Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

When, therefore, Oliver Icingla reached years of legal discretion, he did homage for his mother’s inheritance, and took possession of Chas-Chateil without an obstacle being interposed; and he was even now returning from the court of the King of Scots, at the castle of Roxburgh, whither he had repaired to go through the feudal ceremony which was to constitute him lord of Mount Moreville.

Ralph Hornmouth stuck steadily to De Moreville till the Norman baron turned monk; and when De Moreville hid his head in a cowl, and his body in a cloister, Hornmouth made a complete transfer of his fidelity to Oliver Icingla, and pursued life as if unconscious that he had made a change of masters. Ever ready to ride at half an hour’s notice from Chas-Chateil to Mount Moreville, and from Mount Moreville to Oakmede, where the hall of the Icinglas had again risen in stately proportion from its ashes and ruins, he was worth his weight in gold during troublous times; and as for political creed, Hornmouth was content to leave that to the warrior whose banner he followed. He had ridden willingly with De Moreville to fight for Prince Louis and the Norman barons, and he was prepared to ride as cheerfully with the Icingla to fight for King Henry to the cry of “St. Edward!” It was, as he thought, for the Anglo-Norman baron or the Anglo-Saxon Hlaford to take the responsibility of choosing a side; it was his duty to fight his best on whatever side they drew their swords.

And De Moreville’s daughter no longer inhabited the great mansion in Ludgate, from the balcony of which she looked forth on the cavalcade that escorted the boy-king through the city of London, but a much humbler dwelling on the banks of the Thames, near Scotland-yard, where stood the palace with which, in an earlier age, Edgar had gifted Kenneth, and in which the King of Scots still resided when he came to Westminster to enact his part at a coronation. Dame Waledger was still her guardian and companion, an arrangement most convenient to both; for Beatrix had no kinswoman to whom she could cling for protection, and Sir Anthony, living at his manor in Berkshire, was in the habit of carousing so freely in the day and contending with so many imaginary antagonists at night, that the dame, not indifferent to her own safety in life and limb, dreaded nothing so much as living under the same roof with a husband who might any night slay her, under the delusion that he was engaged in mortal combat with the wild boar which he had encountered under the oak at Donnington.

But one circumstance had much changed the colour of Beatrix’s life: Oliver Icingla had not persisted in avoiding her company and praying to be delivered from the temptation of seeing her. On the contrary, as time wore off the impression that had been left by his frightful dream, the memory of the romantic interview at Chas-Chateil had returned upon him with an effect before which other considerations rapidly gave way. In short, while the Icingla was returning from the North, Beatrix had the prospect of being his bride ere Christmas; and as he passed the village of Charing, riding side by side with Hornmouth, and talking to the tall greyhound, De Moreville’s daughter was uppermost in his thoughts, and her hand seemed to beckon him on as his journey southward drew to an end.

It was ten o’clock, however, and the night had fallen, but the rising moon afforded a pale light, when Oliver, having skirted London, reached the village of Charing, from which then, and for centuries afterwards, cross roads branched out in various directions away to rural regions; and on reaching Charing he directed his course towards Westminster, at the palace of which King Henry was keeping his court and watching over architectural additions to the abbey. Oliver, however, was bound, in the first place, to visit the fair Beatrix, and with a lover’s ardour he spurred on Ayoub, to shorten by half a minute the time that must elapse ere he could be in her presence.

But at that instant a sight met the eye of Oliver Icingla which made him start with alarm and vague terror. Before him gleamed hundreds of torches in the moonlight, and enabled him dimly to descry a countless mob, swaying and surging in masses, and uttering shouts of triumph as they rushed on to havoc and spoliation. It was a terrible spectacle, and as Oliver checked his steed he uttered an exclamation of horror.

“By the Holy Cross!” exclaimed he, on finding breath to speak, “I would fain hope my eyes deceive me; but, certes, nothing less than the agency of the devil and a rising of the Londoners can have brought about such a tumult as this.”

“And, credit me, Fitzarnulph the citizen is at the bottom of it,” said Hornmouth, quickly, “and the Lady Beatrix may be in danger. By salt and bread!” added the rough squire, “we must look forthwith to the demoiselle’s safety.”

As Hornmouth spoke he turned round to call upon the armed men to follow apace; and, ere he did so, Oliver Icingla had drawn his sword, set spurs to his steed, and darted in the direction of Scotland-yard.

