Blood Cries Afar, page 20
John sent out a carefully detailed public letter explaining the financial and political reasons for his actions, revealing an awareness that his actions were causing grave disquiet. It has been reasonably argued that John had to pursue his course ruthlessly: once one baron was indulged with non-payment of debt, all would try for the same treatment. But another convincing argument could be made that in fact William was not his target after all – Matilda was. Perhaps money was only the excuse John put forward for such extreme action and another reason is needed to explain why John was so implacable and vicious. This other reason may be the de Braoses’ knowledge of John’s involvement in the death of Count Arthur of Brittany. De Braose had in fact captured Arthur at Mirebeau and was around John at the suspected time of Arthur’s death. Interestingly, de Braose was the patron of Margam Abbey the annals of which offer a unique insight into the young Count’s murder, laying the blame squarely on John during a drunken rage.329 It is worth asking whether de Braose felt that his position of influence combined with his knowledge of John’s dark secret led him to believe that he could be relaxed about the payment of his debt to the King. If so, he was playing a dangerous game that backfired tragically. A key moment in the affair came when, as was John’s custom, he demanded the de Braoses’ sons as hostages. Wendover has Matilda paling at the prospect, explosively declaring in front of John’s officers: ‘I will not hand over my boys to your master King John, who wickedly murdered his nephew Arthur, whose custody had been honourably granted.’ Just as revealing is William’s measured response; upbraiding his wife for her foolish (that is, dangerous) words, he said: ‘If I have offended him [John] in anyway, I am and shall be ready to give my lord satisfaction, without hostages, according to the decision of his court and of my fellow barons.’330 The ‘without hostages’ provision might easily be taken as damning, for hostages were habitually surrendered to John by barons, even by those deeply antagonistic towards him. John was ‘enraged’ and from this point on did not relent until Matilda’s death.
It may be wrong to look at this whole, terrible affair from just one angle, either financial or personal; both would have been important and both had serious political implications. Why this case is so significant, and why it has been afforded so much space here, is because it shows the alienating combination of John’s greed, inept management of people and his arbitrary viciousness that did so much damage to him. All of England quickly came to know about these events; the barons now felt more vulnerable and edgy than ever: if John could treat one of his leading nobles in this capricious and disgraceful way, who among them could be sure of their own safety and that of their families? Historians have rightly and consistently made much of the consequences of John’s fatally flawed and paranoid character. In 1961 Warren wrote that ‘the king’s ability to cripple his vassals was all the more disturbing in John because he was capable of using it for no very good reason – a caprice of his twisted suspicions, his dislike of men simply because they were great and powerful’. He adds, ‘Even if the barons accepted John’s explanation, they could only have been more alarmed, and felt more dreadfully insecure, at this terrible illustration of the king’s interpretations of his rights. Even the mightiest among them could be crumpled if they lost the king’s “goodwill”, and the goodwill of a king, moreover, who was so suspicious and mistrustful.’331 In 2010, David Crouch, in the most recent assessment of the Braose case, says that it reveals the king’s ‘irrational capacity for abrupt, extravagant, and uncontrolled resentment that put John outside the courtly world. He was unpredictable and unreliable.’ Sidney Painter has called the Braose affair ‘the greatest mistake John made during his reign’.332
John delighted in adding insult to injury, and rumours abounded of his licentious behaviour at court. Such stories may have been added after rebellion had broken out as a form of justification for taking action against the monarch. Certainly, William the Breton did not hesitate to lay into the Angevin enemy by claiming that John took advantage of his half brother Earl William of Salisbury’s captivity in France after Bouvines to seduce his wife. Two of the rebel leaders both accused John of adultery, not with commoners and servants, but with women in their families: Eustace de Vescy claimed John attempted sex with his wife, while Robert Fitzwalter accused John of having forced himself upon his daughter. Clearly there was great rallying, anti-John propaganda to be made here, and again the effective warning was sent out that if