Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

Matters, however, did not go quite smoothly; nor was John without a rival. Some months after his elder brother, Geoffrey, was killed in the tournament at Paris, Geoffrey’s widow, Constance of Brittany, gave birth to a son, to whom the Bretons, in honour of the memory of their mythical hero, gave the name of Arthur. King Richard was well inclined towards his nephew, and anxious to educate the boy to succeed him. But Constance, a weak and somewhat vicious woman, refused to place her son in the custody of Cœur de Lion, who, in consequence, recognised John as his heir. Nevertheless, on Richard’s death, the people of Anjou and Brittany proclaimed young Arthur as their sovereign; and Constance, carrying him to the court of Paris, placed him under the protection of Philip Augustus. But Philip, after making great professions, and promising to give Arthur one of his daughters in marriage, concluded a treaty with John in 1200, and, without scruple, sacrificed all the boy’s interests.

And now John’s throne seemed secure; and both the crown of England and the coronal of golden roses – the diadem of Normandy – sat easily on his brow; but at this juncture his indiscretion hurried him into a matrimonial project which cost him dear.

It was the summer of 1200, and John made a progress through Guienne to receive the homage of that province. In Angoulême, at a great festival given in his honour, his eye was attracted and his imagination captivated by Isabel, daughter of the count of that beautiful district – a lovely nymph not more than sixteen. John became passionately enamoured; and as “maidens, like moths, are caught by glare,” Isabel to be “a crowned queen” was “nothing coy.” It is true that there were serious obstacles in the way of a matrimonial union. John had previously been married to a daughter of the Earl of Gloucester, and Isabel affianced to Count Hugh de la Marche. But the obstacles were not deemed insuperable; for the Church had forbidden John to take home his bride, on account of their nearness of kin; and he, as sovereign of Angoulême, had power to break the link which bound the fair heiress to the man to whom she had been betrothed. Moreover, the parents of the young lady encouraged John’s passion; and, all difficulties having been got over for the time being, John and Isabel were united at Bordeaux, and sailed for England. On their arrival a grand council was held at Westminster; and Isabel of Angoulême, having been acknowledged as queen, was formally crowned by the Archbishop of Canterbury.

So far all went smoothly. But, ere a year elapsed, the royal pair were alarmed with rumours of a formidable confederacy. Hugh de la Marche, who had, not without indignation, learned that his affianced bride was handed over to another, first challenged John to mortal combat, and, on the challenge being declined, took up arms to avenge the wrong he had sustained. Accompanied by his tender spouse, John repaired to the Continent to defend his dominions, and visited the court of Paris. Philip Augustus received and entertained the King and Queen of England with royal magnificence, and professed the strongest friendship. But no sooner had they turned their backs than Philip, who was a master of kingcraft, resolved on John’s ruin, and allied himself closely with John’s foes.

It would seem that the darling object of Philip Augustus was to make France the great monarchy of Europe; and he was bent, therefore, on humbling the pride and appropriating the Continental territory of the Plantagenets. In the days of Henry and of Richard, Philip’s efforts had been almost barren of results. But against an adversary like John he had little doubt of achieving substantial successes, and of being able to seize the territory which had gone from the kings of France with Eleanor of Guienne. While John, under the impression that Philip was his stanch friend, was parading, with indiscreet bravado, before the eyes of his Continental subjects, Philip recalled Arthur of Brittany, now fifteen years of age, to the French court, and again espoused his cause.

“You know your rights,” said Philip, “and you would like to be a king?”

“Assuredly I would,” answered the boy.

“Well,” said Philip, “I place two hundred knights under your command. Lead them into the provinces which are your birthright, and I will aid you by invading Normandy.”

At the head of a little army Arthur raised his banner, and, marching into Guienne, boldly attacked Mirabeau, where his grandmother, Queen Eleanor, was then residing, and succeeded in taking the town. But Eleanor, retreating to the citadel, defied the besiegers, and sent to inform John of her peril.

