The Demon's Brood (11 page)

But he was ready for his great overseas campaign. While he attacked Philip II from the south-west, Otto of Brunswick (now Emperor Otto IV), the Duke of Brabant and the Counts of
Boulogne, Flanders and Holland, would invade France from the north. He sent his half-brother Salisbury to reinforce them, then sailed for Poitou on 2 February 1214, with an army of mercenaries, taking gold, silver and gems for use as bribes. He left England in the hands of a justiciar, the Bishop of Winchester, a former knight from Touraine who had been the only prelate to stay loyal to him during the interdict.
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The expedition was welcomed at La Rochelle, which depended on English trade. Hoping to win over the barons of Aquitaine, John spent two months marching through Angoulême, La Marche, the Limousin and Gascony, securing the Lusignan clan's homage through bribery. Early in summer he struck north, defeating a French army and capturing Nantes, the Breton capital. In June he occupied Angers as an Angevin count, holding court. Encouraged, he prepared to attack Paris, which Philip II – in the north, trying to intercept the Emperor Otto's invasion – was unable to defend. En route, he besieged the castle of Roche-au-Moine near Angers, the last obstacle to his advance.

When it was about to surrender, Philip's son Louis arrived from Chinon with 800 knights and the Poitevin lords, whose troops formed a substantial part of John's army, refused to fight him. Losing his nerve, the king returned to La Rochelle, where he waited anxiously for news of his northern allies. Despite frantic pleas, the barons of England refused to come to his aid.

On 27 July on some marshy fields near Bouvines, a village between Lille and Tournai, 24,000 imperial troops confronted Philip's slightly smaller army and a confused battle was fought until Otto's wounded horse ran away with him and the French won a crushing victory. This ended all John's hopes, if at first he did not realize it, sending money to the emperor and ordering Peter des Roches to hire 300 Welsh mercenaries for a fresh campaign. In September, however, he accepted a truce from Philip based on the status quo. Next month, he sailed into Dartmouth, humiliated. Normandy and Anjou were lost for ever.

When at La Rochelle John had demanded financial compensation from magnates who had failed to accompany him while his justiciar, Peter des Roches, had outraged the entire baronage by abusing the law. Further taxes were the last straw for the northern lords led by Eustace de Vesci, who refused to pay despite Peter's threat to confiscate their estates. Nor were they more amenable after John's return. Protests came from East Anglia, led by Robert FitzWalter, then from all over England. In autumn 1214 the barons assembled at Bury St Edmunds to voice their grievances and at Epiphany 1215 met in London, fully armed, demanding reforms. The king promised to discuss their complaints at Northampton on the Sunday after Easter, but they did not trust him.

Early in the spring of 1215, five earls and forty barons – almost the entire nobility – elected FitzWalter ‘Marshal of the army of the Lord and Holy Church', then gathered at Stamford before marching south. Their army consisted of 2,000 knights, with many more sergeants (mounted men-at-arms) and foot soldiers. Occupying Northampton, they besieged the castle but, failing to take it, advanced on London. En route, they renounced their feudal homage to the king – questioning his occupancy of the throne.

However, John had powerful allies in the Earls of Chester, Derby, Devon, Salisbury, Surrey and Warwick, who were the richest magnates in England, and in William Marshal. He was also backed by Archbishop Langton, eight other prelates, the Master of the Temple and the papal legate. He could rely, too, on lesser but extremely able men, such as Hubert de Burgh and Peter des Roches. On Ash Wednesday 1215 the king swore an oath to go on Crusade, which secured Innocent III's support. Early in May he gave the city of London a charter allowing its citizens to elect their mayor annually.

John's anxiety to avoid armed confrontation shows in a draft that historians call the ‘Unknown Charter of Liberties', drawn
up before June. Referring to Henry I's coronation charter, this contains such concessions as scaling down feudal dues, granting freedom of inheritance, abolishing scutage and military service overseas, cancelling debts to Jews and relaxing forest laws. ‘Why don't the barons ask for my entire kingdom?', he had commented. ‘What they're demanding is stupid and altogether unrealistic, with no sort of logic behind it.'
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Yet the document shows he was ready to grant a good deal.

