The Minority of Henry the Third

by Kate Norgate

Next day {12 Nov.} there was issued a provisional Charter, purporting to be granted by the boy-King “under the guidance of God, and for the salvation of our soul and of the souls of all our ancestors and successors, to the honour of God, and the exaltation of Holy Church, and the amendment of our realm, by the counsel of our venerable fathers” Gualo and the other prelates and magnates enumerated. Of course it began with the declaration which had already been, and was to be again, so often made, and so often proved but an empty form: “The English Church shall be free, and have her rights and liberties entire and undisturbed;” but the recital in the first article of the Great Charter of John’s grant, made to the Church before his quarrel with the barons, of one special liberty—that of free election—was omitted.[34] The clauses of John’s Charter regulating the reliefs due from tenants-in-chief,[35] the wardship of heirs under age,[36] the marriage of heirs and widows,[37] were reproduced with a few very slight alterations, of which the most significant was an addition to the clause relating to the custody of estates: that the obligations laid down as binding on the guardian of a lay fief were to be binding likewise on the custodian of a vacant ecclesiastical dignity, and that a wardship of this kind was not to be bought or sold.[38] The article protecting the King’s debtors and their sureties against arbitrary distraint;[39] that which protected free tenants against arbitrary requirement of service other than what was legally due from their lands;[40] that which ordered common pleas to be held in a fixed place instead of following the King;[41] the regulations for taking recognitions of novel disseisin, mort d’ancester, and darrein presentment;[42] the clause protecting men of all classes against the infliction of arbitrary fines for offences;[43] the clauses which forbade the exaction of contributions for bridge-building from persons or places not legally bound thereto,[44] and the holding of pleas of the Crown by sheriffs or other royal bailiffs,[45] the regulations concerning ward-penny and castle-guard;[46] the royal promises to seize no timber for building without the owner’s consent,[47] not to withhold the lands of a convicted felon from his lord beyond a year and a day,[48] to abolish all weirs except on the sea-coast,[49] to issue no more writs of praecipe in cases where a freeman might thereby be deprived of the means of obtaining justice,[50] to grant writs of inquisition concerning life or limb freely without payment,[51] to cease from unjust interference with other men’s rights of wardship in the case of heirs holding land of a mesne lord by military service and other land of the Crown by some other tenure;[52] the clause ordaining equal weights and measures to be used throughout the realm;[53] that which forbade any man to be sent to the ordeal on the sole accusation of an officer of the Crown;[54] the King’s undertaking not to punish or prosecute any man in any way except by the lawful judgement of his peers and according to the law of the land,[55] and neither to sell, deny, or delay, right and justice to any,[56] not to exact unfair reliefs from escheated baronies,[57] not to summon men to the Forest Courts from districts outside the Forest jurisdiction and on pleas unconnected with it;[58] the clause securing the custody of vacant abbeys to those who were entitled to it as founders,[59] and that which forbade arrest or imprisonment for manslaughter on the appeal of any woman other than the wife of the slain man[60]—were all renewed, as were also the promises given by John that the Forests made in his reign should be disafforested and the river enclosures made during the same period destroyed.[61] Henry pledged himself, as John had done, to give immediate redress to any Welshmen whom John had dispossessed of their lands without lawful judgement of their peers.[62] The article concerning the ancient liberties and customs of London and other towns was renewed, with the insertion of a special mention of the Cinque Ports.[63] That which forbade the King’s constables to seize any man’s corn or cattle without immediate payment, except by the owner’s leave, was modified; if the owner belonged to the township in which the castle stood, payment might be deferred for three weeks.[64] Another article of the Great Charter had forbidden all sheriffs and other officers of the Crown to use any freeman’s horses or carts without the owner’s consent; they were now permitted to do so on payment of a sum “anciently fixed”—tenpence a day for a cart with two horses, fourteenpence a day for a cart with three horses.[65] The general rule laid down in 1215 that “all merchants should come and go and dwell and trade in England, in time of peace, without the imposition of arbitrary customs” (“maltotes”), was limited by the insertion of a proviso, “unless they have been publicly forbidden.”[66] Nineteen articles were entirely omitted. There was no renewal of the articles forbidding the exaction of interest, during the minority of a debtor’s heir, on money borrowed from the Jews or others; nor of the royal promises to institute an inquiry into the abuses of the Forest law and of the Crown’s rights over escheated baronies, to remove from all offices in England certain of John’s foreign adherents, to make restitution to persons illegally disseised under John, to remit fines made illegally with him, to reinstate Welshmen illegally disseised under Henry II. and Richard, and to appoint no justiciars, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, save those who knew the law of the realm and were minded to observe it well.[67] The articles declaring that the ferms of the shires, wapentakes, and hundreds should be reduced to their old figures, without increment (except on royal manors); sanctioning the distribution of the chattels of an intestate freeman by his next-of-kin under the direction of the Church, after his debts were paid; and giving leave to all men to go in and out of England freely, except in time of war,[68] were also omitted. Above all, there was no renewal of two provisions of the highest importance: that no scutage or aid should be imposed except by the common consent of the realm, unless it were for the King’s ransom, the knighting of his eldest son, or the marriage of his eldest daughter, and of “reasonable” amount, and that for the assessment of an aid or scutage on occasions other than those named, the common council should be summoned in a certain manner and for a fixed day, and the matter should proceed according to the counsel of those who answered the summons.[69] As a natural consequence of this omission, the article providing that no mesne lord should henceforth receive permission to take an aid from his freemen except of reasonable amount and for the before-named purposes[70] was omitted likewise. The weighty sixtieth article of the Great Charter, however—“All these aforesaid customs and liberties which we have granted in our realm, so far as in us lies, to be kept towards our own men, all the people of our realm, both clerks and laymen shall observe, so far as in them lies, towards their men,”—was retained.[71] The provisions for the return of hostages and charters, and for a settlement of terms with King Alexander of Scotland,[72] were of course omitted, being no longer applicable under the altered political circumstances. The grounds on which the other omissions and modifications were made are thus set forth in the clause with which the Charter concludes, and which replaces the sixty-first clause of the Great Charter (the clause containing the arrangement about the twenty-five “over-kings”): “Forasmuch as in the former charter there were certain chapters which seemed weighty and doubtful, to wit, concerning the assessment of scutages and aids, the debts of Jews and others, the liberty to go in and out of our realm, the forests and foresters, warrens and warreners, and the customs of the shires, and the river-enclosures and their keepers: it has pleased the prelates and magnates that these should be deferred till we shall have taken counsel more fully; and then we will do to the full, concerning these and other matters which may require amendment, whatever things may appertain to the common good of all and the peace and stability of our self and our realm.”[73]

