Blood Cries Afar (31 page)

Meanwhile, John’s larger expedition wreaked greater havoc.
³⁹⁰
He left St Albans with Philip d’Albini, John Marshal and continental commanders with Flemish troops and crossbowmen, ‘lawless people who neither feared God nor respected man’.
³⁹¹
Resting on the first night at Dunstable, he advanced through Northampton and Rockingham, reaching Nottingham by Christmas Eve: ‘destroying everything in his way, he gave a miserable spectacle to all who saw it’.
³⁹²
No wonder one chronicler wrote that John spent Christmas Day at Nottingham Castle ‘not in the usual fashion but as one on the warpath’.
³⁹³
On hearing of the King’s approach with large forces, castellans abandoned their rebel strongholds and fled to safety, hastily leaving their provisions behind to the advantage of the advancing royalists. This was common practice of those in charge of castles when, as here, they faced clearly unfavourable odds with little or no prospect of relief from their own side if besieged.
³⁹⁴
However, this was often a fine judgment to make. Castellans who too readily gave up their castles might be suspected of treason or cowardice and be punished accordingly: decapitation for capitulation. This was the case at Touques in 1417 when a leading citizen was beheaded for surrendering the town too swiftly, even though help was not on its way (even the messenger was hung for being the bearer of this bad news).

John’s next target was Belvoir Castle. This is where Roger of Wendover’s priory stood. Its lord, William d’Albini, was languishing in the prison of Corfe castle since his capture at Rochester. From the nearby manor of Langar, John sent messengers to the castle, held by William’s son Nicholas d’Albini and two of his knights, William of Studham and Hugh de Charneles. The message was simple: surrender the castle on the first time of asking or their lord would be starved to death, a ‘digraceful’ and ‘ignominious’ way to die, says Wendover. The defending knights took counsel with one another, deciding that as they could not hold out, they were better to lose their castle rather than master, as opposed to both if they resisted. Nicholas and Hugh took the keys of the castle to John at Langar. The following day John went to Belvoir and placed it under the charge of two Poitevin brothers, the mercenaries Geoffey and Oliver de Buteville, and then moved northwards to Newark. This was an important gain for John: as part of a royal castle network with Lincoln, Nottingham, Newark and Sleaford it provided him with essential military assets in a strategically vital area: the last stages of the war were to be played out here the following year. From Newark John ordered Roger of Clifford to take Geoffrey de Mandeville’s castle at Hanley in Warwickshire and for Thomas of Eadington to destroy Tamworth in Staffordshire. Painter believes that ‘in all probability these were the only baronial castles left to the west of the king’s line of march with the possible exception of Mountsorrel.’
³⁹⁵
It is tempting to say that the year had ended well for John: the rebels were not daring to stand before him and his army was progressing equally well further south. But the rebels still held London in the south and there was unfinished business in the north.

By 1 January John was in Doncaster. He was taking the war against the northern barons and their chief ally in the region, the teenaged King Alexander II of Scotland. In the time honoured tradition of Scottish kings, Alexander had taken advantage of an English king’s problem to add to his discomfiture. When John engaged in open war with his barons in the previous autumn, Alexander had promptly moved south into Northumbria and lain siege to Norham, close to the pivotal border town of Berwick, on 19 October.
³⁹⁶
Three days later the Northumbrian barons paid homage to him in return for military aid. Alexander was no doubt trying to improve the harsh conditions of the 1209 and 1212 Anglo-Scottish agreements while reasserting traditional Scottish claims to Northumberland and Westmorland. Eustace de Vescy invested Alexander with Northumberland during the siege of Norham. The garrison held out and a 40-day truce was arranged; Alexander moved on. John was now intent on once again proving his mastery over the British Isles as he done just a few years earlier. And he intended to punish the Scottish king, to ‘run the sandy-eared little fox cub to his earth’.
³⁹⁷

