The Minority of Henry the Third

by Kate Norgate

Next day arose a new peril, which recalls one of the incidents that preceded another battle at Lincoln, seventy-six years before. “The Normans who were in the host” went to the younger William Marshal and addressed him thus: “Fair sir, you were born in Normandy; you ought to know that it is the right of the Normans to strike the first blow in every battle. Take heed that we lose not our right.” Earl Ranulf of Chester, however—like his father in 1141—claimed the same privilege for himself, and bluntly declared that unless he were placed in the van, he would not go with the host, and they should have no help from him. The Earl Marshal and the other leaders were obliged to pacify him by granting his demand, on the understanding that the right of the Normans should not be thereby prejudiced for the future.[162] Three days were spent at Newark {Tues., 16 May}, as a breathing-time for men and horses and an opportunity for religious exercises to prepare the men for their task. On the third morning {Fri., 19 May}, after Mass, the Legate and clergy again excommunicated Louis by name, with all his accomplices and abettors, especially those who were sieging Lincoln castle, “together with the city of Lincoln and all its contents.” The Legate then gave plenary absolution to all who, having made a truthful confession, were about to take part in the expedition.[163] This done, the whole host flew to horse and arms.[164]

The Legate set out for Nottingham,[165] taking with him the young King. For the fighting men, the direct route would have been the Foss Way, which ran in an almost straight line from Newark to Lincoln. But it ran to the southernmost gate of the city, below the hill; and their aim was to reach the western side of the castle on the hill-top without passing through the city, which was in the hands of the enemy. They therefore fetched a compass to the northward as far as Torksey;[166] and there, or at Stow[167] hard by, they spent the night. On Saturday morning (May 20th), after Mass, they drew up in full array for their final march upon Lincoln.[168] Once more the Marshal bade them fight, “for honour or Paradise,” against the enemies of God and the Church. “God has given them into our hands; up and at them! The hour is come!” “And all who heard him bore themselves joyfully, as if they were going to a tournament.”[169] Chester led the van; the Marshal and his sons commanded the next division; Earl William of Salisbury the third, and Bishop Peter of Winchester the fourth, which consisted of cross-bowmen.[170] Another body of cross-bowmen—perhaps commanded by Falkes—seems to have formed an advanced guard which marched a mile in front of the rest of the host.[171]

The boundaries of medieval Lincoln were determined by those of the Roman city on the site of which it was built. They formed, roughly speaking, a parallelogram whose length from north to south was considerably greater than its width, and whose northern half stood on the summit of a steep and rocky hill whence the southern half sloped down almost to the bank of the river Witham; the whole was divided longitudinally by the Roman road known as Ermine Street. The city “above hill” represented the original Roman camp; to this the part “below hill” had been added in the later days of the Roman occupation. The wall wherewith, in the thirteenth century and for many centuries after, the whole was encompassed, followed in the main the outlines of the Roman enclosure thus enlarged. The castle, founded by William the Conqueror and partly reconstructed in the twelfth century, occupied the south-western angle of the first Roman city: it was thus enclosed on the north, east, and south within the later city, from which it was separated by a wide and deep ditch. This ditch was continued along its outer or western side; and on this side the walls of castle and city formed one continuous line, the wall being carried across the ditch at the north-western and south-western extremities of the castle enclosure. Immediately north of the ditch at the former of these two points of junction between the city wall and the castle wall, stood the West Gate of the city; whether there was also a gate at the southern junction point is not known. The castle had two main entrances; one on the east, towards the city; the other on the west side, towards the open country. The keep was on the south side. Beyond the western wall and ditch the plateau formed by the hill-top extended some little distance; and it was here that King Stephen had entrenched himself when he besieged the castle in 1141, leaving the bishop and citizens to watch the other three sides. The partisans of Louis seem not to have been sufficiently sure of the citizens to venture on following Stephen’s example; for they had evidently made no attempt to occupy the site of his encampment, but had set up all their machines and concentrated all their forces within the city, directing all their attacks upon the castle from thence, and taking no steps to prevent its garrison from communicating through the western sally-port with their friends outside.

