In his capacity of personal guardian, “master,” and instructor to the young King, Bishop Peter had an assistant in Philip d’Aubigné, a man whose valour and loyalty had been proved both on land and sea, and who bore a high character alike in public and private life.[825] It seems to have been in Philip’s charge that the boy had been left while the bishop made his pilgrimage to S. James;[826] much against the will of Philip, who had taken the Cross at the beginning of the year and was anxious to fulfill his vow.[827] He started as soon as he was set free by the bishop’s return.[828] The Christian host besieged in Damietta was known to be in great straits, and many volunteers from Europe were eager to reinforce it. On 19th September Bishop Peter also took the Cross;[829] Falkes did the like about the same time; and at the close of the year or beginning of the next they were both preparing to set out, seemingly together, when they were stopped by the tidings that Damietta had been surrendered.[830] The fact that Peter contemplated such an expedition is significant. It shows that his tutorship of the young King was at an end. Falkes says that it was pronounced—seemingly by the other members of the Council under Hubert’s influence—on Peter’s return from Spain, to be at an end, on the ground that Henry was now beyond the age of pupilage.[831] The boy’s personal emancipation from his tutor’s control, however, did not imply any emancipation from wardship or tutelage in the legal sense; Henry’s school-days were over, but not his minority.
The Christmas court was held at Winchester. On former occasions the King, when he visited that city, seems to have been entertained by his tutor, in the episcopal palace or castle of Wolvesey; this time, however, the royal castle on the hill-top was specially made ready for his abode.[832] During the festival season {1221–1222} a quarrel broke out between Earl Ranulf of Chester on the one part and the Earl of Salisbury and the Justiciar on the other. High words passed, and Chester seems to have uttered some threat of violence, for we hear that “the Earl of Salisbury and the Justiciar, the governors of the King and kingdom, manfully prepared themselves and their followers for resistance.” Fortunately, however, there was now one member of the royal Council who was outside of and above all party or personal disputes, and whose position and character alike marked him out for the office of peacemaker. For six years the Archbishop of Canterbury had been reduced to a subordinate position, ecclesiastical and political, by the presence in England of a Papal Legate; and during the last nine months of Pandulf’s legation Stephen had been out of the country altogether. But he had now come back to his old place as the highest ecclesiastical authority in the realm and the first adviser of the Crown. “Pitying the King’s youth and lack of power,” he called his suffragans together in council in London at Hilary-tide (1222), and in concert with them threatened to “wield the spiritual sword against disturbers of the realm and assailants of the King.” This threat brought the contending parties to “concord and peace.”[833] Of the subject and origin of this quarrel we know nothing. The sole writer who mentions it tells us that “it was said, and many persons throughout England suspected and asserted, that the foreigners, who were more desirous of disturbance than of peace in the realm, were trying to stir up the Earl of Chester to give trouble to the King and disquiet the kingdom.” Who were the particular “foreigners” thus accused by rumour, who were the persons that spread the rumour, and what it was that Chester really did, or threatened to do, or was suspected of intending to do, is absolutely unknown. So far as the evidence goes, the dispute may have been a purely personal one, and the Archbishop’s strong measure may have been taken for the purpose of emphasizing the scandal and the possible danger involved in a brawl at the King’s court between men of such high rank and importance, rather than for that of checking any actual or even supposed design of political disturbance or rebellion.
