The Magnificent Century

by Thomas B. Costain

  It did not take long for the people of England to realize that Boniface of Savoy was the strangest primate the country had ever seen. After a succession of old men which stretched back into the mists of the past, sometimes men of great ability and inspired qualities of leadership, always of some degree of saintliness, it was disturbing to see the leadership of the Church in the hands of a worldling in his thirties, a soldier, moreover, contemptuous and grasping. The only thing which could be counted even slightly in Boniface’s favor was his prepossessing appearance. He soon became known throughout England as the Handsome Archbishop.

  Boniface was as able in his way as any primate of the past. Having one objective only, to make a fortune for himself, he proceeded to employ his very considerable abilities to that end. Realizing that he could not accumulate wealth until he had put the affairs of the see on a better basis, he reduced his staff, made economies in all departments, sold off what was left of the timber. As a quick means of personal aggrandizement he persuaded the Pope, with whom he remained a great favorite, to grant him the first fruits on all vacancies in the province of Canterbury. He proceeded to fill the vacancies, allowing the new incumbents one sixth of the income and keeping five sixths for himself. His pockets filled quickly.

  It then entered his head that what Robert Grosseteste had done for the spiritual improvement of the Church could be carried on with an eye to personal profit. He began to make visitations, and when he detected proofs of slackness (his sharp eye found them everywhere) he imposed fines on the delinquents, keeping the money for himself. Sometimes he agreed to forgo visitation when a sufficient inducement was offered.

  Finally he came to London, expecting figuratively to find gold coins hanging in the clerestory of St. Paul’s like hops on a string, and silver in enticing piles in the churches whose modest spires rose everywhere above the tenements of the old town. He took possession, without permission, of the town house of the Bishop of Chichester and then turned his guards loose on London to exercise a concession the King had given him (and which he had no shadow of right to give), that of purveyance. The armed Poitevins visited markets and shops and took whatever they wanted without making payment London, incredulous that such things could be happening, did nothing at first. Soon, however, rumblings were heard in the Shambles and in Barking. Wherever men gathered there was talk of what must be done. The anger of London, sometimes slow to rouse, was always hard to appease.

  Ecclesiastical London had decided to resist visitation. When Boniface came to St. Paul’s, his guards in chain mail at his heels (and all of them from Savoy), he was greeted by a strange silence. No organ sounded, no processional of cathedral officers in ceremonial robes, no censers swinging, no chanting of plainsong. St Paul’s, in fact, was as empty as a cavern under the sea. Finally the dean, old Henry of Cornhill, came doddering up to explain that there had been some mistake. Boniface excommunicated old Henry in a towering rage. Then, not being content with such an insignificant reprisal, he sent his men scurrying in all directions for candles and proceeded to dash them out on the paving stones while he cast into outer darkness everyone connected with the see of London.

  The Handsome Archbishop now decided to visit St. Bartholomew’s and sent a command for everything to be in readiness at the appointed hour. He must have been aware as he made his way through the crowded streets that he walked in an atmosphere charged with menace. If he had understood the mettle of London he would have known that the scowls on the faces he passed were not mere idle resentment, and his ear would have told him that the trained bands were marching before him, behind him, in parallel streets. The great city was getting ready to act.

  As soon as he appeared at the entrance of St. Bartholomew’s the bells began to ring, the boom of the organ rose from the interior of the church; it was plain that a service had just begun. Boniface saw at once that it had been timed to prevent him from making his inspection. He was white with rage when the aged sub-prior, who did not seem aware of what was going on, came up to receive him.

  “Where are the canons?”

  The old man gestured in the direction of the stalls, and the wrathy archbishop saw that the canons, to a man, were already on their knees in prayer and could not be interrupted. He was sure, in spite of the soberness of their faces, that they were laughing at him.

  Boniface fell into such an uncontrollable fury that he knocked the venerable sub-prior down and then, as he lay on the stone floor, struck him on the head and face, the blows having all his vigor behind them.

  “Thus, thus,” cried the furious primate, “will I deal with English traitors!”

  He called loudly for a sword so he could finish the helpless old man at his feet. As none was offered him, he reached down and crushed his victim against a spondyl between two of the stalls with such force that several bones were broken. The service was brought to an abrupt end, and the canons crowded between the irate archbishop and his victim. In the struggle which ensued the rochet was torn from the back of Boniface and it was discovered that he was wearing under it, not a penitential hair shirt as might have been expected, but a coat of chain mail!

  Even the violent archbishop sensed the impropriety of what had been revealed. He seems to have desisted at once and to have left the church, taking his followers with him.

  Word of what had happened had already reached the streets, which were filled with the rising tumult of the angry mobs. Boniface, an experienced soldier, knew that he and his men would be torn to pieces if they did not get away quickly. He succeeded in breaking his way through the people and led his men to the river. Here they secured boats and crossed to Lambeth. The mobs followed to the other side of the water and milled about the palace.

  “Where is the bloody aggressor?” they cried. “Come out, infamous assailant of helpless priests! Come out, extorter of money, married priest that you are!”

