Richard & John: Kings at War (77 page)

Since many of the greatest magnates, such as William Marshal, the archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of Ely held aloof from the fray, the question must be posed: who were the barons who opposed John? Were they all northerners? Were they all motivated by the same considerations? It would be misleading to see the movement for the charter in 1215 as an exclusively northern phenomenon; the problem has arisen because the chroniclers used the word ‘northerners’ as a shorthand tag for baronial rebels and in turn thought of them this way because one of their prominent ringleaders was Eustace de Vesci, lord of Alnwick, now in the forefront of opposition to John alongside his former fellow exile Robert Fitzwalter, lord of Dunmow and hereditary holder of Barnard Castle in the city of London; both of them had headed the 1212 rebellion.
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Vesci and Fitzwalter had been expressly named by Innocent III as lords against whom John was not allowed to take reprisals, as part of the settlement which ended the papal interdict and excommunication. The ingenious duo of barons, who had actually planned to murder John, duped Innocent III into believing that they had fled abroad (not, as in fact they did, because the king discovered their conspiracy) because they could no longer stomach the persecutions of the Church by an ungodly king. The Pope regarded them as martyrs, accepted that his cause and theirs were one and the same, and insisted on their restoration to full wealth and honours in England as an earnest of John’s sincerity.
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The reality is that there was bad blood between both Fitzwalter and Vesci on the one hand and John on the other, and this was a long-standing affair, which had nothing to do with John’s struggle with the Church. The fact that Vesci and Fitzwalter pulled the wool over the Pope’s eyes and those of the papal legate Pandulph, has nothing to do with the core issue. Vesci’s main grievance seems to have been John’s lecherous designs on his wife,
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but Fitzwalter’s animosity was overdetermined. Some say John tried to seduce his daughter, others that Fitzwalter defied the king by bringing five hundred armed men in a show of force to a trial for murder by Fitzwalter’s spoiled and roughneck son-in-law Geoffrey de Mandeville. It is quite within the realm of possibility that John had offended Fitzwalter in both ways but he was certainly no noble rebel fighting for freedom, as in the absurd legend, but a deeply unpleasant thug with a well-documented track record for cowardice, treachery and ingratitude.
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Vesci and Fitzwalter, the two highest profile rebels, were profoundly rebarbative individuals, but this in no way vindicates John nor does it affect the merits of the campaign for the Charter. Evil men may, intentionally or otherwise, support good causes, and vice versa. There were others in the Vesci/Fitzwalter mould among the barons, notably Saer de Quincy, who had collaborated with Fitzwalter in cravenly opening the gates of Vaudreuil in Normandy to Philip Augustus in 1203 and was William Marshal’s bête noire.
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Yet there were others who had good grounds for their hatred of John. Giles de Braose, bishop of Hereford, had never forgotten the dreadful fate meted out by John to his brother and sister-in-law. Nicholas Stuteville had been mulcted by John for no less than 10,000 marks as the ‘relief ’ for his inheritance. William Mowbray had even deeper grounds for hatred. John had demanded 2,000 marks to hear a case concerning his barony and had then barefacedly given judgement against him - all this in the case of a man who had spent four years in Germany as a hostage for the payment of Richard’s ransom in the 1190s.
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For some, adherence to the rebels was a simple function of family loyalty. Geoffrey de Mandeville, earl of Essex, was in the Fitzwalter orbit (only fitting, as he owed him his life), as were the other members of this extended clan: Henry Bohun, earl of Hereford, Robert de Vere, earl of Oxford and Geoffrey de Say. Since these were southern magnates, it is clear that, even if the rebellious spirit first flickered in the north, it was fanned into flame farther south. The northern faction of the rebellious barons contained few great earls, and leadership quickly devolved on the lords of East Anglia and the south.
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The rebel spirit was also very strong in John’s beloved West Country: the earl of Salisbury led an army against the men of Dorset and Devon but was forced to retreat because of his inferior numbers.
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On paper the rebels’ endeavour seemed a desperate venture, as the really big baronial guns held firm and stayed loyal to John. The earls of Salisbury, Chester, Albemarle, Warren and Cornwall, plus William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, all lined up behind the king. So did the lords of Aubigny, Vipont, De Lucy, Basset, Cantelupe, Neville and Brewer; all these had pointedly paid the scutage demanded by John which the ‘northerners’ so vehemently objected to.
