The Magnificent Century (14 page)

The bishops held a council in February 1232 and excommunicated everyone connected with the depredations. This does not seem to have had any effect. At any rate, the raids went on.

Word reached Rome in June. Gentle Honorius was dead and had been succeeded by Ugolino of the counts of Segni, a relation of Innocent III, under the name of Gregory IX. The new Pontiff was a man of great firmness of character and of very great learning, although he failed to attain in the pontificate the full stature of his illustrious relative. Being embroiled with Frederick II of Germany at the time, and finding that versatile and violent monarch as much as he could handle, Gregory does not seem to have taken the situation in England with any particular seriousness. The note he sent to Henry was, at any rate, surprisingly mild. He rebuked the King for allowing such things to happen and he chided the Church in England. Naturally, of course, he commanded the excommunication of all whose part in the raids had been proven, but adding that they should be sent to Rome for his absolution. The impression is left that Gregory entertained a secret suspicion that the Brotherhood had some right to voice their dissent with conditions in this illegal but forthright way.

By this time the truth was out in England. It had been discovered how small the original Brotherhood had been and the identity of the leader had been revealed. Robert Tweng was excommunicated and then packed off to Rome. The Pope, discovering that the young knight’s actions were due to his pique over the giving of a church, to which he held the right of presentation, to an alien without his consent, treated the culprit most kindly. Tweng was not only absolved but was allowed to continue holding the right of presentation.

In England the activities of the Brotherhood had ceased and masked men no longer rode the highways by night. The investigation had been dropped, however, and the whole nation knew the reason. Preliminary inquiries had uncovered the fact that many prominent men both in Church and State had either been involved personally or had given the ringleaders the sanction of support; so many, in fact, that the crown officers shied away at once and reported the case closed.

Neither the actual participants nor the men of prominent rank who had lent support to the movement paid any form of penalty. Punishment was reserved for the one man mentioned who unquestionably
was innocent. It had been known from the start that the documents of royal sanction were forged, and the whisper had gone out that Hubert de Burgh had either supplied these false credentials or had winked at their use. The whisper originated without a doubt in the fertile brain of Peter des Roches, who could not fail to see at once the splendid possibilities in what was happening. It was inconceivable that Hubert de Burgh could have been guilty of such an absurd mistake. He had earned the name of a stern and relentless upholder of the law and, if he had seemed lax in following up its prosecution of the Brotherhood, it undoubtedly was because he also knew the prominence of the men involved. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain through the activities of Tweng and the Brotherhood.

When the investigation was dropped, however, it was given out that the involvement of the justiciar in the plot had been established.

On August 8, while the King was at Shrewsbury, the blow fell. Hubert was commanded to surrender all the royal castles in his possession to Stephen Segrave, and the latter was appointed chief justiciar in his place. Henry, who tended to swing fiercely from one extreme to another, was no longer content to dismiss his minister and let matters rest; he was determined to ruin Hubert as well. On August 13 a second order was issued which took away all the personal possessions of the latter. The royal offices at Westminster were swept clean of Burgh men. Stephen Segrave and one Geoffrey of Crowcomb, the steward of the royal household, went to work on the papers which had been seized.

Hubert de Burgh was not surprised. He bad been realizing for some time that forces were working to bring about his dismissal from office. He was dismayed, however, at the unexpected ferocity of the attack. At first he did nothing, sitting disconsolate in the Tower. This inertia changed to active consternation when he found that London had turned bitterly and turbulently against him. From the narrow windows of the White Tower he looked down on streets packed with angry, jeering people, on bonfires blazing in open spaces, on torches carried exultantly to celebrate his fall.