John moved northwards through Yorkshire, burning his way to Pontefract. Here the castellan, John de Lacy, Constable of Chester, submitted to the King. His lord, Earl Ranulf of Chester, spoke up on behalf of de Lacy allowing the rebel to return to John’s mercy by swearing oaths of loyalty while disavowing any ties with the barons and rejecting Magna Carta; as surety, his brother was given over as a hostage. Another rebel, Roger de Montbegon, submitted to John here. Both de Montbegon and de Lacy were two of the original 25 barons. York placed itself at John’s will with a votive offering of £1000, as did Beverley; Robert Oldbridge, Brian de Lisle and Geoffrey de Lacy were given extra men to hold the area. Before he moved on, John wrote to Robert de Ros demanding that he give up Carlisle to Robert de Vieuxpoint while the Earl of Chester took Richmond Castle and probably Middleham, too. On 7 and 8 January John was at Darlington and thence quickly on to Durham, giving the charge of the latter to the powerful Philip of Oldcoates. The speed and ferocity of his march had put his enemies to flight. Alexander, who had burned Newcastle, took to his heels; on 11 January at Melrose the rebels chased out of England vowed their oaths to him again on holy relics. By the third week of January John was at Berwick, the town falling on the 15th, and sacked with great violence. A short but devastating raid across the river Tweed into Scotland was undertaken, John’s forces reaching, and burning, Haddington and Dunbar; at Dunbar the castle was stormed. Roxburgh and numerous villages met with a similar onslaught; even Coldingham Priory was sacked. Keith Stringer has labelled the ‘ruthless thoroughness’ of John’s
chevauchée
as ‘shocking’.
³⁹⁸

On home territory, Alexander rallied his forces from their organised retreat and harassed the English army. He may have sought an engagement with John but the latter characteristically avoided this and used intelligence from scouts to alter the direction of his march. The English raid had anyway achieved its punitive objective in the north, and a lack of supplies – exacerbated by Alexander’s own retreating scorched earth policy – saw the English out of Lothian by 23 or 24 January. Matthew Paris believed that ‘urgent necessity’
³⁹⁹
dictated this. The urgency may have been the news telling of a second wave of French reinforcements reaching London on 7 January. Berwick was torched before the English left (the Scottish chronicles claim at John’s own hand); the castle and bridge across the Tweed were also reported as destroyed and the ships and their cargoes in the port profitably appropriated. Overall it appeared that John had, within a short space of time, ‘delivered a mighty blow to Alexander’s war effort, the more so because long-term infrastructural damage was done. Perhaps unsurprisingly, after this “extraordinary and unequalled devastation” – the Melrose chronicler’s words – John appears to have thought Alexander would soon accept peace.’
⁴⁰⁰
There was no doubting that John had humiliated the Scottish king.

John now headed southwards in the last week of January, sending out his incendiaries into rebel lands once again. The castles of Morpeth, Prudhoe, Wark, Brancepeth and Mitford fell into his hands, and Alnwick was attacked.
⁴⁰¹
The rebel Gilbert Fitzrenfrew went over to John, bringing with him his two castles and ten hostages. Robert de Ros, clearly recognising John’s unstoppable momentum, granted his constable at Carlisle permission to submit to de Vieuxpont, leaving John’s man in complete dominance of Cumberland and Westmoreland except for Cockermouth Castle. The castles of Lancashire were placed under Earl Ranulf’s care and those of Yorkshire under Geoffrey de Neville (the barons in Yorkshire paying homage to John on 11 January). Further afield, John was issuing orders regarding the control of Manchester and Moulton. By 7 February John had taken Skelton Castle from Peter de Bruce, leaving Robert de Ros’s Helmsley the only definitely rebel castle in Yorkshire, says Wendover.
⁴⁰²
John progressed through Lincoln, Sleaford, Stamford and Fotheringay, arriving south in Bedford at the very end of February. The ferocious and speedy expedition witnessed victory after victory and some notable submissions. Painter is not alone among some historians in judging that ‘the King’s northern campaign had been highly successful.’
⁴⁰³

