Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

It was well, perhaps, for the young King of England and for the people which he was to rule under circumstances so difficult, that Isabel of Angoulême took her departure and left him to begin his reign under happier auspices. An intriguing and ambitious woman might have spoiled all. As it happened, Pembroke had his own way, and felt that he was equal to the crisis.

CHAPTER XXXIX

A CONQUEROR IN IMAGINATION

WHEN King John died at Newark, and when the boy Henry was crowned at Gloucester, Louis of France and the Anglo-Norman barons were still before Dover. But Hugh de Burgh held out gallantly; and Louis, wearying of an enterprise in which there was no prospect of success, swallowed the vow he had made never to move from before the castle till he had taken it and hanged the garrison, and resolved on withdrawing from the siege, and employing his energies to consolidate the conquests he had already achieved in England. Accordingly, he returned to London, which was still devoted to his cause, and on the 6th of November took possession of the Tower, which, doubtless, he considered a stronghold which would stand him in good stead, in case of the citizens becoming refractory, and requiring to be kept down with the strong hand.

So far the French prince, notwithstanding his check at Dover, saw no reason to despair of ultimate triumph over the obstacles which barred his way to the throne, and, looking upon young Henry’s coronation as a farce, he was already a conqueror in imagination. Moreover, he daily showed himself more and more indifferent to the opinions of his Anglo-Norman allies, bestowing all his confidence on the lords and knights who had accompanied him from France, and not scrupling to make Robert Fitzwalter and his confederates feel the full humiliation of their position. It is difficult to guess whether or not Fitzwalter believed the story which was current as to the death of his daughter, Maude the Fair, by the poisoned egg. But even if so, his conscience must sometimes have reproached him when he reflected that, in order to gratify his revenge for a private wrong, he had played a part similar to that of Count Julian of Spain, when, five hundred years earlier, he, in order to avenge the wrongs of his daughter, Caba, had invited the Moors to seize the kingdom of Roderick, overthrew the monarchy of the Goths, and placed his native land and its inhabitants at the mercy of foreign invaders. Probably, however, Fitzwalter seldom thought either of Count Julian’s country or of his own, but gave his whole attention to his own safety and his own interests, and troubled himself very lightly with the misery which he had been the means of bringing on England and on Englishmen.

At all events, when Louis, having taken possession of the Tower, again marched from the capital to pursue his career of conquest, Fitzwalter accompanied the French prince, and aided him in his various enterprises. His position, indeed, and that of the other Anglo-Normans who aided the foreigners to ravage the country, even if they were destitute of patriotism, could hardly have been very pleasant; for at that time there existed no love between the barons of England and the warriors of France; and it appears that the continental adventurers were in the habit of assuming airs of superiority, and treating the islanders with something very like contempt, vapouring about their own prowess, repeating the wretched joke about Englishmen being born with tails like horses as a punishment for somebody having cut off the tail of Thomas à Becket’s horse, and describing the islanders, without distinction of race, as “English tails.”

Now it must have been sufficiently mortifying to Fitzwalter, and De Quency, and De Roos to be supposed to have tails like horses, and perhaps still more mortifying to them as Normans to be treated as English. Nevertheless, they bore all taunts and insults as best they could, and fought side by side with their laughing allies – no doubt valiantly and well. First they besieged and took the castle of Hertford, and then the great castle of Berkhampstead, a place renowned in the history of the Norman Conquest. Elated by his successes, Louis proceeded to St. Albans, and threatened to burn the magnificent abbey which Offa, the Saxon king, had founded and dedicated to the proto-martyr of Britain, if the abbot did not come and do him homage. Trembling for the edifice, and trembling for his own safety, the abbot, nevertheless, declined to do what, as an Englishman, he could not do with honour. However, the holy man offered a large sum of money as a bribe, and Louis, having accepted the abbot’s gold instead of his homage, passed on. But ere this a serious misunderstanding had broken out in his camp, and threatened mischievous consequences. When Berkhampstead was taken by the French, Fitzwalter suggested that the castle, on which he pretended to have an hereditary claim, should be committed to his custody. Louis thereupon consulted the French knights who were with him whether or not he should do as Fitzwalter wished.