At that time John was in Normandy, and, without loss of a day, he marched to his mother’s rescue, entered Mirabeau in the night, totally routed his enemies, and, having taken Arthur prisoner, conveyed him to Falaise. From Falaise he was removed to Rouen, and soon after the body of a youth was seen by some fishermen of the Seine, ever and anon rising, as it seemed, out of the water, as if supplicating Christian burial. On being brought ashore the body was recognised to be that of Arthur of Brittany, and it was secretly interred in the Abbey of Bec.

Whether Arthur had been killed by King John and flung into the Seine, or whether he had fallen into the river and been drowned while attempting to escape from the castle of Rouen, remains an historic mystery. But neither the Bretons nor Philip Augustus expressed any doubt on the subject. Within a week after the tragical event the Bretons demanded justice on the head of the murderer; and Philip summoned John, as one of his vassals, to appear before the Twelve Peers of France, and answer to the charge. Without denying the jurisdiction of the court, John declined to appear unless granted a safe conduct; and, the Twelve Peers having pronounced sentence of death and confiscation, Philip took up arms to execute the sentence, and seized cities and castles in such numbers, that, ere long, John retained little or nothing of the Continental empire of the Plantagenets, save Bordeaux, and a nominal authority in Guienne. One effort he did make to redeem his fortunes. But, losing heart and hope, he abandoned the struggle, and, returning to England, entered on that contest with the Church which was destined to involve him in ruin.

In the year 1205, Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, departed this life, and in his place the monks of Canterbury elected Reginald, their prior, to the vacant see. The king, however, far from sanctioning their choice, insisted on elevating John Grey, Bishop of Norfolk, to the primacy; and the dispute between the monks and the crown was referred to Innocent III., one of those popes who, like Hildebrand and Boniface VIII., deemed it their mission “to pull down the pride of kings.” In order at once to show his impartiality and his power, Innocent set aside the man nominated by the monks and the man nominated by the king, and gave the archbishopric to Stephen Langton, a cardinal of English birth, who was then at Rome. The monks, in consequence, found themselves in an awkward predicament. However, they were under the necessity of doing as the Pope ordered. In vain they talked of their scruples and fears, and protested that they could do nothing without the royal sanction. When urged, only one monk stood firm; all the others, out of deference to the head of the Church, confirmed the nomination of Stephen Langton.

When John learned what steps had been taken in contravention to his authority, his rage knew no bounds; and, in his excitement, he bethought him of punishing the monks for their servility to the Pope. Accordingly he sent two knights to seize the convent and drive the monks out of their cloisters; and the unfortunate men were expelled at the point of the sword. But the king soon discovered that this had been rashly done. Indeed, the Pope no sooner became aware of his wishes being treated with such disrespect than he sent three bishops to threaten John and his kingdom with an interdict if he did not yield; and all the other bishops coming to the king, implored him on their bended knees to save himself from the evil that was threatened by accepting Stephen Langton as primate, and allowing their monks to return to their convent and take possession of their property. John stood upon his dignity, and refused to bend an inch. In vain Innocent demanded redress, and indulged in threats of bringing spiritual artillery into play. The king, who believed he had justice and law on his side, and who believed also that, if supported by his subjects, he had little to fear in a contest with the court of Rome, boldly answered with defiance; and at length, in 1208, Innocent laid the kingdom under interdict, preparatory to excommunicating the king, in the event of his continuing refractory.

The papal interdict plunged England in gloom, and caused the utmost consternation. The churches were closed; no bell was tolled in their steeples; no services were performed within their walls; and the sacraments were administered to none but infants and the dying. Marriages and churchings took place in the porches of churches; sermons were preached on Sundays in the churchyards; and the bodies of the dead were interred silently and in unconsecrated ground. No bells summoned the living to their religious devotions, and no mass or prayer was offered for the souls of the departed. After this had continued for some time, Innocent finding that John gave no indications of a desire to yield, formally excommunicated the king, absolved his subjects from their allegiance, and exhorted all Christian princes to aid in dethroning him. Philip Augustus did not require much prompting. Willingly and readily he assembled a fleet at the mouth of the Seine, and mustered an army to invade England. John was exceedingly nervous about the future. Indeed, it is said that, in his alarm, he sent ambassadors to ask the aid of the Moorish King of Granada. If so, the mission came to nought. However, an English fleet crossed the Channel, and, after destroying the French squadrons in the Seine, burned the town of Dieppe, and swept the coast of Normandy. Even at that early period of our history, the naval power of England was not to be resisted.

