Richard & John: Kings at War (78 page)

John hit back with a mixture of threats, cajolery, promises, bribes and sweeteners. On 9 and 10 May he published letters promising to submit all points of difference between him and the barons to papal arbitration, doubtless now confident that Innocent would back him to the hilt. He also offered a concession: ‘Know that we have granted to our barons who are against us that we shall not take them or their men, nor disseise them, nor go upon them by force or arms, except by the law of our realm or by the judgement of their peers in our court.’
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John tried to put flesh on these bones by offering to have two particularly controversial reliefs, those imposed on the earl of Essex and the bishop of Hertford (significantly relating to inheritances from two of John’s most hated families, the Mandevilles and the Braoses) reviewed by a jury of their peers.
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If
John could be trusted, this was a significant concession, as it was an implicit admission that the barons had genuine grievances and that he himself had acted arbitrarily and unjustly, but could he be trusted? Might this not simply be a ruse to get the barons to disarm, whereupon the ‘concession’ would be at once rescinded? What guarantees was the king offering? Also, it seemed just too transparent a ploy to abandon the general demands of the charter for the satisfaction of a few particular ones on an ad hoc basis. But the offer was speciously reasonable, deliberately made to seem attractive to waverers, and some of the barons took the bait, influenced no doubt by John’s ‘carrot and stick approach’: alongside the silky purr of diplomacy the king applied the resounding thwack of main force by granting rebel lands to his favourites. Some of the less obdurate rebels began to buckle at this point. When Henry Braybrooke had two manors seized, he secured a safe-conduct to come and talk to John about the terms on which he could be reconciled. Even more dramatic was the coming to heel of Simon Patishall. On 15 May John alienated his manor of Wasden to one of his placemen; within a week Patishall had used the good offices of the abbot of Woburn to make his peace with the monarch.
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Stalemate and stand-off, almost ‘phoney war’, seemed the main feature of the civil war by mid-May, with the rebels entrenched in London and John based at Winchester (but even now pursuing his peripatetic existence - Fremantle (Wiltshire) 17-19 May, Silchester 19 May, Winchester 19-20 May, Odiham (Hampshire) 21-22 May, Windsor 22-23 May, Winchester 23-24 May). While the king sent a plethora of negotiators and mediators to treat with the rebels, with Stephen Langton always foremost, he tried to extinguish baronial hopes in the west, so that he would not be threatened by a two-front war. There seem to have been two (and possibly three) expeditions to the West Country under the earl of Salisbury. One was supposed to relieve the rebel siege of Exeter, but the city fell before the royal troops could get under way properly. It was either on this or a subsequent occasion that the embarrassed Salisbury, believing the enemy were preparing an ambush near Sherborne (Dorset), crept back to Winchester with his tail between his legs, claiming that he was hopelessly outnumbered.
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John is said to have remarked scornfully that Salisbury’s approach was no way to take fortresses. It seems that the earl was indeed unduly fainthearted, for when John sent him back with reiterated orders to relieve or retake Exeter, boldness won the day. Once again Salisbury’s scouts brought him alarming news of an ambuscade near Sherborne, but this time the earl preferred to take his chances with a concealed enemy rather than return for another shaming tongue-lashing from John. Salisbury’s army was mainly composed of Flemish mercenaries and their ferocious reputation preceded them, to the point where the rebels in Exeter did not relish trying conclusions with them and lamely evacuated the city.
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John’s strategy now was to tighten the noose around the rebels in London while he waited for reinforcements to come in from overseas. Hubert de Burgh was put in charge of the new army to be formed from the foreign knights, and meanwhile John tried to close the ring by mustering forces at Marlborough and Reading and then ordering them to a general rendezvous between Odiham (Hampshire) and Farnham (Surrey). That John was thinking of investing London from both sides is clear from the instruction to Stephen Langton on 26 May that he should hand over Rochester castle (in Langton’s custody by right of his being the archbishop of Canterbury) and allow the king to garrison it with his own men; the subtext is clear - John had no confidence in Langton’s ultimate loyalties.
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John indulged himself in his favourite stalling tactics by negotiating interminable truces and safe-conducts with the barons, under the guise of an earnest quest for peace.
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The stalling extended to the papacy. John kept Innocent III warm by writing that it was only the rebellion that prevented him setting out on the much-desired crusade.
