The Magnificent Century (17 page)

Edmund had not yet taken priestly orders, but from his own funds he constructed a chapel in Oxford for the better training and care of his pupils. They paid him a mere pittance (a few shillings a year, no more), but he had so little regard for any kind of reward that he would take the small pieces of money, cover them in a flowerpot on his window sill, and say, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.” It was understood that the needy could help themselves to the coins buried in the earth, and no doubt many of them did.

It was during his term at Oxford that he had a vision of his mother coming to a blackboard covered with geometric problems which he taught as part of the quadrivium (the advanced course at the university) and substituting for them the three circles of the Trinity. This warning from beyond the grave led him to take holy orders. He soon became the most noted orator in the country. People flocked to hear him preach, attracted by his clarity, his simplicity, and his avoidance of disputation. His eloquence reached its stage of highest manifestation in 1227, when at the express command of the Pope he went out through the country and preached the latest Crusade. It is recorded that on several occasions rain fell all about the crowds who listened to him but that never a drop touched tunic or hood of the attentive
audiences. He made many converts in these years of his pulpit eminence, particularly old William Long-Espée, the Earl of Salisbury, who had been a rough-and-tough fighting man all his life and had given small thought to eternity. After the earl’s death his widow Ela depended on Edmund for spiritual guidance, and it was on his advice that she built and endowed Lacock Abbey.

He was appointed treasurer of Salisbury Cathedral in 1219 and he continued in that office for fifteen years, his reputation for saintliness growing all the time. It was freely recognized, however, that his gentleness made him a poor financial administrator. He gave away his own stipend with such openhandedness that he would have nothing to live on for at least half of each year and would be compelled to eke out an existence with the help of friends.

He had been appointed prebend of Calne, an ancient town snuggling quietly in the midst of Salisbury Plain, and he was here at his prayers one afternoon when a great shouting arose outside his window. A servant, almost breathless with excitement, rushed into the oratory to tell him the news. Remaining on his knees and seeming to take small interest, Edmund heard that a deputation had arrived to notify him of his appointment as Archbishop of Canterbury. What he said on hearing this astonishing word has not been recorded, but it was clear that he was deeply disturbed. He had no desire for such high preferment and he doubted his fitness for the post. He remained in prayer for several hours. In the meantime the members of the deputation, who had expected to be received with joyful acclaim, had become puzzled and resentful. They partook of a frugal meal, the household being, as usual, poorly stocked, while listening to the low murmur of the prayers rising from the humble man in the oratory.

The mood of the disgruntled deputation changed when at nightfall Edmund emerged to greet them. He was now approaching his sixty-fifth year, his frame was frail from a lifetime of privation, his eyes were deeply sunk in his wasted countenance. With the first word he spoke, however, his magic asserted itself. The group of churchmen who made up the delegation listened in astonishment and awe as the ascetic preacher told them he could not accept the honor. He had neither the strength nor the capacity, he said, to undertake the headship of the Church. He was better fitted to the humble work he was doing and he earnestly entreated that this message be taken back to the chapter and acted upon.

Although impressed with the humility of Edmund’s attitude, they crowded about him, urging him to reconsider. They told him of the impasse which had been reached at Home and of the quick agreement as soon as his name had been advanced. Edmund, filled with a premonition of what this translation to greatness would mean, remained unconvinced. He accompanied them to Salisbury, however, and to the cathedral where from a multitude of tents and sheds the walls of the nave were rising in majestic grandeur. Here the bishop and other high officers of the see joined in urging him to consent. It took a long time to beat down his doubts and his conviction of unworthiness. In the end, however, he gave in and a triumphant
Te Deum
was sung over him in the midst of the bare high walls.

And then something came to pass which can only be compared to the change made in Thomas à Becket by his elevation to the archbishopric. The saintly Edmund of Abingdon, realizing the responsibilities of his office and the great need the Church had for uncompromising leadership, became as bold as a lion. He knew that he must fight the Pope who had selected him in order to save England from the spiritual loss resulting from absenteeism and plurality, that he must oppose the King and his bad councilors, that he must purge the Church of evils. The gentle, soft-spoken, scholarly Edmund, better fitted to the soft debates of the cloisters and to rapt prayer on callused knees than to facing selfish and worldly men, drew his sword with firm resolution and took up the good fight.

The first organized opposition to the new form of tyranny under the Poitevins came, therefore, from the bishops. To the great surprise of everyone, and the consternation, no doubt, of Henry and his chief officers, it was the gentle and saintly man they had plucked from the obscurity of a country cathedral who led the attack. Without waiting for his consecration as archbishop, Edmund called together his suffragans at Westminster and won their support to a move against the men who ruled the pliable King. They passed a resolution of censure which did not mince words.

“Lord King,” it read in part, “we tell you, in the name of God, that the counsel you receive and act upon—that, namely, of Peter, Bishop
of Winchester, and of Peter des Rivaux—is not wise or safe but is dangerous as regards the realm of England and dangerous to yourself. These men hate and despise the English nation and, when the English assert their rights, they call them traitors. They estrange you from your people and alienate the affections of the people from their King.… We solemnly warn you that we shall put into effect against you the censures of the Church.…”

Two months later, having been consecrated in the meantime, the new archbishop led a deputation of the barons and the bishops to confront the King. Edmund was spokesman and he delivered his warning with all the force and eloquence of which he was capable. Henry gave way easily. Lacking resolution even in his ill-doing, he promised an investigation of conditions. Promises meant nothing to Henry, however, and he continued thereafter to act in concert with the men against whom the criticism had been directed, even taking them with him on a tour of the country in the spring. The sharp attack of the archbishop had shaken him, without a doubt, but it would take a touch of steel to bring him to the distasteful fulfillment of his pledge.

