All this was a practical defiance of Louis. But to set Louis at defiance without endeavouring to secure the adherence, or at any rate the neutrality, of La Marche and Angoulême would have been simply to court defeat. Two days before the King’s truce with Hugh expired, therefore, two of the places in dispute between Hugh and the King—the city of Saintes and the castle of Merpins—with the town of Cognac and the castle of Belmont, were committed to Hugh to hold “till the King’s coming of age,” “as he held them on the Saturday before the feast of S. Peter in Chains” in the preceding year; two envoys (of whom one was Geoffrey de Neville) were despatched to take security from him “for his good and faithful service, and that he would faithfully do his utmost to advance the King’s interest and procure his honour till the term before mentioned”;[865] and on 4th August the holder of the papal mandate for Hugh’s excommunication was desired to deal with it only as the same two envoys should direct.[866]
Contrary winds detained Archbishop Stephen and his fellow-ambassadors in England[867] for more than a week. When they reached the French court, Louis was already crowned.[868] He seems to have declined to make any immediate answer to their demands, and adjourned the matter to the octave of All Saints.[869] The delay was probably not unwelcome to Henry’s counsellors, who at that moment had their hands full with a Welsh war. The pacification at Shrewsbury in July, 1221, seems to have been followed by an unusually long period of comparative tranquillity on the Marches of Wales. It was probably this condition of affairs which, when it had lasted for sixteen months, encouraged the King’s representatives to venture on what looks like a very bold step in the prosecution of their schemes for asserting the royal authority over the castles. On 11th November, 12221222, the Earl Marshal was informed by letter patent that “as the castle of Caerleon with its appurtenances, which is in your hand, ought to be held of us in chief, it is provided by our common council that that castle shall be delivered into our hand; and therefore we strictly command that you, without delay or excuse, surrender that castle with its appurtenances to us, and afterwards we will cause full justice to be done in our court to you and to any others who may have aught to say about it.”[870] For this demand it is hardly possible to conceive any motive save one: a desire to obtain from the Marshal, by way of example and precedent, a practical acknowledgement of the King’s right to take into his own hands, when he pleased, a castle held of the Crown not merely in custody, but in fee. If, however, this was the purpose the Council had in view, they were ill-advised in their choice of a time for making the demand; the Marshal, if not already in Ireland, was on the point of setting out to spend the winter there.[871] Possibly the King’s letter never reached him; if it did, he had a fair excuse for not acting upon it till his return. A second letter, written on 26th January, 1223, desired him to surrender Caerleon before the close of Easter “because we do not deem it advisable that you should hold it beyond that term.”[872] But when he came back, in Passion Week, the Welsh March was in turmoil from one end to the other, and the Council were only too glad to make the utmost possible use of his ready co-operation in restoring the English supremacy in South Wales. Such a moment was clearly inopportune for taking an important border stronghold out of the hands of a defender at once so capable and so loyal; and more than three years passed away before the King ventured to renew his demand.
Llywelyn had taken advantage of the Marshal’s absence to organize an attack on the English border. Early in 1223 he besieged, took, and utterly destroyed two castles in Shropshire, Kinnerley and Whittington.[873] The Justiciar, taking the King with him, went at the beginning of March to Shrewsbury, seemingly to demand or compel satisfaction from Llywelyn. The Earl of Chester came forward as mediator, offering himself as surety for Llywelyn’s compliance with the demand within a given time; and the intended punitive attack on Wales was suspended accordingly.[874] But meanwhile tidings of Llywelyn’s outbreak had reached the Marshal in Ireland, and in the middle of April[875] he “came up to land” somewhere in South Wales “with a vast fleet,” carrying “a multitude of cavalry and infantry.”[876] Hubert seems to have expected his arrival, and sent a messenger to meet him with a request that he would keep truce with Llywelyn for another fortnight, in the hope that Llywelyn might yet fulfill the promise made for him by Chester, although the time fixed for its fulfilment had already expired.[877] The delay proved useless; and on Easter Monday (24 April) Earl William marched upon Cardigan. “On that day the castle was delivered to him, and on the Wednesday following he drew to Caermarthen, and obtained that castle also.”[878] Llywelyn, on hearing what had occurred, sent his son Gruffudd “with a very numerous army to oppose the Earl”; they met at Kidwelly and fought “for the greater part of the day”; Gruffudd seems to have been worsted, and “for lack of provision returned back to his country.”[879]