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But the first week in June saw a major setback to his plans. Northampton Castle suddenly collapsed under the fury of the townspeople, who massacred some of the garrison. Then simultaneous news came in that Lincoln had fallen to the rebels and that the garrison still holding out in the Tower of London was likely to capitulate at any moment.
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There were four rebel armies in the field but, even more seriously, England had lurched into financial and administrative anarchy. Taxes were no longer being paid or courts attended, while debtors and criminals awaited the outcome of the civil war.
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To some of John’s more thoughtful advisers, the slide towards anarchy was ominous. It was not inconceivable that the political void would lead to total social breakdown, with a peasant rising as the ultimate nightmare. The king might well find that, even if he defeated the barons, he had a rural
jacquerie
on his hands. He would certainly not get any money in the future. It was time to bow to the inevitable and strike a deal with the rebel magnates.

On 8 June John issued a safe-conduct for the rebel leaders, enabling them to make a journey to and from Staines between 9-11 June. On 10 June he himself came down from Windsor to the water meadows near Staines to meet rebel leaders and commit himself to a draft schedule.
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A preliminary version of Magna Carta (the Great Charter) known as the ‘Articles of the Barons’ was haggled over, but in the end John agreed to affix his royal seal to it, to show that he had agreed the provisions in principle.
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He then sent William Marsal and an embassy to London to tell the dissidents there what had happened: ‘that for the sake of peace and for the welfare and honour of his realm, he would freely concede to them the laws and liberties which they asked; and that they might appoint a place and day for him and them to meet, for the settlement of all these things’.
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When both sides had discussed the terms among themselves, a formal ceremony of acceptance took place at Runnymede on the 15th. Both sides pitched their tents a short distance from each other on a long level stretch of grassland that ran down to the riverbank. The barons came with a large party of well-armed knights, perhaps still not quite trusting John.
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It was an impressive assembly, with anyone who was anyone in English politics present: Stephen Langton, Pandulph, all the senior bishops, the Master of the English Templars, William Marshal, Hubert de Burgh, the earls of Salisbury, Warren and Arundel and a host of other dignitaries and warriors.
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Magna Carta concludes with the words ‘Given in the meadow that is called Runnymede between Windsor and Staines, 15 June’. Several more days were to elapse, however, while the Chancery clerks and their rebel equivalents hammered out the exact wording. Finally, when copies had been made and distributed on all sides, there was a further ceremony on 19 June, when the rebel barons formally renewed their oaths of allegiance to the king. This was a necessary quid pro quo, for a solemn grant by the Crown could not be made to rebels still in the field against that selfsame royal authority.
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The towering reputation of Magna Carta seems at first sight puzzling, since the sixty-three clauses of the Charter overwhelmingly deal with medieval and feudal matters. Much predictable mirth has been expended by the cynics and sceptics on clauses like number 33: ‘Henceforth all fish-weirs shall be completely removed from the Thames and the Medway, and throughout all England, except on the sea coast.’ For convenience Magna Carta may be considered under four headings: purely baronial grievances; wider issues touching on the law; clauses benefiting the rebels’ allies; and those aspects which really do bear upon the common good and ‘liberty’ as it would be understood today. Reliefs, wardships, marriage, the position of widows of tenants-in-chief, and the payment of debts to the Crown were the most vexatious matters oppressing the barons, and the sought-for protections were assured in clauses 2-9. Clauses 10-11 covered debts due to the Jews. There was an important concession about scutage in clauses 12 and 14, where it was declared that this would be taken ‘only by the common counsel of our kingdom’. This meant, in future, not just rubber-stamping by handpicked royal advisers but the actual consent of the tenants-in-chief, who would be summoned to give it either individually, if they were great lords, or collectively, in the case of lesser barons. John promised to abolish the ‘evil customs’ of the Forest once a commission of enquiry had reported, and to disafforest all the land he had afforested in his reign (clauses 44, 47, 48 and 53). He furthermore promised to restore immediately all lands, castles and other property he had taken from anyone without proper judgement and to have similar acts by his father or brother investigated and rectified once he himself had returned from crusade (clause 52). He also pledged himself to return all hostages that he had taken ‘as security for peace or faithful service’ (clause 49) and to expel from his kingdom all mercenary troops and foreign knights and crossbowmen (clause 51). The most startling concession wrung from John by the barons was a written promise to clamp down on the activities of Gérard d’Athée and his kinsfolk, explicitly named in clause 50 as follows: ‘Engelard de Cigogne, Peter and Guy and Andrew de Chanceaux, Guy de Cigogne, Geoffrey de Martigny with his brothers, Philip Mark with his brothers and his nephew Geoffrey, and all their followers.’