At Windsor on 9 May he announced that the dispute would be settled by eight arbitrators, four chosen by each side. When the barons rejected this, he ordered the sheriffs to seize their goods, which was impossible. On the morning of Sunday 17 May, when most citizens were at Mass, the barons entered London, where they took the opportunity to rob and kill Jews. There was trouble elsewhere, rebels capturing and occupying Exeter. Negotiating a truce through Archbishop Langton, John played for time in which to assemble a really large army. Finally he accepted that he must give way if he was to avoid deposition.

The two sides met on 15 June at Runnymede meadow, between Staines and Windsor, a draft treaty having been agreed as a basis for negotiation. ‘Through the Archbishop of Canterbury's mediation, and that of some of his fellow bishops and several barons, a species of peace was concluded', says Ralph of Coggeshall with a certain understatement.
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What was agreed after nearly a week's discussion was a reaffirmation of ancient law and custom applying to every freeman in England.

The real importance of the ‘Great Charter of the Liberties of England and of the Liberties of the Forest' lies of course in the clause that no freeman can be imprisoned or dispossessed of his land or liberty, or outlawed or exiled or punished in any way, except by judgement of his peers or the law of the land. Translated into French in 1219 so that ordinary men could understand it, the Magna Carta was re-issued over 30 times – the last occasion being in 1423 – and, if many clauses have been repealed, is still on the statute books. As a twentieth century
Master of the Rolls, Lord Denning, famously put it, the charter is ‘the greatest constitutional documents of all times – the foundation of the freedom of the individual against the arbitrary authority of the despot.'

The charter covered a bewildering number of grievances. There were clauses on the freedom of the Church, death duties, feudal aids (scutage, wardships, dowries, taxes, fines and marriage of heirs), widths of cloth, measures of wine, fish traps, debts to Jews, London liberties, free passage for merchants in war time, releasing Scottish hostages, exiling foreign mercenaries and relaxing forest laws – poachers would no longer risk losing their private parts. The last clause provided for a committee of twenty-five barons, chosen by those present at Runnymede, who were to seize the king's castles and lands if he failed to remedy all grievances listed within forty days.

Summoning John to settle a law case while he was ill, the twenty-five insisted he came in a litter, refusing to rise to their feet when he arrived. In any case, an investigation by another committee of twelve knights into the ‘evil customs' of sheriffs, foresters and their officials (extorting money) made cooperation impossible – the king needed the revenue. Archbishop Langton did his best to reconcile the two sides but a letter from Pope Innocent released John from his oath, annulled the Charter as diabolical, and called Langton and the English bishops worse than Saracens for trying to depose an anointed king.

Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris (who continued Roger's chronicle) often exaggerate. Yet as monks of the great abbey of St Albans near the capital on the road north they met well-informed travellers and their accounts contain a basis of truth. Wendover may talk nonsense in claiming that after Runnymede John spent three months at sea as a pirate, but we can believe that he was in great agony of mind. Matthew adds that John
imagined people saying behind his back, ‘Look at a king without a kingdom, a lord without land!' While he smiled in public, in secret he ‘ground his teeth and rolled his eyes, grabbing sticks and straws from off the floor which he chewed or tore in shreds with his fingers'.
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Warning castellans of the royal castles (there were nearly 150) to be on the alert, he sent to Flanders for more mercenaries, as he had few troops beside his bodyguard – Wendover says that only seven English knights remained with him. He expected them to arrive at the end of September, but their fleet ran into a gale and their bodies were washed up all along the Norfolk coast. When he heard the news he seemed out of his mind.