The Marshal hereupon busied himself with the repair of Caermarthen castle[880] till at the end of May a royal letter patent bade him, “forasmuch as it is determined by our Council that the castles of Caermarthen and Cardigan, which you have taken, should be retained in our own hand,” deliver both places to Robert de Vaux to hold during the King’s pleasure.[881] Llywelyn had certainly proved himself utterly undeserving of the confidence in his loyalty which had induced the regent Earl Marshal to entrust him with the custody of these two important strongholds; and if the regent’s son was not actually commissioned by the Council to recover them by force, it could at any rate have no scruples in approving his action and reaping its fruit for the benefit of the Crown. A day in July was next appointed for Llywelyn and the Marshal to lay their mutual complaints before the King and Council. The meeting took place at Ludlow, seemingly between 6th and 10th July,[882] but the parties “could not be reconciled.”[883] The Council had apparently not expected a reconciliation, and had come prepared for war. On the 11th the sheriffs of Devon and Herefordshire were bidden to take care that no men of their respective shires should send (by sea in the case of Devon), any supplies to, or hold any communication with, Llywelyn and his Welsh adherents, but that all merchants and markets should follow the King’s army to South Wales, “that is, to our lands of Caermarthen and Cardigan, and to the lands of our faithful Earl William the Marshal.”[884] An effort was made to detach the Welsh of Deheubarth and Powys from obedience to their North-Welsh lord; the Earls of Pembroke and Salisbury were empowered to receive into the King’s grace “all the Welsh of South Wales who would return to the King’s fealty and service”;[885] the sons of Gwenwynwyn of Powys, who since Gwenwynwyn’s death in 1216 had been living in England as wards or prisoners of the Crown, and were now in Bridgenorth castle under the care or in the custody of Earl Ranulf of Chester, were brought to the King’s court at Gloucester, and all men of the lands which had belonged to their father were invited to “come to the sons of Gwenwynwyn and to the King’s fealty and peace”;[886] a host of English barons and knights marched into Wales under the command of the Marshal and his friend Longsword.[887]
The King and the Justiciar were recalled to London, partly, no doubt, by the weighty news from France, and partly by the necessity of receiving the titular King of Jerusalem, John of Brienne, who was travelling through western Europe to collect forces and funds for the recovery of his kingdom from the Turks. An “aid for the Holy Land,” of three marks from every earl, one mark from every baron, twelve pence from every knight, and one penny from every free tiller of the soil and every free man who had no land, but had chattels to the value of half a mark, had been agreed upon by the great Council of the realm in 1222,[888] but had never been collected.[889] No Christian sovereign, however, could evade the duty of giving at least a personal welcome, even if he gave nothing more, to the successor of Godfrey of Bouillon. John seems to have crossed from France to England at the end of August.[890] On 1st or 2nd September the English King and Primate received him “solemnly and with great honours” at Canterbury, and escorted him to London.[891] His visit was a brief one, and the hospitality which he received in England was probably amply requited by the gift of four large sapphires—“than which we never saw finer,” says Matthew Paris—which he, “out of his innate munificence,” on his way back offered at the shrine of S. Thomas at Canterbury.[892]
As soon as their royal guest was gone, King and Justiciar hurried back to the Welsh border. The English host under the Marshal and the Earl of Salisbury had apparently set out with the intention of joining the Marshal’s other forces in Pembrokeshire. It was caught by Gruffudd in one of the intricate passes of the Welsh hills, and narrowly escaped destruction,[893] but it seems to have cut its way through; and the Marshal set to work to fortify “the lands which he occupied,”—that is, doubtless, the districts of Caermarthen and Gower—by founding new castles and repairing old ones.[894] Llywelyn’s next diversion was to lay siege, early in September,[895] to Reginald de Breuse’s castle of Builth, with such a numerous force that Reginald immediately applied to the Crown for help.[896] On 12th September the host was summoned to meet the King “with all haste” at Gloucester,[897] and march with him to the relief of Builth. The expedition probably set out from Hereford on the 19th or 20th. Its mere approach sufficed to raise the siege; on the 23rd King and Justiciar were back at Hereford.[898]
