Читать книгу The Minority of Henry the Third - Kate Norgate - Страница 6

On Thursday, 25th May,[232] the news of the Fair of Lincoln reached Louis in his camp before Dover. He took counsel with his friends; and they all agreed that he must raise the siege, concentrate in London, and send to France for reinforcements. Unwillingly he caused his trebuchet to be taken down, and prepared to withdraw, but determined to stay over Sunday 28th, “to see whether he would get any news.” On the Sunday “it was very clear at sea, and looking towards Calais they saw many ships with their sails set, whereof they rejoiced greatly.” Next day {29 May} the ships “came sailing over the sea right merrily, to the number of full six score.” The English, when they saw them, hoisted their sails and put to sea; the French set off in chase, but finding they could not catch them put about again and made straight for Dover. The English then put about likewise, overtook the hindermost ships of the French fleet, and captured eight of them; the rest got safe into the harbour, and were met by Louis on the beach. To his great disappointment and rage, however, he found that, except one large vessel in which were eighteen knights, they brought nothing but sailors, merchants, and men-at-arms. Next day {30 May} he sent them all back again, with two messengers charged with letters to his father. Then he set fire to “all the ships which were ashore before the haven,” and betook himself to Canterbury and thence to London, where he arrived on Thursday, 1st June.[233]

The Royalists meanwhile had advanced by way of Windsor and Staines to Chertsey;[234] thence they made secret overtures to some of the leading citizens of London for the surrender of the city. Tempted on the one hand by the promise of a confirmation of its liberties “under the King’s seal,” and terrified on the other hand by the fate of Lincoln, London was clearly beginning to waver; and Louis, on discovering these secret negotiations, could only secure himself in the city by closing all its gates save one and insisting upon a renewal of homage from the citizens to himself.[235] At the beginning of June the Archbishop of Tyre, who had come to Europe to preach a crusade, arrived in England from France, accompanied by the abbots of Citeaux, Clairvaux, and Pontigny, and endeavoured to reconcile the contending parties.[236] Several parleys were held,[237] and a draft treaty was actually prepared[238] and seems to have been discussed between four of Louis’s counsellors and four of Henry’s, who met, accompanied by twenty knights of each party, between Brentford and Hounslow,[239] on 13th June. But the meeting proved useless because Louis insisted upon including in the peace four clerks whose conduct had been, alike in an ecclesiastical and a political point of view, so outrageous that the Legate absolutely refused to admit them to any terms without previously consulting the Pope.[240] The unsuccessful mediators returned to France at the end of the month.[241]

Meanwhile Falkes de Bréauté had taken Lynn.[242] On 23rd June the sheriffs were ordered to publish the Charter in their shires and see that it was put in execution.[243] The King and his council then withdrew to Gloucester;[244] and it was probably during their temporary absence from the neighbourhood of London that Louis sent the Viscount of Melun and Eustace de Neville on a plundering raid into East Anglia, whence they returned laden with the spoils of the famous abbey of S. Edmund.[245]

This raid was evidently a desperate expedient for obtaining supplies. Cooped up in London, Louis and his men were in need of everything; and Philip Augustus shewed no inclination to send them help of any kind.[246] Months before, if we may believe the Marshal’s biographer, the French King, when he heard that John was dead, his son crowned, and the Marshal in charge of the realm, had declared that further effort was useless. “We shall take nothing in England now; that brave man’s good sense will defend the land—Louis has lost it. Mark my words! When the Marshal takes the matter in hand, we are undone.”[247] As Philip had from the outset refused to countenance his son’s enterprise openly, so now he connived at, rather than assisted, the efforts of his daughter-in-law, Blanche of Castille, to collect money and troops for Louis.[248] Blanche scoured the country in her husband’s behalf, pleading his cause so energetically that a contemporary says, “if those whom she enlisted had all gone to England in arms, they might have conquered the whole kingdom.”[249] The force which her efforts finally brought together at Calais numbered, however, only about a hundred—or at the utmost three hundred—knights.[250] Several times, while they lay encamped on the shore, some English ships sailed up to the harbour and discharged arrows at them; and once, at least, a great fight took place, in which the English were signally worsted. Another night the French actually crossed the Channel and anchored off Dover, intending to sail thence round to the mouth of the Thames; but in the morning, as they were about to set forth, a storm overtook them and drove them back panic-stricken to the coast of Flanders.[251]