It was, no doubt, regarded as a great triumph over the Pope and the King of France. Nevertheless, John was in no enviable frame of mind; for Innocent was bent on vengeance, and Philip Augustus showed the utmost eagerness to be the instrument of inflicting it. At the same time an enthusiast, known as Peter the Hermit, who fancied he had the gift of prophecy, predicted that, ere the Feast of Ascension, John should cease to reign; and the king, menaced by his barons, gave way to doubt and dread, and began to entertain the idea of saving himself by submitting. A way of reconciliation was soon opened.

It was the month of May, 1213, and John, then suffering from anxiety and ill health, was residing at Ewell, near Dover, when Pandolph, the papal legate, arrived in England, and sent two Knights of the Temple to ask a private interview with the king. “Let him come,” replied John; and Pandolph, coming accordingly, made such representations that the king promised to obey the Pope in all things, to receive Stephen Langton as primate, and to give complete satisfaction for the past. Of course, Pandolph expressed his gratification at the turn affairs were taking; and, after John had, in the Temple Church, at Dover, surrendered his kingdom to the Pope, and agreed to hold it as a fief of the Holy See, the legate passed over to France, and intimated to Philip Augustus that the King of England was under the special protection of the Church, and that he was not to be meddled with. In fact, it now appeared that John had, by yielding to the papal power, freed himself from his troubles; and perhaps he flattered himself that he should henceforth govern in peace, and have everything his own way. If so, he was very much mistaken. Between the Plantagenet kings and the Anglo-Norman barons there had never existed much good feeling; and between John and the barons, in particular, there existed a strong feeling of hostility. Even when he was engaged in his contest with the Pope, the great feudal magnates of England gave indications of their determination to set the royal authority at defiance; and, ere the inglorious close of that contest, they had made up their minds either to rule England as they liked, or to plunge the country into a civil war. Affairs were rapidly approaching a crisis at the Christmas of 1214 – that Christmas when Hugh de Moreville conducted Oliver Icingla as a hostage to the Tower of London.

CHAPTER VII

A MAN OF THE FOREST

FEW days were merrier in ancient England than the first day of the year. Not so fatigued with the celebration of Christmas as to be incapable of continuing the festivity, the inhabitants – especially the young – welcomed the new year with uproarious mirth.

Even before the Saxon, or Dane, or Norman had set foot in Britain – even before the apostles of Christianity had found their way to our shores – the season had been the occasion of religious rites and observances. It is well known that, on the last night of the year, the Druids were in the habit of going into the woods, cutting the mistletoe off the oak with golden bills, bringing it next morning into the towns, distributing it among the people, who wore it as an amulet to preserve them from danger, and performing certain pagan rites, which were gradually turned by the early Church into such exhibitions as the “Fête des Fous,” performed by companies of both sexes, dressed in fantastic garments, who ran about on New Year’s Day, asking for gifts, rushing into churches during the services of the vigils, and disturbing the devout by their gestures and cries.

In England, on New Year’s Day, it was customary for every one who had it in his power to wear new clothes; and unfortunate was deemed the wight who had not the means that day of indulging in some luxury of the kind. Now, on the 1st of January in the year 1215 – a year destined to be memorable in the annals of England – Wolf, the varlet, had been provided with garments more befitting the sobriety observed in the house of Dame Isabel Icingla than the scarlet striped with yellow, in which he had strutted at the court of Castile; and, prompted by the vanity natural to youth, he resolved on displaying his finery at the cottage inhabited by his father, Styr, the Anglo-Saxon.