It was not the first time, nor was it to be the last, that the Welsh fled before Hubert de Burgh. He now led the King and the host from Hereford to Leominster and Shrewsbury, and thence, on the last day of September, to Montgomery,[899] passing through Llywelyn’s lands and driving the flocks and herds before them as they went, to serve for the sustenance of the troops. The castle of Montgomery, originally built by one of the most famous of the followers of William the Conqueror, had been more than once destroyed by the Welsh. Its site, which had sufficed for the simple Norman keep reared by the first Earl of Shrewsbury, was probably not suited for more elaborate fortifications such as were used in the thirteenth century; it served, however, to shelter the King and the Justiciar; and some of “the wiser men of the army,” while scouring the country around it under Hubert’s orders, found “a place fit for building a castle whose position, everyone thought, would be impregnable.”[900] Urgent orders were despatched to the sheriff of Shropshire for an immediate supply of building materials and tools, and the work was begun at once.[901] Meanwhile Llywelyn had been excommunicated by Archbishop Stephen. On 7th or 8th October, at Montgomery, the Prince once more came and made submission to King and Primate, Stephen dictating the terms. Llywelyn swore that within a reasonable time, to be fixed by the Archbishop, and in a fitting place, he would make satisfaction to the King and the King’s men for all damages done by himself and his men since the day of the taking of Kinnerley. Six lesser Welsh chieftains swore with him; each of the seven embodied his engagement in a charter; and on these conditions Llywelyn was absolved.[902] Moreover, he at once gave the King seisin of Kinnerley and Whittington, that he might restore them to their former owners; and Henry gave back to Llywelyn and his men seisin of all that they had held in fee on the day of the capture of Kinnerley, subject to a trial of counterclaims at the date fixed for Llywelyn’s promised satisfaction[903]—that date being Candlemas, 1224.[904] This conditional restitution of course did not include Cardigan and Caermarthen, which Llywelyn had held merely as custodian for the Crown. On 7th November these two castles were committed to the only man in whose keeping they were likely to be safe—the Earl Marshal.[905]
The time fixed by Louis for answering Henry’s demand for the restoration of his continental heritage had now come. On 10th October an embassy consisting of Bishops Pandulf of Norwich and John of Ely, Philip d’Aubigné, and Richard de Rivers, had been accredited to France to receive Louis’s reply, and to treat with him concerning a prolongation of the truce,[906] which would expire in April, 1224. These envoys met with a very unfavourable reception. Louis declared that the whole continental possessions of the Angevin house had been by a legal judgement escheated to the French Crown;[907] that they were therefore his by right—a right which, he added, he was prepared to prove in his own court, if the King of England would come and submit to its judgement; and that moreover the agreement to which he had sworn in England was no longer binding upon him, inasmuch as it had been doubly broken on the English side, first by the exaction of heavy ransoms from his partisans who had been captured at Lincoln, and secondly in that “the liberties of the realm of England, for which the war had been waged and which at his departure had been granted and sworn to by all, had been so dealt with that not only those most evil laws were brought back into use as of old, but others still more wicked were generally established throughout the realm.”[908] He wound up his harangue to the envoys with a distinct threat, which he charged them to repeat to those who had sent them: not only would he restore nothing, but he intended, when opportunity should offer, to prosecute his claim to the English Crown, as having been taken from John by a legal sentence and granted by the barons of England to himself.[909] Although the truce had still six months to run, the cry of Constantine Olaveson must have rung ominously in the ears of Hubert de Burgh when the French King’s complaints and threats were repeated to him,[910] even if the return of the envoys did not—as it most probably did—coincide with the most alarming outbreak of baronial discontent with which the government had had to deal since Louis left England.