1222
There was, indeed, an undercurrent of disturbance running beneath the surface of English politics; but the disturbance, so far as can be seen, was not, as yet, of a party character, though it contained elements which might easily combine so as to form a serious danger to the government. The traces left by the war on the habits and dispositions of the classes which had been engaged in it were far from being wiped out even yet. The passion for tourneying which had seized upon Englishmen after the close of their struggle with the invader still required constant repression.[834] Moreover, the years of confusion had brought back to England another continental practice which had never been recognized as legal there since Stephen’s time, the practice of private war; and so deeply had this evil custom taken root that it seems to have been tolerated by the King’s guardians without protest, except when it brought a belligerent into direct collision with the authority of the Crown. We have seen how one magnate who was actually a member of the Council, Earl William of Salisbury, had to be prevented by Falkes, acting under a royal order, from forcibly ousting a rival custodian from Lincoln castle. He avenged himself on Falkes by stirring up against him some of the chief men of Devon and Cornwall, one of them being the sheriff of these two counties, Robert de Courtenay. These men banded themselves together in March, 12211221, for a combined plundering raid on Falkes’s lands in Devonshire, “but,” wrote Falkes to the Justiciar, “that day they received letters from the Earl of Salisbury bidding them not move, on account of a truce made between him and me till the quindene of Easter; to which truce—so he told them—he had consented in order that he might make use of the interval in Lincolnshire.”[835] Robert de Courtenay, nevertheless, not only forcibly prevented the shipping of corn from Falkes’s manor of Exminster to revictual Falkes’s castle of Plympton, but seized the corn, and flogged and imprisoned one of Falkes’s boatmen, alleging that he had orders from the King to let no corn go out of the harbour of Exminster. Falkes asked the Justiciar to put a stop to this flagrant violation by a sheriff of the rights of private property; but the tone of his letter shews that he regarded, and expected Hubert to regard, his struggle with Longsword as quite another matter, one in which each of the belligerents was free to act as he thought good, without reference to the government.[836] Another illustration of the same evil occurs fifteen months later {1222}. The castle of Dinas Powys, in Glamorgan, was in the hands of the Earl Marshal, but belonged of right to Gilbert Earl of Gloucester. The Marshal surrendered it to the King in Gilbert’s presence in London, that it might be delivered to a representative of the King, who in his turn should restore it to its owner. Gilbert, instead of waiting for the completion of this quite ordinary procedure, gathered his followers and prepared to march upon the castle, if he did not actually lay siege to it, in July, 1222. He was officially told that the King was “greatly astonished,” not, it would seem, at his taking the law into his own hands in any case, but merely at his doing so after the transfer of the castle had been agreed upon in the King’s presence and undertaken by the King himself.[837] The crowning instance of lawlessness occurred a fortnight later; and this time the offenders were neither foreign soldiers of fortune nor English earls, but citizens of London.
1222
From time immemorial the fields around the Tower had served as a holiday resort for the younger citizens, who spent their leisure time there in wrestling and other athletic sports. A trial of strength and skill in wrestling was arranged to take place hard by Queen Matilda’s Hospital, between the young men of the city and those of the suburbs, on S. James’s day, 25th July. The citizens won the match. Among their antagonists was the Abbot of Westminster’s steward; and he brooded over his own defeat and that of his comrades till he devised a way to avenge it. First, he sent out a general notice inviting all who would to come to a wrestling match at Westminster on the next holiday, the feast of S. Peter in Chains, 1st August; the prize was to be a ram. Next, he gathered on his own side a picked band of strong and expert wrestlers, and secretly provided them with arms. The unsuspecting citizens came in crowds; for a while the wrestlers seemed equally matched; suddenly the Westminster side produced their weapons. The unarmed Londoners were soon overcome; beaten and wounded, they fled helter-skelter into the city. A mighty tumult arose; the common bell was rung, a mass-meeting was held, schemes of vengeance were proposed. Serlo the mayor, “a prudent and peaceable man,” advised that a complaint should be laid before the Abbot of Westminster, and urged that if the abbot would make a fitting compensation on behalf of himself and his men, “all ought to be satisfied.” The angry citizens, however, were more inclined to listen to a certain Constantine Olaveson, “a great man in the city,” who proposed that “all the abbot’s buildings” and his seneschal’s house should be pulled down;[838] and next morning an armed mob made a raid upon Westminster. Their first intention was to attack the church; but from this “some wise man” dissuaded them,[839] and they contented themselves with pulling down the steward’s house and doing as much damage as they could to his property and that of the abbot.[840]
The Justiciar was at this time in the west of England.[841] It chanced, however, that Philip d’Aubigné on his return from the East reached London a few days after the riot had taken place; and to him the Abbot of Westminster went to complain of the violence which he and his men had suffered. The Londoners at once came “like bees” about the house where Philip and the abbot were, forcibly carried off twelve of the abbot’s horses, beat his servants, ill-treated the knights who accompanied him, and tried to capture the abbot himself. Philip d’Aubigné vainly endeavoured to quell the tumult; the abbot was obliged to slip out by a back-door and escape in a boat, in peril of his life from the stones which the citizens flung after him.[842] On 12th or 13th August Hubert reached London.[843] He at once called together the mayor and aldermen and demanded the names of the ringleaders. Constantine boldly answered for himself, asserting that he “would give a warrant” for his action, and openly expressing regret that he “had done less than rightly should have been done.”