And the cottage of Styr, which stood about a mile from Oakmede, was not without its pretensions. Indeed, it was a palace compared with the squalid huts in which most of the labouring peasantry of England then herded; for Styr, in his youth, had served the Icinglas with fidelity in peace and war, and they had not proved forgetful of his services. Moreover, it was rumoured that Styr had dealings with outlaws, and that, at times, he so far forgot himself as to take out his crossbow on moonlight nights with an eye to the king’s deer. But, however that may have been, food in abundance, and, on such occasions as holidays, good cheer in plenty, and tankards of foaming ale, were found under Styr’s roof; and he could tell of war and of battles, especially of that last battle in which Richard Cœur de Lion defeated Philip Augustus, and in which Edric Icingla fell with his back to the ground and his feet to the foe. Listening to stories of the past, and singing some songs he had learned in Spain, Wolf found the hours glide away rather swiftly, and the day was far spent when he rose to leave.

“And so, Wolf,” said Styr for the fifth or sixth time, “it is not, after all, to the wars to which the young Hlaford has gone?”

“No, in truth,” replied Wolf, quickly, “or, credit me, he would not have left me behind. Little better than a prisoner is he, mewed up in the gloomy Tower, like bird in cage.”

“But hark thee, Wolf,” said the old man, “and I will tell thee a secret. Forest Will, or Will with the Club, as they call him, passed this way not later than yesterday.”

“And who is this Forest Will – knowest thou, father?” asked Wolf, interrupting.

“Nay, lad, that is more than I can tell. Some say he is a great man whose life is forfeit to the law; others that he is a captain of forest outlaws. For my part, I know little more of him than do my neighbours; but this little I do know, that he is wondrous familiar with all that is doing, alike at the king’s court and the castles of the barons – ay, even in foreign parts – and he foretells that, ere the harvest is ready for the sickle, there will be war.”

“War in England?” said Wolf.

“Ay, war in England – and a bloody war to boot; and when swords are being drawn, King John will know better than to keep an Icingla from drawing his sword. Even mine must be scoured up if blows are to be going, and if King Harry’s son has to defend himself against the men who have done all but crush our race to the dust.”

And Styr bent his brows and clenched his hands as if eager for the battle, which, with the instinct of an old warrior, he scented from afar.

“Well, father,” said Wolf, “I hope it will all turn out for the best; but what if my master took into his head to fight on the other side?”

“What if an Icingla took into his head to fight for Norman oppressors against an English king, the heir of the Athelings!” cried Styr, repeating his son’s words. “Why, just this, that he might expect his ancestors to come out of their graves and cry ‘shame’ upon him.”

“May the saints forefend!” exclaimed Wolf, almost as much terrified as if the Saxon chiefs alluded to had appeared before him in their shrouds. “But, come what may, I must even take my departure, for the hour grows late, and Dame Isabel is somewhat strict in her rules.”

“The better for thee and others that live under the Hleafdian’s roof,” observed Styr.

It was about the fall of evening when Wolf left his father’s tenement to return to Oakmede, and he hurried through the woodland and over the crisp ground that he might reach the hall of the Icinglas before the hour of supper, then an important meal under the roof of vanquished Saxon as well as victorious Norman, and especially in seasons of festivity. Notwithstanding the anxiety he felt about Oliver Icingla, and the disappointment he had experienced in not being allowed to accompany the young squire to the court or into captivity – just as might turn out – Wolf’s heart was not heavy, and as he neared the old house of brick and timber, and anticipated the good cheer that awaited him, he began to believe that all would come right in the end, and whistled almost joyously as his spirits rose and he thought of the good time that was coming. Suddenly a hare crossed his path. “A bad omen,” said Wolf, who had all the superstitious feelings of his race and country; and scarcely had he thus briefly soliloquised when his steps were arrested by a huge white bulldog which growled menacingly in his face, and by the voice of a man who leant against the trunk of a leafless oak.

“Wolf, boy, where is thy master?” said the man. “I have not seen him once of late, albeit he was wont to seek my company often enough.”