The abolition of the regency before the King attained his majority had inevitably resulted in giving a great increase of power to the Justiciar. Under a sovereign of full age the Justiciar was the King’s lieutenant; it was on him that the supreme powers and functions of government temporarily devolved when the King himself was absent from the realm. It followed almost of necessity that when there ceased to be a person specially set apart to exercise those powers and functions for a King under age, they fell into the Justiciar’s hands. This result of Pandulf’s resignation could not be altogether pleasing to some, at least, of the other members of the Council, or of the magnates outside the Council. It was one thing, first to accept the autocracy of a ruler whom they had unanimously chosen out of their own ranks on the score of his transcendent personal merits, and, afterwards, to yield to the dictates of one who legally represented a power acknowledged by all as superior to that of the Crown itself; it was quite another matter to be ruled by Sir Hubert de Burgh, and to be, moreover, confronted with a prospect of being ruled by him till Henry’s coming of age—an event which seemed almost as remote as ever, since, the date originally intended for it being past, it was now seemingly regarded as deferred till his twenty-first birthday.[911] Nominally, of course, Hubert governed in concert with his colleagues of the royal Council. But with the control of the executive in his hands, and no authority capable of overriding him nearer than Rome, he was practically master of the Council. There were only two other members of it who could under any circumstances have sufficient weight in themselves to act as a check upon him. Both officially and personally Stephen de Langton was a greater man than Hubert de Burgh. The Archbishop of Canterbury was not only the highest ecclesiastical authority in the land, he was also the first adviser of the Crown; and Archbishop Stephen had long ago proved himself a statesman of a far higher order than any other then living in England. But Stephen had never desired to be a leader in secular affairs; and he seems to have come home in 1221 resolved to take as little direct share in politics as possible. His one recorded public act, for more than two years after his return, was the holding, at Oseney in April, 12221222, of a great Church council[912] for the settlement of ecclesiastical discipline and administration on the basis of a set of canons which he had drawn up and on which the law of the Church of England is grounded to this day. When he did intervene in temporal matters, his character, even more than his office, gave to his intervention a special importance which all parties seem to have felt and acknowledged. The Bishop of Winchester’s position was wholly different. “Peter des Roches was as hard as a rock,” said the monks of his cathedral chapter;[913] which seems to imply at any rate that his conduct as a bishop did not err on the side of neglect or laxity in matters of order and discipline. His material benefactions to his church, and the diligence and ability with which he managed the temporal concerns of his see, were indisputable; and there is nothing to indicate that he failed in any of his episcopal duties. But Peter was ambitious of exercising his talents in a wider field than that of diocesan administration; and his talents were great enough to justify his ambition. After his death Matthew Paris declared that “the whole council of the realm of England, royal as well as ecclesiastical, had suffered an irreparable loss” in losing him.[914] Under Pandulf he and Hubert had worked together almost as equals; but before the end of the year 1221 Peter found himself Hubert’s subordinate, and found, too, that his chance of regaining at a future time his former influence in matters of state was diminishing day by day; for though the King’s ex-tutor retained his seat in the Council, the King had virtually become Hubert’s pupil instead of his.
There was only one possible means of altering this state of things: to put Henry into possession, if not of full regal powers, at least of some voice in the government of his own realm, something like a decisive vote in his own Council. If this were done, the Justiciar’s supremacy would become dependent on his personal influence over the King’s mind; and if it were done quickly, while that mind was still young and tender and had not yet had time to take the mould of Hubert’s political teaching, Peter might fairly hope to be more than a match for Hubert. A suggestion that something of this kind should be done seems to have been conveyed to the Pope from England at some time before the middle of April, 1223,[915] and to have been either coupled with, or accompanied or followed by, a request that the Pope would issue some instructions concerning the royal castles. When the result of these two suggestions appeared, the onus of responsibility for it fell upon Hubert; Hubert, however, in later days declared that the Pope’s action in the matter had been instigated by the Bishop of Winchester, against the interests of Hubert himself. Meanwhile a number of the magnates had for some time past been murmuring among themselves against the Justiciar, resenting his haughty bearing and his (in their opinion) high-handed judicial decisions in cases where they were concerned, and “saying to one another that he stirred up the King’s mind against them, and likewise that he ruled the kingdom by unjust laws.”[916] A step which he took at the beginning of 1223 aggravated their resentment and their distrust. On 30th January orders were issued in the King’s name for the sheriffs to inquire in full county court, by a sworn jury of twelve knights, what customs and liberties King John had in the shires before the war between him and the barons began; to proclaim the result of the inquest in full county court and cause it to be observed throughout the shires; and to send a report of it to the King at Westminster on 8th May.[917] These orders evidently caused some commotion in the shires, for on 9th April they were significantly modified; the King “by the advice of his faithful men” issued other letters whereby the sheriffs were bidden not to proclaim the royal liberties and customs ascertained by means of the inquest or to enforce their observance, “for the present,” and were assured that he “had no will to raise up, or cause to be observed in the realm, any evil customs”; these new letters also were to be read in full shire-court; and the date for the return of the inquest was postponed to 25th June.[918]