Louis: The French Prince Who Invaded England (20 page)

CHAPTER FIVE

THE TIDE TURNS

King John reigned for eighteen years, five months and five days, during which time he caused many disturbances and entered on many useless labours in the world, and at length departed this life in a great agony of mind, possessed of no territory, yea, not even being his own master. (Matthew Paris)

He was generous and liberal to foreigners but a despoiler of his own people. Since he trusted more in foreigners than in them, he was abandoned before the end by his own people, and in his own end he was little mourned. (Barnwell annalist)

T
HESE EPITAPHS ARE
among the more balanced of the thirteenth-century verdicts on John and his reign. John has been called many things over the centuries, both by chroniclers and by historians: tyrant, murderer, oppressor and adulterer among them. As it happens, none of these were particularly detrimental characteristics for a medieval king: many monarchs considered to be great exhibited one or more of these behaviours, and being genial, universally popular and well liked was more often than not counterproductive in the circumstances. But alas for John, he was also lacking in those qualities which would have impressed his contemporaries and made him an effective thirteenth-century ruler. He did have significant skills as an administrator, but even here he was let down by his small-mindedness and suspicion, his unreliability and unpredictability, and his lack of trust in his nobles. He was not a great warrior like his brother, or a great leader like his father; he did not seem to inspire loyalty in the way they did. This is not to say that Henry II or Richard I were perfect kings either: Henry ruled a huge empire but did not really foster any sense of unity among the diverse parts of it, which set his successors up for trouble; and Richard, had he lived longer, might well have faced some sort of revolt from his barons over the enormous financial exactions he forced out of them in order to pay for his crusading fervour. But they were both effective in ways John was not, and the main point must be this: power in the early thirteenth century was gained, held, displayed and transmitted through the possession and retention of land, and in this John was a failure. In 1199 he inherited England, Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine and all of Aquitaine, as well as a claim to Ireland; in 1216 he left only England and the Poitou and Gascony parts of Aquitaine, none of which was actually under his complete control.

With London in Louis’s hands there was no question of John being interred at Westminster Abbey (which was not, at this stage, the official royal mausoleum it later became); instead his remains were embalmed by the abbot of Croxton and taken by a troop of his mercenaries to Worcester cathedral, to lie near the shrine of St Wulfstan.

Once Louis had had the chance to take in the momentous news, he was faced with a range of options for immediate action. After spending the last several months outside the walls of Dover Castle, the subduing of the great fortress was naturally still in the forefront of his mind: he sent word to Hubert de Burgh to surrender it now that John was dead, but Hubert refused on the grounds that he now served John’s sons and daughters. Hubert’s declaration of support for John’s heirs was matched by four other important and influential men who would form the backbone of the continuing resistance to Louis: William Marshal, earl of Pembroke; Ranulf de Blundeville, earl of Chester; Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester; and the papal legate Guala. They were supported by Falkes de Bréauté: as John’s favourite he could have found his position in jeopardy now that his patron was gone, but the cause could not afford to do without his military skills or the string of vital castles which he held in the Midlands.

John left five legitimate children: Henry, who had just turned nine; Richard, seven; Joan, six; Isabelle, two; and baby Eleanor. Joan was in France being brought up by the Lusignan family following her betrothal to Hugh the younger which had been negotiated as part of John’s campaign in Poitou two years earlier; the others were being kept safe in the west of England, out of Louis’s reach for now. Henry, who was at the royal stronghold of Devizes along with his mother, Queen Isabelle, was hurriedly summoned by John’s remaining supporters who needed him as the figurehead for their cause; they declared him king. Their declaration was based on the principle of hereditary succession rather than on election by the barons, as this is where Henry had a stronger claim than Louis. There was of course no way the boy could be taken to Westminster for a coronation as London held firmly for Louis, and in any case there was no archbishop of Canterbury in the country (archbishops of Canterbury had enjoyed the exclusive right to conduct coronation ceremonies in England since the issue of the papal bull
Quanto majorem
by Pope Alexander III in 1171). Indeed, there was not even a crown as it had been lost during John’s last days, either during the baggage incident in the Wash or possibly stolen after his death as his possessions were looted.

However, it was vital to the cause of the resistance that they should have a crowned king, or at least the appearance of one, so a hasty ceremony was arranged at Gloucester cathedral on 28 October 1216, just ten days after John’s death. Little Henry, a solemn child, was met outside the town by William Marshal and an armed escort; he gave a short speech placing himself in the care of God and the Marshal, and then burst into tears.

Once they were safely inside the town of Gloucester, Henry, dressed in ‘child-sized robes of state’, was dubbed a knight by William Marshal and gave homage to Guala for England, reiterating the realm’s status as a papal fief. He was carried to the cathedral, where Guala sang a Mass and Peter des Roches ‘crowned’ him with a lady’s circlet provided by his mother. As part of the ceremony Roger of Wendover tells us that Henry

Swore on the holy gospels and other relics of the saints that he would observe honour, peace and reverence towards God and the holy Church … he also swore that he would show strict justice to the people entrusted to his care, and would abolish all bad laws and customs … and would observe those that were good, and cause them to be observed by all.

All of this, of course, was merely symbolic; as we have already seen, Louis had postponed his own coronation as it would only be above dispute if carried out in Westminster Abbey by the archbishop of Canterbury, and the same applied to any other candidate to the throne. But Henry’s temporary ceremony overseen by a papal legate, when added to his status as the eldest son of the previous anointed king, provided the semblance of legitimacy and gave weight to his cause.

