For alack, I can neither write, nor read."
"Four nobles a week, then, I will give thee,
For this merry jest thou hast shown unto me;
And tell the old Abbot when thou comest home,
Thou has brought him a pardon from good King John."
THE LAST DAYS OF KING JOHN (1216).
Source.—Matthew of Westminster, Vol. II., pp. 127, 128. G. Bell & Sons.
Prince Louis and all his followers embarked on board the ships, and came with a fair wind to the isle of Thanet, and anchored in the place which is called Stanhore, on the 21st of May. King John was at that time with his army at Dover, but as he was surrounded by a band of foreign mercenaries, who loved Louis more than John, King of England, he did not dare to encounter Louis in a hostile manner, lest his troups might perchance desert King John himself in his necessity, and transfer themselves to Louis. From which considerations he preferred retreating at the time to engaging in a doubtful battle. Therefore, he retreated, and withdrew to Canterbury, and left and entrusted the Castle of Dover to the custody and good faith of Hubert de Burgh. And soon afterwards, Gualo, the legate, landed in England, for the protection of King John and the kingdom against Louis and his partisans. But King John fled as far as Winchester, and Louis, when he found that no one offered to resist him, disembarked from his ships, and landing at Sandwich, subdued immediately the whole of that district, with the exception of the town of Dover, and hastening towards London, he made himself master of the Castle of Rochester, and on the 2nd of June he arrived in London, where first of all he offered up prayers at St. Paul's, and was afterwards publicly received by the clergy and laity with great joy, and received the fealty and homage of all the barons. And shortly afterwards, namely on the 14th of June, the city of Winchester was surrendered to him; and on the day after the feast of Saint John, he took the castle of the city, and the bishop's castle also; and on the 9th of July he received the submission of the Castles of Odiham, Farnham, Guildford and Reigate. The Castle of Windsor was besieged by the earls and barons of both France and England, but they were forced to retreat from before it, without succeeding in their object. But the Castle of Cambridge was taken by the barons, with twenty esquires which were found in it.
The same year Gualo, the legate, exacted visitation fees throughout all England, from all the cathedral churches and houses of religious brotherhoods, fixing each visitation fee at fifty shillings. He also seized all the benefices of the clergy and men of religious orders, who adhered to Louis and the barons, and converted them to the use of his own clergy. In the meantime, King John, inflamed with the madness of passion, oppressed and grievously afflicted the provinces of Suffolk and Norfolk. Then, continuing his march towards the north, he irrecoverably lost his carriages, and much of his baggage at Wellester, where they were swallowed up by a quicksand. And when he heard the news he grieved inconsolably, and redoubling deep sighs, he passed the night at Swineshead Abbey, belonging to the Carthusian order, where according to his custom, he gorged himself with peaches soaked in new wine and cider, and being greatly absorbed in grief for his recent loss, he became attacked with a severe illness.
But the next day, concealing his illness lest the enemy should triumph over him, he, though with difficulty, mounted his horse; and soon afterwards, having had a litter drawn by horses made for him, he dismounted from his palfrey and entered it, and in this way he came to the Castle of Leadford, where he spent the night, and found his disease increase greatly. But the next day he was carried forwards and arrived at the Castle of Newark where he took to his bed, and his sickness assumed a fatal appearance; and summoning the Abbot of Crofestune, who was skilful in the art of medicine, to his side, he confessed himself to him, and received the eucharist from him. And he appointed Henry, his eldest son, the heir of his kingdom, bequeathing his body to the Church of Worcester, under the protection of Saint Wolstan. After this, with the greatest bitterness of spirit, he cursed all his barons, instead of bidding them farewell; and in this manner, poor, deprived of all his treasures, and not retaining the smallest portion of land in peace, so that he was truly called Lackland, he most miserably departed from this life on the night following the next after the day of Saint Luke the Evangelist. And because this John made himself detestable to many persons, not only on account of the death of his nephew, Arthur, but also on account of his tyrannical conduct, and of the tribute with which he bound the kingdom of England under perpetual slavery, and of the war which his misdeeds provoked, he scarcely deserved to be mourned by the lamentations of any one.