CHAPTER LX

A DEMAGOGUE AND HIS DESPERADOES

THE crowd driven so unceremoniously from Westminster did not separate before agreeing to assemble again at a given signal; and no sooner did Bow bell toll the hour of curfew, than, like bees swarming from their hives, all the desperadoes and riff-raff of London assembled from lanes, and alleys, and slums, and the purlieus of the Thames, and, joined by many hundreds who were neither desperadoes nor riff-raff, but honest men led away by the excitement of the hour, filled the narrow streets, and, jostling each other as they went, made for St. Paul’s Churchyard. Here Constantine Fitzarnulph, accompanied by two or three other persons whom he had allured into his enterprise, was ready to receive them and place himself at their head.

And then Fitzarnulph mounted a temporary platform, and harangued the mob in such inflammatory language, that their excitement was rapidly converted into frenzy, and they raved like maniacs. No longer condescending, as in former days, to treat the Anglo-Norman barons as friends, he denounced them as tyrants and oppressors who ground the faces of the poor, and lived in luxury by the sweat of their neighbours’ brows. Proceeding, he attacked the young king and his ministers, and traced suffering and sorrow to the misgovernment that prevailed, and asked whether there was not something radically wrong in a system under which such oppression could exist. He concluded with a fierce invective against the Abbot of Westminster and his steward, and called on the Londoners to wipe out the disgrace they had that day suffered in the person of their champion, Martin Girder, who, he asserted, had been foiled by foul means; finally, either by premeditated design, or led away by his own enthusiasm and the cheers with which he was greeted, he boldly stated that there was only one remedy for their woes, and that was to invite Prince Louis to return to England, and deliver them from the evils under which they were groaning. “Montjoie, St. Denis!” exclaimed he, in conclusion, as he waved his hat. “God help us and our good Lord Louis!”

The desperadoes loudly applauded the proposal to recall the French prince, just as they would have applauded if Fitzarnulph had proposed to invoke the aid of the prince of darkness. But some of the crowd murmured, and the oration, especially towards its close, seemed to give great offence to a young warrior who stood by Fitzarnulph’s side. Several times while the harangue was drawing to a close he started as if to interrupt, but on each occasion checked the impulse. But no sooner did Fitzarnulph, waving his hat, shout “Montjoie, St. Denis!” than he raised a very noble countenance towards the demagogue, and eyed him with a glance of fiery scorn. It was Walter Merley.

“Citizen,” said he, after forcing himself to be calm, “your speech to this multitude has belied all your professions to me, and I despise you as one whom the truth is not in. You have basely deceived me, and shame upon me that I have been fooled by such as you are! and, but that I deem you all unworthy of my steel, you should have three inches of my dagger to punish your presumptuous perfidy, and silence your lying tongue. Come, Rufus, let us begone!”

A shout of indignation arose from the mob on hearing their hero thus bearded, and several of the desperadoes moved as if to lay hands on the bold speaker, but he paid no attention to their cries and gestures. Calling one of his companions to follow, he strode right through the midst, and that with an air so fearless and fierce, that they opened their ranks and made way for him to pass, and carried their hostility no further than uttering a yell and indulging in a little banter as he disappeared.

“Now,” said he, as he took a boat and was rowed towards the Surrey side, “farewell to home and country; and, since fortune so wills, let my lot be among strangers and in a strange land. All over Europe and in Syria swords are flashing bravely, and it will go hard with me if I carve not out a principality with my sword, which has never failed me. Shame upon me that I allowed myself to be fooled by that citizen! and a malison on his presumption in fancying that, after deceiving me, he could use me for his purposes!”

Meanwhile, Fitzarnulph did not allow the excitement of the mob to evaporate. Finding that they were quite in the humour in which he wished them to be, he proposed to go forthwith to Westminster.

“Our first duty,” said he, “is to avenge ourselves on the abbot and his steward; and the best way to avenge ourselves on them is to pull down their houses, whereby they will be made sensible that the citizens of London are not to be affronted with impunity. So let us on. Montjoie, St. Denis! God for us and Lord Louis!”

“To Westminster!” shouted the desperadoes; and, led by Fitzarnulph, the mob descended Ludgate-hill, and pushed through the gates like so many furies.

