The count of Aumale had surrendered his wardenships; but he still kept possession of one castle which by a legal decision of the King’s Court, given four years before, belonged to another man. This was Bytham, in Lincolnshire. Originally a part of the honour of Holderness, it had been alienated by the first husband of Aumale’s mother, and was thus at the time of the war the property of one William de Coleville. This man joined the rebels, and thereupon his lands were occupied by the count of Aumale, to whom they were no doubt granted by John. On Coleville’s return to allegiance in 12171217 orders were issued for their restoration; but two successive letters from the King to the count failed to procure this,[750] and in November Aumale was summoned to answer before the King’s Court at Westminster for his retention of Bytham.[751] The Court adjudged the castle to Coleville;[752] but somehow Aumale retained possession of it, seemingly without further question, possibly therefore by private agreement with the rival owner.[753] In the night of 26th December, 1220, Aumale slipped away without leave from the Christmas gathering of the court at Oxford, and rode to Bytham.[754] There he collected in a few days a force of armed men, and began to harry the neighbouring townships, carrying off the corn to store it in Bytham castle, and capturing men whom he imprisoned there and tortured till they purchased their release. While the terrified country-folk sought safety for their goods in the churchyards and their persons in the churches,[755] he attempted to surprise the castles of Newark, Sleaford, and Kimbolton, but at each of them met with an ignominious repulse.[756] It seems that the King’s Council on hearing of these outrages summoned Aumale to answer for them at Westminster, and that he made a pretence of intending to obey, and received a safe-conduct for that purpose.[757] Instead of doing so, however, he suddenly marched to Fotheringay. The responsible warden of Fotheringay at that moment appears to have been Hubert de Burgh.[758] But Hubert was in London with the King, and Fotheringay was garrisoned by a mere handful of knights and men-at-arms. Aumale and his followers set fire to the gate, scaled the walls, slew two of the garrison, and captured the rest.[759] The count then returned to Bytham and continued his depredations.[760] One writer of the time says that he even had the impudence to send letters to the mayors of the cities of England, telling them that he had granted to all merchants “his peace, and licence to go freely to and fro between his castles for the exercise of their business,” “as if he alone were master in the realm.”[761]

1221

The seizure of Fotheringay probably became known in London late on January 22nd, or very early next morning. It seems that a great meeting of the royal Council had been convened for the 25th, but was held immediately on receipt of the tidings, in S. Paul’s Cathedral.[762] William of Aumale and all his helpers and abettors were excommunicated by the Legate, the Archbishop of York, and seven (or ten) bishops of the southern province (its primate was at Rome), the Earls of Chester and Salisbury likewise holding lighted candles which they threw on the floor when the sentence was pronounced.[763] The grounds of the excommunication were fourfold: first, Aumale’s refusal either to fulfill or to redeem his vow of crusade; second, his contempt of the “judgement of the realm” which had adjudged Bytham to William de Coleville; third, his seizure of “a castle of his lord the King” (Fotheringay) by treachery and without previous “defiance”;[764] fourth, his neglect to make amends according to the Legate’s command for the plunderings which had brought upon him his former excommunication.[765] A summons was issued immediately to such of the barons as were not present, bidding them meet the King at Northampton with all the forces they could bring.[766] Some of the magnates made an attempt to persuade Aumale into submission, but without success.[767] When the King and the host reached Northampton, they found that the count had left Bytham secretly, and was making for his own castle of Skipton in Craven.[768] On this orders were issued that Skipton and two other of his strongholds, Cockermouth and Skipsey, should be “besieged and utterly destroyed” by the forces of the shires in which they respectively stood—Lancashire, Westmorland and Yorkshire.[769] Meanwhile the garrison left by Aumale at Fotheringay “hastened to consult their own safety” by going to join their friends at Bytham;[770] and when, on 3rd February, the royal forces, with a formidable siege train brought from Nottingham by Philip Marc,[771] marched upon Fotheringay, they found that castle deserted. Falkes was entrusted with its safe keeping,[772] and the rest of the host moved on to Bytham. There a summons to surrender was rejected by the garrison, who were forthwith excommunicated again.[773] Then the place was assaulted, with such effect that it was almost in ruin when on 8th February its defenders surrendered at discretion.[774] What remained of it was immediately burnt to the ground, with all its contents.[775] Aumale was presently found by the Archbishop of York and the northern barons, in sanctuary at Fountains Abbey, whence they brought him to the King under a promise that if he could not obtain mercy from his sovereign, they would take him back to Fountains in safety.[776] At the Legate’s desire, “peace was made between him and the King, forasmuch as he had served the King and his father faithfully and efficiently in the war”; and his knights and men-at-arms were all set free without punishment or ransom. Roger of Wendover grumbles at this clemency of the King, “who,” he says, “set a very bad precedent for others to rebel against him in like manner, trusting to be similarly treated.”[777] Pandulf was probably a better judge than Roger of the respective claims and advantages of mercy and severity in such a case. His mild policy certainly proved successful so far as Aumale himself was concerned. The count managed, indeed, to stave off the fulfilment of his crusading vow for more than twenty years longer; but in all those years he seems never, save for one brief moment in 1223, to have given any trouble to the government.[778]