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Although numerically inferior to the rebels, John’s loyal barons carried far more weight in terms of power, land, money and prestige. The two most notable were William Marshal and Ranulph de Mandeville, earl of Chester. Though with no illusions about John, and in some instances having suffered just as much objective damage as the rebels, these men took the view that only egregious tyranny could outweigh their feudal oaths of allegiance, and in their view John had not yet crossed the invisible line separating an authoritarian monarch from a despot; it would be a mistake to underrate the medieval fear of chaos as Satan’s work. The prestige of Marshal and Mandeville was particularly important: Marshal brought the senior Irish lords in his wake, while the earl of Chester attached William Ferrers, earl of Derby, and other important lords to John’s standard. The open adherence of the earls of Warwick, Devon, Arundel and Surrey to the king also helped to tip the balance of power in his favour.
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There were also perhaps a hundred neutral or undecided barons. Gradually it seemed most intelligent for the more far-sighted of the king’s party to make common cause with these neutrals and try to hammer out a peace formula. It was not just that if John completely vanquished the rebels, he might not be able to resist the temptation to make himself an absolute ruler by turning and rending his erstwhile allies; it was also that the ever-present fear of the chaos principle accelerated daily, once it was realised that sons were taking up arms against fathers and brothers against brothers .
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Not even William Marshal’s gravitas saved him from this fate, since his eldest son joined the rebels. There was a generational tinge to the conflict also, since young men and heirs tended to join the rebels while their fief-holding fathers clung to the status quo. Bit by bit, then, it was the middle-of-the road centrist opinion that prevailed over the outright advocates of civil war, whether Eustace de Vesci and Fitzwalter on the one hand or the fire-eating reactionaries in John’s entourage on the other. Vesci, in particular, sustained a personal check when Innocent III singled him out and warned him not to vex or trouble the king.
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John had not been idle after the Epiphany meeting with the rebel barons. His reflex action to all challenges to his authority was to use force so, while pretending diplomacy, he began assembling an army. His first step was to order a nationwide renewal of the oath of allegiance, trying to manipulate the modalities of liege homage so that each subject taking the oath would bind himself to ‘stand by him against all men’. This was at once construed by the rebels (correctly) as the opening shot in John’s campaign against the charter.
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He sent commissioners to the ostensibly ‘loyal’ counties in the south and Midlands to rally their support, and called in knights from Poitou and Ireland. On 19 February John was persuaded to sign a safe-conduct allowing the ‘northern’ barons to travel to Oxford to confer with William Marshal, Stephen Langton and a quorum of other bishops who fancied themselves peacemakers .
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The conference took place on 22 February but, whatever tentative proposals were made then were soon overtaken by two dramatic new developments. In an act of consummate cunning, on 4 March John took vows as a crusader. He had not the slightest intention of travelling to Outremer but he knew that his father had taken the Cross without actually going on crusade, and could see the potential of such a manoeuvre to obfuscate issues and confuse the opposition. Moreover, by taking the Cross John put himself and his cause technically under the protection of the Church and, as a crusader, he was allowed three years’ grace before fulfilling his secular obligations.
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John’s act gives new meaning to the word machiavellianism. Meanwhile at the end of April there was good news from Rome. Both sides had lobbied the Vatican: John’s agent William Mauclerc reached the Eternal City on 17 February and at the end of the month Eustace de Vesci himself arrived with written representations to Innocent III from his confederates.
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The Pope quickly decided in favour of John.

Gone were the days when Innocent III forced John to make special exceptions for Vesci. His former protégé was now firmly in the rebel camp, and Innocent doubtless took a grim satisfaction in disappointing the hopes of those who had so grievously disappointed his during the interdict. Although the documentary evidence Vesci produced of John’s stalling, prevarication and duplicity was compelling - and archbishop Stephen Langton himself was fuming at John’s wriggling tergiversation - for Innocent in 1215 the overriding consideration was that John had placed himself in the papal camp twice over: by making himself a papal vassal and England a papal fief; and by taking the Cross. Innocent had already shown which way the wind was likely to blow by prohibiting the election to the archbishopric of York of Simon Langton, Stephen’s brother, purely because that was what John wanted.