Collecting a scratch force from his garrisons, in October John laid siege to Rochester Castle, defended by William of Aubigny (one of the twenty-five barons) that barred the way to London. Instead of marching to William's relief, the barons occupying the capital spent their time ‘gambling at dice, drinking the very best wines, which were freely available, and indulging in all the other vices.' The only action they took was to send envoys to Philip II's son, Louis, offering him the throne since he had a claim to it through his wife Blanche of Castile, who was a granddaughter of Henry II.
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Eventually, foreign troops joined John (Poitevin and Gascon knights under Savaric de Mauléon who brought Flemish crossbowmen) and Rochester was starved into surrender at the end of November. The king was encouraged still more in mid-December by Pope Innocent excommunicating thirty barons for rebellion – the document reached England in February, to be read from pulpits throughout the country. No other baronial stronghold put up a fight and, in control of the south and the West Country, John occupied East Anglia and the north, the revolt's real centres.

In the north he made his men set fire to towns and hedgerows as they marched, burning baronial manors and farms, torturing people of all classes until they paid a ransom. They ransacked
towns and villages, hanging victims by their hands or roasting them. Markets and trading ceased, agriculture came to a standstill. Yet the king preferred money to revenge, extracting £1,000 from York, while rebels could purchase a pardon. By the spring of 1216 he had restored his authority across the whole country save London.

The situation altered dramatically in May when Louis of France came with an army to claim the throne, landing on the Isle of Thanet. John made no attempt to intercept him. Leaving Dover Castle to be defended by Hubert de Burgh, he withdrew to Winchester, before establishing his headquarters in Dorset at Corfe Castle, which was almost impregnable. In August the sixteen-year-old Alexander II of Scots – whom John called ‘the little, sandy fox-cub'
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– took Carlisle and then marched to reinforce Louis, who was besieging Dover. Next month Alexander did homage to Louis at Canterbury, as King of England.

Louis quickly overran eastern England, where the only fortresses that held out for John were Dover, Lincoln and Windsor. Even so, the Cinque Ports supported him, while in Kent and Sussex there was guerrilla resistance in his favour, led by ‘Willikin of the Weald', and on Whit Sunday 1216 Cardinal Guala Bicchieri, the papal legate, excommunicated Louis. But in June the Frenchman was welcomed by the Londoners as their King. John's position looked desperate. Winchester, the ancient capital, fell next and Windsor was closely besieged. The Earl of Salisbury, his half-brother, went over to Louis, with the Earls of Albemarle, Arundel and Warren, who together mustered 430 knights. The king retreated westward, as far as Radnor in Wales, where he hired Welsh archers.

Nonetheless, a third of the baronage stayed loyal and in late summer the Earl of Salisbury rejoined him. The rebels' relations with Louis were strained, since the French saw the war as a second Norman Conquest – in London a dying French
nobleman warned that Louis had sworn to banish them after he won, for betraying their king. Taking Savaric de Mauléon as military adviser, in September John tried to relieve Windsor but, outnumbered, withdrew to ravage East Anglia. Chased off by the French, he went north to relieve Lincoln. Then he marched south, devastating Norfolk.

But after a feast at King's Lynn, John contracted dysentery and realized he was seriously ill. (Revealingly, he granted a Briouze lady leave to found a religious house to pray for the souls of her kinswoman Matilda de Briouze and her son.) On 12 October he took a short cut across the Wellstream, part of the Wash, where he ‘lost all his carts, wagons and pack horses, with his money, plate and everything of value, because the land opened in the middle of the waters and whirlpools sucked them down, men and horses'. He was lucky to escape with his life.
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He spent the night after at Swinehead Abbey, stuffing himself with peaches and new cider that made his dysentery worse. He struggled on to Newark in a litter of willow branches or clinging to a slow paced nag. Here, in the Bishop of Lincoln's castle, he received the last sacraments, making a short will in which he asked to be buried in St Wulstan's cathedral at Worcester and named William Marshal as his principal lay executor. The king died at midnight on 18 October, during a whirlwind.

If the Barnwell annalist thought John a great prince, no doubt, but hardly a lucky one, every other chronicler agreed with Matthew Paris that he was too bad even for Hell. He left England in chaos. Louis ruled London, Winchester and the home and eastern counties, the Welsh occupied Shrewsbury, the Scots held Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland and most barons remained in revolt. Whatever revisionists claim, a reign that saw the loss of Normandy and the Angevin patrimony, ending with civil war and foreign occupation, can scarcely be called a success.