The main road from Torksey and Stow to Lincoln now enters the city south of the castle; but there is a branch road connecting it at Burton with an old Roman way which runs from Kirton-in-Lindsey and enters Lincoln by the West Gate; and this appears to have been the way taken by the Royalists. At some distance from the gate they halted, and the Marshal sent forward his nephew John to open communications with the garrison.[172] On his way John met Dame Nicolaa’s lieutenant constable, Geoffrey de Serland, whom she had despatched from the castle secretly to tell the leaders of the relieving host how matters stood within, and that a “little door,” or “postern at the back”—that is, the small door of the western sally-port, by which no doubt Geoffrey himself had gone out—was already open to receive them.[173] With this welcome message John Marshal hastened back; he was seen and chased by some Frenchmen, but escaped unharmed.[174] Two of the English barons who were in the city, Robert Fitz-Walter and Saer de Quincy the Earl of Winchester, rode out to reconnoitre as soon as the Royalists’ approach was known. On their return they said: “These warriors come on in good order, but we are far more in number than they; let us go out to meet them at the ascent of the hill, and then we can catch them all like larks in a cage.” The Count of Perche, however, who was in command of the French troops, was too cautious to act upon a report so vague and went out himself with another of the French leaders, to count the enemies, as he said, “according to the custom of France.” He was, however, deceived in his reckoning; for each of the Royalist chieftains had two banners, one of which led his contingent in the fighting host while the other was with his baggage, so that the baggage, forming a separate group in the rear, looked like another army and was mistaken for such by the two Frenchmen, who went back doubting what was best to do. They finally decided to shut the city gates and thus, as they hoped, hold the city till they should have won the castle[175]; thinking that the English, with men and horses wearied from a long march, would not attempt to penetrate within the walls. When this movement came to the knowledge of the Marshal, he made it an argument for instant attack. “See, they retire behind their walls! The victory is ours already, when these men, ever foremost in tourney, hide themselves at our approach. Let us do the right, for God wills it!”[176]

It was easy to introduce troops into the castle by the western sally-port; but it would not be so easy to pass the whole relieving force through the castle into the city. Bishop Peter of Winchester, who according to the Marshal’s biographer “was the master in counselling our people that day,”[177] seems to have resolved on trying to ascertain for himself where a direct entrance into the city could be effected. He led his men up to the castle wall, bade them await him there, and with a single attendant entered the fortress. He found it greatly damaged by the long siege, and in such constant peril from the French mangonels and stone-casters, still actively at work, that its occupants begged him to withdraw from the great court into the shelter of the keep. Thence, after complimenting and encouraging the “good dame,”[178] he stole out, evidently by the small south door,[179] on a yet more hazardous reconnoitring expedition into the city, “wishing to see how it stood.”[180] Looking about him, he caught sight of a gate “which joined the walls of the city with those of the castle,” and which was “blocked with stone and cement.” This was apparently the West Gate of the city.[181] The reason for which it had been blocked, whether this was done by the French or (as is more probable) under orders from Nicolaa[182] at an earlier period of the war, is not difficult to guess. Lincoln had more gates than could easily be guarded all at once;[183] if one of them was rendered impassable, there was one less to watch and defend. The sequel implies that the “stone and cement” were not so put together as to form a wall of solid masonry; probably the door on the inner side of the gateway had been closed and the obstruction piled up, rather than built up, on the outer side; if so, it might be cleared away without its removal being noticed inside the city until the door was forced open.[184] In all likelihood Peter’s discovery of this possible entrance had really been made as he passed the outer side of the gate on his way to the castle, and the purpose of his daring venture was to learn whether its inner side was penetrable and unguarded. He found that it was so, and having made his way back safely to his friends, gave orders for the gate to be cleared out. His comrades of the host came to meet him joyously, “every man in the ranks singing as if the victory were already won”; Peter merrily told them that when they had gained possession of the city he should claim the bishop’s house for his own residence, as a reward for having prepared them a safe way of entry.[185]