The seals with which, in place of the non-existent royal seal, this Charter was confirmed in the King’s name were those of Gualo the Cardinal Legate and William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, “governor of ourself and our realm.” The form of the document must have been determined by Gualo and William conjointly; and it reflects the utmost credit upon the wisdom, tact, and moderation of both. Their explanation, given in the clause just quoted, as to the omissions in the new Charter was reasonable and true. The matters omitted were such as a provisional government, especially under the existing circumstances, could not safely deal with. They were all, more or less, matters of controversy; they were also matters affecting the relations of the Crown not with the nation as a whole, but with certain members or sections of the nation; matters, in a word, as to which it would have been neither politic nor just to tie the hands of a King who was not yet capable of acting for himself—above all at a moment when any surrender of the powers and claims of the Crown might have deprived him and his counsellors of the already sufficiently small means which they possessed of carrying on the war against the invader. Most “grave and doubtful” of all was the question which had furnished the immediate pretext, though it was certainly not the sole incentive, for the rising of the barons against John: the question of scutage. If the limitations imposed by the twelfth and fourteenth articles of the Great Charter upon the King’s rights of scutage were not actually new, they had been obsolete so long as to be practically an innovation on the established custom of the realm. This fact was the coign of vantage on which John had taken his stand when appealing to the Pope against the barons; and it was on this ground that Innocent had condemned the Charter. The accession of a child-King was not the moment for gratuitously surrendering on his part a claim whose illegality was, to say the least, not proven, and which the Pope, as overlord of the kingdom, had upheld; and the postponement of this question enabled Gualo at once to give the papal sanction to the new Charter. The publication of the Charter, with that sanction, left no valid excuse for the continuance of a refusal to recognize the native sovereign. Henry was now as definitely pledged as Louis to the redress of all grievances which were really national, and the security for the fulfilment of the pledge was at least as strong on Henry’s side as on the side of the stranger.

But the stranger was in the land, with a force of armed followers of his own, sufficient, if not indeed for its conquest, at least to keep the footing which he had gained there; and the men who had called him to their aid were bound to his cause by engagements from which they could not easily extricate themselves, even if they wished to do so. When they heard of Henry’s coronation they were furious, and many of them took a solemn oath that they would never hold land of any of John’s heirs. Gualo retorted by interdicting their lands; and his arguments, pleadings, and threatenings had a considerable effect not only on the clergy to whom they were primarily addressed,[74] but also on the lay folk of the King’s party, whose loyalty was greatly encouraged by hearing their enemies excommunicated every Sunday and holiday. This, together with a general feeling that “the sins of the father should not be visited on the son,” inclined John’s old adherents to serve the new King even more zealously than they had served the late one; and they set to work vigorously at the fortification of their castles in his behalf.[75]