[844] His boast of a warrant was disquieting; for in the midst of the attack on Westminster he had shouted aloud “Montjoie! Montjoie! God and our lord Louis be our aid!” and his nephew and another citizen, Geoffrey by name, had echoed the cry.[845] Hubert had taken the precaution to bring with him to the Tower a band of men-at-arms under the command of Falkes. He caused Constantine, his nephew, and Geoffrey to be imprisoned for the night; next morning, by his order, Falkes and his men secretly led them out to be hanged. Constantine, when he found a rope round his neck, offered fifteen thousand marks for his life, but in vain; “You will stir up no more seditions in the King’s city,” was the grim reply of Falkes.[846] Having thus got the execution over without the citizens’ knowledge, Hubert rode with Falkes and his soldiers through the city, seized as many as he could of those who had been concerned in the riot, flung them into prison, caused their hands or their feet to be cut off, and then let them go; the rest were so terrified by this severity that many “fled never to return.” The hapless mayor and aldermen who had been incapable of controlling the populace under their charge were deposed; the city had to give hostages for its good behaviour, and was only after long deliberation on the part of the Council admitted to reconciliation with the Crown on payment of a heavy fine.[847] Hubert’s drastic measures were effectual in preventing further disturbance in the capital; but of course “it seemed to some persons,” as a chronicler says, that Constantine had been tried and executed “more hastily than was fitting.”[848]
In Aquitaine the respite from trouble won by the diplomacy of Pandulf at the beginning of 1222 lasted through the summer. A safe-conduct to the count of La Marche to come and speak with the King in England was issued in June,[849] and another in August.[850] He was evidently thought to be really coming this time, for the Bishop of Winchester was sent across the sea to meet and escort him;[851] but he did not come. The sentence of excommunication issued against him two years before had never yet been published, but it had never been withdrawn, and the Pope seems to have now directed his commissioners, the Bishops of Saintes and Limoges and the Dean of Bordeaux, to publish it on S. Andrew’s day. The royal Council, however, shrank from driving Hugh to extremity; and early in November they sent Philip of Aubigné and the Abbot of Boxley to make another effort for a peaceful settlement with him and Isabel, and begged the papal commissioners to give him a further respite till the result of these negotiations should appear.[852] Meanwhile the new seneschal of Poitou had taken up his task with a firm and vigorous hand; but he was hampered by the want of money, like his predecessors, and also by the hostility of the towns, which disliked him doubly because he was not only a baron of considerable social and political importance in the land, but also a man of independent character and determined will. He stuck to his post for ten or eleven months, and then, in September or October, went to England. A full discussion of Aquitanian politics and administration seems to have taken place between him and the royal Council, in the presence of representatives from La Rochelle, Niort, S. Jean d’Angély, Bordeaux, the viscount of Thouars, and possibly some other towns and barons; a whole bundle of letters patent and close, issued in consequence of these deliberations, indicate that the Council, conscious of having at last secured a fit man as governor, was now ready to give him all the moral support in its power.[853] Unluckily it had little other support to give him. It was not till February (1223) that Philip d’Aubigné and his fellow commissioner succeeded in coming to any agreement with Hugh of Lusignan; and then the result of their labours was merely another truce, to last till 1st August.[854] Four more months passed; Hugh and Isabel continued impenitent; so on 25th June the Pope again threatened them with excommunication.[855] Three weeks later, however, an event took place which led to another change in the policy of the English government towards the count of La Marche. This was the death, on 14th July,[856] of King Philip Augustus of France.
1223
When the treaty between Henry and Louis was made, in September, 1217, both parties, as we have seen, bound themselves by oath to certain conditions which are not mentioned in the copies of that treaty which have come down to us. Henry swore to maintain inviolate those liberties of the English barons and people which had served as one of the pretexts for Louis’s invasion; Louis swore that he “would do his utmost to induce his father to restore the English King to all his rights in the parts beyond the sea.”[857] Naturally the English Council construed this as binding Louis, if the restoration were not effected in his father’s lifetime, to make it himself as soon as it was in his own power. They at once took the matter up with a high hand. Pandulf, now Bishop of Norwich,[858] urged the Pope to forbid that any one should crown Louis until the promised restitution to Henry was made.[859] The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of London and Salisbury undertook the double duty of presenting to Louis himself a formal demand for the fulfilment of his promise, and to the Archbishop of Reims a protest against his coronation if the demand were not at once satisfied.[860] Letters patent had already been issued in the King’s name to the barons, knights, and good men of Normandy, calling on them to return to their allegiance, “since the opportunity is now at hand,” and promising, if they did so, restitution to each man, according to his rights, of the lands in England which they lost when the King’s father lost Normandy, and such further rewards as their service should deserve.[861] Preparations were made for collecting a fleet; all ships coming into English ports were ordered to be seized, emptied of their contents (which were to be stored up safely for return to the owners), and sent to Portsmouth for the King’s service.[862] The Forest districts of the southern counties were bidden to send to Porchester large supplies of “hurdles for the ships,”[863] and on 9th August the barons of the Cinque Ports were summoned to come to Portsmouth “with the whole service which they owe to the King, and with their ships, with the first favourable wind, to go with the King in his service.”[864]