‘Bollocks, my Lord!’ John bawled. ‘Utter bollocks! You are a traitor to my Crown, Marshal! My Lords,’ John lowered his voice and addressed his nobles, pointing at William. ‘Judge you not that this man is a traitor?’ It was a masterly performance, an attempt to both coerce those who shared William’s intention, if not his reason, calling upon those among them whom, John knew, were nursing a growing animus against William. There was a growl of agreement among the younger knights, particularly those envious of William who served in the King’s household.
‘Philippe of France has put you up to this, Marshal,’ snarled John, but William interrupted him.
‘No, my Lord King, Philippe of France has not put me up to this. Besides my inability to follow you into France, there is my opinion, and that is that such an expedition as you now propose is a monstrous folly…’
A murmur of agreement met this contention by William and, for a moment he thought that he might guide the debate into a sensible channel, but John’s blood was up and he was intent on making William pay for all his recent sins, real and imagined.
‘I am your King,’ he snarled quietly enough, but his voice rose as he recited his titles. ‘I am, besides, Duke of Normandy, Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Anjou, Maine, Poitou! I am to be obeyed, not thwarted and checked like a dog.’
‘Why then did you call us to your Council?’ riposted William.
‘To inform you of the service I required of you! Now your refusal exposes you as a traitor whose disloyalty is now become so notorious that in failing to banish you before, I shall now have you confined to await my pleasure! You are an instrument of France and by God you shall answer for it!’
William’s temper rose with the heat of his blood. Whatever his shortcomings he was not a man to be so publicly humiliated and he flung down his challenge to the King in a voice of fury that roared out above the King’s as he stepped forward, alone between the King and the assembled chivalry.
‘Good my Lord King, answer it I shall and by my honour too!’ He spun round, turning his back upon John. Raking the gathering of nobles, barons, and knights with a glare, he bellowed: ‘I will meet any man in arms to settle this matter, to try in single combat whether I be a traitor or not! Any man!’
In the long silence that followed, the assembled chivalry looked at one another and seemed to shrink away from William, further isolating him. Instead of fear William was suddenly swept by a sensation of exhilaration such that he had not felt in years.
‘Any man,’ he repeated, almost mocking them, ‘be he half my age…’
There was utter silence, though behind him John moved, biting his finger-nails and supressing a rage as not one of his nobles stepped forward to take this old man at his word. But William had not finished. Turning back to King but addressing the greater company he said, greatly daring, ‘be alert to the King, lest what he thinks to do to me, he will later do to each and every one of you!’
The King flung his goblet across the chamber with a cry of strangled anger and quickly Baldwin of Béthune stepped forward in an attempt to end the unpleasant spectacle of so public a clash.
‘My Liege,’ he said, ‘too many hot words have been here flung about without the coolness of thought. I beg you that good sense might prevail and that God’s peace may reign among good Christians…’
A number of the barons muttered their ‘Amens,’ and although this was not universal, it took the heat out of the moment. John slumped in his seat and ground his teeth while John de Earley stepped forward and, taking William’s arm, drew him through the crowd – which parted for them – and out of the presence-chamber.
‘By the Christ, my Lord, but you will ruin us all yet,’ murmured De Earley; he was not smiling.
Later, Archbishop Hubert FitzWalter, came to William who sat late at his board in company with a handful of his household knights, drinking deeply. ‘I have persuaded His Grace to abandon his projected expedition, at least for the time being, and largely on the grounds of your sound military advice, my Lord of Pembroke. But you have this day given grave offence and I am to tell you that the King has withdrawn his favour from you.’
William sighed, but held his tongue, overwhelmed by a sense of shame and anger that he had been made a fool of by King Philippe, and – at a stroke – lost his reputation for loyalty. In his cups, his ambition had the taste of ashes and, even as the Archbishop had entered the room, he had conceived the idea of taking the cross. He would best serve his family by leaving Isabelle to manage his affairs and sail with such of his mesnie who would accompany him to Outremer, for he had an affiliation with the Knights Templars.
