The men of Bordeaux on the other hand were urgent that Hugh should be appeased. “He has promised,” they wrote, “to maintain and defend the towns, from himself and his, and all other living men, faithfully to the utmost of his power, for your benefit and honour. And since his defence and maintenance is, above that of all others, most useful and necessary to your faithful men of Poitou, and molestation from him is equally perilous and injurious to them, we entreat your royal majesty, by every means we can, to take such counsel that a man of such importance, such a useful defender of your land, and so pious and humble a protector of peace and tranquillity, may not through any other’s fault withdraw from your service; for he has promised that so long as he lives he will, unless you give him cause to do otherwise, remain faithfully in your service against all men living. All these things,” they add, “have been communicated to us by the good men of La Rochelle.”[662] But meanwhile the good men of La Rochelle had learned something of the value of Hugh’s fine promises. Threatened by him with “all the harm that he could do” to them, surrounded by enemies who persecuted them for their loyalty, and without any protector save the Bishop of Saintes, they again pleaded—as did also the men of Bordeaux[663]—for the appointment of an efficient seneschal: “Send us quickly a strong man, who will bring back the barons to allegiance, and with their aid rout the enemies and restore the royal authority.”[664] A rumour that the King was about to make the viscount of Thouars seneschal of Poitou struck panic into Niort. “God forbid it! for the viscount is our mortal foe, and in your father’s time, with the counsel of the King of France, he did us all the evil that he could. As you love your land of Poitou, and us, and your own honour, we beseech you on no account to venture on making him seneschal; moreover, make not anyone from these parts seneschal of Poitou. If you do, they will take your land for their own advantage, as much as they can, as some did in your father’s time. And we and the other faithful men shall have to go out of your land, unless you take diligent care and good counsel in this business. May it therefore please your excellency to send some noble, discreet, wise, and powerful man from the parts of England, to be your seneschal—such a man as will know how to deal with your affairs in Poitou, and be able to hold your land.”[665] Another rumour—this time in England—as to the Council’s intentions with respect to the vacant office drew forth a trenchant protest from Earl William of Salisbury. “I am given to understand,” he writes to Pandulf, “that you, together with the King’s Council, proposed to send the count of Aumale into Poitou to keep the land. And as it seems to me that the count is less obedient than he should be to the King’s commands concerning the things which he holds in England, which are small, I doubt he would be less obedient still if he had the seneschalship and government of Poitou which is a great thing. And therefore I give notice to your holiness that you will in no wise commit the custody of that land to him by my counsel or assent.”[666]
Oddly enough, the man finally chosen by Hubert was Philip of Ulecote, who also had given the government some trouble about the restitution of a castle to its rightful owner.[667] When the choice was at last made, in August, some difficulty arose before it could be carried into effect; the sequel suggests that Philip’s state of health may have been the obstacle. “I never felt any confidence,” wrote Pandulf to Hubert on 25th August, “that Philip should go there; though you seemed mighty certain about the matter, rambling over seas and mountains in quest of things that are not to be had.” In a more serious strain he warned the Justiciar that some decision must be made at once. “You must provide for that country, which plainly appears to be perishing through the fault of the King’s Council. The matter has been already shamefully delayed, and I greatly fear lest grave damage should come of it.”[668] In the middle of September Philip of Ulecote was formally appointed seneschal of Poitou,[669] and went across the sea.
Pandulf and Peter des Roches, meanwhile, had enlisted the services of the Dean of Poitiers, who visited England in August, to negotiate with Hugh of La Marche for a truce.[670] A carucage “for our great needs, most urgent debts, and the preservation of our land of Poitou” had been agreed upon in a council at Oxford on 9th August.[671] Negotiations with the communes of La Rochelle and Bordeaux for a loan “for the safe keeping of Poitou and Gascony” were begun in September.[672] These two towns, with Niort and S. Jean d’Angély, had now resolved upon sending representatives to England to lay their complaints before the Council; the Preceptor of the Temple, Gerard Brochard, at their request undertook to accompany these envoys, and begged the Council to give him and them an audience in London in the week after Michaelmas, “to hear the proposals of the count of La Marche, and of others, on all sides.” Gerard, it is clear, was in the confidence of all parties, and he declared positively that if the Council would listen to him, the damsel Joan would be restored to them in honour and freedom; “she would have been delivered to me,” he said, “if I would have stood surety that the King would do to the count what he ought.”[673] Probably Gerard received in London, and thence transmitted to Hugh, a formal assurance that Henry would “do what he ought”—in other words, surrender his mother’s dowry. At the same time the Pope took up the matter; and a letter from him, on 20th September, threatening that if Hugh did not within fifteen days after its receipt deliver Joan, together with the city of Saintes and the Isle of Oléron (which had been pledged to him by John as security for her dowry) to Henry’s appointed representatives, he should be excommunicated and his lands placed under interdict,[674] was followed by Hugh’s submission, so far as the surrender of Joan herself was concerned. In obedience to an order from England issued on 6th October that he should either himself bring Joan to England, or deliver her at La Rochelle to certain persons appointed to receive her there,[675] he set out with the child; but he fell sick at Oléron, where the Dean of Poitiers and the new seneschal of Aquitaine, Philip of Ulecote, had been ordered to meet him. The Dean waited for the seneschal in vain, and at last learned that he was dead.[676] At the beginning of November Hugh, being too ill to proceed, delivered Joan to the commissioners—the Dean and two other envoys—who escorted her to La Rochelle.[677] The term fixed for her marriage was past, but at its expiration, on 13th October, Henry and Alexander had met again at York,[678] and Alexander had evidently consented to wait for her with patience; he waited in fact till the following Midsummer. Her stepfather, when he gave her up to Henry’s commissioners, assured them of his intention to go and perform his homage for La Marche and Angoulême as soon as his health should permit him.[679] Thus for a few months Aquitaine was—comparatively—at peace.
