Returning now to the state of affairs in October, 1216, when John had just finished his suicidal career at Newark, we find the kingdom to a very great extent in the hands of the party pledged to support Lewis, the enterprising prince to whom the French have not hesitated to attribute the title of the Lion, or the Lion-hearted. This party comprised nearly all the baronage, for John’s insane behaviour during the last year had dispersed the friends whom after the granting of Magna Carta he had gathered to his side; even his brother William, Earl of Salisbury, had gone over to the enemy. Lewis’s party had, however only one point of union, the hatred and distrust inspired by John; and when John was once removed, the disruption of the party and the expulsion of Lewis were sure to come in time. It was certain that all real national feeling would take part against a foreign king; that all the desires for free and ancient institutions and good government would have a much better chance of contentment in the prospect of the reign of the child Henry; and that even the party among the barons which still clung to the feudal ideas of government would have a much better opportunity of regaining its coveted influence through him than through Lewis. But the cause of the child was at first sight very weak. John had driven all the strong men from his side; and Archbishop Langton, on whom the defence of what was now become the national dynasty would properly have devolved, was at Rome, in temporary disgrace. It may be fairly said that had not the Roman legate Gualo taken up a decided line, had not Honorius III. seen his way to reconcile the rights of the nation with the maintenance of the Plantagenet dynasty, Lewis must for the moment have triumphed, and England would then have had to win her freedom by a mortal struggle with France. But Gualo was staunch. The great Pope who had committed England to him was just dead, but Honorius III. was no more likely than Innocent to be satisfied with half-service; and the legate saw that both his own prospects of advancement and the credit of the Roman see were involved in the success of this administration. With him was Peter des Rochos, the Bishop of Winchester, whom John had made justiciar after the death of Geoffrey Fitz Peter. He was a Poictevin who had been transformed from a knight into a bishop with few qualifications and little ceremony; but he was faithful to John and to his son, and he was the representative man of the foreign party at court, which stood chiefly if not solely by personal attachment to the king. There were two or three other bishops who had won their places in John’s chancery, the Earl Ranulf of Chester, nearly the last left of the great feudal aristocracy of the Conquest; William Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke, now growing old, who had been the intimate friend of the younger Henry, who had been a justice and regent under Richard, who had helped to set John on the throne, and had remained personally faithful to him to the last although his own sons were on the side of the barons.
The Charter
re-issued.
This little party had the child crowned on October 28, at Gloucester; and on November 12, at Bristol, re-issued the Great Charter in his name, with some important omissions. They did not venture at so critical a time to renew the articles which placed taxation in the hands of the national council or define the nature of that assembly; but in the final clause of the document these articles were declared to be suspended only because of the urgency of the times. The guardianship of the king and what little remained to him of the kingdom was placed in the hands of William Marshall, and the bishops and barons swore fealty to Henry, as his contemporaries called him—Henry IV., or Henry of Winchester, the son of King John. The office of guardian for an infant king had never yet been needed in England, at least since the days of Ethelred the Unready, and all that we know of the present arrangement is that it was made in the council, and with the acquiescence of the legate. The title that William Marshall took was “governor of the king and kingdom.” We might have expected that the queen-mother would have been guardian of the person of the King; but he had no near male kinsman to take charge of the kingdom, according to the reasonable rule that the defence of the inheritance belongs to the nearest heir, that of the person to the nearest relation who cannot inherit; and accordingly the wardship of both was entrusted by the national council to a chosen leader. No other in age, dignity, experience, or faithfulness came near the Earl of Pembroke.
Struggle with
Lewis.
The struggle with Lewis covers the first year of the reign. Winter was too far advanced at the time of the Bristol Council for much active warfare, and a truce was as usual concluded for the Christmas season, purchased by the surrender of some of the royal castles. Before the new reign began Lewis’s side had lost two of its representative men—Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex, the leader of the old baronial party, and Eustace de Vesey, who had conducted the intrigues with Scotland and France which had brought about the present complication. The greatness of Lewis’s early success and the haughty assumptions of his French followers were already disgusting the barons, and those who had no cause to despair of pardon were contemplating adhesion to Henry. The year 1217, however, began with brisk action. Henry’s supporters assembled at Oxford, Lewis and his party at Cambridge. The military strength was all on the side of the latter; whilst the legate was treating for a truce Lewis was besieging and taking castles. Before Lent he had reduced the whole of Eastern England, except Lincoln, which held out unswervingly under Nicolaa de Camvill, the wife of that Gerard who had drawn John into his first quarrel with Longchamp. But at Midlent Lewis was summoned to France; and, although he returned in a few weeks, he found that some of his supporters had changed sides. The Earl of Salisbury had gone over to his nephew; the legate was preaching a crusade against the disloyal and excommunicated; and the loyal barons bestirred themselves to some purpose.
Battle of Lincoln,
1217.
They advanced from the West, just as had been the case in the end of Stephen’s days, Lincoln again appearing to be the decisive battle-ground. And so it was. Lewis returned in an evil mood, determined to treat England as a conquered country; the barons detected his design and deserted him one by one. At Whitsuntide the king’s party advanced to relieve Lincoln under the Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Chester, and the legate. Lincoln was relieved at the cost of a battle; but in the battle was slain Lewis’s chief captain, the Count of Perche, and Saer de Quincy and Robert Fitz-Walter, the leading spirits of the anti-royalists, were captured. Lewis was not there, but engaged in the siege of Dover Castle, which had not yet been taken. On the news of the battle he threw himself into London, and there awaited foreign succor. The foreign succor came as far as Thanet; but there, on St. Bartholomew’s Day, it was beaten and dispersed by the English fleet, which thus justified the pains and cost that John had spent upon it.
Departure of
Lewis.
Third issue of
the Charter.
That defeat decided the struggle; within a month Lewis had consented to make peace and go home. The legate showed a wise and politic mercy in treating the rebels as ecclesiastical offenders and admitting them to absolution and penance; and William Marshall was not anxious to alienate friends by exacting the penalties for a treason which it might be difficult to define, and in which his own family was largely implicated. By Michaelmas 1217 the peace was restored, and the Charter again re-issued in a still more modified form. This may be regarded as the ending of the Magna Carta struggle in its first phase. It was now become permanently the palladium of English constitutional liberty; it was recognized as the salvation of king and kingdom, and the legate, instead of anathematizing, had turned and blessed it.