Richard & John: Kings at War

by McLynn, Frank

  Maybe news of John’s appeal to Rome had leaked out to the barons, for they certainly acted after Runnymede as if John could not be trusted and a renewal of hostilities was only a matter of time. There was clearly a hardline faction that wanted no settlement whatever with John and thought themselves secure only if he was dead, deposed or abdicated. Some members of this clique slipped away from Runnymede once it appeared that a peace deal was likely, intending to carry on the war against John on the grounds that they were not present at the signing of Magna Carta and therefore could not be bound by it. 76 Some spoke openly of electing a new king, and others began fortifying the castles they had just received from John, as if war was imminent. Still others sought ways to avoid disarming. The obvious pretext for remaining in arms was a tournament, so there was suddenly a spate of these, all held suspiciously close to London; one such, with the venue originally advertised as Stamford, was transferred to Hounslow, so that armed men would be at hand in case John tried to retake London.77 That this was clearly in John’s mind became apparent from the ill-tempered exchanges at the conference in Oxford in July, whose sullen tone was set by the barons’ refusal to stand when the king entered. John demanded to know why the barons were strengthening the defences of London if it was really true that peace had broken out; the magnates replied that the preconditions in the Charter were far from having been met: castles had not yet been given up or privileges granted and, most importantly, not everyone had yet taken the oath to the Twenty-Five.78 Even Stephen Langton, no particular friend to John, began to urge a more conciliatory attitude on the barons. But they were right to be suspicious, for John had not the slightest intention of surrendering a jot or tittle of his powers long-term.79 Their suspicions seemed justified when John, raging at the insulting treatment he had received at the July conference in Oxford, refused to attend a second one in mid-August. He declared that since Runnymede he had received nothing but insults, and that he no longer felt safe venturing among the barons with their huge bristling-armed retinues.80

  It was at this juncture that John received the news from Rome he had been waiting for. With no knowledge of Magna Carta Innocent III wrote the first in a long series of letters on 18 June, ordering the barons to come to terms with the king or face excommunication.81 On 7 July, still ignorant of Magna Carta, the Pope wrote to Pandulph his legate and the justiciar des Roches (with the abbot of Reading as a third addressee), praising John’s decision to take the Cross and opining that the lords who opposed him in England were worse than Saracens; at least the benighted heathens had no true appreciation of what they were doing, but the English lords were contradicting God’s will by impeding the crusade. Innocent gave des Roches carte blanche to use the weapons of interdict and excommunication against ‘those who disturbed the realm’ and to suspend any clergy who refused to cooperate.82 Innocent may have suspected that Stephen Langton was secretly abetting the rebels, for he added the following in the last paragraph of his letter: ‘That our mandate may not be impeded by anyone’s evasion, we entrust you with the execution of the above instructions and charge you to proceed as you see fit, disregarding all appeals. If you cannot all discharge the business, let two of you do so.’ Stephen Langton justifiably refused to promulgate these letters, and their threats of interdict and excommunication, on the grounds that they were out of date, written with no knowledge of Magna Carta. On 5 September Pandulph and des Roches, who had become close collaborators and fellow ideologues, duly excommunicated the barons.83 There remained Langton. Elated by the confirmation of papal support, John had outwitted the archbishop of Canterbury by appearing ultra-conciliatory: he even released a further 2,000 marks of the sum agreed in 1214 for the settlement of the Interdict and made a point of letting Innocent know that he was also settling Queen Berengaria’s long-standing claim for a dower as widow of Richard I.84 Confident that he had secured his position at all points, John gave the nod to des Roches and Pandulph. They proceeded to suspend Langton and all clergy who supported the rebels. John added a vindictive twist of his own by refusing to let any but ultra-loyal English clerics attend Innocent’s Fourth Lateran Council, which was even then assembling in Rome.85

