence by his contempt of the judgement of the King’s Court in still retaining Newark, but, in consideration of his long service to the late King and the present one, his claim shall be satisfied if he will without fail come and stand to the judgement of the King’s Court concerning the castle on 31st August at Oxford.[495] It was, however, not till 26th October that Robert made a formal surrender of Newark into the hands of the King himself, for the Bishop of Lincoln, and took an oath that within forty days he would clear the place of himself and his men and deliver it bodily to the bishop in person or to whomsoever the bishop should delegate for that purpose; and also that in the meantime he would do no harm or damage to any of the bishop’s men, lands, or goods. The constables of Lincoln and Nottingham (the two nearest royal castles) were bidden to enforce full amends for any infraction of this last promise;[496] a detail which seems to imply that Robert was suspected of being actuated by personal ill-will towards the bishop. Three months passed {1218}, and Newark was still occupied by Robert and his men. Then, on 27th January, 1218, the temporalities of the see of Lincoln were committed—having apparently been placed in the King’s hand by the bishop specially to that intent—to two laymen, and the constables of its castles, Banbury, Sleaford, and Newark, were ordered to resign their respective charges to the new custodians.[497] Again Robert de Gouy disobeyed the royal order; and on 14th March the sheriff of Nottingham (Philip Marc) was bidden to join the Bishop of Lincoln in driving him out of Newark by force.[498] Either their joint attempt failed, or the bishop shrank from this extreme measure; at last, on 4th July, the Earl Marshal took upon himself to subdue the obstinate rebel, and summoned thirty miners from Gloucestershire to meet him at Stamford, where the royal forces were to muster for the siege of Newark.[499] He and the King left London on July 8th; on the 20th they reached Newark, and next day they wrote to the mayor of Lincoln for materials needed for the siege.[500] The Marshal apparently saw no occasion for superintending its conduct in person; on the 23rd he and the King withdrew to Leicester, and by the 26th they were in Oxfordshire.[501] Probably before they left Newark their military demonstration had done its work in frightening Robert sufficiently to make him offer terms, not indeed to the government, but to the Bishop of Lincoln. Some friends of Robert’s made overtures of peace to Hugh; Hugh agreed to pay Robert a hundred pounds for the provisions in the castle, and Robert apparently evacuated it forthwith.[502] On 27th July he made formal surrender of it into the hand of the King in person, at Wallingford, and the King committed it to the custody of the Bishop of Winchester, who was to do with it whatever the Legate should direct.[503] No doubt it was restored to the Bishop of Lincoln. Robert de Gouy was struck dead by lightning at S. Neot’s before the year was out.[504]
1218
As the second year of little Henry’s reign drew to a close, his guardians seem to have felt it time to make arrangements for securing that the validity of acts done and orders issued in his name should no longer be dependent on any individual, even though that individual were the Governor of King and Kingdom or the Legate. It is probable that a change in the legation was known to be impending,[505] and also that the physical strength of the aged Marshal was beginning to give way under the strain of his great labours and responsibilities, when the making of a new royal seal was entrusted to a goldsmith named Walter “of the Hithe.” The seal was of silver, of the weight of five marks.[506] It was first used on 3rd or 4th November, 1218, to authenticate an ordinance specially designed to guard against a possible misuse of it during the King’s minority. Letters patent were issued warning all men that no grant in perpetuity was to be sealed with it till the King’s coming of age, and that any such grant found thus sealed should be null and void.[507] It was probably on the same occasion that the Bishop of Winchester, the Chancellor, the Justiciar, and “the King’s common council” made oath in the Legate’s presence that they would “keep and hold the King in seisin of all the lands which were in the hand of his father, King John, on the day when war was first begun between him and his barons of England, and that nothing should be done in the way of granting or alienating any land so that it should be ceded to any man in perpetuity so long as the King was under age.”[508] The letter patent concerning the use of the seal was attested by the Legate, the Archbishops Stephen of Canterbury—who had returned from Rome in May[509]—and Walter of York, the Justiciar, and a number of other prelates and nobles.[510] Its attestation must have been almost the last of Gualo’s public acts in England. His work there was done, and well done; he wished to resign his office; and the Pope, who had other work for him elsewhere, had accepted his resignation. In the last week of November he set out on his homeward journey.[511] A few days later a new Legate came to take his place.[512]
1219
At Candlemas, 1219, the Marshal fell sick. The court was then in London; but he seems to have been absent from it for a few days when he was taken ill, for his biographer says he “rode to London in pain.”[513] There, with his wife, he lodged in the Tower—still, despite increasing illness, attending to the duties of his office—till the middle of March, when, feeling that the end was drawing near, he sent for his son and his men and “spoke comfortable words to them, as he well knew how.” By the advice of “several who loved him heartily,” he made his will, deliberately and carefully. Then he asked his son and Henry FitzGerold to carry him to his manor of Caversham, “for he thought he could bear his sickness more easily in his own house, and if he were to die, it were better that he should be at home than elsewhere.” They carried him thither in a boat, his wife accompanying him in another boat.[514] The court seems to have immediately removed from London to Reading, probably as the most convenient place where the Council could all assemble within such a distance of Caversham as enabled them to keep in constant communication with him.[515] To the King and the Council at Reading he sent a message, asking that they would all come to speak with him; and they came. “Simply they sat around him” while he spoke to the King: “Fair sweet sir, in presence of these barons I wish to tell you that when your father died and you were crowned, it was arranged that you should be given into my charge, and so you were, that I should defend your land, which is not easy to hold. I have served you, I can truly say, loyally and to the uttermost of my power; and I would serve you yet, if it pleased God to enable me; but every one can see it is not His Will that I should abide longer in this world. Wherefore it is fitting, so please you, that our baronage choose some one who shall guard you and the realm in such a way, if he can, as to please both God and men. And may God grant you to have such a master as may be to our honour!” Up rose the Bishop of Winchester and spoke: “Hearken now! Marshal, the land was given you to hold and the realm to maintain, I grant it; but the King was given to me.” “Out upon you!” said the Marshal, “Lord Bishop, that saying is wrong; you should have held your peace. You were never concerned in this matter. The time is not very long since you and the good Earl of Chester besought me with tears that I would be guardian and master of the King and the kingdom both together; your memory is short, meseems; and the Legate was at great pains about the matter, and begged and commanded me, till from you all, together with him, I received the King and the kingdom. And when I had received the King, it was well seen and heard, I assure you, that I gave the King into your hand, for he could not go travelling about; therefore I gave him to you to take care of him.” Here, seized with sudden pain, he turned to the Legate: “Go now, and take the King with you; and to-morrow, if you please, be good enough to return. I will take counsel with my son and my people, and provide some one to undertake the business; and may God guide our counsels aright!”