the wives and daughters of great nobles were vulnerable to John’s advances, then no one’s family was safe, no matter how elevated they were. These stories are likely to have been more than merely malicious gossip. It could not have been easy for such proud nobles as Fitzwalter and Vescy to admit to such stories. The Anonymous of Béthune – not a monastic chronicler, remember – condemns John because ‘he lusted after beautiful women and because of this he shamed the high men of the land, for which reason he was greatly hated.’333 Even government records make a knowing nod towards this, probably with dark humour: the chancery rolls record that ‘the wife of Hugh de Neville gives the lord King 200 chickens that she might lie one night with her lord, Hugh de Neville.’334 Other kings had been serial adulterers, not least John’s father, Henry II, whose ‘adultery was conducted on a truly regal scale’; he was able ‘to make free with the women even of his greater barons’. That John’s ‘crimes against women’ were not tolerated in the same way says something not only about their nature, but also about his personal stature, authority and the character of his misrule.335
So there were plenty of reasons to take up arms against the King: political, patronage, personal (often deeply personal) and financial. John was overwhelmingly responsible for this state of affairs: his crass incompetence in dealing with his magnates, his erratic behaviour and his spiteful, almost sadistic violence, this displayed in destabilising, arbitrary and unchivalrous kingship marred by persistent military failure, all fused into a programme of opposition to John and a casus belli in the autumn of 1214. This amalgamation of grievances did not help in settling upon a single, rallying cry of rebellion. This makes it harder to identify the rebels as a homogenous group, a task made all the harder, as we have seen in France, by the fluctuating allegiances of knights and barons. Individual bones of contention might more easily be settled by mutual self-interest than a raft of demands; some would show allegiance to the side that most threatened their own land. With the crisis of 1212, John had shown that he could be flexible and pragmatic when the occasion – and pressure – warranted, the Barnwell chronicler noting that suddenly the King ‘began to conduct himself more civilly to his people and the country subsided’.336 It was then that, crucially, John healed his differences with William Marshal to get him back on side. However, John seemed inherently incapable of sustaining such judicious and measured behaviour for any length of time and the baronial party formed into a recognisable movement.
For David Crouch, in his recent important article on paranoia and the barons in King John’s reign, a real measure of the how critical matters were can be seen by the number of ‘corporate baronial letters suddenly flying everywhere’, arguing that ‘statements of joint baronial positions and beliefs are the most evocative symbols of crisis. Things have to be really bad to get the barons to work that closely together.’337 Already by late summer 1213, according to Ralph of Coggeshall with some exaggeration, ‘nearly all the barons of England formed an association to fight for the liberty of the Church and the realm.’338 The appeal to Church and rights of liberty was a strong one. James Holt takes a more jaundiced view of the rebels’ cause. ‘It was a rebellion of the aggrieved, of the failures’ (the two should be taken separately and include those wronged and those who lost out on patronage and advancement); it was ‘a protest against the quasi-monopoly of privilege by the King and his friends’. At its most significant it was ‘a call, not to break bonds, but to impose them … on the monarchy’.339
A highly vocal defence of the Church and liberties of the realm gave the opposition honourable and attractive ideals; while these provide convincing cover for more practical concerns, these concerns, no matter if self-serving in practice, had genuine connections with the liberties being fought for. Crouch says of the aristocracy that ‘Even under John’s ham-fisted rule it was by no means predisposed to rebel, and it took a lot to bring it to the point of resistance.’340 Rebelling against the king, even one as undeserving as King John, was not to be undertaken lightly, and many baulked at the idea. An exact rendering of who was in the rebel ranks is no easy task, not least because of the fleeting allegiances mentioned above. By May 1215, of some 197 baronies in England, only 39 had declared for the rebels; however only a similar number openly expressed their support for the king. The majority stood to one side, wishing either to avoid becoming embroiled in the conflict or waiting to see which side gained the advantage. Thus, with the arrival of the French a year later, the number of rebel barons grew in the summer to 97 but may have dramatically dropped after John’s death. The numbers in themselves do not tell the whole picture: variables are introduced by the relative wealth and strength of barons, the size of their knightly retinues and whether these retinues were largely loyal or not. This last factor is a matter of debate amongst historians. John was aware that knights might have multiple fealties (William Marshal brought the point sharply home in 1204), and sought to take advantage of this in 1212 and 1213 by summoning knights to discuss matters of the realm at a national assembly, but this has ‘never earned John any credit as one of the fathers of the English Parliament’.341