  The disconsolate Stephen Langton nonetheless set out for Rome to plead his case in person. Here was a clear case of the world turned upside down, for it was John’s refusal to accept his appointment and the Pope’s insistence that had precipitated the long conflict between England and the Vatican. Now he, Langton, had been turned out by the Pope’s express mandate. It is no wonder that he thought bitterly of resigning his see and becoming a Carthusian monk.86 But the worst was yet to come. Langton had clung to the belief that Innocent’s letters so far related to the situation before Magna Carta, that he might change his mind once he had read the settlement contained in the Charter. Innocent’s indignant repudiation of Magna Carta, in a letter dated 24 August,87 was therefore the last straw. Innocent’s argument was twofold: John had been coerced into agreement; and as overlord of England, only he, Innocent, could decide disputes about government and governance. The machiavellian brilliance of John’s ‘surrender’ to the Pope was now clear. Innocent wrote that Magna Carta was an insult to John who:

  was forced to accept an agreement which is not only shameful and base but illegal and unjust . . . We refuse to pass over such shameless presumption, for thereby the Apostolic See would be dishonoured, the king’s right injured, the English nation shamed and (the Charter) a serious danger to the whole crusade, a danger that would be imminent if the concession thus wrested from a great king who had taken the Cross were not cancelled by our authority, even though he should prefer them to be upheld. On behalf of Almighty God, Father, Son and Holy Ghost, and by the authority of Saints Peter and Paul His apostles . . . we utterly reject and condemn this settlement, and under threat of excommunication we order that the king should not dare to observe it and the barons and their associates should not insist on it being observed. The charter, with all undertakings and guarantees, whether confirming it or resulting from it, we declare to be null and void of all validity forever. 88

  Magna Carta is both myth and historical document. To an extent the two interpenetrate, for the version so admired by English ‘libertarians’ in the seventeenth century was not the original of 1215 but a truncated and modified version published by Henry III in 1225.89 The pure myth was best expressed by Rudyard Kipling:

  And still when Mob or Monarch lays

  Too rude a hand on English ways,

  The whisper wakes, the shudder plays,

  Across the reeds at Runnymede.

  And Thames that knows the mood of kings,

  And crowds and priests and suchlike things,

  Rolls deep and dreadful as he brings their warning down from Runnymede.

  But the historical fact is that Magna Carta was a dead duck within ten weeks and thereafter both sides had recourse to civil war. Immediately the rebel barons faced a problem. They were presumably fighting to replace John, but by whom? Since 1066 there had been many civil wars in England, but in each case there was an obvious pretender to the throne for whom the rebels fought: the Young King against Henry II in 1173-74, the younger Angevins against old King Henry in the 1180s, even John against Richard in 1193-94. In 1215 there was neither an alternative royal dynasty nor a dissatisfied plotter from the present ruling family - John’s murder of Arthur had seen to that. It was one thing to say that the barons opposed John on the basis of Liberty, the Ancient Constitution or the Charter. But would men fight for such abstract ideals? Besides, now that the Pope had weighed in with his influential opinion, the barons badly needed an ideological counterweight, someone who would add political legitimacy to their cause. And, the xenophobia exhibited in the Charter notwithstanding, for lack of any domestic candidates this would have to be a foreign prince. This was the context in which they began to look across the Channel at the headstrong French version of the Young King, a man moreover who had the vital attribute of being on the side God and the F
ates seemed to favour: Louis, son of the successful Philip Augustus. It was time to call in the power of France to redress the imbalance caused by the Pope and to bring the victorious ethos of Bouvines to bear on the detested John.

  5. John’s Campaigns 1215-16

  19

  THE GLOVES WERE OFF, the veils ripped asunder and at last the two sides stood forth in all their nakedness. All pretence of peace and goodwill could be laid aside. For ten weeks John had scarcely been able to contain himself. While in public he maintained an equable statesmanlike demeanour, in private he seethed and raged with fury and frustration: he ‘gnashed his teeth, rolled his eyes, caught up sticks and straws and gnawed them like a madman, or tore them into shreds with his fingers’ - the circumstantial details inevitably recall Henry II in one of his tantrums.1 The papal endorsement had been the necessary condition for his breakout into total war against the barons; the sufficient conditions would now be supplied by mercenaries from Europe. This was what Roger of Wendover meant when he commented: ‘After much reflection, he (John) chose, like the Apostle Peter, to seek vengeance upon his enemies by means of two swords, that is, by a spiritual sword and a material one, so that if he could not triumph by the one, he might safely count upon doing so by the other.’2 In Flanders his man Hugh de Boves was actively recruiting troops, while the chancellor, Richard Marsh, was doing the same in Aquitaine. John went so far as to try to draw Britanny once more into his web, writing on 12 August to Count Peter of Britanny with an offer of ‘the honour of Richmond’ if he would come with a goodly company of knights to levy war on the English rebels.3 When one realises that John’s sole official reason for not attending the Oxford conference three days later was that he was ‘cast down’ by the treatment he had received so far, the extent of the king’s duplicity really needs no further comment.

