The unconscionable delays to Louis’s crossing seem to have been caused mainly by Philip Augustus’s apprehension about the Pope’s likely reaction and the need to find an argument that would justify French intervention. Certainly Innocent’s support for John seemed stronger than ever. On 4 November 1215 he had reiterated the suspension of Stephen Langton and on 16 December, fresh from his triumphs at the Fourth Lateran Council, returned to the ideological fray in England by confirming his excommunication of the barons, this time explicitly naming thirty-one ringleaders.57 He also placed the city of London under interdict and sent two commissioners to execute the mandate; they arrived in England at the end of February 1216. They soon managed to promulgate Innocent’s decrees everywhere in the realm except London. There the clergy, barons and people were at one in vehemently rejecting it, both on the grounds that Innocent had been gulled by mendacious disinformation and that the internal politics of England were no affair of his anyway.58 Although the barons’ stance was disingenuous - a year earlier they had boasted about how they had made John submit to the Pope and explicitly recognised the pontiff as the temporal ruler of England - there is no doubt that Innocent’s intervention was counterproductive; paradoxically it raised morale in London and stiffened the resolve of the rebels. John soon had an unpleasant taste of the new spirit. Having emulated William the Conqueror in so many ways recently, he decided to ape Harold Godwinson also, by sleeping at Harold’s beloved sanctuary at Waltham Abbey, little more than twenty miles from London. This was open provocation, and when Savaric de Mauléon ventured even closer to London with the intention of blockading the Thames, he and his comrades were badly mauled and made their escape only after heavy losses.59 As so often after a reverse, John retired to the West Country to lick his wounds, swinging in a great arc through Enfield, Berkhamstead and Windsor before coming to rest in Hampshire (early April 1216).
Everything now hinged on French policy. John was very much alive to this dimension and sent a further embassy to Philip Augustus headed by William Marshal asking the king to forbid his son’s proposed expedition, stressing his friendliness and the fact that he was still issuing safe-conducts to French merchants. There was something frenzied and desperate about John’s diplomacy at this juncture, for he even sent a personal letter to Prince Louis, promising to put right any hurt, injury or insult he had inadvertently done him. He also rather foolishly tried to appeal above Philip Augustus’s head to the guardians of the truce he had signed with Philip, asking for their good offices.60 But it was all in vain, for Philip Augustus had by now decided to give his son the go-ahead, and all that remained was the task of ideological rationalisation. At a grand council of the French barons at Melun in April, Philip Augustus secured their approval for a descent on England; thereafter they bent their collective minds to a justification of the project. This was the very moment when the new papal legate to England, bearing important letters from Innocent, arrived at Melun on his way from Rome to the Channel.61 On 25 April Cardinal Guala Bicchieri met Philip Augustus and presented him with Innocent’s epistles, requiring him to forbid his son to invade England, to change his entire policy and to protect and assist John as a vassal of Holy Mother Church. The French king gave the request short shrift. In a published letter, he made the following trenchant points: the realm of England never was, was not now and never would be, St Peter’s patrimony; John on the other hand was guilty of treason against his brother Richard and had been condemned for it by Richard’s court, and for this reason, as much as by his foul murder of Arthur, the true heir to the throne, he had forfeited all his kingly claims. This declaration, when read out in the full conclave, was rousingly cheered by the French barons. 62
Next day there was a second meeting. Philip Augustus swept in, ignoring Guala, and Louis then entered, openly scowling at the legate. The cardinal formally requested Louis not to go to England and begged his father to forbid him. Philip then invited Louis to speak. One of his knights, acting as his advocate, rose to his feet and presented the prince’s case. This was simply that John was no true king, being both the murderer of Arthur and a ruler who had been repudiated by his barons. As for the Pope’s alleged role as temporal ruler of England, this was a unilateral action by John, done without the consent of his barons and thus against all precedent and the norms of England’s ancient constitution. John’s unconstitutional actions amounted in law to de facto resignation, which meant the English throne was vacant; and now finally the English barons had invited Louis to be king, as was their right, his title being established by his wife Blanche, granddaughter of Henry II, whose mother, the queen of Castile, was the sole survivor of the English king’s siblings .63 Moreover, there was no point in Guala’s asking Philip Augustus to forbid him to pursue this claim, for Philip was liege lord in France, but Louis’s wife’s rights in England were outside his jurisdiction. This ingenious and specious case was no more than casuistry, and one of John’s defenders rightly calls it ‘a barrage of fictions and half-truths’.64 Nonetheless, the flustered cardinal, obviously no expert in the finer dialectics of feudal law, was unable to refute it on the spot. He evaded this issue by switching the argument to the other issue of crusade, pointing out that John should be left unmolested until he had fulfilled his crusader’s vow. Louis’s advocate replied that the war between John and Louis predated John’s bogus ‘taking of the Cross’, so that consideration was irrelevant.