Historians have emphasised the three major regional groupings of the barons. In the north, its chief leaders were William de Forz, the Count of Aumale, John de Lacy and William de Mowbray, and Eustace de Vescy, one of John’s most implacable enemies; including Lincolnshire, this group also counted Gilbert de Gant and William d’Albini (Roger of Wendover’s patron) among their number. Contemporaries labelled the rebel barons collectively as ‘the Northerners’, probably because the seeds of rebellion had been sown there most fruitfully with resistance to service and scutage in 1213–14, but also because animosity towards John was generally at its most bitter there. From East Anglia and Essex came the most important group: Robert Fitzwalter, Lord of Dunmow in Essex; Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk; Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford; Geoffrey de Mandeville, Earl of Essex; and Robert de Vere, Earl of Oxford (whose lands were overwhelmingly held in Essex and Cambridgeshire). Given the number of earls, it is not surprising that this group provided the main leadership of the rebels; the soon to be established baronial council comprised no fewer than twelve men from this group. Less emphasis has been given to the western rebels, chief of whom were Henry de Bohun, Earl of Hereford; Giles de Braose (unsurprisingly), Bishop of Hereford; and William Marshal’s oldest son, also William (who had spent time as one of John’s hostages). Important recent research has redressed the neglect of this region and argued for its more significant role in the rebellion.342 From elsewhere, the chief men of note were Saer de Quincy, the Earl of Winchester with land in Northamptonshire and Cambridge, and the baron William de Beauchamp with lands in Bedfordshire.
The leadership of the rebels has not been viewed favourably by historians: Poole says that ‘the leaders do not inspire confidence’; Warren condemns Fitzwalter, the elected leader of the rebels, as ‘altogether disreputable and mischievous, rescued from ignominy only by his great fiefs, and owing his leadership to his dominating aggressiveness’. He and Eustace de Vescy were little more ‘than baronial roughnecks’.343 The Anonymous of Béthune tells the colourful story of how Fitzwalter’s son-in-law, fellow rebel Geoffrey de Mandeville, once killed a servant during an unseemly row taking place near to where the King was staying. When John threatened Geoffrey with hanging, Fitzwalter challenged the King with ‘You will not hang my son-in-law! By God’s body you will not!’ before threatening intervention with 200 of his knights. At Geoffrey’s trial, his father-in-law turned up with an estimated – but completely implausible – 500 knights.344 Fitzwalter and Saer received opprobrium for giving up Vaudreuil so easily to King Philip in 1203, but there is uncertainty over this episode. Fitzwalter clashed with John in 1210 over the rights to a priory which he ravaged, prompting the King to send troops against him and he was declared an outlaw in 1212 for his part in the assassination plot; his estates were seized and two of his castles, including Baynard’s Castle in London, were destroyed. Influential as these groupings were, regional associations were just one of the ties that bound them together. As seen above, kinship and marriage were important, as was friendship; Robert de Ros and Eustace de Vescy were brothers-in-law to the new King of Scotland, Alexander II.
But most significant ‘was their shared hatred of King John on account of personal wrongs done to them’.345 These wrongs included being denied privileges and rights; having castles, lands and offices withheld without justification; corrupted justice and extortionate fines; excessive, punitive royal debt collection; the favouritism towards foreigners; personal affronts to families and honour; exorbitant demands for failed military campaigns; and the sheer arbitrariness of a vindictive royal will. Underneath it all lay a deep and bitter resentment against the monarch. The rebellion that began in England in 1215 had been a long time in gestation, and John was its feckless father.