Meanwhile, however, the “concord and tranquillity” in England had not been altogether unbroken. At first glance the Pope’s selection of the spring of 1220 for the re-crowning of the young King appears unaccountable. Since the ceremony had not taken place immediately after the Primate’s return, two years ago, it would have seemed more natural to delay it for seventeen months longer, till the boy should have reached the completion of his fourteenth year, the earliest age which could, on any known principle, be reckoned as that of legal majority. A clue to the purpose for which the matter was hurried on may possibly be found in certain steps which were taken immediately after the coronation. On its morrow (18th May) “the barons who were present swore that they would resign their castles and wardenships at the will of the King, and would render at the Exchequer a faithful account of their ferms; and also that if any rebel should resist the King, and should not make satisfaction within forty days after being excommunicated by the Legate, they would make war upon him at the King’s bidding, that the rebel might be disinherited without the option of a fine.”[680] A week after this, on 26 May, the Pope wrote a letter to Pandulf. He began by expressing his distress at the reports that reached him of his royal ward’s extreme poverty; this, he said, was imputed chiefly to the archbishops, bishops, and other prelates in England, some of whom had usurped the King’s castles, manors, and other domains, and were detaining the same “on the frivolous pretext that they wish to keep them safe till the King should be of age; and so meanwhile the King must be a beggar, while they run riot, against his will, on what belongs to him.” The Pope therefore ordered that they should surrender all such castles and lands to the King, and make restitution of all the proceeds thence derived since the war, and bade Pandulf enforce their compliance with penalties both spiritual and temporal. In a second letter, written two days later, Honorius instructed the Legate not to suffer any man, howsoever faithful or closely attached he might be to the King, to hold in his custody more than two of the King’s castles, on pain of ecclesiastical censure without appeal.[681]
From the days of Henry II, if not from a yet earlier time, the Crown had found it a hard matter to preserve its authority over castles held in private ownership. Such ownership was limited by the King’s right in three ways. The owner was bound to allow his castle to be garrisoned by the King’s own men at the King’s will; to surrender it into the King’s hand if required; and not to make any addition to its fortifications without the King’s licence. Against the enforcement of these royal rights the owners of castles had struggled, with varying success, under Henry II, Richard, and John. The civil war, and the new conditions under which the powers of the Crown had to be exercised during the minority of John’s successor, had intensified their jealousy of all restriction upon their tenure of their fortresses; and a like spirit of independence began to show itself in some of the wardens of the King’s own castles, with regard to the fortresses under their charge. The only important case of this kind, until the latter part of the year 1219, was that of Count William of Aumale. But between August, 1219, and March, 1220, trouble began to threaten in connexion with two royal fortresses of not less consequence than Sauvey and Rockingham, and from two men of far greater political and personal weight than William de Fors.