“No,” answered they, scornfully. “How can any confidence be placed in English tails, who are traitors to their own sovereign?”

Louis returned to Fitzwalter.

“You must wait patiently till the kingdom is conquered,” said he, “and I will then give every man what he has a right to possess.”

Fitzwalter remonstrated, but Louis curtly refused to listen longer to the proposal; and the Anglo-Norman baron grew purple with rage. A violent quarrel ensued; and it looked as if the French prince was about to lose an adherent whose value in calm moments he could hardly fail to recognise. Fitzwalter, however, had linked himself too firmly with the Frenchman to have it in his power to break his chains, and the matter was accommodated. But the friends of the Anglo-Norman baron, exposed to frequent insults of the kind, grew sullen and discontented; and Louis began to perceive that it would not be prudent to rely too far on the fidelity of men born on English ground, and to concert measures for surrounding himself with a force of foreigners sufficient to render him independent of aid from the natives. With this view he consented to a truce with the Protector from Christmas to Easter, and resolved to employ the interval in a voyage to France, and to make a great attempt to persuade his crafty sire to furnish a force formidable enough to overawe all his enemies, and to terminate his successes as a conqueror with a crowning triumph.

Accordingly, Louis, having appointed the Lord De Coucy as his lieutenant in England, set out for the coast of Sussex to embark at Shoreham for the Continent, dreading no interruption. This time he found himself wrong in his calculations. There was a serious obstacle in the way, in the shape of a small but very formidable body of men, headed by a warrior in his teens, wearing a long white jacket, and wielding a very formidable battle-axe, who rushed to the assault with very little respect for persons – whether royal or knightly – under a white silken banner on which figured a fierce raven with open beak, and spread wings, and outstretched neck.

CHAPTER XL

A CAMP OF REFUGE

IMMEDIATELY after his exploit at Chas-Chateil, William de Collingham, as if a great idea had been suggested to him, repaired with Oliver Icingla to an islet deep in the forests of Sussex, overgrown with willows and rushes, and surrounded by marshes which regularly in autumn overflowed with water and became a large lake, with the islet rising in the midst. This islet had at one period been inhabited, and the ruins of a fortress, of which the origin and history were lost in the obscurity of ancient days, were still visible; but now it had no inhabitant save an anchorite, who dwelt among the ruins in a rude hermitage built of timber and overgrown with moss, and who appeared to be cut off from communication with mankind, occupying himself much with the study of the stars, and enjoying the reputation of being able to predict events, as if he had been privileged to read what was written in the book of fate.

It was in this islet, situated in the recesses of what remained of the great forest which before the Conquest extended all over Sussex, that Collingham determined to establish a camp of Refuge for Englishmen who, like himself, would not bow the knee to Prince Louis and his myrmidons, and he had several reasons for selecting the place; some of these he frankly stated, but the principal reason, which was a very strong one, he, like a prudent man, kept to himself. However, he proceeded to throw up intrenchments, constructed huts of earth and wood, set up his raven banner, and summoned all to come thither who had made up their minds to endure any privations and fight to the death rather than submit to the French invaders and lay down their arms.

The summons of Collingham was not disregarded. Within a fortnight some five hundred men had sworn to follow the raven banner for better or for worse, and never a day passed without some new band of outlaws, or some individual fighting man, or some ardent patriot, coming and adding to the number. No doubt there were bad as well as good among those who took refuge on the islet; but under Collingham’s discipline all were under the necessity of living decently and in order.

At this camp of refuge, on the evening of the 2nd of June, 1216, an hour after sunset, arrived William de Collingham and Oliver Icingla, riding one horse, like the old Knights of the Temple, accompanied by the russet bloodhound which Clem the Bold Rider had that morning been patting in the stable-yard of the White Hart, but which now willingly followed its old master, from whom it had been taken by Hugh de Moreville, who coveted the animal as well as the rest of the patrimony which Oliver Icingla ought to have derived from his mother. As for the knight and the squire, they were by no means in the best plight. The garments of both – the rustic garments which they had worn to disguise themselves – were spotted with blood, and their appearance indicated that they had been engaged in a desperate struggle for life or death.