Hubert had made the grievous mistake of offending London.
Some years before there had been an occasion when a group of apprentices had set up a quintain outside the walls of the city. A quintain was a wooden target at which knights practiced tilting in preparation for the time when they would face live opponents in the lists. The apprentices were trying their skill with homemade lances when some youths of the court happened to see them. Taking umbrage at this open aping of their betters, the scions of gentility returned in a body to teach the sons of common men a lesson. In the melee which followed the young courtiers got the worst of it and were driven off with broken heads and torn clothing. The incident grew into a riot when the court elected to punish the youth of London. It was asserted that one bold citizen named Constantine Fitz-Arnulf incited the townspeople to destruction of property by raising the French battle cry of “Mont joy and St. Denis!” an indication that London sympathies had been with Louis of France and not Henry. Fitz-Arnulf was arrested and brought before Hubert de Burgh.

Hubert had always been a stern administrator of the law, quick to punish, quick to call on the services of the executioner. He ordered that Fitz-Arnulf be hanged without giving him the privilege of trial, and the sentence was carried out immediately. Not content with this, he punished a number of other ringleaders by having their feet cut off.

London had never forgotten. From that time forward the head of the state had encountered in the great city on the Thames a steady and undeviating opposition, an unceasing dislike. Hubert de Burgh was a brave man, but he was unnerved now when he saw below the tossing of angry torches and realized, for the first time fully, that any man who incurred the enmity of London would come to rue it someday. The trained bands of the citadel of wool had forgotten his heroic war record and remembered only the body of Constantine Fitz-Arnulf dangling on a gibbet. They thought no longer of the sea battle off Sandwich but recalled the arbitrary way in which he had punished Londoners for a disturbance forced upon them by the young gentry of the court.

The deposed minister decided that it would be wise to get away from London and he departed stealthily at night. He made his way to Merton Priory, a famous institution behind a high triangular wall where Thomas à Becket and many other great men had gone to
school, and settled down to the urgent task of preparing his defense. There was little time for this, a hearing having been set for September 14 and the demand made on him that he be prepared to account for all funds which had passed through his hands during his long term in office.

All England was now in a ferment. The nobility shared the jubilation of the Londoners and clamored for the punishment of the upstart. The common men of the kingdom, whose opinions in this crisis were of no weight, however, were disturbed and unhappy. They had been dazzled and alienated somewhat by the magnificence of the man during his days of power, but this had not obliterated their memories of his heroic stands at Chinon and Dover and the sweep of his sails over the Channel in pursuit of the ships of Eustace the Monk. They were stunned and apprehensive over the dislodgment from the high wall of authority of this first great Humpty Dumpty of humble origin. Did it mean a return to baronial supremacy and the sharp medicine of feudal justice? The common men waited anxiously, certain that Hubert had been their friend, fearful of the consequences of his sudden fall.

Henry was like an excited boy over his success. Directing the moves from Westminster, he drank in the ugly rumors which were circulating about Hubert and perhaps came to believe them himself, even though he had had a hand in the concocting of them. It was not only being said that the justiciar had looted the treasury and that he had mismanaged the military operations. Darker things were now being openly charged. The fallen minister had removed opponents from his path by the hand of the assassin and the cup of the poisoner. He had administered a lethal dose to stout old William Long-Espée after the return of the latter from abroad. He had encompassed the deaths of William the Marshal, son of the Good Knight, and of Archbishop Richard, who had succeeded Stephen Langton at Canterbury. He had seduced the Princess Margaret and then married her in the hope of succeeding to the throne of Scotland.

The campaign of calumny went even farther and spread tales of black magic which he had used to gain his ends. It was said that his hold over the King had been the result of evil charms. He had stolen a precious stone from the royal treasury which had the power to render anyone who wore it into battle safe from all harm and had given it to Llewelyn of Wales. The last tidbit was circulated
avidly, although no attempt was made to explain why no one else had known of the existence of this magic stone or why Hubert had given it to his most active opponent instead of keeping it for his own use.