At the moment of John’s death Louis was still, with the greater part of his forces, encamped, as he had been for three months, before Dover castle, and was awaiting the results of a truce which had been made between him and its warden—Hubert de Burgh—in the early part of October, to enable Hubert to communicate with John and obtain from him either succour, or leave to surrender. When fully certified of John’s death, Louis invited Hubert to a parley and addressed him thus: “Your lord, King John, is dead; it is useless for you to hold this castle longer against me, seeing you have no succour; surrender the castle and come into my fealty, and I will enrich you with great honours and you shall be great among my counsellors.” “If my lord be dead,” Hubert is reported to have answered, “he has sons and daughters who ought to succeed him; as to surrendering the castle, I would fain speak with my comrades of the garrison.” These all agreed that he should refuse, “lest by shamefully surrendering the place he should incur the mark of treason.”[76] On this Louis consented to another truce with Hubert till after Easter,[77] and withdrew to London.[78] The Dover garrison immediately sallied forth and foraged around till they had stocked the castle with all necessaries, after burning all the buildings which Louis had set up round about it;[79] while Hubert was by this somewhat unexpected release enabled to join the council at Bristol.

The French party now held, besides London, the chief strongholds of Surrey and Hampshire—Reigate, Guildford, Odiham, Farnham, Winchester, Southampton, Porchester; Marlborough, just within the Wiltshire border, seems to have been their extreme western outpost. In the Midlands and the North they held Mountsorel and most of the castles of Yorkshire. Between these northern fortresses and London, however, lay a tract of hostile country. The Thames Valley was blocked by Windsor and Oxford; two of John’s foreign followers, Engelard d’Athée (or de Cigogné) and Andrew de Chanceaux, were in command of Windsor; while the castles of Oxford, Buckingham, Hertford, Bedford, Cambridge, and Northampton, and the whole of the six shires in which they stood, were under the charge of the most devoted and energetic, as well as the most ruthless, of John’s soldiers from over sea, Falkes de Bréauté. Beyond these lay Nottingham, Newark, Sleaford, and Lincoln, whose castles were all in the possession of the royalists.[80] To the east, though the Earls of Essex and Norfolk were among the partisans of Louis, the castles of Pleshy, Colchester, Norwich, and Orford were garrisoned by the troops of the King.[81] In the far north Newcastle-on-Tyne was held for Henry by Hugh de Baliol,[82] and the fortresses of the see of Durham by the constables of the Palatine bishop. The western shires were entirely in the hands of the Royalists. On the Dorset coast Peter de Maulay, to whom John on the eve of his last campaign had entrusted his second boy, Richard, was in command of Corfe, a fortress which on account of its remote position and great strength had been chosen for the depository of the greater part of the royal treasure.[83] The French had apparently no hold upon the coast anywhere except at Southampton and Porchester, and at Rye, where the castle was held for Louis by Geoffrey de Say.[84] Some of the Cinque Ports had indeed submitted to Louis in 1215, but they had almost immediately thrown off his yoke, resumed their allegiance to John, and joined hands with a motley band of adventurers and country folk who under the leadership of William de Casinghem occupied the Weald of Kent and were a perpetual danger to the French troops engaged in the siege of Dover.

That siege Louis seems to have now finally decided to abandon, probably with the intention of devoting himself instead to the consolidation of his conquests by the acquisition of eastern England. On 11th November—the meeting-day of the Council at Bristol—he appeared before Hertford and laid siege to the castle. For twenty-five days he plied his machines against it in vain, its commandant, Walter de Godardville, a knight of Falkes’s household, making a brave defence and a great slaughter of the assailants, till the siege was ended on 6th December[85] by a general truce made between the Royalist leaders and Louis on the condition that Hertford and Berkhamsted should be evacuated and surrendered to the French prince.[86] The constable of Berkhamsted, however—a German knight named Waleran, who had long been in John’s service—was unwilling to accept the truce, and held out against siege and assault till an order in the King’s name compelled him to surrender on 20th December.[87] When the truce expired, another was made, the condition being the evacuation and surrender of the royal castles of Orford and Norwich;[88] and this second truce seems to have been followed by a third, purchased probably by the surrender of Cambridge and either Colchester or Pleshy. At some date between the middle and the end of January, 1217,1217 Louis called his adherents to a council at Cambridge, while the King’s guardians brought up their young sovereign from Gloucestershire to Oxford,[89] and opened negotiations for a peace, or, failing that, a further prolongation of the truce. Of peace Louis’s English supporters would not hear; and as the arrangements for another truce made but slow progress, Louis laid siege to the castle of Hedingham. Finally, however, a truce was made, its conditions being apparently the surrender of Hedingham and Colchester (or, if Colchester had been surrendered earlier, Pleshy), and perhaps some minor strongholds, and the continuance of “all things”—castles and other matters—as they were at that moment until a month after Easter.[90]