On 4th July the King’s guardians issued from Gloucester a summons for a council to be held at Oxford on the 15th. It seems not to have actually met till a week later; and on 26th or 27th July the King and the Marshal returned to Gloucester, after issuing (22nd July) a summons for another assembly to be held at Oxford on 6th August.[252] The royal forces were increasing more and more. Two great nobles had joined them since Louis’s return to England—the Earl of Warren before 22nd June, and the Earl of Arundel before 14th July[253]—and nearly one hundred and fifty rebels submitted between the end of May and the beginning of August.[254] When the host re-assembled at Oxford[255] all was ready for the final struggle. From Oxford they moved to Reading, and thence to Farnham;[256] there, it seems, the leaders separated, the Legate and the King going northward again with one part towards London, while another part under the Earl Marshal and the justiciar made for the Kentish coast to prepare for its defence against the expected French fleet.

From Dover the Marshal summoned the men of the Cinque Ports to arm and assemble their ships at Sandwich. The aged warrior was eager to go forth in person and encounter the French at sea, but his men would not suffer it; he must stay on shore, they said, “for if it chanced that he were slain or captured, who then would defend the land?”[257] On S. Bartholomew’s eve {Wed., 23 Aug.} he, with the Earl of Warren, King John’s elder son Richard,[258] Philip d’Aubigné, and a host of other “good knights,” lay encamped near Canterbury. They “slept little,” for they all knew that the morrow might prove a day almost as momentous as that of Senlac. At early dawn {24 Aug.} they marched to Sandwich. The day broke clear and bright, with a “soft and pleasant” wind which soon brought into view the armament coming from Calais.[259] It consisted of some eighty vessels of various sizes;[260] ten of them were large ships of war, fully armed,[261] of which four were filled with knights and six with men-at-arms; the smaller vessels carried accoutrements and other goods.[262] Among the knights were some of the noblest and bravest men of France;[263] those of highest rank and fame, thirty-six in number, together with the treasure which Blanche was sending to her husband, were in the ship of Eustace the Monk, who seems to have been in command of the whole fleet.[264] The vessels were making for the mouth of the Thames,[265] and as they swept round Thanet in close array as if ready for a fight, Eustace’s ship leading,[266] their number and character could be plainly distinguished by the Royalists drawn up on the shore, as well as by the sailors who manned the English ships in Sandwich harbour.[267]

At the eleventh hour the Marshal’s plan of campaign all but broke down. The English fleet was ready; but it comprised only eighteen, or at the utmost twenty-two, ships of any size, with some smaller ones to the number of about twenty more;[268] and the sight of the enemy’s superior fleet struck such terror into the sailors that they lost their heads completely, left their ships with the sails all hoisted, and took refuge in their little boats.[269] Once more the Marshal appealed to them as only he could appeal. Again he offered to go with them; but again his own men forbade it.[270] Then by a characteristic exhortation he shamed the mariners out of their fears. “God has given us one victory over the French on land. Now they are coming again, to claim the country against Him. But He has power to help the good on sea as well as on shore,[271] and He will help His own. You have the advantage in the game; you will conquer the enemies of God!”[272] The impressionable sailors caught a new spirit from the landsmen who, fresh from their victory over superior numbers at Lincoln, were fearless of the risk of another encounter at similar odds.[273] One ship was quickly filled with the Marshal’s own followers, under his nephew John;[274] Richard the King’s son went on board another with a company of knights;[275] a third was occupied by Earl Warren’s men, the Earl himself remaining on shore with the Marshal;[276] Philip d’Aubigné probably commanded a contingent from the Channel Isles. Hubert de Burgh seems to have joined the muster by sea, coming from Dover in “a fine ship” of his own,[277] and to have taken the supreme command.