Possibly, however, the lay leaders may have been unwilling to stake the safety of their enterprise solely on the judgement of their episcopal counsellor; for it seems that while Falkes de Bréauté, with his own followers and all the cross-bowmen, was sent into the castle, the main body of the host went round to the north gate—the Roman “Porta Nova,” “New Port,” now reduced to a single great arch with a smaller one at its side, but in the Marshal’s day probably still almost complete in the pristine strength of its solid Roman masonry, forming an arched passage flanked by two smaller passages, some twenty feet long,[186] and closed with heavy doors which the Royalists set to work to batter in.[187] The French party were plying their engines vigorously on the castle when suddenly they saw its walls and towers bristling with cross-bowmen; and “as in the twinkling of an eye” a shower of quarrels, aimed with deadly effect at the destriers of the besiegers, reduced many knights and barons of high rank among them to the condition of foot soldiers. The sight of their discomfiture tempted Falkes to make a dash from the eastern gate of the castle into their midst, with some of his personal followers; he was, however, quickly surrounded and captured, but was gallantly rescued by his men.[188] Bishop Peter meanwhile was protesting to the Marshal against the folly—as he deemed it—of trying to force an entrance elsewhere than at the “safe” place where, as he said, there was an opening in the wall ready for use, yet hidden from and unguarded by the enemy. “By my head! those men are wrong; they have not found the right way to get in. I will lead you to it; come with me.” “By God’s sword! hither, my helmet!” was the Marshal’s reply.[189] Peter however now held him back and proposed that before risking a general assault two men from each “battle” or division of the host should be sent to look around for ambushes.[190] This was done; but the Marshal was too impatient to await the result. He at once “put himself forward on his way,” calling his own men to the onset: “Forward! Now shall ye see your enemies vanquished in a few hours; shame to him who longer delays!” Again Peter tried to check him, begging him to wait till the whole host could be reunited and the attack made in full force. The aged warrior would not listen; “swifter than a merlin he struck spurs into his horse, so that all who were with him gathered hardihood as they beheld him.” A “valet” called after him that he was, after all, going without his helmet; “Stop here while I fetch it,” said the Marshal to his son. In a moment he was back again, “and when he had thus covered his head, he was goodly to look upon beyond all the rest—light in movement as a bird, hawk or eaglet.” “Hungry lion never rushed on its prey so hotly as the Marshal on his foes”; at the first onset he dashed three spears’ length into their midst, cutting his way through them and scattering them on all sides, while Bishop Peter followed shouting “God help the Marshal!”[191]

By this time the stubborn attack on the north gate had succeeded, and all the Royalist forces thus poured in at once upon the besiegers of the castle,[192] who, although numerically stronger, were unable to withstand their onset,[193] aided as it was by the murderous fire which Falkes’s cross-bowmen, from their vantage-ground on the castle wall, poured down upon the horses of the French knights, the animals falling “like stuck pigs” while the riders were captured without possibility of rescue.[194] The French force is said to have consisted of six hundred and eleven knights and full a thousand footmen; it is not quite clear whether this reckoning includes their English allies.[195] Yet, small as were the numbers engaged on both sides, the fight lasted from between seven and eight o’clock in the morning till nearly three in the afternoon.[196] It was protracted partly by the stubborn persistence of the two parties, who both alike felt that the destiny of England was involved in its result, and partly by the impossibility, in the steep and narrow streets of a city such as Lincoln, of bringing it to a decisive issue in one general encounter. It thus became a battle of the old-world epic type, full of separate incidents and individual encounters; and this peculiar character, together with the extraordinarily small amount of actual bloodshed and loss of life that took place in it, probably suggested the name afterwards given to by the victors—“the Tournament,” or as the word is commonly but in this case perhaps less accurately rendered, “Fair of Lincoln.”[197]