But John had other plans for him and FitzWalter was his mouth-piece.
‘You are to deliver up your son William, my Lord,’ Fitzwalter announced with a chilling finality, ‘as a ward to His Grace the King.’
***
William placed his hand on the lad’s shoulder as Isabelle stifled the urge to weep. The atmosphere in the couple’s private chambers in Chepstow Castle was chilly with uncertainty. ‘The King would keep you close to his person, Will,’ he explained, trying to keep his voice unemotional, ‘as I was kept close to Stephen during the Anarchy. This is a service you must render me for my sake and that of your mother, brother and all our family. Do you understand?’
‘Aye, father.’
William said nothing more for a while but squeezed the lad’s shoulder. After a moment he managed to add, ‘you bear a proud name, Will, and the blood of Kings runs in your veins too, thanks to your mother.’
‘What will become of you, father?’
‘Me? Oh, I am ordered north, to meet and escort King William of Scotland to York where my Lord the King intends a conference.’
When the younger William had left them, Isabelle said coldly, ‘I fear he will suffer the fate of Arthur of Brittany, husband.’
William rose. ‘No, John would not do that.’ He has yet some need of me though he pretends not and sends me upon this embassy to keep me from Court. Hubert FitzWalter has warned me that he will punish me by taking some of my lands, probably those in Sussex, but I am persuaded, both by FitzWalter and Ranulph of Chester, that he has need of me to hold the Welsh March and possibly England if he ventures into France next year.’
‘By the Cross,’ Isabelle said quietly, ‘I hope you are right.’ She paused but William knew her to be angry with him, still fearful for her first-born, yet unwilling to cause a deep rift between them. ‘If anything happens to…’
‘The lad is fifteen Isabelle. I was but five…’ William broke off and Isabelle looked up, thinking her husband lost in recollection, but William had made a shrewd decision and suddenly changed the subject. ‘If John does venture into France when the campaigning season opens, I shall send a powerful contingent of my men to serve him…’
‘Is that all you can think of? Besides, you would appease him thus?’
‘I would serve him thus,’ said William shortly. ‘As for myself, I am too old to go campaigning. I shall, when the moment is right and I can see how the land lies, seek his permission to go quietly into Ireland. And you ‘Belle, shall come with me.’
Guardian of the Realm
BOOK THREE OF A TRILOGY BASED UPON THE LIFE OF
WILLIAM MARSHAL
Richard Woodman
Copyright © Richard Woodman
The right of Richard Woodman to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
First published in 2018 by Sharpe Books.
Table of Contents
AUTHOR’S NOTE
PART ONE - JOHN SOFTSWORD 1206 - 1216
CHAPTER ONE - THE LORD OF LEINSTER 1206 - 1209
CHAPTER TWO - THE INCONSTANT KING 1209 - 1214
CHAPTER THREE - RUNNYMEAD 1214 - 1215
CHAPTER FOUR - THE FALL OF THE KING 1215 - 1216
PART TWO - GUARDIAN OF THE REALM 1216 - 1219
CHAPTER FIVE - HENRY OF WINCH
ESTER - 1216
CHAPTER SIX - WINTER 1216 - 1217
CHAPTER SEVEN - SPRING 1217
CHAPTER EIGHT - LINCOLN May 1217
CHAPTER NINE - SANDWICH May – August 1217
CHAPTER TEN - CAVERSHAM - 1217 - 1219
AFTERWORD
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AUTHOR’S NOTE
Those readers who have followed my evocation of the life of William Marshal in the first two works in this trilogy, The Knight Banneret, and The King’s Knight, will know that in attempting to tell the tale of this remarkable man who survived a period of great instability, it has been necessary to whittle-away much of the complex detail of the times and confine myself to events within the purview of William Marshal himself. I need not repeat the arguments for so doing here.