  After the first abortive conference at Oxford in mid-July, John withdrew into Wiltshire and from there made his way into his beloved Dorset. He placed his queen and eldest son in Corfe Castle for safety then proceeded to Wareham and then overland to Southampton, intending to proceed along the south coast by sea and land in the rear of the rebels at Dover, to which point he had summoned all his putative continental allies for a grand muster on Michaelmas Day. As was the custom in those sea-fearing days, he put in at as many ports as he could overnight and it was at Portsmouth on 24 August that the bishops acting as go-between met him, bringing a ‘last chance’ offer of peace from the barons.4 John indignantly refused it but sent the bishops back to a meeting with the barons at Staines on 26 August, where the king’s remonstrance was read out, declaring that ‘it was not his fault if the peace was not carried out according to the Charter’. The barons had meanwhile got hold of the first papal letters (not the later one condemning Magna Carta) and claimed that the general condemnation of ‘disturbers of the king and kingdom’ applied to John. Although they did not use such terminology, they claimed in effect that a schizoid king could well be his own worst disturber, and therefore that the papal condemnation could as well apply to John as to themselves.5 This was clearly disingenuous, but the rebels were in a quandary of their own making. By accepting the Pope as overlord of England in 1214, and even claiming that this surprise outcome was their own doing, they had cut the ground from under their own feet. Their acceptance of the Pope meant that in feudal law clause 61 of Magna Carta, disallowing any appeal to the Vatican, was itself null and void. While the barons thus split hairs, John landed at Sandwich on 28 August, taking the enemy by surprise. With the taste for rationalisation that seemed to increase daily, the rebels then claimed that John had been trying to quit the kingdom and escape abroad but that foul weather had driven him ashore.6 Yet by early September John was ensconced at Dover Castle and beginning to collect around him the nucleus of a foreign army. The rebel magnates had been overconfident, and John had successfully used the element of surprise against them.7

  The initiative soon switched back to the barons after John’s hopes received a severe check from a disaster at sea. Hugh de Boves, a skilled organiser, was returning from Flanders with a picked force of mercenaries when his transports were overwhelmed by high seas in the Channel; among the hundreds of drowned was Hugh himself, and it was said that the coasts of Suffolk were littered with bleached bones for months thereafter as more and more dead bodies were washed ashore.8 The rebels decided to take advantage of John’s predicament by advancing on Rochester, to bar the king’s route to London. Something of an opéra bouffe ensued, with John advancing to Canterbury, the rebels to Ospring, then both sides retreating, the king to Dover, the rebels to Rochester. Reginald of Cornhill, the castellan acting on Stephen Langton’s behalf as official keeper of Rochester Castle, made no pretence of his master’s official neutrality and at once opened the gates to the ‘Army of God’, triggering yet another paroxysm of rage and fury in John, who had long coveted this stronghold.9 Such was his anger that he decided on instant retaliation, despite his small numbers. His routier captains remonstrated with him, but John brushed their objection aside. ‘In truth, sire,’ said one of the mercenary leaders, ‘you hold your enemies of little account if you go to fight them with such a tiny force.’ ‘I know them well enough,’ said John. ‘They are not to be feared or made much of. We could safely fight them with fewer men than we have.’10 John knew his opponents well enough. The boastful Robert Fitzwalter, who had proved his cowardly mettle in many a fray from which he had fled, ran true to type. After making a mess of intercepting the royal mercenaries when they broke down the bridge over the Medway, he thought better of facing John and retreated to London, leaving a garrison in Rochester Castle.11 This inexplicable action can only be partially palliated by the argument that the barons were expecting massive reinforcements from France; it was an error of egregious proportions. With the Medway bridge destroyed, there was no obvious way the garrison at Rochester could be reinforced from London.