  In the meantime the canons of Bartholomew, acting on instructions from the Bishop of London, went in a body to tell the King what had happened. Henry refused to see them.

  Boniface managed to slip away from his palace at Lambeth and took a boat down the river to Westminster. He had no difficulty in gaining admission. The King seems to have taken a serious view of the incident at first, fearing that Boniface had been hasty and ill-advised. Queen Eleanor did not agree with him. She supported her uncle, declaring indignantly that he could not have done otherwise when confronted with such impudent opposition. She even persuaded the weak-kneed King to issue a proclamation warning the people of London not to take part in a controversy which was purely ecclesiastical.

  However, the Handsome Archbishop left the country soon afterward and remained away for seven years.

  5

  There can be no doubt that Eleanor was beautiful. No description of her is available, but it is probable that she inclined to the ivory and brown of the South rather than the dazzling gold-and-pink loveliness of the former Queen. Peter Langstoft speaks of her as “The erle’s dauhter, the fairest may of Me.” Even after people began to entertain a wholesome dislike of her they remained fascinated by the legend of her learning, and the women never did lose their interest in the clothes she continued to import from France. England even then was under Latin influence in all matters of dress. There had been insouciance in the trousseau Eleanor brought to the court of Henry; the parti-colored cotte, the gold or silver girdle in which a dagger was carelessly thrust, the wide goring at the hips, the daring effect of red silk damask and decorations of gilt quatrefoil, the mantle of honor over the shoulders, the very high and very new type of wimple into which the head receded until the face seemed like a flower in an enveloping spathe, the saucy pillbox cap.

  That she failed to produce an heir until after nearly four years of marriage added to Eleanor’s unpopularity. A land tired of succession quarrels had no place in its affections for a barren queen. There was excitement, therefore, and even a resurgence of her early popularity when it became known in the first months of 1239 that she w
as with child.

  On June 18 of that year a healthy male child was born at Westminster. It was quite late at night when the happy event occurred, but all London was awake and waiting. As soon as a loud clangor of bells conveyed the intelligence that the child was a boy, the city was illuminated and the streets filled with excited people. Already the descent of the royal infant had been traced back from Matilda, the Saxon wife of Henry I; to Margaret, her mother, who had been Queen of Scotland; to Edward the Exile, Edmund Ironsides, Ethelred, Edgar, Edward, Alfred. There it was to con, to talk over, the proof of descent from Alfred the Great, Alfred of glorious memory! For the first time in many years Henry had succeeded in making his people happy.

  Four days later the child was baptized and given the name of Edward, which again delighted the people because it was so completely English. By this time, however, the first flush of enthusiasm, the first glow of content, was beginning to wear off. Henry was up to his old tricks, demanding gifts for the heir from everyone. He was so demanding as to the nature and value of the gifts, in fact, that one of his Norman officials who stood beside the font remarked dryly to those about him, “God gave us this infant, but our lord the King sells him to us.”

  Not one of the nobles in their handsome surcoats of silk or samite or their wives in somewhat less costly grandeur had any conception of the importance of the event they were witnessing, that the infant held before the font, this son of vacillating Henry and grandson of the vicious John, would prove to be one of the greatest, if not the very greatest, of all English kings, that after a wild and unpromising youth he would assume office with an intensified sense of responsibility and govern so well that he would be called the English Justinian. They would perhaps have been unhappy and indignant if they had been given a glimpse of a future in which common men sat in the great council of the nation known as Parliament and that the tall man into which this child would grow, after killing in battle the great leader who first called “loyal and honest men” from all counties to sit in deliberation with baron and bishop, would be the one to adopt the idea and give it the sanction of long usage.

  There was nothing of this, of course, to be read in the wrinkled face of the rather long infant on whom the holy water was sprinkled this warm day of June. The common people, massed outside and well fortified with the stout English ale always drunk on such occasions, had more prescience than the bowing and chattering people of the court. The boy was descended straight from Alfred, he was to bear the fine name of Edward: it stood to reason that he would grow into a proper man. The common people had high hopes for this prince.

  It soon became apparent that the lord Edward was going to be of kingly appearance. He was called Edward with the Flaxen Hair. His eyes were blue, his complexion high, his features fine. He grew quickly and strongly. Some slight dismay was felt when it was found that one eyelid drooped in close imitation of his father’s defect, because that famous squint of Henry’s was generally believed to be the manifestation of slyness and his other maddening qualities. Would the boy develop the traits of his sire? The heir, however, showed early signs of being different from his father in most respects; a rugged, high-spirited, hot-tempered lad, always willing to exchange a blow for a blow but always fair about it, with a love from the very start for horses and dogs and weapons.