It was already sunset when Fitzarnulph led the mob from St. Paul’s Churchyard, and darkness was descending ere they reached Westminster. Many of the desperadoes, however, had furnished themselves with torches, and what with the glare of the torches, and the fierce faces of the desperadoes, and the brandishing of weapons and bludgeons, and the shouts, the screeches, the bellowing, and the confusion, the inhabitants might, even had they been less superstitious than they were, have imagined that a host of fiends was upon them.

Great was the alarm, loud the shouts for aid, each man calling on his neighbour, as the startled indwellers suddenly found their houses and hearths exposed to such danger, and at the mercy of such a multitude. But it soon appeared that the mob were, in the first place, intent on vengeance, and went direct to destroy the houses of the abbot and his steward. Warned in time, the abbot fled, trembling for his life, and, getting into his barge, escaped to Lambeth. Determined to defend himself and his property, the steward drew bolt and bar, and armed his household. But a few minutes’ experience told him that resistance was vain, and, escaping with his household by the rear, he left his home to its fate. The riot and uproar then became more terrible every moment; house after house was torn down or given to the flames; and the mob, whooping, and yelling, and braying, as their appetite for destruction was whetted, rushed into outrage after outrage, and enacted such a scene as Westminster had seldom or never witnessed.

And what was Constantine Fitzarnulph doing all this time?

Fitzarnulph, in truth, had other game, as his movements speedily indicated, than the abbot and his steward, and, leaving the mob to destroy and plunder without restraint, he proceeded with a chosen band of twenty desperadoes towards Scotland-yard, and on to a house that stood in a garden on the margin of the river. At first he endeavoured to gain access by gentle means, and loudly knocked at the gate. No answer was returned, and he ordered the desperadoes to break it open. His command was immediately obeyed, and he passed into a courtyard, and knocked vehemently at the door; but, seeing that his knock at the door was as little regarded as his knock at the gate had been, the desperadoes broke it open, and Fitzarnulph, making a signal to the band to remain where they were till summoned by him, entered alone, found several domestics, who fled at his approach, ascended a stair, and, advancing along a corridor, opened a door and entered.

It was a large chamber, furnished after the fashion of the period, brilliantly lighted, and occupied by four women, who, alarmed at the riot and the uproar, and the breaking in of the gate and door, were giving themselves up for lost. One was Beatrix de Moreville, another Dame Waledger, and the other two were Beatrix’s waiting-women. As Fitzarnulph entered, a simultaneous cry of horror and despair burst from their lips, and three of them fell on their knees. De Moreville’s daughter, however, rose to her feet, and stood facing the intruder with an air of haughty defiance which showed that, gentle as was her usual manner she inherited some portion of her sire’s spirit.

“What seek you here, sir citizen?” asked she, with a gesture and in a tone before which most men, under the circumstances, would have quailed.

“Demoiselle,” answered Fitzarnulph with equal pride, “it is vain to assume such airs at the stage at which matters have arrived; vainer still to deem that I, Constantine Fitzarnulph, am likely to be daunted by a haughty tone and a frowning brow. I therefore answer frankly – it is you I seek. You have treated me with a scorn to which I am but little accustomed; however, of that anon. You are at length in my power, once and for ever, so prepare to go hence. My barge awaits you at the stairs to convey you to a place of safety. Nay, frown not; I say it is vain; for, come what may, by the blood of St. Thomas! ere to-morrow’s sun is high in the heavens, you shall stand at the altar as Fitzarnulph’s bride, and women neither less fair nor less exalted in rank than yourself will envy your lot. I have said.”

Scorn, amazement, terror, succeeded each other rapidly in the face of Beatrix de Moreville as Fitzarnulph spoke, and she was nerving herself to reply when he advanced and seized her arm, as if to bear her off as his prey; but she clung so tenaciously to Dame Waledger, who was literally speechless with affright, that he found all his efforts to separate them in vain. Suddenly he relaxed his grasp.

“Maiden,” said he, looking earnestly into her face, “you are fighting against fate, and against a destiny you can no more avoid than you can the death which comes to all flesh. You struggle in vain. It is not my wont to be baffled, as the world well knows, and will yet know better. Loath am I to use force, but, since you make it necessary, I needs must. Below are twenty men, who, if I said the word, would bring me the head of the pope or the caliph. One sound of this, and they come to my aid;” and he pointed to a silver whistle that hung at his belt.