The next step taken by the King’s guardians towards the recovery of control over the royal castles was a weighty one. They “urged” Earl William the Marshal to surrender Marlborough[779] and Luggershall; “a thing which”—as the king himself explained in a letter written some three years later—“was most expedient for us, that thereby the other magnates should be more easily induced to resign likewise the castles of ours which they held.”[780] To conciliate the Marshal himself was, however, at that moment especially, a matter of almost greater consequence than to get possession of the castles. No other man in England had as much power to strengthen or weaken the hands of the government as he; and that power was on the increase. In June, 1220, he had ceded to his brother Richard his rights to the Norman lands of their father. Richard, having no lands in England, could do what the Earl could not—enter into his Norman heritage, by doing homage for it to Philip Augustus; and he did so without delay.[781] Thus the family was brought into close connexion with the interests of France. The Marshal’s wife, a half-sister of the Count of Aumale, had now been dead some years, and he was contemplating a marriage with a sister of Earl Robert de Bruce. In view of the relative geographical positions of Bruce’s earldom on the Scottish border and the Marshal’s lands in Ireland, the prospect of this alliance filled the English King’s Council with alarm; the more so as they believed that “there were other magnates in England who by malicious confederations were striving to turn away his heart from” the King.[782] They therefore offered him a bride of higher rank—the youngest sister of the King.

The Justiciar and the Marshal pledged their faith to each other that this marriage should take place, if the King and the magnates of the realm would give their consent, which the Legate and Hubert promised to do their utmost to obtain. The Marshal then surrendered the two castles, delivering them into the hands of the Legate as their custodian, on a promise that they should be restored to him if the contract were not fulfilled within a certain time.[783]

It is difficult to guess who can have been the magnates suspected of “trying to turn the Marshal’s heart away” from his young sovereign. There were, however, rumours of a treasonable plot about this time. The Justiciar’s uneasiness was shown in an order, issued early in March, that no person, armed or unarmed, should be allowed to land at or sail from Bristol, Exeter, or any of the Cinque Ports unless he had a special warrant from the King.[784] While the court was assembled at Winchester for Whitsuntide, Peter de Maulay, the sheriff of Dorset and Somerset and warden of the royal castles of Corfe and Sherborne, was arrested on a charge of treason brought against him by one Richard Muscegros.[785] Engelard de Cigogné was arrested and imprisoned at the same time, also on suspicion of treason.[786] On the Friday in the same week (4th June) Peter de Maulay delivered to the King, by the hands of the Justiciar, the Earls of Salisbury and Pembroke, and William Brewer, the royal castle of Corfe, with the King’s cousin Eleanor, the Scot King’s sister Isabel, and the jewels, crossbows, and other property which King John had committed to Peter to keep in the castle.[787] Thereupon he seems to have been released,[788] on an undertaking to stand his trial before the King’s Court at a later time. The charge against him, whatever may have been its origin, was evidently already recognized as unfounded; he was left in possession of his sheriffdoms, and of another royal castle, Sherborne,[789] and no further proceedings were taken in his case till November. Then, at a great council in London, he was, according to one account, tried and acquitted;[790] according to another, “he put himself on the King’s mercy, and was reconciled with him, his accusers thinking better of the challenge which they had brought against him.”[791] His sheriffdoms were transferred to other hands,[792] but he was publicly acknowledged by the King as “trusty and well-beloved”;[793] and Sherborne castle was left in his keeping till the end of January, 1222.[794] The charge against Engelard de Cigogné was evidently found to be as baseless as that against Peter; Engelard was released on giving hostages for the surrender of Windsor castle whenever the King should require it,[795] but it was not required till more than two years later, and then only in consequence of a papal order for the surrender of all the royal castles of England; and meanwhile, four months after his arrest, he was employed by King and Council on important political and financial business in Poitou.[796] Peter de Maulay is said to have sworn to John that he would not give up the castles committed to his charge till Henry should be of age.[797] Possibly Engelard may have been in the same case, and the “treason” of both may have consisted in a refusal, grounded upon this previous oath, to obey some demand made by the Justiciar for the surrender of Corfe and Windsor on the strength of the oath taken at the coronation in 1220. There is indeed no evidence of such a demand having been made; but it appears somewhat significant that both Peter and Engelard were released, and the charges against them practically withdrawn, as soon as the one prisoner had surrendered Corfe and the other given security for the surrender of Windsor on demand.

The marriage of Alexander and Joan was now fixed to take place at York in the middle of June.[798] The court therefore moved northward, by way of Oxford, Northampton, and Nottingham; and in each of these castles, it is said, the garrison was reinforced, or a part of it replaced, by some knights of the King’s own household.[799] On 19th June[800] Alexander and Joan were married by Archbishop Walter.[801] A month later {19 July}, at Westminster, in presence of the bishops of Winchester, London, and Salisbury, Pandulf publicly resigned his legation.[802] Archbishop Stephen, who had been at Rome ever since the previous autumn,[803] was now coming home,[804] bringing with him a grant from the Pope of some important privileges, one of which was that during Stephen’s own lifetime no resident legate should again be appointed in England.[805] In all likelihood Pandulf had asked to be released from the double burden which he had now borne for more than two years.[806] By resigning his legation he also laid down his regency; for it was in virtue of his authority as the Pope’s representative that he had been chosen to succeed the Earl Marshal as regent. Neither the Pope nor the magnates took any steps to provide a successor to Pandulf in this latter office; and thus the first English regency suddenly came to an end.

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