This third volume brings William Marshal’s life to its inevitable conclusion. By 1205, when he went into semi-voluntary exile in Ireland, he was, by the standards of the day, an old man, yet the remaining fourteen years of his life are among the most amazing. From utter disgrace he was recalled by the enigmatic King John and upon John’s death he became ‘Guardian of the Realm,’ effectively Regent of England, during first years of the reign of the boy-King Henry III. John’s reign is chiefly known for its ‘badness,’ his tyranny, his licentiousness, and for his concession to his rebellious Barons at Runnymede, or Runnymead, on the Thames in 1215, which concessions are enshrined in Magna Carta, the great charter from which – it is widely supposed – that the liberties of the British people were first established and the power of the monarchy curtailed. This is a gross over-simplification; within days John had repudiated Magna Carta to wage a savage winter campaign against his enemies and England was invaded by the French. The defeat of this invasion and the securing of a second Magna Carta were, in fact, far more consequential events – and owed more to William Marshal - than that expedient accommodation in the water-meadows of the Thames two years earlier.
Some authorities, eager to make the case for William’s nobility of soul, have hinted that he was joint author of the first Magna Carta, an assertion that is almost certainly erroneous. However, it is not beyond the possibility that some of his views were enshrined in it, and he was close enough to events to have had some influence in the text, being one of the chief architects of the parley at Runnymead.
William Marshal’s more certain - and typically active - part in the subsequent events of 1217 - 1219 was crucial, earning him a place among the statues of Parliamentary heroes in the Palace of Westminster. His reissue of an amended Magna Carta in 1216 - the first of several - was an act close to political genius, since it took the wind out of the sails of the rebellious Barons. However, whatever William Marshal’s legacy maybe in such a grand arena, he was a man of his age: a professional warrior, both brutal and magnanimous according to circumstances; an opportunist whose sole purpose was to preserve the dynastic line he – the second son of a minor Norman Court functionary (his father had been Marshal of King Stephen’s horses) – had established through his marriage to Isabelle de Clare, daughter of Richard Strongbow, Earl of Clare, whose forbears had been Irish Kings. Part of this was the acquisition of land and the complications in terms of fealty that this brought with it in a feudal age are often beyond the easy telling. As Philippe II, known as ‘Augustus,’ King of France, expanded his own domain at the expense of the House of Anjou whose lords had been both fief-holders of the French King, and Kings of England in their own right, England and France tore themselves apart, to become the ‘traditional enemies’ that they would remain until within living memory, each vying for a power beyond the grasp of either but which would give to Great Britain that lynch-pin of her foreign-policy – the maintaining of a balance of power in Europe – for the next seven centuries following the defeat of the Dauphin’s forces at Lincoln and off Sandwich in 1217.
Lincoln was a battle of great significance, since it marked the beginning of the end of Philippe Augustus’s attempts to bring England within his own Pale and William’s part in it is as disputed as the actual action itself. Whatever the hypocrisy to the modern mind of a Christian Bishop (in this case Peter Des Roches of Winchester) fighting in armour, the Church liked its own to get the credit, and there seems little doubt that Des Roches played a key role in the victory, but the fact that among the senior commanders of the Royalist force were some extremely experienced professional soldiers, and that William was indisputably commander-in-chief, have led me to take a different view. William’s ill-education was common knowledge and, among the lettered, probably made him the butt of jokes and excited the insolence of his peers; snobbery has long been an English vice. Des Roches’ own character seems not to have been above criticism and this being the case, I have presumed that at all points William acted as a true leader, suppressing the petty rivalries that were in the genes of these men, took control of the strategy of the brief campaign and the tactical direction of its culmination, using the individual talents of his subordinates to achieve his objective.
As to the battle itself, this is my own recreation, though it seeks to draw on all the (somewhat conflicting) accounts, incorporating all the significant details. Important though Lincoln was it did not in itself prove decisive. Such were the methods of medieval warfare that, even risking an all-out battle – rather than the tedious taking and exchange of strongpoints – there remained powerful forces under the Dauphin in the south-east. They were ultimately dislodged by a naval battle off Sandwich in Kent, an action that deserves to be better known, and which, it seems to me, awoke the possibilities inherent in English sea-power. Though William was a by-stander in this action, there is ample evidence to suggest that the collision of forces was the outcome of a maritime strategy of his own devising. Historians may argue over the niceties; a novelist has more freedom of assertion. Whatever his short-comings, including his venality, William seems always to have had one eye on something above and beyond the ordinary.