1217

Thus by the beginning of February, 1217, Louis’s mastery of eastern England was completed, seemingly without a struggle. At first glance, the action of Henry’s representatives seems unaccountable; there is, however, reason to think that it was really part of a scheme for bringing the desultory war to a crisis. Their aim seems to have been first to induce Louis to scatter his forces, and then to lure him back to the coast, hoping that there they might either cut off his retreat, or compel him to return to his own country.[91] For the accomplishment of this design it would be necessary to concentrate their own forces; and this could only be done by withdrawing the garrisons from such of the royal castles as were least worth retaining at the moment. These were the castles of East Anglia and Essex. Unlike the fortresses of the west, which it was of paramount importance to maintain in a state of efficiency as a protection against encroachments of the King’s enemies from the Welsh border, these eastern castles were practically isolated outposts in a district of which the greater part was under the enemy’s control. Surrounded as they were by the territories of powerful barons who supported Louis, they were not available as bases for concerted action; and the stores, arms, horses, and men in them could be made far more useful elsewhere.[92] To the enemy, on the other hand, the bait would be a tempting one; and the possible consequences of taking it might well have escaped the penetration of a more wary general than was Louis of France at this stage of his career. The possession of these castles placed the whole of eastern England under his uninterrupted sway, and removed all serious obstacles, except one, to his communications with his allies in the north. That one obstacle was the castle of Lincoln, which under the command of a woman had hitherto resisted every assailant. Louis appears to have made a circuit of his new possessions—no doubt placing a garrison in each of them—and then proceeded to Lincoln, hoping that his personal presence and the isolation in which she was now placed might tempt or frighten Dame Nicolaa into a betrayal of her trust. In this hope he was disappointed. The city received him, as it had already received his adherents; but the castle “held out,” for the Dame “kept it very loyally.” Louis could only return to London and thence send the castellan of Arras to take up his quarters in Lincoln city, that he might “hold the country with the help of the Northerners.”[93]

Louis was now anxious to get back to France. According to one account, his father was again urgently calling him home;[94] according to another, he was alarmed by letters from his agents at Rome, telling him that unless he left England the Pope intended to confirm on Maundy Thursday the excommunication which had been pronounced on him by Gualo.[95] When he announced to his English friends in London his intention of leaving the country they were highly displeased, and he had to take a solemn oath that he would return before the expiration of the truce.[96] None of the successive truces made during this winter seem to have been very scrupulously kept by either party. On the morrow of the surrender of Berkhamsted {1216 21 Dec.} Louis had marched upon S. Alban’s and demanded homage of the abbot, and on its refusal had only been restrained from burning both abbey and town by the intervention of Saer de Quincy, whereby the abbot was persuaded to give him eighty marks for a respite till Candlemas.[97] A month later {1217 22 Jan.}, at the very time when the King’s Council were endeavouring to arrange a conference of commissioners from both sides for the redress of infractions of the first and second truces and for securing the observance of the truce then existing,[98] Falkes de Bréauté sacked the same unlucky town and wrung from the abbot another heavy fine.[99] Louis’s visit to Lincoln was not an overt act of hostility such as these, but it was distinctly a violation of the spirit of the conditions on which the last truce had been made; and the Royalists may perhaps have considered themselves thereby released from their own obligation to abide by those conditions. However this may be, Louis, seemingly on the point of setting out from London for the coast, received information that the castle of Rye had been “taken by subtlety” by the English.[100]

As early as 17th December, 1216, “the brave men of Ireland who are with their ships on the coasts of Normandy” had been bidden, and encouraged by the promise of liberal reward, to come in force to Winchelsea, ready and prepared to go forth in the King’s service on S. Hilary’s day, or as soon after as possible.[101] They seem to have obeyed the summons, and to have been joined by an English fleet, gathered no doubt from the loyal Cinque Ports, and commanded by the governor of the Channel Islands, Philip d’Aubigné.[102] {Jan.} A detachment of Royalists, protected by, if not actually landed from, these ships, had “by the wise counsel of the Marshal” now surprised and occupied Rye.[103] Louis at once set out for the coast; he went, however, not direct to Rye, but to Winchelsea—still, it seems, intending to sail for France. At his approach the burghers of Winchelsea broke up all the mills in their town, and then took to their boats and went to join Philip d’Aubigné and his fleet off Rye. Louis had no sooner entered Winchelsea than he found himself caught in a trap whence there was no way of escape—shut in between the new garrison of Rye, the ships, and the Weald, where “Willikin” de Casinghem was still in command of a dauntless and reckless band of loyalists who broke down every bridge and blocked every passage in the rear of the French, and cut off the head of every straggler who came within their reach.[104]