The legal reforms of Magna Carta were momentous. The barons did not attack those aspects of John’s reforms which had benefited litigants, even though they were primarily designed to swell his coffers, but they did object to the king’s manipulation of legal processes for his own advantage. In future he was not to deny a man justice, to take money from anyone for helping to get him a favourable verdict or for delaying a suit, to sell writs or to try to make a profit out of the sale of writs that initiated legal actions or to try to use writs to bring into the royal court matters that could be perfectly well dealt with in the barons’ own feudal courts. It was stipulated that no action against an offender should deprive a man of his liberty, rights at law or property ‘except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land’. The limitation of the power of sheriffs was another prime aim of the Charter (clauses 4, 24, 26, 30, 48). John’s foreign henchmen were specifically targeted in the requirement that the king could not simply appoint anyone he wished as sheriff and that no one could be appointed sheriff or justice who did not know the law of the land (clause 45). Moreover, in a significant new development, common pleas could be held in a fixed place and those who entered them did not have to follow the king’s court around the country to secure a hearing (clause 17). Clause 18 stated that judges were to hear the assizes of novel disseisin, mort d’ancestor and darrein presentment - exactly the sort of jargon that makes the past seem a foreign country to all but scholars. In plain English, it offered safeguards to anyone who felt he had been wrongly dispossessed of property, who claimed to be the lawful heir to a deceased person’s property or who disputed patronage of churches. Whereas, previously, writs had to be prepared and presented by the plaintiff, with all the attendant expense and risk, under the new system the sheriff had the duty to prepare such writs and to convene a jury to hear the case when the king’s judges next visited the county. As has been pointed out more than once, clause 18 was an anomaly in that it was the only clause in the Charter that asked for
more
government rather than less. The demand that royal judges should hold county court sessions four times a year proved beyond the administrative capability of the governments that succeeded John’s.

Although most of the Charter was designed to satisfy the demands and aspirations of the barons, either explicitly or implicitly, the fact that they claimed to be campaigning for justice, not to mention the prudential requirements of simple politics, meant that they had to include some sops or inducements for their actual or potential allies. Wales and Scotland were placated in clauses 56-59, while London was specifically favoured by the provisions of clauses 12 and 13, which effectively gave the capital the status of ‘most favoured city’. The barons realised the growing importance of the merchant classes, and sought protection for the privileges of towns, freedom of trade, liberty of movement for merchants, including the right to pass freely to and from national borders; foreign merchants were given the same rights except in wartime (clauses 41-43). There is something almost pettifogging about the barons’ concern for commerce in clause 35: ‘Let there be one measure of wine throughout our kingdom and one measure of ale and one measure of corn, namely the London quarter, and one width of cloth, whether dyed, russet or halberjet, namely two ells within the selvedges. Let it be the same with weights as with measures.’ Even infrastructure got a mention, with clause 23 emphasising the importance of bridge-building. But for a modern reader perhaps the most interesting provisions of the Charter are the ‘universal’ ones, real or alleged. All classes, even the peasantry, benefited from the mitigation of ‘amercements’ - those notoriously draconian punishments ordained for misdemeanours - such as neglect of public duties, failing to bring a criminal to justice, mumbling or pleading falteringly in court or minor offences against public order. Clause 20 of Magna Carta tried to make the fine fit the crime and declared that no fine should make a peasant economically unviable; moreover, only local men, not royal officials, were to decide the amercement. Hitherto it had been a simple matter for the king’s officials to declare almost anyone in default on this score and at the king’s mercy - a plight only to be relieved on payment of a fine. Amercements rarely came to less than half a mark (six shillings and eight pence) in an era when the average wage of a day labourer was thirty shillings a year and the total value of a peasant’s goods and chattels seldom exceeded ten shillings. On other aspects of the ‘General Good’, some critics have attempted to read clauses 12 and 14 as adumbrating an embryonic parliament. The one incontestable breakthrough came in clause 39 in the famous
nullus homo liber
provision: ‘No free man shall be taken or imprisoned or disseised or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.’ The original wording was to have been ‘any baron’; by changing it to ‘any free man’ the drafters of Magna Carta turned a medieval document into something that has often been hailed as a charter of freedom that belongs to the ages.
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