Wolf turned to the speaker, and, as he found his sleeve grasped, appeared somewhat more awed than was reasonable at finding himself alone with such a person and in such a place, and he would have been still more so had it been an hour after dark.

He was, so far as could be judged from his appearance, not more than thirty-five – that age which has been called “the second prime of man” – and had nothing about him to daunt or terrify a youth who, like Wolf, had been in Spain, and watched eagerly while grim warriors engaged in mortal combat. Indeed, the expression of his countenance was frank, and even kindly, and to the ordinary eye would have been prepossessing, while his figure was tall and of herculean strength, with mighty limbs, the arms long and muscular. His dress was that which might have been worn by any forester or forest outlaw, and he had a bugle-horn at his girdle, to which also was attached a heavy club of iron, which was likely, in his hands, to do terrible execution whenever necessity or inclination made him use it. But, as I have said, there was nothing in his appearance to excite alarm. Nevertheless, Wolf gazed on him with an awe that every moment increased, for he had often seen this person before, and knew him as Forest Will, or Will with the Club, whose existence was enveloped in mystery, but who was suspected of being a chief of outlaws, and by most people, particularly by Dame Isabel Icingla, deemed a dangerous man, with whom it was as impossible to hold converse without being led into mischief as to touch pitch without being defiled. Such being the case, Wolf felt almost as much alarmed as if Satan had suddenly started up in his path, and with difficulty mustered voice to say in a tremulous tone —

“I am in haste; I pray thee permit me to pass on my way.”

“Have patience and fear nothing,” said the man of the forest. “I asked thee what had become of thy master. I fain would see him.”

“May it please thee,” replied Wolf, after a pause, “my master has gone to the king’s court.”

“Gone to the king’s court! Oliver Icingla gone to the king’s court!” exclaimed the man of the forest, wonderingly. “What in the fiend’s name took him there?”

“In truth,” answered Wolf, slowly but gradually recovering his self-possession, “it was not of his own will that he went thither; but ‘needs must when the devil drives.’ He was conducted to the Tower of London as a hostage by his mother’s kinsman, the Lord Hugh de Moreville.”

“Ho, ho, ho!” cried the man of the forest, stamping his foot with anger and vexation; “I see it all. He is destined to feed the crows, if not saved by a miracle. I marvel much that a youth of his wit could be so blind as to be led by his false kinsman into such a snare. Hugh de Moreville,” he continued, speaking to himself, but still loud enough to be heard by Wolf, whose hearing was acute – “Hugh de Moreville gives Oliver Icingla to King John as a hostage for his good faith. Hugh breaks faith with the king and rises with the barons, and Oliver is hung up to punish Hugh’s perfidy, which is just what Hugh wants; and when peace is patched up between the king and the barons, and the past forgiven and forgotten, Hugh remains in undisputed possession of the castles and baronies, which otherwise he might one day have to surrender to the rightful heir at the bidding of the law. By the rood, this lord is wise in his own generation, and, doubtless, knows it; yet, had he asked my counsel, I could have shown him a less hazardous way to accomplish his wishes; for Hugh has but one daughter, who is marvellous fair to look upon; and the Icinglas, whatever their pride and prejudices as to race, are as wax in the presence of Norman women of beauty and blood. What thinkest thou the life of Master Oliver Icingla may be worth,” asked he, again addressing Wolf, “now that he is securely mewed in the Tower?”

“I know not,” said Wolf, mournfully. “I would fain hope my lady’s son is in no real danger.”

“Your lady,” continued the man of the forest, with an air of careless indifference, “relished not the thought of her son holding so much discourse as he was wont to do with one like me. Was it not so?”

Wolf hesitated.

“Nay, boy, speak, and fear not. Knowest thou not it is good to tell truth and shame the devil?”

“In good sooth, then,” replied Wolf, at length yielding to the pressure of his questioner, “I know right well that my lady did much fear that her son might be tempted into some enterprise perilous to his life.”

“Even so,” said the man of the forest; “and it is ever in this way that women err as to the quarter where danger lies; and now her noble kinsman has led her son into far greater peril than he was ever like to be exposed to in my company.”