The skill and energy of the English sailors quickly atoned for their momentary panic. Though wind and tide were both against them,[278] they came up in the rear of the French fleet just as it reached the mouth of the estuary. For a moment the leading English ship—that of Hubert—seemed about to close with the enemy; then it suddenly shot forward, as if the commander’s purpose were not to give battle, but to avoid it.[279] On seeing this, the French shifted their sails, and with insulting cries of “La hart! la hart!”—a call with which huntsmen were wont to urge their hounds after the quarry—turned round to the attack, their line still headed by the ship of Eustace the Monk.[280] This was probably the largest and most formidable vessel of the French fleet; but it was overloaded; it carried, besides its freight of men and treasure, some valuable horses for Louis, and a trebuchet; and in consequence, it lay so deep in the water that the waves almost overflowed its deck. Sir Richard the King’s son laid his ship alongside it at once; Earl Warren’s men quickly brought up their ship on its other side. This latter ship was only a cog, or fishing vessel; but being light it stood high above the water, and its occupants were thus able to cast down potfuls of lime and stones on their adversaries’ heads, with blinding if not deadly effect.[281] Meanwhile the armed galleys of the English fleet, few though they were in number, were doing fatal execution on some of the other French ships, piercing them with their iron beaks and sinking them. Now, too, the French had the wind in their teeth, and it carried into their faces clouds of quicklime thrown up into the air by the English. Moreover, Philip d’Aubigné had with him a company of crossbowmen whose arrows wrought havoc among the enemy.[282] At length a man-at-arms from Guernsey, Reginald Payne, leaped from the deck of the cog to that of Eustace’s ship with such an impetus that in alighting he knocked down a French knight, William des Barres; in another moment he had prostrated a second foeman of rank and disabled a third; amid the confusion thus created all the fighting men on the cog followed him, and Eustace’s ship was captured with all on board.[283] On seeing this the remaining French ships took to flight. The victors chased them all the way back to Calais.[284] Only fifteen vessels—the largest in the fleet except that of Eustace—reached the harbour; of the lesser ones many were taken[285] and the rest sunk.[286] The slaughter was frightful; only thirty-two men, all of high rank and renown, were retained as prisoners on the ship which had belonged to Eustace, and even these were with difficulty saved by the English knights from the fury of the men-at-arms and sailors whose valour had won that great prize.[287] On every other captured vessel only a man or two were left alive; the rest were slain and “flung to the fishes for food.”[288]

When the fight and the chase were over and the prizes all towed into Sandwich, one prisoner was missed: Eustace the Monk. After a long search he was found hiding in the hold of his ship[289] from the universal hatred of which he knew himself to be the object, not only as the commander of the hostile fleet, but still more as a traitor of the deepest dye and a man of infamous character in every respect. He offered to give his captors ten thousand marks and to serve King Henry faithfully if they would grant him his life, “but it could not be.” One Stephen, a seaman of Winchelsea, who had sailed with him in earlier days when he was in the service of King John, flung in his face a recital of all his misdoings on land and sea, and bade him choose whether to have his head cut off on the ship’s deck or on the trebuchet. “Neither alternative was sweet,” says a contemporary writer with grim sarcasm; “anyway, they cut off his head. That was his festival day.”[290] The severed head was afterwards stuck on the point of a spear and carried round the neighbourhood, to shew the people, who had long lived in terror of the ruthless freebooter, that he was really dead.[291] The prisoners were sent to Dover to be put in ward in the castle under the charge of Hubert;[292] Philip d’Aubigné was despatched to carry news of the victory to the Legate and the King;[293] the Marshal stayed to superintend the division of the spoils. There was a large quantity of valuable things, money, plate, clothes, horses, arms, harness, provisions of various kinds; the Marshal contrived to distribute these in such a way that every man thought his own share better than that of his fellows, and yet to leave a residue which, with the hearty assent of the sailors, he devoted to the foundation of a hospital for “God’s poor,” in honour of the Saint on whose festival day the victory had been won.[294]