Guala’s inability to rebut John’s counsel convinced any wavering French barons that the Pope really had no case. Unable to make any headway, Guala finally lost patience and threatened excommunication to both Philip and Louis if they went ahead with the English expedition.65 Louis then asked his father if he had any just cause for impeding the prosecution of his rightful claim. Philip made no answer, indicating that he had no objection. Guala, convinced that further argument was useless, simply bowed his head and asked the king for a safe-conduct to England. Philip replied contemptuously: ‘I will glady give you a safe-conduct through my realm, but if you fall into the hands of my soldiers who are guarding the coast, don’t blame me if you come to harm.’66 At this obvious threat Guala finally lost his temper and stormed out. Louis then sent envoys to Rome to prolong the farce, presenting a case to the Pope they knew would fail but thereby playing for time. Surprisingly, some scholars still believe that Philip and Louis were not colluding. One biographer of Philip Augustus says that when Louis told his father he had no jurisdiction over England, ‘this sounds more like a petulant son than one in conspiracy with his father’.67 Others think that, while Philip wanted to defeat John, he had genuine reservations both about Louis’s venture and the wisdom of alienating the Pope.68 Much controversy has centred on the actions of the countess of Champagne and her son who, when asked to contribute to the costs of the expedition, flatly refused to do so, on the grounds that they could not fight against a king recognised as a crusader by the Pope. The upshot was that a group of French knights then forced her to contribute. Philip Augustus’s supporters say this kind of duress was not typical behaviour by the king and that the ruffianly Louis alone was responsible. 69 But surely it is obvious that Philip Augustus and his son were engaged in an elaborate charade, a ‘dumb show’; Philip could claim, within the letter if not the spirit of things, that he had not explicitly authorised his son to invade England.
John must have been well informed by his spies of what was afoot, for on 14 April he ordered twenty-one coast towns to send all shipping to the Thames estuary to prevent a French landing. On 17 April he issued his ‘last chance’ proclamation, calling on all rebels to submit by 24 May (one month after Easter) or forfeit their lands and possessions forever.70 Forced marches took him from Hampshire to Windsor and thence through Surrey to Rochester and Dover, where he arrived on 25 April. For three weeks he ranged up and down the coast of Kent, awaiting the arrival of the French and Guala. Dover was ordained as a grand mustering point for all shipping, to be fetched from as far away as Yarmouth and Lynn (King’s Lynn)
. At this stage John entertained a grand design of setting sail with the assembled flotilla and blockading Louis in Calais, where he was assembling a mighty armada to be piloted across the Channel and into the Thames estuary by a notorious pirate called Eustace the Monk.71 But from the evening of 18 May a ferocious gale howled in the Channel. Giant waves smashed into John’s armada at Dover, engulfing, overwhelming, smashing and shattering his ships. It was a critical blip in the weather on which so much hinged, for at the first sign of calmer seas Louis cleared from Calais (on the evening of the 20th). Next morning the watchers on the shore at Thanet saw his ships in the distance and notified John. The king himself then looked on gloomily as the French passed the mouth of Pegwell Bay in safety. He gave the order to march, trumpets sounded, and his soldiers formed up ready but the final order never came.72 As with so many of John’s actions, this one remains mysterious. Perhaps he was, to use a modernism, ‘in denial’ - an inference strengthened by his initial pretence that the sighted ships were some of his own storm-tossed vessels. Perhaps he was distracted because a messenger had brought him word that Guala had just landed at Romney. Three more rational motives have been suggested: that William Marshal advised him against offering battle; that the mercenaries were unreliable both because their pay was in arrears and because many of them were Louis’s subjects; and that a foreign invasion was certain to swing Englishmen over to his side long-term. But the most likely explanation is that, when faced with an imminent and decisive encounter, John as commander always ducked the issue. He had turned aside from London in December 1215 and he turned aside from a trial of strength with Louis now.73 He performed his old trick of simply riding away in silence when he was deeply frustrated and was three miles down the road from Sandwich to Dover before most of his men knew he had gone. Leaving Dover under Hubert de Burgh, well fortified and provisioned, he sped through Sussex to Winchester where, at a safe distance, he awaited the drift of events.74