Magna Carta and Civil War
The peace that John and Philip had made was formulated to last until Easter 1220. While it signified military disaster on the Continent, it freed the Angevin King to focus on the dangerous unrest in his own country which, in turn, had itself been stoked further by John’s military failure. However, although clearly by far and away still the dominant military force in England with his network of royal castles and influx of mercenaries, his position was much weaker than ever before; the domestic opposition had increasingly fused into a substantial entity with a focus on personal opposition to the King.346 John tried to make amends where he could with conciliatory gestures. In November he attempted to win over the Church and Langton in particular through a charter which granted freedom and swiftness in ecclesiastical and abbatial elections; the reservations he attached to it rendered the offer less generous than it seemed and Langton remained more inclined to the rebel cause than the royal one. Overtures to the Welsh princes Llewelyn and Maelgwn failed to secure them to his side. Robert de Ros and John de Lacy were sweet-talked and substantial efforts were made to retain the loyalty of barons who were at risk of wavering.
In parallel with these emollient moves were sensible, practical ones. Knights from Savary de Mauléon were due in February and from Hubert de Burgh, Seneschal of Poitou, in March. John’s continental mercenaries, principally Poitevin in origin, were distributed to royal castles under the command of Falkes de Bréauté. Strengthening of garrisons meant not only that castles were well prepared for defence, but could also readily launch a force in the field in the locality. Increased garrison sizes were a clear indication of heightening tensions on the political barometer. When discussions between the opposing factions broke down in January, this garrisoning was stepped up further, as exemplified by Nottingham and Scarborough. In October, Nottingham Castle received 20 men, more were sent in late January and six knights were dispatched there in February. At Scarsborough at the end of March, the garrison comprised no fewer than 10 crossbowmen and 60 soldiers; within three weeks it had climbed to 13 crossbowmen, 72 soldiers and a minimum of 10 knights. Throughout autumn and winter the castles themselves underwent repairs and had their fabric reinforced: Northampton, Mountsorrel, Corfe, Winchester, Oxford, Hertford, Wallingford, Berkhamstead and the Tower of London all appear in the records as undergoing such work; that many of these were soon to see action reveals the necessity of such operations.347
The contumacious barons had also been busy. They, too, were forging and reinforcing links, aiming first at John’s principal princely enemies in Wales, France and Scotland. It was not just the Northerners who had ties with the Scottish; connections went deep and wide across the barons and the royal court as Keith Stringer has shown.348 The sixteen-year-old Alexander II came to the throne of Scotland only on 5 December 1214; he was very possibly in consideration by the barons for the title of the next king of England, four centuries before James Stuart achieved this. But the availability of Prince Louis of France, backed by the might of the newly victorious Capetian monarchy and the prospect of lands being regained in Normandy without war, proved easily the better prospect. It was this line of communication that was pursued most enthusiastically.
The baronial party is believed to have met at Bury St Edmunds in the autumn of 1214 under the guise of a pilgrimage. Here they attempted to bolster their platform of reform by appealing to Henry I’s famous coronation charter, which promised the King’s commitment to adherence to rights of custom and regulation of the correct intercourse between the baronage and the monarch. For some historians such developments point to a real attempt at reform by the community of the realm for the betterment of the crown’s subjects; for others, they merely represent a fig-leaf to cover the naked self-interest of over-mighty nobles. The cynical interpretation is probably closer to the truth, but that should not blind us to the programme of genuine reform that manifested itself with Magna Carta, no matter how self-serving the motivation behind it. The precise events leading up to Magna Carta are not known in great detail but what is has been told elsewhere. The very nature of conspiracy and surreptitious meetings inevitably mean that even the best-informed commentators of events can take us only so far. Even with the 24-hour-media coverage and information overload of the twenty-first century we still perceive only glimpses of the reality behind decisions made by governments going to war.