The first recorded incident was one of good omen for the Royalists. Some of them found the enemy’s chief engineer[198] working a stone-caster which hurled stones against one of the towers of the castle. Mistaking the new-comers for knights of his own party, he, all the more eagerly, placed a stone in his machine, but as he was giving the signal for its discharge they came up behind him and struck off his head.[199] The Marshal and the Earl of Salisbury “turned to the right, leaving a minster on their left,”[200] and came upon a cluster of enemies, one of whom, Robert of Ropsley, levelled his spear “to joust,” and struck that of Longsword with such force that it shivered into fragments; but the Marshal gave him such a blow between the shoulders that he fell to the ground “and crawled away to hide himself.” The fight swept onward almost to the brow of the hill on which the city was set, till on a level space near the great minster,[201] the French made a resolute stand under the direction of the Count of Perche.[202] He was only a youth, of scarce two and twenty years,[203] “handsome, tall, and noble-looking.”[204] He stood at bay as bravely as King Stephen had stood in somewhat like circumstances in the earlier battle of Lincoln; and for a while he and his men succeeded in checking the progress of the Royalists. By degrees, however, the French lost ground and began to fall back down the hill. Perche, with a few of his personal followers, alone kept his post, and was at last surrounded by almost the whole force of the English. They called upon him to surrender, but he refused with an oath, saying he would never yield to one of a race “who had been traitors to their king.”[205] Reginald Croc, a knight of Falkes’s household,[206] then levelled a spear at him and struck him in the eye. The Marshal, coming up at that moment, seized the bridle of the count’s horse, “and it seemed right, as the count was the chief man on the French side.” Perche dropped the bridle, took his sword in both hands, and struck with it on the Marshal’s helmet three blows in quick succession, “so mighty that they dinted it visibly,” and then suddenly fell from his horse. The Marshal thought he had fainted, “and feared that he himself should be blamed therefor.” “Dismount and take off his helmet,” said one of Perche’s men, William of Montigny, “for it hurts him; but I doubt he will stand up no more.” Croc’s spear had in fact pierced through the eye to the brain, and when the helmet was removed the friends and foes who crowded round saw that the gallant youth was dead.[207]

Perche’s comrades at once rushed down the hill[208] and rejoined the bulk of the French troops, to whom his heroism and the concentration of the English around his person had given a breathing-space of which they had made good use. They and their English allies had rallied in the lower town, and now came, in close array, up the hill, hoping to regain possession of its summit. Meanwhile the young Marshal had rejoined his father. “Are you hurt?” asked the Earl. “No, Sir.” “Forward then! This day we will conquer, or chase them from the field.” Attacked on their right flank by Chester and his “good folk” before they reached the hill-top, confronted when they did reach it by the Marshals, and shut in between the minster and the castle, the French, after another stubborn fight, were again driven down the slope; and this time they were chased right out of the city and through its southern gate, or Stone-Bow,[209] to Wigford Bridge.[210] There they made a last gallant stand, fighting with such desperate fury that “if God had spoken by thunder, He would not have been heard.” Their pursuers were no less daring and impetuous: William Bloet, the young Marshal’s standard-bearer, charged into the crowd on the bridge with such vehemence that he and his horse went sheer over into the river, only, however, to struggle out again with equal quickness and gallantry. Gradually the cry of “King’s men! King’s men!”[211] rose higher above the din. Saer de Quincy and his son Robert were taken; so was Robert FitzWalter; so were several other rebel barons;[212] at last the rest turned and fled across the suburb of Wigford by “the street which goes straight to the hospital”[213]—in other words, the whole length of the present High Street—till they reached the outer or furthermost gate of Lincoln.[214] This gate, known as the Great or Western Bar-Gate, protected the bridge by which the main road from Lincoln to the south crossed the great drain called the Sincil Dyke. Here the fugitives were checked by a double obstacle. The bar of the gate was so constructed that the gate closed of itself after every individual who passed in or out. Just as the foremost of them reached it, a cow tried to enter, and, the gate falling upon her, stuck fast, so that egress was altogether impossible till the animal was slain; and even then, as there was apparently no means of fixing the gate open, each man as he came up had to dismount and open it for himself.[215] The unhappy fugitives might, it seems, have been captured or even slain almost to a man, had their pursuers so willed it; but many of them were English, and the ties of blood restrained their kinsmen in the royalist host from carrying the pursuit to extremity.[216] Notwithstanding this forbearance, however, a large number of prisoners were captured.[217] Among these were nearly all the English barons who had sided with Louis;[218] no less than seven were taken by John Marshal, and several by Bishop Peter and his men;[219] forty-six in all are named by contemporary historians;[220] and the prisoners of knightly rank numbered three hundred,[221] besides many others of lesser degree. Those who escaped “stopped neither by night nor by day, in town or house, for they thought that on every hill-side and in every dale the bushes were all full of Marshals.”[222] Only three of the “great men” among the French—Simon of Poissy, Hugh the castellan of Arras, and Eustace de Merlinghem the constable of Boulogne—reached London with some two hundred knights. The foot-soldiers were nearly all slain by the country folk who came out “with swords and staves” to intercept their flight.[223] In the actual battle only five men had been slain; on one side the Count of Perche, two of his knights,[224] and a man-at-arms whom no one recognized; on the other, Perche’s slayer, Reginald Croc.[225]