The Fair of Lincoln had, as a contemporary writer emphatically says, “destroyed the [rebel] barons.”[295] It had deprived Louis of the bulk of his English allies, and left the French conquest of England to be accomplished, if accomplished at all, solely by French hands. Had the French reinforcements effected a landing and defeated the Royalists in one battle, such a conquest might still have been possible. But when the tidings of that S. Bartholomew’s day reached Louis, he at once saw that his cause was lost.[296] While the Marshal’s division of the English host was in Kent, the other division, with the Legate and the young King, had encamped round about London, more closely than the Royalists had yet approached the capital since Louis’s return. Gualo seems to have placed Henry with his mother in the safe shelter of Windsor castle while he himself ventured as near to London as Kingston; one day, however, a report reached him that the French were sallying forth to attack him, whereupon he rode hastily back to Windsor. This French sally may have been the “very fine raid, wherein the lesser folk won much gain,” which is said to have been made about this time by the young Duke of Brittany. Again there was ineffectual talk of peace. Then the Legate proposed a siege of the city; but for this the lay leaders deemed their forces insufficient, and they retired each man to his own quarters. Another unsuccessful attempt at pacification, made by a Cistercian monk who was one of the Pope’s penitentiaries, was followed by a meeting of the Queen-mother and the Count of Nevers, between Windsor and London; “they spoke amicably, and parted amicably, but without making peace.” Louis was so conscious of peril that he removed from the bishop’s house to the Tower, “to be more in safety.”[297] The news of the battle of Sandwich reached him late on the evening of Saturday, 26th August. On Monday, 28th, Robert of Dreux went under a safe-conduct from the King to speak with the Marshal at Rochester; next day one of the newly-captured French knights, Robert de Courtenay, was allowed to go to London to speak with Louis, Dreux remaining as a hostage in his stead.[298] After consulting with Courtenay and others, Louis decided to ask for a parley with William the Marshal in person.[299]

William took counsel with the other Royalists; “and there were some who spoke rightly bravely, though they had kept away from the coast in the hour of need.” These men said: “We do not want to conciliate Louis. The only parley we want is a siege of London.” But the valiant men who had been in the fight were wiser; they besought the Marshal to get the French out of the country “and not to let lack of money be a hindrance, for they would help him to the utmost of their power, with their hearts and bodies and possessions.” He therefore agreed to go and parley with Louis.[300] He took with him, however, all the Royalists who had accompanied him into Kent; and the whole English host, thus reunited, now blockaded the city by land, while on 1st September the “barons” of the Cinque Ports were bidden to bring all their ships to the mouth of the Thames for the King’s service,[301] thus cutting off the capital from all chance of communication by sea. It was obvious that if Louis did not make terms at once, he would speedily be starved into unconditional surrender.[302] He took a course which was not only safer, but also more honourable both for himself and his adversaries, when he met the Marshal and the Justiciar in conference outside London {5 Sept.}. He frankly committed himself into their hands and those of the Legate, requesting them to dictate their own terms, on the sole condition that those terms should be such as would neither dishonour him nor offend his companions in arms.[303]

The Marshal and the Justiciar returned to Windsor, and Louis to London. From that night—Tuesday, 5th September—till Saturday, 9th, he waited in vain for their expected propositions; then, on the advice of his barons, he determined to make a sally early next morning and try to cut his way out. Late on the Saturday night {9 Sept.}, however, as they were about to separate and make their preparations for the morrow’s venture, a letter was brought to him from the Marshal asking for a day’s truce and requesting that Hugh de Malaunay might be sent to speak with the Marshal and the council. Both these requests Louis granted. A parley was then fixed for Tuesday (12th September), and a prolongation of the truce till Thursday (14th) was guaranteed by the Queen, the two William Marshals, the Earls of Salisbury, Warren, and Arundel, and some other magnates. Malaunay returned on Monday, 11th, and “told Louis what he had got.”[304] It was evidently something of great importance, for Louis at once “summoned his whole council, and the barons of England who held with him, and the citizens, and asked their advice upon it; and they all approved it.”[305]