De Moreville’s daughter, retreating behind Dame Waledger, gazed with alarm at the citizen, but did not venture to speak. It seemed that her stock of courage was exhausted. Fitzarnulph appeared to hesitate. After a moment’s pause, however, he took the whistle and sounded it loudly. As he did so, voices were heard as if in altercation below; steps as of persons ascending, and the ring of steel on the stone stairs, succeeded; and then there entered, not the twenty desperadoes, but Oliver Icingla, with his spurs of gold on his heels and his trusty sword in his hand, just as he had jumped from his good steed Ayoub.

De Moreville’s daughter uttered an exclamation of rapturous surprise, and darted forward to throw herself on the young knight’s protection. Fitzarnulph stood as much like an image of stone as if the heir of the Icinglas had brought the Gorgon’s head in his hand.

CHAPTER LXI

AN OFFERING TO THE WINDS

THE sudden appearance of Oliver Icingla changed the aspect of affairs so completely that Constantine Fitzarnulph could not but curse the folly which had placed him in a position so thoroughly perplexing as that in which he found himself. He would have felt relieved if Oliver had burst into one of the brief but violent rages in which, like most men of Anglo-Saxon race, the Icingla frequently indulged. But Oliver was perfectly calm, treated Fitzarnulph as a madman not responsible for his actions, and with cool contempt showed the citizen the door, and expressed a hope that his kinsfolk would take better care of him in future.

Fretting with mortification, boiling with rage, and uttering bitter threats, Fitzarnulph departed to join the mob; but he discovered that they were fast dispersing, owing to intelligence that Falco, having mustered his men, was mounting to put them to the sword; and, making for the Thames, he entered his barge, for which a fairer freight had been intended, and was rowed rapidly down the river to his house in the city. Fitzarnulph, wearied with the fatigues of the day, retired to rest, but for many hours sleep did not visit his pillow. He was of all men the most wretched. Not only were his reflections bitter, but he had a vague presentiment of coming danger which he in vain endeavoured to banish. At last, as day was breaking, he fell asleep; but his repose was disturbed by feverish dreams, in which the Abbot of Westminster, and the abbot’s steward, and Oliver Icingla, and Beatrix de Moreville figured prominently; and when he was roused by one of his domestics about ten o’clock, it was to inform him that the mayor had summoned him to the Tower on urgent business.

Fitzarnulph was brave, but could not feel otherwise than alarmed at this summons, and he even thought of flight as he recalled the mayor’s ominous warning as to the fate of William Fitzosbert. But, he rose, dressed hastily, and, confident in his powers of browbeating and in his influence with the commonalty and desperadoes of London, he manned himself with dauntless air, and was soon in the great hall of the Tower – that great hall in which Oliver Icingla was presented as a hostage to King John, at that monarch’s Christmas feast of 1214. Here Fitzarnulph found not only the mayor, and aldermen, and many of the chief citizens, but no less important a personage than Hubert de Burgh, Justiciary of England, with Falco in his company. Fitzarnulph had great difficulty in bearing himself with his wonted dignity, but when he observed that his fellow-citizens were inclined to shun him, his spirit of defiance rose, and he resolved to brave the business out and take the consequences, let them be what they might. It was a resolution of which he was to repent, but to repent when too late.

Hubert de Burgh gravely opened the business which had brought him to the city, that business being neither more nor less than to inquire into the origin of the riot that had taken place on the previous day, and to bring its authors to condign punishment. The mayor thereupon justified his own conduct as the highest municipal functionary, and added that “he had earnestly entreated the people to be quiet, but that Constantine Fitzarnulph had so inflamed their minds by his seditious speeches that there was no hope of appeasing them;” while the aldermen and citizens all disclaimed any connexion with the disturbance, and to a man charged the said Constantine as its author.

“Constantine Fitzarnulph,” said Hubert de Burgh, gravely, “you hear of what you are accused. What have you to say for yourself?”

By this time Fitzarnulph had thrown prudence to the winds and banished every thought of discretion, and reckless for the moment of the danger to which he was exposing himself, he first eyed his fellow-citizens with scorn, and then turned fiercely on the justiciary.