  John’s assault on Rochester town was something of a walkover. The Brabantines and Flemings routed the citizen levy with contemptuous ease, and the panic-stricken rabble raced for the Medway bridge only to find it gone; with undisguised relish the mercenaries described how they cut down men ‘many of whom would gladly have fled to London if they could’.12 The citadel, naturally, was a different proposition. In command in Rochester Castle was William of Aubigny, lord of Belvoir, by repute one of the ablest of the rebel commanders. He had at his side ninety-five knights and forty-five men-at-arms but they were desperately short of provisions. John saw the chance for a knockout victory that would demoralise the barons in London. He ordered all the blacksmiths in Canterbury to work day and night making pickaxes, and meanwhile staged a deliberate campaign of terror to weaken the resolve of the defenders, burning, looting and marauding in the town in full view of the garrison, deliberately showing contempt for the ‘Army of God’ by acts of overt blasphemy and sacrilege, such as stabling their horses in the cathedral.13 The barons in London seemed paralysed by John’s energy. Although Fitzwalter had promised William of Aubigny that they would return at once if the king was bold enough to besiege them, for two weeks they sat in London, biting their nails in indecision, dithering and prevaricating. At last, on 26 October Fitzwalter set out with 700 knights but got only as far as Dartford before unaccountably turning back. Clearly Fitzwalter’s cowardice was at the root of this: he was said to have panicked when he heard that John had been reinforced from the continent and now possessed a formidable host.14 Roger of Wendover’s contempt for the barons was palpable: he portrays them as staggering drunkenly from stews to gaming table while their comrades faced John’s fury at Rochester. Once again they rationalised their folly, telling each other that huge reinforcements were expected by the end of November, and the Rochester garrison could easily hold out until then.15

  The Rochester garrison was actually in a desperate plight from the very first day of John’s siege, and it says much for the calibre and valour of William of Aubigny that he held out so long. John threw everythi
ng at the citadel and exhausted his store of military knowledge. ‘Living memory does not recall a siege so fiercely pressed or so staunchly resisted’, said the most reliable annalist of the time. 16 John tried mining, sapping, direct assault and finally assault by siege engines; five trebuchets pounded the castle day and night. The defenders were convinced they could expect no mercy from John so fought like tigers. According to Roger of Wendover, John finally defeated Aubigny in a singular way: on 25 November he ordered his new justiciar to send him with all speed ‘forty bacon pigs of the fattest, and of those which are least good for eating, to be put to set fire to the stuff that we have got together under the tower’.17 A tunnel was dug, shored up by timbers and filled with all manner of combustibles; then the fat of the forty pigs was used as a kind of porcine Greek Fire. The resulting conflagration finally brought the corner towers of the keep crashing down. But even in the burning ruins of the gutted keep the defenders fought on like madmen, contesting every foot. At last, when human courage could do no more, they surrendered, on 30 November, St Andrew’s Day.18 Their worst fears seemed about to be realised when John erected a gallows and announced he would hang every last man. But Savaric de Mauléon, no humanitarian, protested and pointed out to John that if men as brave as these were hanged, not only would the barons retaliate, involving both sides in a savage ‘no prisoners’ war (which the Pope would hardly sanction), but they would score a huge propaganda advantage, as John would seem to have proved that he was a vicious tyrant, just as his enemies alleged. John took the force of the argument, and contented himself with hanging a single crossbowman who had deserted from his household service. He imprisoned the wealthy knights until ransoms could be paid for their release, leaving the men-at-arms to languish in jail against the unlikely event of their raising a ransom.19 John’s success at Rochester caused a great éclat. The myth of the impregnable castle had taken a hammering, and from now on no rebel would feel safe in a keep or citadel.