This is, I think, best revealed by what we know of his prolonged death, probably from a carcinoma of the bowel and/or the prostate. The Histoire, that biography written shortly after his death, dwells at length upon his last days. Given the well-known vagaries of human memory, and for the purposes of ending a story that did not, of course, terminate with William’s death but would lead to further Baronial unrest, I have taken some minor liberties with the detail of those last days at Caversham. From William’s perspective as he lay dying, his own sense of duty, alongside his personal agenda, had to be brought to a conclusion from which he might leave this life in a state of grace to meet his God.
Thus, until the moment of his death, the key figure in this period of English History is most certainly William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, whose dynasty lasted no time at all, but whose legacy – seen in this way, rather than a peerless knight when such a credit was of dubious value – was exceptional, superlative even.
Here, then, is my final ‘take’ on this remarkable Anglo-Norman knight. Knowing what happened, one cannot ascribe to him any sense of prescience, for he was not only rooted in his time. Unusually, even for his class, he was illiterate, but it seems to me he did possess something of military genius and political vision (feudal though it was), and a strong sense of loyalty to a principle that stretched beyond the concerns of family and personal aggrandisement, though these ran strong within him. It is this, I think, that sets William Marshal apart from his peers and from the general, and generally contemptible, run of politicians in the last seven centuries.
R.W.
PART ONE - JOHN SOFTSWORD 1206 - 1216
CHAPTER ONE - THE LORD OF LEINSTER 1206 - 1209
Wi
lliam Marshal, Earl of Pembroke and Lord of Leinster, regarded the restless assembly that stood before him in the castle of Kilkenny. Nominally at least they were all vassals of his, the power-brokers of the region who nevertheless owed William their feudal duty. Most, however, wore their obligations lightly, too used to an absentee master in the first place, and, when confronted with a present one, unwilling to surrender the assumed authority by which they had been quietly aggrandising and enriching themselves. Chief among these restives was Meilyr FitzHenry, King John’s Chief Justiciar of Ireland, who, having been among the first of the Norman invaders who disturbed the peace of Ireland, regarded William as a new-comer among the Anglo-Norman nobility. Although a great land-owner elsewhere, he was present at the gathering in Kilkenny castle as a tenant of William, holding lands in Leinster and laying claim to other domains within the county, notable Offaly. Moreover Meilyr FitzHenry was related to Henry II by virtue of one of Henry’s bastards having impregnated Nest of Deheubarth, a Welsh Princess, with whose family William had gone to war not many months earlier.
William had come into Ireland to escape the frustrations of John’s Court and to avoid the King’s further displeasure, only to find he had exchanged the Devil’s cauldron for the fire beneath it. For almost two years he had played the courtier, aware of John’s ill-concealed indifference to an ageing Baron whose usefulness was waning. When John passed over the Channel into Poitou in 1206 on the first of a series of vain expeditions to recover his lost inheritance, he did not summon the Earl of Pembroke; but before going the King settled an outstanding debt to William, leaving William in England in the limbo of uncertainty.
However, on his return, the King blocked William’s own long projected departure for Leinster. William recalled that interview, the King vacillating as usual, continuing to refuse to allow William to leave for Leinster, then demanding the surrender of Richard, William’s second son, before half-heartedly allowing William to leave the Court with a hint that a passage to Ireland might be possible ‘soon’. William and Isabelle’s preparations were well-advanced when John rescinded this; William pleaded the necessity of ordering his – and the King’s – affairs in south-east Ireland and ordered his mesnie and household to Milford Haven to embark. Here the King’s wrath caught up with William; for his disobedient presumption William had been deprived of the Shrievalty of Gloucester, the Forest of Dean and Ceredigion Castle, all of which greatly reduced his status as a Marcher Lord. In disgust William went aboard his chartered ship.
William Marshal Guardian of England- The Complete Series Page 52