  As soon as he had weathered an infantile illness or two (in the course of one Eleanor scandalized the monks of the Cistercian monastery of Beaulieu by insisting on remaining with them to nurse her son back to health) he was taken to Windsor Castle, where Henry’s ambitious building plans had been partly carried out, and there he was put in charge of one Hugh Giffard. His tutor soon found out other things about the boy: that he was quick in understanding, an excellent scholar up to a point; that he had an inherent sense of honor. Edward was beginning to grow very tall for his age, and it was certain that he was going to overshadow in height both his father and his grandfather, the thickset John. People began to call him affectionately Longshanks. The name stuck to him, and it is as Edward Longshanks that he is most often referred to in history.

  Queen’s Men, King’s Men, and the Villain of the Piece

  HENRY was now determined to rule the country without a responsible government. His new council of twelve was subservient to him, and he began to give all administrative posts of importance to men who had been serving him, for the most part, in minor capacities. He had always wanted to do things this way, and his own inclination was, therefore, the main contributing factor in the decision. It was plain to see, nevertheless, that he had been urged to it by the greedy newcomers. They wanted to have to themselves the goose which laid the golden eggs.

  But Henry had not been cut to the measure of a dictator. Born with a belief in the absolute power of kings, he lacked the capacity and the personal discipline to make proper use of the power he was now wrongfully assuming. He was too indolent for the role. He must have men to do the work, and it was characteristic of him to lean on his wife’s relatives. They suited him perfectly: they were courtly, sophisticated, believers in the kind of government he wanted. He liked to have them around him and, in order to cut a good figure in their eyes, he was prepared to squander the wealth of the realm on them.

  As soon as he selected the council of twelve with William of Valence at the head of it, however, it became only a matter of time until the barons would rise against him. But the murder of Richard the Marshal had removed the one man capable of leading the forces of discontent, and the breaking of the storm must wait the appearance of another leader.

  The bitterness of his subjects was made abundantly clear when Henry decided to go to war with France. Of all the wide Angevin possessions, only a small province in the southwest remained to the English King, made up largely of Gascony. Henry dreamed of winning back the empire of his grandfather and he kept an eager eye on developments south of the Channel. It was largely through the influence of his mother that he decided to make the effort at this juncture.

  It has already been told that Isabella could not reconcile herself to the loss in rank which resulted from her marriage to the Count of La Marche. She had been Queen of England and of the Angevin possessions beyond the seas, and three times each year she had worn in public a crown on her lustrous hair. Whenever she found herself now in the company of women who outranked her and took advantage of it, she would return in a great rage, her fine eyes blazing, her color high. She was the widow of a king and the mother of a king, she would declare, and she could not live under such rebuffs.

  In 1241 Louis decided that his brother Alphonse was to rule over Poitou and took him to Poictiers to receive the submissions of the nobility. Hugh of La Marche obeyed the summons with the greatest reluctance. Isabella accompanied him with even greater unwillingness, and it did not improve her state of mind that she was ignored for three days. Finally she was summoned to the royal presence.

  Blanche of Castile was seated beside the King when the former Queen of England made her entrance. It does not need stating that the two women had hated each other from the time when Blanche’s husband had tried to take John’s throne. The presence of the dowager Queen of France did nothing to soothe the ruffled feelings of Isabella.

  There was silence in the room while she walked to the far end where Louis and his mother were seated on raised chairs. Neither rose to greet her, nor did they speak. Isabella compelled herself to voice a brief expression of her loyalty, although each word must have cost her an effort. Louis nodded in response but said nothing. His mother, her eyes fixed triumphantly on this once admired Queen who had been her bitter rival, remained silent also. Isabella accepted their attitude as a dismissal and swept out of the state room in a towering passion.

  Louis was a man of rare magnanimity, and it may safely be assumed that this slight to the ex-Queen of England was the work of Blanche of Castile. Blanche had suffered a great deal at the hands of beautiful women. As a girl she had been eclipsed by the attractions of her lovely sister Uracca. The court
of Philip Augustus, to which she had come as the wife of Prince Louis, was a brilliant one, the center of beauty and chivalry and fashion. The bride from Spain could not have failed to resent the women of the court, who, she knew quite well, considered her plain and dowdy. She had sought release by interesting herself in affairs of state and she had been almost fiercely in favor of the invasion of England on the invitation of the barons. Her rivalry with Isabella had been long-range, but it had been deep-seated.

  The humiliation of the ex-Queen who had tossed her cap over the windmill (and her royal prerogatives with it) had a result which Blanche could not have expected. The Count of La Marche was still in love with his wife and he resented the coolness of her reception as much as she did. She accompanied him when he arrived at the palace sometime later, ostensibly for the purpose of taking the oath of fealty. It was during the Christmas festivities, which may account for the way things fell out Hugh stomped into the presence of the new ruler of Poitou and in a loud voice disputed Alphonse’s right to the control of the Poitevin realm. He then turned and left the palace. Before the ale-drowsy officials could order his detention, he and Isabella had mounted their horses and galloped out through the courtyard.

  Having thus committed themselves to rebellion, the daring pair put their heads together and planned the first steps in a conspiracy to unite the provinces of the South and West against the French King. Raimund of Toulouse, who shared their desire to prevent the whole of France from being snared into the Capetian net, fell willingly into line. The barons of Gasoony met secretly at Pons and