Henry’s age meant that he could not, and would not be expected to, rule in person. This was the first accession of a minor since the Conquest, so there was no Anglo-Norman precedent; Henry’s supporters needed to make some swift and practical arrangements. William Marshal was named as regent – that is, he would rule on Henry’s behalf and would technically be king in all but name. The
History of William Marshal
is unsurprisingly full of the details: we are told that at first Marshal tried to refuse due to his age (he was around seventy) and his modesty; but after being persuaded, encouraged and begged at length by the other men he agreed. The text tells us of the stirring speech he then made, which, while probably embellished, gives a flavour of the heightened emotions of the time:

‘By God’s lance!’, said the earl … ‘if all the world deserted the young boy except me, do you know what I would do? I would carry him on my shoulders and walk with him thus, with his legs astride, I would be with him and never let him down, from island to island, from land to land, even if I had to beg for my daily bread.’

The only one of Henry’s supporters who was not entirely comfortable with the arrangement was the earl of Chester, who, as Marshal’s equal in rank, wealth and land ownership, felt that he should have been given more of a share of the power. He was also considerably younger and more vigorous, being in his mid-forties. In the event he had to be content with a more supporting role, but the first seeds of what would later become discord had been sown. The others divided up a number of responsibilities: Marshal would be in control of the military campaign to put Henry on the throne; Peter des Roches would take personal custody and tutorship of the boy; Hubert de Burgh would return to the south-east to continue the defence there. But the real mastermind of the outfit would be the papal legate Guala. Playing on his role as the pope’s representative in a realm subject to the papacy, he wielded great power both behind the scenes and unabashedly to the fore: his seal appears on a number of official acts from around this time and it precedes that of the Marshal as regent. Guala was in effect almost an absolute ruler: Pope Innocent had ordered all English magnates to submit to him ‘humbly and devotedly’ and had given him full power to act in his name in England, to do whatever he thought best without appeal.

One person who played no role in the new regime, when she might have expected (or been expected) to, was Henry’s mother, Isabelle of Angoulême. Other recent queens dowager such as Eleanor of Aquitaine in England or Adela of Champagne in France had been major political figures in their time but Isabelle was not prominent in the support of her son. Isabelle’s experiences as John’s wife have been the subject of much speculation which we will not explore here, but much can be inferred from her actions after his death: staying in England only long enough to see her son installed with his protectors, she left him and her younger children, returned to France, and, as far as we can tell from her surviving charters and other evidence, never mentioned John’s name again. In one of the more bizarre marital arrangements of the Middle Ages she married in 1220 Hugh X de Lusignan (the younger), who was betrothed to her daughter Joan and who was the son of her own original intended husband, Hugh IX the elder. ‘This caused much talk,’ says the Anonymous of Béthune’s
History of the Dukes
, succinctly. Joan was later palmed off on King Alexander of Scotland, whom she married in 1221 when he was twenty-three and she was ten. Isabelle and Hugh went on to have nine children within the next twelve years, a number of whom later came to their half-brother Henry’s court and became the unpopular foreigners of their own day. Isabelle had very little contact with her children by John and did not see her eldest son again until he was an adult; Henry was left to the care of his regent, his tutor and his council.

* * *

In all the euphoria and emotion surrounding the ‘coronation’ of Henry it might have been possible for his supporters to forget for a while that there was actually another claimant to the throne in England: a grown man, a warrior and leader in charge of his own army, to whom most of the barons (almost three-quarters of them by this stage) had sworn allegiance, who was currently in the capital and who had more than half the country under his direct control.

We might imagine that the death of Louis’s chief antagonist would leave the field clear for him, resulting in an immediate landslide victory of the sort enjoyed by his predecessor William the Conqueror after the death of Harold. But the lingering support for John’s children meant that this was not the case, and the war would go on. In Louis’s favour was the fact that, given Henry’s age, long years of minority beckoned which would inevitably invite more conflict and there were many in the kingdom who might prefer the strong man who could take charge now rather than the promise of a boy with arguably more hereditary right (depending on your point of view of John’s deposition), who would not rule in his own stead for another decade or so. On the other hand, the prospect of a lengthy minority offered more scope for personal gain, something never far from the minds of the individual barons. The immediate result of John’s death was therefore an uneasy stalemate, and there were no major defections one way or the other during the autumn and winter of 1216.

Both sides used the breathing space to regroup and take stock of their situation. Geographically, England was split along a line which ran more or less from north to south; Louis was in control of the east, while Henry’s camp held territory and a number of royal castles in the west, and William Marshal’s own lands were in south Wales, which made that area secure. Moreover, the Henricians retained control of three major strongholds situated in Louis-controlled areas: Dover, Windsor, and Corfe, home to the royal treasury. Thanks to the truce which Louis had agreed there in October, Hubert de Burgh was finally able to leave Dover, and he travelled to Bristol for a first meeting of Henry’s council in November. The council used the opportunity provided by John’s death to send letters to all the opposing barons offering them amnesty and restoration of their lands if they would swear fealty to Henry. This produced only one defection of note before the end of the year: William d’Albini, last seen defending Rochester against John in late 1215 and having been in John’s custody since the castle’s eventual surrender, decided to throw in the towel and pay homage to Henry. He raised the considerable sum of 6,000 marks to pay for his ransom and was released.