John derived what comfort he could from the presence of Cardinal Guala, who at the very first meeting with the English king at once pronounced Louis excommunicate and rode, resplendent in scarlet robes on a white palfrey, at the king’s side to Canterbury. Guala explained his mission to John. Innocent had given him extraordinarily wide-ranging powers as legate, and he was specifically charged to fill the void at the highest level of the hierarchy left by Langton’s suspension; as far as John was concerned, the legate was to give him every assistance so as to put down the rebellion and speed him on his way to the crusade.75 On 29 May, at Winchester Guala passed formal sentence of excommunication against Louis and his followers, and in the months to come would extend the same anathema to the Scots and Welsh rebels.76 But Guala’s bell, book and candle methods were something in the nature of a papal bull against a comet, for Louis and the barons treated the papal interdict with the same contempt, openly expressed, that John felt for religion and all its works in his secret heart. In the context of the ferocious civil war in England in 1216, ‘how many divisions has the Pope?’ had a compelling resonance, especially since Louis’s arrival electrified the waverers and won new converts to the barons’ cause. Many who had only just beaten John’s May deadline for surrender immediately apostasised at news of the latest development for, they reasoned, how could this deeply unpopular king prevail against the combined might of France and his own barons? Many others who had remained neutral and sat on the fence for fear of the consequences now thought they saw clearly which way the wind was blowing and jumped on Louis’s bandwagon. Among the host of defections from John’s camp were Hugh Neville and Warin Fitzgerald, hitherto considered solid king’s men, and the earls of Arundel, Surrey and York. The most shattering blow to John’s cause was the apostasy of his half-brother William of Salisbury, one of his most trusted commanders.77
At first Louis swept all before him. From the moment of his landing at Stonor, he seemed a veritable dynamo. He began by issuing a manifesto to the English Church expressing the utmost contempt for Guala, whom he described as a venal cleric bought by John’s gold. He promised religious toleration and special consideration for the secular clergy, always provided they accepted the legitimacy of his claim to the throne, which he now reiterated without any of the frills and obfuscations used at Melun. He had the early satisfaction, on marching for Canterbury, of turning the detested Guala out of his lodgings helter-skelter; the legate hastened after John to Winchester.78 Louis proceeded to Rochester, which capitulated within a week; observers were not slow to remark that this supposedly mighty fortress had taken John two months to crack but now it had fallen to a doughtier warrior. On 2 June Louis entered London, to the acclamation of the people, there to receive the homage of barons and citizens and the awed deference of the clergy. He took a solemn oath on the Gospels that he would restore the golden age of just laws and the ancient English constitution, and called on all magnates who had not yet paid homage to do so rapidly, or leave the country - or face the obvious consequences.79 After just four days in the capital, Louis took his army on the hunt for John - the prince may have been reckless but he did not believe in shirking battles. But John had quit Winchester the day before, on 5 June, leaving Savaric de Mauléon to conduct the defence. Louis’s rapid sweep through Surrey was something of a walkover: the castles of Reigate, Guildford and Farnham surrendered in quick succession so that the French were in sight of Winchester by the morning of 14 June. Savaric de Mauléon did not stay to try conclusions but withdrew, not before setting fire to the suburbs - whether on his own initiative or in obedience to John is unclear. The blaze quickly got out of hand and had gutted most of Winchester by the time the French marched in, but Savaric had left a strong garrison in the chief keep at the west end of the city, which held out for ten grim days in face of Louis’s siege engines, until Savaric returned with permission from John for the defenders to surrender. 80