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On 19 March 1215 he wrote his formal pronouncement on the dispute in England. A letter to the barons condemned leagues and conspiracies against King John, especially since they would have the effect of delaying his holy purpose of going on crusade.
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The same day Innocent wrote to Stephen Langton to rebuke him for failing to mediate between the king and the rebels, and for having allegedly given succour and comfort to the northern barons.
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Innocent followed up this initial salvo with a fresh barrage on 1 April. He ordered the barons to pay for the Poitevin scutage of 1214, again citing the imminence of the crusade as the reason; if the barons wanted justice he added naively, they could seek it from the Vicar of Christ himself.
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Finally on 7 July he reprimanded the English bishops for their lukewarm support for King John and their sympathy for the rebels, declaring that they were indulging in a wicked conspiracy against God’s holy work and a ‘worthy’ king who was prepared to carry the fight for the true faith to Outremer; if they did not themselves wish to be dismissed from office, they should immediately excommunicate the rebels.
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It infuriated Stephen Langton that Innocent either could not or would not see through John’s obvious ploys, and the disingenuous pretence of going on crusade. But John played his machiavellian hand to perfection. Until the shoal of letters from Innocent arrived in England, John was the very model of a meek son of the Church, appearing conciliatory at all points and even rescinding the order to the knights of Poitou to join him.
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Needless to say, when Easter came there was still no answer to the barons from the king: John stalled shamelessly, keeping Stephen Langton and William Marshal closeted on detailed negotiations he had no intention of honouring, while he waited for the papal letters to come in. For the barons Innocent’s intervention was the last straw. They responded defiantly, first mustering at Stamford then meeting at Brackley near Northampton and issuing a fresh sheaf of demands, presumably a hardening of their initial conditions, since the next we know is that John rejected them outright. ‘Why do these barons not ask for my kingdom at once?’ he said scornfully. ‘Their demands are idle dreams, without a shadow of reason.’ There followed the customary John tantrum, in which he claimed the barons were trying to turn him into a slave. In vain did Langton and Marshal represent to him that he ought to make some concession. Raging and frothing, John insisted that the two ‘mediators’ return and repeat to the rebels word for word what he had said.
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The barons then decided that the time for diplomacy was past; on 3 May they formally renounced their homage and fealty, in effect declaring that they no longer recognised John as king. Fitzwalter was appointed commander-in-chief of rebel forces and assumed the grandiose title of ‘Marshal of the army of God and Holy Church’. They marched back to Northampton, occupied the town and besieged the castle, held for John by Geoffrey of Martigny, kinsman and protégé of the notorious and much feared mercenary leader Gérard d’Athée.
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The rebels soon realised that John was a tough nut to crack. Perhaps they had underestimated how many mercenaries and well-fortified castles he had under his aegis. At all events they found Northampton Castle to be impregnable, at any rate given the absence of trebuchets which they did not possess; they raised the siege after a fortnight and switched their attentions to Bedford. Here they had better luck, for its constable William de Beauchamp surrendered it to them.
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John meanwhile was not idle. He ordered a general muster at Gloucester and, on 30 April, ordered his forces to proceed to Cirencester for a further rendezvous. Reassured that the fortresses in London, Oxford, Norwich and Bristol were all unassailable and as soon as he received the good news from the Pope, John renewed the request for help from the knights of Poitou and Flanders, and based himself in London, granting the city the right to elect its own mayor in future as a guarantee of its loyalty.
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But if John thought he had thereby secured the capital, he soon received a rude awakening. On Sunday 17 May rebel forces were secretly admitted to London by a powerful dissident faction, acting with speed and precision before the implications of John’s charter of privileges became common knowledge.
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The euphoric rebels then plundered all known royal partisans and instituted a mini-pogrom against the Jews, confiscating their money and tearing down their houses. They then issued a general declaration, calling on all undecided magnates to come off the fence or risk the loss of their property. Fire-eating threats were made to all neutrals that the rebels would ‘direct their banners and their arms against them as against public enemies, and do their utmost to overthrow their castles, burn their dwellings and destroy their fishponds, orchards and parks’.
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Some have interpreted this declaration as a sign of rebel weakness, but for John it was a devastating blow that convinced him that some accommodation with the barons was inevitable.
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