But was it? On paper the bald recital of facts and of castles taken would appear to support this view. The reality was, yes, John had been triumphant in vanquishing all before him; but the trouble was, as ever with John, that it was all so ephemeral. John’s campaign had to be fast: he did not want to be in the same position as King Harold in 1066, fighting at Stamford Bridge while an invasion force landed on the south coast. As Holt so perceptively recognises, this necessary speed ‘reduced the effectiveness of John’s onslaught, for the rebels could readily appreciate that he could stay in the north for a limited time’.
⁴⁰⁴
The loss of castles was a serious blow to the rebels, already outnumbered in this department, and the royal garrisons left behind had significant control of the north. But the garrisons were expensive to maintain and they could not ensure a pacified region that had as its neighbour a hostile King of Scotland and the English rebels that had retreated north of the border. The rebels had deliberately employed a strategy of non-resistance for their castles, surrendering them without a fight. Wendover says that Donnington was left vacant when John arrived there; in probability there was a skeleton garrison in place there. As Ralph Coggeshall wrote: ‘The King and his army … depopulated the lands of the barons, incessantly dedicated to plunder and burning … The Northern barons fled before his face while a few submitted themselves to the mercy of the merciless one.’
⁴⁰⁵
This was a sensible tactical retreat that, while executed at a considerable cost, permitted them the freedom to fight later with the French on their side. Already by 20 January another contingent of French troops had arrived in London with Louis promising to come with his main force at Easter. With John back in the south, regional stability would be harder to enforce: before John had even arrived back at Bedford, the Scots had crossed over the border again to besiege Carlisle, and by spring the rebels were besieging York. John had decidedly gained the upper hand for the moment, and, in addition to peace overtures by the leading barons Robert de Ros, Eustace de Vescy and Peter de Brus, many minor figures amongst the rebels made their peace with John, reflecting the new developments. The northern rebellion was essentially over. That John was ready to come to terms with them indicates an awareness of his position: much better than it was before Rochester’s fall, but still with the capital in enemy hands. If John had held London as well, Louis might have thought twice about invading.

John’s successes arguably came at another cost. The sheer brutality of the campaign, with the worst excesses committed by foreign mercenaries on English soil, alienated many of his own subjects. The monastic chroniclers, never short of ammunition to fire at John, lamented the terrible sufferings of the English, but even writers on the royalist side acknowledged this, speaking of how the ‘men of Flanders, foreign knights and soldiers, who every day were set on pillage … bent on laying waste’ the land.
⁴⁰⁶
We have encountered Ralph of Coggeshall’s descriptions of events at Ely and the fear created by John’s army, but it is Wendover who provides us with the devastating reality of John’s campaign. In a passage entitled ‘On the various types of suffering endured by the Christian people’, he writes of John’s soldiers:

The whole surface of the earth was covered with these limbs of the devil like locusts, who assembled … to blot out every thing from the face of the earth, from man down to his cattle; for, running about with drawn swords and knives, they ransacked towns, houses cemeteries, and churches, robbing everyone, and sparing neither women and children; the King’s enemies wherever they were found were imprisoned in chains and compelled to pay a heavy ransom. Even the priests, whilst standing at the very altars … were seized, tortured, robbed and ill-treated … They inflicted similar tortures on knights and others of every condition. Some of them they hung up by the middle, some by the feet and legs, some by their hands, and some by the thumbs and arms, and then threw salt mixed with vinegar in the eyes of the wretched … Others were placed on gridirons over live coals, and then bathing their roasted bodies in cold water they thus killed them.
⁴⁰⁷

Such depictions may owe some literary flourish to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle or ecclesiastical traditions (St Laurence, for example, was martyred on a gridiron), but, as I have argued in my book
By Sword and Fire: Cruelty and Atrocity in Medieval Warfare
, such medieval tales of barbarity had firm and disturbing foundations in reality. Here, the atrocities are confirmed by Ralph of Coggeshall’s account of the attack on Ely. The violence was not gratuitous, or even merely punitive in nature; at its heart lay the prosaic but vital motivational force of money. Wendover makes this vividly clear:

The wretched creatures uttered pitiable cries and dreadful groans, but there was no one to show them pity, for their torturers were satisfied with nothing but their money. Many who had worldly possessions gave them to their torturers, and were not believed when they had given their all; others, who had nothing, gave many promises, that they might at least for a short time put off the tortures they had experienced once. This persecution was general throughout England, and fathers were sold to torture by their sons, brothers by their brothers, and citizens by their fellow citizens.
⁴⁰⁸