All doubt on this subject, however, vanished when, after passing the water on a raft, Collingham and Oliver entered the camp and threw down their weapons. Both warriors were wounded: the sword of the knight was hacked and red; the axe of the squire was dyed dark with gore. Moreover, the strong steed that had carried them to the place of refuge was so weary and wounded that it died that night of fatigue and loss of blood. Such was the consequence to the patriotic warriors of one of their earliest conflicts with the enemy; they were to have many more equally sanguinary, but not so unequal in numbers.

But fierce as they had found the combat, neither Collingham nor Icingla was daunted. No sooner were their wounds dressed and bound up by the anchorite than, assembling the men by the light of the moon, they took a solemn oath, by the cross on the hilt of the knight’s sword, not to sleep under a roof, nor to dine in a hall, nor to drink a brimming can at a chimney corner, till Prince Louis and the French were expelled from England. At the same time, every man present – Oliver Icingla included – engaged never to decline a combat with three of the enemy, and to yield implicit obedience to the commands of their leader, upon which Collingham swore to relieve them from their promise if he was known to shrink from an encounter single-handed with six of the enemy.

And now every man understood what he was expected to do, and the work was begun with spirit, and the camp of refuge soon boasted of a thousand men, mostly archers, who attacked the French, and the Anglo-Normans who sided with them, whenever an opportunity presented itself, and, as historians tell us, made themselves particularly formidable when Louis marched into Sussex to take possession of the county.

“Louis, availing himself of John’s weakness,” says Carte, “sent William Fitzpiers, Earl of Essex, and Robert Fitzwalter, and William Huntingfield into Essex and Suffolk, and marching himself into Sussex, took all the fortresses in the county, but could not quell William de Collingham, who, with a thousand archers, made incursions from the woods and forests in those parts, killed several thousands of the French in different encounters, and held out all the time that the hostilities lasted. There was no attacking this man,” adds Carte, “in the fortresses wherein he kept without great disadvantage.”

It was not, however, till the French had learned by severe experience what manner of man Collingham was, and the ferocity of his “Ravens” – for so his followers were called, from the fierce raven on his banner – that they came to regard him as invincible and his camp as impregnable. In the effort to put him down, more than one continental warrior of high name was tried and found wanting. Especially did there fail in this endeavour a very valiant captain of free lances, who had been entrusted with the castle of Lewes, and who was deemed equal to any enterprise of the kind.

He was a native of Rheims, his name was Clarembald, and he was one of the mercenary leaders who had come with Louis to conquer England, bringing with him a rather remarkable surname, which, no doubt, he hoped to exchange for a territorial title derived from some earldom or barony on the Thames, or the Humber, or the Tweed. In fact, from his nocturnal excursions into towns and villages in Anjou and Normandy during the wars of King John and Philip Augustus, Clarembald had won the surname of “Eveille-chiens,” or Wake-dog, and he had rendered the surname very terrible to such as had learned what it was to have the misfortune to be the foe of his friends.

When Louis seized the castles of the king’s adherents in Sussex, Clarembald was appointed governor of Lewes, one of the castles of the Warrens, and he began to rule the neighbourhood with a rod of iron. Nowhere did the inhabitants of England find the invaders so tyrannical and so merciless. In vain the unfortunate English endeavoured to soften his heart by rendering him every possible honour. It only made him worse. He vexed them, tormented them, plundered them, hounded his dogs on their cattle so as to drive them into the marshes, and by breaking their limbs or backs killed or rendered them worthless. Nay more, he lamed their horses, slaughtered their sheep, and treated them very much as the French magnates of the fourteenth century treated Jacques Bonhomme, till the said Jacques, rendered furious by cruel treatment, turned on his persecutors, and proved to the world, during that outbreak known as the “Jacquerie,” how much worse than the beasts of the forest a human being can become when brutalised by long and continuous oppression.