Behind the high walls of Merton, Hubert heard what was being said and knew that the scales had been weighted, that his trial would be no more than a formality. He refused to leave the priory, claiming the right of sanctuary. Henry stormed into action. He hurried off a letter to the Lord Mayor of London, asking that the citizens organize themselves and bring Hubert de Burgh back dead or alive. It was night when this missive was received, but the Lord Mayor responded at once by ringing all the bells of London. The townspeople, roused from slumber, poured out of their houses in instant response and were delighted when the word was circulated of the service the King had asked of them. The night was spent in preparation, and by dawn the march was begun. It was estimated that as many as twenty thousand men had armed themselves, and the roads into Surrey were black with unorganized but eager citizens.

It was fortunate that among the men around the King at this juncture there was one with a cool head. The old Earl of Chester, who had no love for Hubert de Burgh and no desire to shield him from punishment, was apprehensive of the results of this appeal to mob rule. He pointed out to the King that the situation was certain to get out of control. The strength of London, once allowed to assert itself, might be turned later to less agreeable objectives. Henry was brought finally to a realization of the danger. Fortunately, also, the Lord Mayor was a man of great common sense, Henry FitzAlwyn, a son of the renowned Roger FitzAlwyn who had been the first to hold the office. The FitzAlwyns were drapers and believed in the motto which the members of that powerful guild carried under the two lions, “Unto God only be honor and glory.” The Lord Mayor had enough of conscience to see the danger in the situation and he was quick to issue an order to the trained bands to break up and return home.

Reluctantly the long marching lines halted, turned, and retraced their steps to London. At the head of the line they displayed the chains which had been forged for the limbs of the now thoroughly hated ex-minister.

The excitement died down, but Hubert was not reassured thereby.
It was quite clear to him that his opponents, with the young King urging them on, would be satisfied with nothing but his ruin and death. The deposed justiciar, who had laughed when the French prince threatened to hang him from the battlements of Dover, succumbed now to an emotion quite new to him, a feeling of panic. He fled from Merton Priory, intending to join his faithful princess wife at Bury St. Edmunds.

The events which followed in rapid succession were like a mirror held up for one brief moment to the beliefs, the moods, the deep faiths, the contradictions, of the Middle Ages. Hubert progressed no farther than a crossroad settlement in the forests of Surrey where Brentwood now stands and where he sought lodging at a manor owned by one of his nephews, the Bishop of Norwich. He had retired for the night when there was a sudden clamor of horses’ hoofs on the road outside and loud voices demanding entrance. Not waiting to dress, the deposed minister escaped from the house and made his way in the dark to the chapel of Boisars, which was nearby, and there his pursuers found him, kneeling before the altar with a cross in his extended hands. Dragged out by command of Geoffrey of Crowcomb, who had charge of the pursuit, he was taken to the crossroad smithy, and the blacksmith, routed out in turn, was ordered to forge fetters for his wrists and ankles. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, and recognizing the prisoner, the stout smith refused.

“It is my lord Hubert de Burgh,” he said. Remembering Dover and Sandwich and forgetting everything else, he threw down his hammer. “I’ll never make chains for my lord Hubert de Burgh!”

No manner of threats could make the brave smith change his mind, so Geoffrey of Crowcomb and his men placed the prisoner on horseback, bound his feet under the animal’s belly, and took him to London and the Tower. Here he was lodged far down under the spacious apartments where formerly he had dined in state, in the lowest of the remote cells of the White Tower.

The high churchmen of the land had been as anxious as the nobility to get rid of the arrogant climber who had raised himself above them. Violation of sanctuary, however, was an offense they could not condone. The Bishop of London felt called upon to inform the King that, unless the prisoner was taken back to the chapel, he would excommunicate everyone connected with this act of violence, beginning with Henry himself and going all the way down to the
groom who held the bridle of Geoffrey of Crowcomb’s horse. Reluctantly the King gave in and the deposed minister was restored to the sanctuary from which he had been torn. A large force was placed on guard and a patrol thrown about the little chapel; and then the whole nation waited and watched to see what would happen.