“Sir,” said he in a loud tone, as he knitted his dark brow and clinched his hand, “I do hear of what I am accused, and I am ready to answer on my own behalf. I avow myself the author of the disturbance that has taken place, and I glory in the thought of so being. Nay, more, I tell you to your beard, Lord Hubert de Burgh, that I therein did no more than I ought; and, by the blood of St. Thomas! I add, I did not do half as much as I intended.”

Having thus expressed himself, with a tone and manner before which every listener quailed, save Falco, who smiled a little grimly at the citizen’s vehemence, Fitzarnulph strode from the hall, and, wrapping his gabardine closely round him, was about to leave the Tower by the great gate. But he was wholly mistaken as to the degree of terror he had inspired. As he reached the gate, and was about to step forth, the hand of Falco was laid meaningly on his shoulder, and two of Falco’s men-at-arms arrested him in the king’s name. Fitzarnulph was amazed at this summary proceeding, but he knew that resistance would be vain. He was placed in a boat, rowed up the river to Westminster, and confined in the gate-house till the king’s pleasure was known. But it soon appeared that there was no hope of pardon, and ere sunrise next morning he was carried to the Nine Elms and handed over to the hangman, Falco and his armed men being present to witness the execution.

So far Fitzarnulph had shown no sign of shrinking from the fate he had defied. But at sight of the gibbet his heart failed him, and as the hangman put the halter round his neck he lost all his self-possession, wrung his hands and beat his breast, bewailed his sad plight, and offered Falco fifteen thousand merks to save his life. The sum sounded enormous, and the eyes of the foreign warrior sparkled with avarice. But it was too late, and he shook his head. The sentence had gone forth, the hangman did his office, and just as the bells of the neighbouring convent were ringing the hour of prime, and as the monks were rising to sing the morning hymn in Latin, Falco gave the signal, and in the twinkling of an eye Constantine Fitzarnulph was dangling between heaven and earth; or, in the language of his contemporaries, he was hung up “an offering to the winds.”

And so ended the last feeble effort to disturb King Henry’s government in the name of Prince Louis, and with Fitzarnulph expired the faction that had survived Pembroke’s wise and vigorous protectorate. From that time no man, save in ridicule of French claims, ventured to shout “Montjoie, St. Denis! God aid us and our Lord Louis!” Whatever the troubles of Henry’s long reign – and they were many – no faction devoted to the French interfered to rouse hostilities between the two antagonistic parties, one of which had been represented by the great barons who forced John to sign the Great Charter under the oak of Runnymede; and the other by the patriot warriors who, to save their country from thraldom to France, fought so valiantly on the memorable day of Lincoln Fair.

A few words will suffice to satisfy any curiosity the reader may feel as to the further career of the personages who have figured in the foregoing history. In due time Oliver Icingla led Beatrix de Moreville to the hymeneal altar, and in due time, also, goodly sons and daughters grew up around them to perpetuate the ancient lines of Icingla and De Moreville, both of which names, however, were soon veiled under the title of one of England’s proudest earldoms. Years afterwards, Icinglas were in the train of Prince Edward when he so rashly chased the London militia from the field of Lewes; and, later still, they followed him in the battle of Evesham, when the life and the faction of Simon de Montfort were both extinguished; when, again, that great prince went upon his crusade, there were scions of the old Anglo-Saxon lords of Oakmede by his side; and, indeed, throughout the whole of the long and wise reign of the first Edward, Moreville-Icinglas were his faithful and cherished friends. As for Oliver himself, he and his friend William de Collingham occupied a foremost place in the field and in the council under King Henry, who, had he paid more heed to their advice, and less to that of the foreign favourites by whom he surrounded himself, might have been saved many of those troubles which distracted his reign. To Ralph Hornmouth was committed the task of teaching the young Icinglas how to govern their steeds and to handle their weapons, and of this business he was as proud as if he had been made Lord High Marshal of England. Wolf, the son of Styr, succeeded to his post. Sir Anthony Waledger, in one of the paroxysms of madness brought on by his deep potations, leaped from the battlements of his castle while in fancied combat with a wild boar, and was dashed to pieces on the stones of the courtyard. Hugh de Moreville, as Abbot of Dryburgh, found a field in which to gratify his love of power and rule, which he exercised so sternly as to be called and be long remembered as “The Hard Abbot.” The other personages who have strutted their little hour upon our mimic stage need not be further noticed.

notes

1

Sussex.