The combined offices of sheriff of Lincolnshire and warden of Lincoln castle were hereditary in the family of Haye, represented at this time by the old Dame Nicolaa, whose capability, courage, and loyalty had never failed in the service of John and his heir throughout the last twenty years. Three days after the battle of Lincoln {24 May 1217} the city and county had been committed to the boy-King’s uncle, William Longsword Earl of Salisbury, to hold during the King’s pleasure.[682] This grant was probably made with the double purpose of rewarding Longsword for his share in the victory, and relieving Nicolaa of a burden which she had, nearly two years before, declared to be too great for her.[683] Five months later, however, when peace was made, the old lady asked to be reinstated in her hereditary functions. Her request was granted, and on 31st October the Earl was bidden to deliver the castle to her and give her seisin of the sheriffdom without delay; but the latter half of this order seems not to have been enforced;[684] and at the beginning of December the county “with all its appurtenances” was again committed to William to hold during the King’s pleasure.[685] This time, however, the castle did not go with the shrievalty; for from March, 12181218, onwards we find the former once more, with the full sanction of the Crown, under the charge of its veteran castellan, Nicolaa.[686] No one seems to have ventured on molesting her till three months after the death of the old Earl Marshal. Then, on 23rd August, 12191219, “the sheriff of Lincoln”—no doubt the Earl of Salisbury’s deputy—had to be sharply told that he was to “maintain, protect, and defend the lands, goods, and men of our trusty and well-beloved Nicolaa de Haye within his bailiwick, to cause her no molestation, injury or damage, nor to meddle in any way with her debts to the Crown, or in any matters concerning her, till he received orders to do so”; and next day “all the knights and good men” of the shire were informed that the King had assigned Falkes de Bréauté (who was sheriff of two shires contiguous to Lincolnshire, those of Northampton and Rutland) to Dame Nicolaa as her assistant in the defence of Lincoln castle, “and that they should all efficaciously counsel and assist Falkes in the King’s business which Falkes would explain to them, for the preservation of the peace of the realm.”[687] It seems that Falkes, with three of his knights (and no doubt some attendant men-at-arms), at once took up his abode in the castle and made it his headquarters for the next nine months.[688] From a temporary absence in January, 12201220, when he went to meet the King at Northampton, he was recalled by an urgent message from Nicolaa; and a letter from Falkes himself to Hubert de Burgh makes it perfectly clear that the danger against which he was required to protect her was a persistent endeavour of the Earl of Salisbury, as sheriff of the county, to enter the castle. “But,” wrote Falkes, “God helping me, with the force at the Dame’s command I will take good care that he shall not get in.”[689]
William Longsword was a son of Henry II; illegitimate, but always acknowledged and treated as “the King’s brother” by both Richard and John, and by Henry as “our beloved uncle.” Richard had given him the earldom from which he took his title, together with the hand and the great possessions of Ela, heiress of an earlier line of Earls of Salisbury. He had done good service to John until the middle of 1216; then he had joined Louis, but early in 1217 he had returned to the side of little Henry, and had received back all his forfeited estates, to which in August of the same year were added the counties of Somerset and Devon.[690] His attempt to interfere with the rights of a castellan appointed by the King to the command of a royal castle certainly failed, and was probably abandoned without any open strife, for there is no sign of any breach in the friendly relations between the King and his “beloved Uncle William,” to whom the boy seems to have been really attached. But the mere making of such an attempt, by a man of such high rank and so closely connected with the King, was not without grave significance; and it coincided ominously with another incident of graver significance still.
1220
The castle of Marlborough, like that of Lincoln, belonged to the Crown. When it fell into the hands of Louis in 1216 the younger William Marshal, then in arms on Louis’s side, claimed it as his by right. The chronicler who records this claim mentions also a claim put forth by William to act as Marshal for Louis in England;[691] possibly he may have claimed the wardenship of Marlborough castle as appertaining to the Marshalcy. The two offices may have been granted together to his grandfather John FitzGilbert, who was certainly Marshal under Henry I, and commandant at Marlborough after that King’s death. In 1175–1176 a part of the fine due to the Crown from the heirs of John FitzGilbert for entering upon their patrimony was remitted in reimbursement for repairs done to Marlborough castle.[692] At the coronation of Richard John FitzGilbert’s two elder surviving sons, John and William, shared between them the functions of Marshal, but the hereditary character of that office was not explicitly determined till ten years later. During the greater part of those ten years Marlborough was not a royal fortress; Richard had given it to his own brother John. John’s accession as King restored it to its old status; but no reference to its wardenship occurs in the charter whereby John granted the Marshalcy to William and his heirs for ever; and the great Earl never was, nor, so far as we can see, claimed to be custodian of Marlborough castle during John’s lifetime.[693] He certainly was so, however, from November, 12171217, until his death, and his eldest son succeeded him in this wardenship.[694] In March, 12201220, Hubert de Burgh informed Pandulf that Marlborough castle was being fortified—evidently without instructions from the Crown. Pandulf bade him despatch without delay “the most stringent letters from the King that could be drawn up,” ordering the Marshal to stop the work at once, and strictly forbidding all persons engaged in it, on pain of their bodies, goods, “and even their inheritance,” to do anything towards fortifying the castle without a special licence and order from the King.[695] No further letters on the subject appear to be extant; the information which Hubert had forwarded to Pandulf may have proved to be incorrect, or the Marshal may have given some satisfactory explanation. There is, however, an indication elsewhere that he took upon himself to exercise over the tenants of the castle of Marlborough more arbitrary authority than he was entitled to assume as custodian of that fortress for the King.[696] Moreover, there was another matter about which trouble with him must have been felt to be impending.