John seemed to be in headlong retreat and the French unstoppable but now, once more, the weathercock of war in this ever-oscillating conflict turned round again to give the English king respite. Louis’s problems were twofold: he proved inept at siegecraft and he had no real idea how to scotch the growing Anglo-French conflict within his own army. The siege of Odiham was a case in point. From Winchester Louis quickly ‘ate up’ the garrison at Porchester, but at Odiham a tiny garrison - no more than three knights and ten men-at-arms - held him at bay for a week. Although the gallant defenders were then allowed to march out with full honours, Louis’s ineptitude at pressing the siege did not inspire confidence.81 Meanwhile his army was riven with jealousies and rivalries as French and English notables vied with one another for the same places, positions and prizes. William Marshal junior, the apostate son of the earl of Pembroke, claimed the right to be marshal of Louis’s army - a position that really should have gone to Adam de Beaumont, his chief French captain; so as not to alienate the English Louis was obliged to give Marshal what he wanted. Not satisfied with this signal honour, the greedy young William Marshal threw a sulk when he further claimed the castle of Marlborough but was turned down by Louis in favour of his own cousin Robert of Dreux. By not alienating the barons and giving them most of what they wanted, Louis managed to disillusion his own compatriots, who began to drift away back to the continent in dribs and drabs, convinced that the English campaign was a waste of French blood and treasure from which only the English barons would benefit.82
While Louis was thus engaged, the barons in London, now much more confident, sortied into Essex and East Anglia and visited on these areas some of the same rapine and destruction they had recently suffered at the hands of John.83 Another party ventured into the East Midlands to pen John’s men up more closely in the seemingly impregnable castles of Nottingham and Newark. Gilbert de Gant and Robert de Ropesley, leaders of this expedition, did not achieve as much as was expected from them, managing to sack Lincoln city but without taking the citadel.84 A third detachment, under Robert de Ros, Peter de Brus and Richard de Percy, were more successful in Yorkshire, a
nd meanwhile Alexander of Scotland opened the siege of Carlisle and sent marauding forces into Northumberland and Durham.85 By mid-July Louis had a spotty control of England from the Channel to the Cheviots, but worryingly many major centres still held out for John. Most of the royal castles remained inviolate, and at least four of John’s lieutenants had humiliated their besiegers in one way or another: Engelard de Cicogne in Windsor Castle, Hubert de Burgh in Dover, Philip Oldcoates in Durham and Hugh Balliol in Barnard Castle.86 The burghers of the Cinque Ports had taken an oath to Louis but were in the field against him, causing particular damage by their harrying of French shipping. There was even a band of guerrillas operating in Sussex and Kent against the French under a leader code-named Willikin of the Weald (William of Kensham).87 William Marshal senior and Ranulph of Chester had the West Midlands in a secure royalist grip. John, typically, for ever hankering after the near West Country, spent most of June and July roaming the hunting lodges of Wiltshire and Dorset. He seems to have settled in for a war of attrition, holding out olive branches to Louis while he tried to suborn his supporters and detach the rebel barons by lavish promises - usually total amnesty and full restoration of lost estates.88
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