W
ILLIAM
THE
MARSHAL
left five sons, the first, named after his father, succeeding to the earldoms of Pembroke and Striguil and the hereditary post of marshal of England. At no other period of English history has one family possessed as much power and wealth as the Marshals at this juncture. In addition to their enormous estates in England and Wales, they owned all the possessions in Ireland which Strongbow had accumulated, nearly all of Leinster, and, by virtue of a rather extraordinary arrangement made with Philip Augustus when he was King of France, they retained their Norman estates at Longueville, Orbec, and elsewhere.

There was an equal number of daughters, Matilda, Isabella, Sibilla, Eva, and Joanna, handsome and high-spirited girls who had married representatives of other powerful families, Bigod, Warenne, Clare, Derby, Braose, Warin, Valence. Isabella, the second of the five daughters, who was the real beauty of the family, was first married to Gilbert de Clare and brought six children into the world. On her husband’s death in 1230 she was still so beautiful that the King’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, who had been looking for a wife among the princesses of Europe, gave up the quest and elected instead to take the young widow as his bride. They seem to have been quite happy and had four children before Isabella died at a relatively early age. Matilda, the eldest daughter, had married Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and it was through this connection that the post of
marshal of England came finally into the Howard family. The alliances thus created added immeasurably to the power of the Marshals as a family.

Henry was King of England, but it is certain that he was a poor man compared to the head of the Marshals, who lived in semi-royal state. While the first son lived they never used their power to oppose the King, but it was recognized that potentially they were strong enough to dictate to the Crown if the need should arise.

Before telling of the part the five sons took in the affairs of England, particularly in forcing Henry to abandon the Poitevins, there is a story about them which should be related because of its bearing on what was to follow.

It goes back to a quarrel in Ireland between the Good Knight himself and the Bishop of Ferns over two manors which each of them claimed. Old William had no doubt in his mind at all that the land belonged to him because he had taken it in the civil wars, and he retained possession without paying any heed to the shrill claims of the churchman who resorted to every legal means without success and finally proclaimed a ban of excommunication on him. No one seems to have been concerned over what had happened, least of all the Good Knight himself. When the marshal died, however, King Henry began to worry about the state of his soul. Would the ban issued at Ferns keep him in purgatory until some means could be found to have it lifted? Some years later, the bishop being still alive, the young King summoned him to London. Together they walked into the Round Church, where the tomb of the great warrior stood against the wall.

The bishop was a choleric man, and his sense of wrong flared up as soon as he stood in the presence of his former enemy, even though the body of the marshal had been moldering into dust for years. Without waiting for royal prompting as to what was expected of him, he stepped forward and shook an admonitory finger at the stone coffin.

“Oh, William,” he said, speaking as man to man, perhaps in the hope that some response or sign might be elicited from the tomb. “Oh, William, who are here entombed and bound by the bonds of excommunication, if those possessions of which you have wrongly despoiled my church are restored with adequate compensation—by
the King, or by your heirs, or by any of your family—then I absolve you.”

A moment of silence followed in the small circular space of the church. Then the indignation of years mounted still higher in the mind of the old bishop. He took a step forward, his face mottled with the intensity of his feelings, his outstretched hand trembling.

“But if not,” he cried, “I confirm the sentence that, involved in your sin, you shall remain in hell forever!”

Henry was dismayed beyond measure. He was afraid that, in his desire to do something for the grand old man who had secured for him the crown of England, he had made things worse. With the shrill voice of the bishop ringing in his ears, he hurriedly summoned the eldest son of the family, who was now Earl of Pembroke and marshal of England, and told him what had occurred. Would it not be a sensible thing, he hinted, for the family to give up the two manor houses in question?

William the son was not at all disturbed. He declared that, in the first place, the lands had belonged to his father, that they had been fairly won in time of war, and that his father had died legally seized of them. It is not recorded that he used the most important point, which must have been, however, in all their minds, that the papal legate had offered his father remission of all his sins if he would assume the burden of the kingdom after John died, that the old marshal had done so and had driven the French out of England, thereby assuring to Henry the possession of the throne. This promise had come directly from the Pope at Rome and would override any earlier ban pronounced by a bishop.

At any rate, the young marshal declared that he had no intention of being intimidated into relinquishing the land.

When the bishop heard what had been decided he fell into a state of such sustained anger that he hurried to demand an audience of the King. “What I have said, I have said!” he cried. He went on then to prophesy the end of the family. “In one generation the name shall be destroyed. The sons shall be without share in that benediction of the Lord, ‘Increase and multiply.’ Some will die a lamentable death and their inheritance will be scattered. All this, my lord King, you will see in your lifetime.”

Having thus said his last word on the subject, the old bishop returned to Ferns.

William, the oldest of the five brothers, remained head of the family for twelve years, fighting in all the wars with such stoutness that he was considered a worthy successor to his great father. He resembled the Good Knight closely, being tall and magnificently put together and having a handsome head of light brown hair. He became Chief Justiciar of Ireland and crushed all opposition there with thoroughness. He also succeeded in giving Llewelyn a drubbing when that ever-aggressive chief of the Cymry elected to invade the Marshal domain in Wales.