What Malaunay had brought was evidently the definite offer of terms for which Louis had asked. Louis had put himself—“saving his honour”—into the hands of the King’s guardians; “therefore,” as a contemporary English historian says, “they, with whom the whole matter rested, and who desired above all things to get rid of Louis, sent back to him a certain form of peace drawn up in writing;[306] to which if he consented, they would undertake to secure for him and his adherents a safe departure from England; if not, they would use their utmost efforts to compass his ruin.”[307] The terms which they offered seem to have been these: The adherents and allies of Louis in England, Henry and his adherents, London and the other towns, were all to have their respective rights and lands as they had them at the beginning of the war. (A later clause explained that this provision was not to apply to clerks, except as regards lay fees held by them.) Prisoners on both sides, taken since Louis’s coming to England, to be set free; those taken earlier, to be released if three persons, to be chosen by Henry’s council from the council of Louis, should swear that they were Louis’s men on the day of their capture; for all prisoners, ransoms already paid to be kept; ransoms now due to be paid; ransoms not yet due to be remitted; and all disputes to be settled by the aforesaid three. All English prisoners, and other English subjects who were in arms against King John, to give security for their fidelity to Henry, by homage, oaths, and charters, according to the custom of England. Money for the payment of which hostages had been given to Louis was to be paid at once, if the date fixed for the payment had arrived, and the hostages were to be restored. All cities, lands, and other property which had been forcibly occupied in England were to be restored to the King or other owners. Louis was to send letters to the brothers of Eustace the Monk bidding them restore to Henry the islands (some of the Channel Isles) which Eustace had seized; if they failed to do so, Louis was to distrain the lands which they held of him; and if they were then still contumacious, they were to be outside this peace. Louis and Henry were each to send a copy of the peace to King Alexander of Scotland, and he, if he wished to be included in it, was to restore all castles, lands, and prisoners, taken by him during the war. Louis was to send a copy, on the same conditions, to Llywelyn and the other Welsh princes. Louis was to quit-claim to all the barons and men of England all homage, fealty, confederations, and alliances, and never henceforth to make, on account of this war, any confederation which might at any time cause damage to the English King. The barons of England were to swear to Henry that they would enter into no confederation or undertaking against him or his heirs, with Louis or with any other person. Louis was to take his corporal oath, and his men with him, and such of them as the King’s council should choose were also to pledge themselves individually by charters, that they would keep this peace firmly and faithfully; and Louis was to do his utmost to obtain confirmation of it from the Pope.[308] All debts now due to Louis were to be paid.[309]

Well might Louis and his counsellors “all approve” this draft treaty. Even if it was not—as in all likelihood it was—accompanied by a verbal intimation of the Marshal’s willingness to pay Louis an indemnity in money, still the terms were much less hard than they had expected.[310] The issue of the next day’s conference was now a foregone conclusion.[311] The meeting took place in an islet in the Thames, opposite Kingston.[312] The Royalists drew up on one side of the river, the French on the other. Louis and his counsellors entered a boat and were rowed to the island, where they found the Queen, with the Legate “clad all in scarlet,” the Marshal, and the other members of the English King’s council, as well as the King himself.[313] Louis and his men swore on the Gospels, first of all, that they would stand to the judgement of the Church and be faithful to Church and Pope from that day forward.[314] Then they swore to the conditions of peace already set forth,[315] Louis adding a promise that he would, if possible, induce his father to restore to Henry his rights beyond the sea. Henry then laid his hand on the Book, and, together with the Legate and the Marshal, made oath to restore to the barons of England and all other men of the realm all their rights and heritages, with all the liberties formerly demanded, for which the discord between John and the barons had arisen.[316] Lastly, an indemnity of (seemingly) ten thousand marks was promised to Louis, for which the Earl Marshal made himself personally responsible.[317]

Thus, on Tuesday, September 12th,[318] the peace was made. The absolution of Louis and his followers was deferred till next day, because the prelates had not brought their “chapels” with them,[319] and also because Gualo declared that Louis should have no absolution unless he would come “barefooted and shirtless, clothed in a woollen gown”—the proper garb of a penitent. The Frenchmen however begged hard that their lord might be suffered to come with his woollen gown hidden under his robe; and to this Gualo consented.[320] Both parties returned to their lodgings for the night. Next day {Wed., 13 Sept.} the Legate and the bishops put on their silken copes and their mitres and absolved Louis and all his men, except the four clerks specially reserved for the judgement of the Pope,[321] who were made to withdraw from the island while the absolution was taking place. Gualo then sent the Pope’s penitentiary to London to absolve the citizens and others who had not been present at the conference.[322] On Thursday, September 14th, the conclusion of the peace was formally announced in the King’s name.[323] On Sunday, 17th, the Legate went to Merton priory, and next day {18 Sept.} the peace was confirmed there, on the one part by Louis with the Counts of Britanny, Nevers, and Dreux, and “many others from France,” on the other part by the Queen with many English bishops, earls, barons, and knights. On the 22nd Louis came to Merton again, to receive from the Legate’s penitentiary injunctions about his penance.[324] After this he was escorted to Dover by the Legate, the Marshal, and other magnates,[325] and sailed for France on Michaelmas eve.[326]