Now Clarembald Eveille-chiens received very peremptory orders from Prince Louis to attack and destroy the camp of refuge in Sussex, and the bold warrior immediately prepared for the enterprise, only regretting, as far as he was concerned, that it was not one in which there was any chance of plunder.

It was late in autumn when Clarembald Eveille-chiens left the castle of Lewes, encamped in the wood, set up his standard, which was the colour of blood, and, investing the camp of refuge on all sides, constructed dykes and gangways over the marshes, and commenced on one side a causeway through the waters, so that his soldiers might enter the islet and put its occupants to the sword. But he soon found that the work in which he was engaged was no child’s play. Not only were the workmen harassed and interrupted in their operations by mocking jests and flights of arrows, but, night after night, Oliver Icingla, in spite of the watch that was kept, contrived to cross the marshes in his white jacket, and made attacks so sudden and unforeseen that the French at length verily suspected that he dealt in magic.

One night in December, when the snow lay pretty thick, and the frost was severe, and the ground hard as iron, and Eveille-chiens was absent from his camp on one of the many love adventures with which he diverted his leisure hours, the French were suddenly aroused from their slumbers by shouts of and found that Oliver in his white jacket, accompanied by six men, each of them as fearless and most of them stronger than himself, was among them and felling down everything in his way. Penetrating even to Clarembald’s tent, with the hope of taking the doughty warrior captive, they no sooner observed that it was empty than they seized on his red banner, carried it off as a trophy, and cutting their way with shouts of scorn and defiance through their startled foes, reached the island in safety. Oliver immediately climbed a high tree that grew close to the edge of the water, and fastened the red banner to one of the most prominent branches.

“Hey for the fierce raven!Ho for the fierce raven!”

“There,” said he, as he descended and it began to flap in the keen, frosty wind – “there let it hang in wind and rain till Wake-dog plucks up courage to come and reclaim it. By the Holy Cross, the sight of it may tempt him to do something very venturesome, for surely it cannot fail to have the effect on him which scarlet has on the wounded bull.”

But still Clarembald made nothing worthy of the name of progress in his enterprise, whilst Oliver continued to make nocturnal sallies which cost the French so dear that Eveille-chiens was glad when the truce which Louis concluded with Pembroke gave him a fair excuse for leaving his red banner to its fate, drawing off his force, and returning to spend his Christmas at Lewes in the halls of the Warrens. The existence of the truce was also notified to William de Collingham by a messenger despatched by the Protector. But Collingham bluntly refused to recognise it.

“I know nothing,” the knight said, “of truces or treaties with Frenchmen who have come into England as invaders. I have sworn to devote myself to ridding the land of them, and to succeed or die in the attempt; and, come what may, I will never lay aside my arms till the invaders have laid down theirs. I have said my say.”

“What mean you, sir knight?” asked the messenger, astonished.

“I mean what I say,” was the brief answer.

And, in truth, Collingham did soon show that he meant what he said. When Louis, with his train, escorted by the Bastard of Melun – a Frenchman, who was captain of Bramber – was on his way from the castle of De Braos to the coast, to take shipping for the Continent, Oliver Icingla, despatched by Collingham to lie in wait for the prince, suddenly appeared with some hundreds of archers, and made a fierce attack – his men shouting, “Ho for the black raven!” and “St. Edward for Icingla!” Louis attempted to charge the archers; but his horse was killed under him, and he rolled on the ground. His knights assisted him to rise, and he was about to mount a fresh steed, when Oliver and his men penetrated to the very spot where he was drawing his sword; and the axe of the Icingla, having rung well on the prince’s head, was already swung a second time, and descending with a force which would have smashed both helmet and head. But fifty knights spurred to the rescue, and saved the invader’s head from the patriot’s hand. A fierce conflict ensued, and Louis, after finding himself more than once in danger, deemed it discreet to escape while his attendants screened his flight with their bodies.

Hurrying on and hailing his ships, he embarked in haste, confusion, and agitation, and sailed in no joyous mood from the shores on which, seven months earlier, he had set foot with prospects so inviting and a heart so elate. Indeed, a great reaction had already manifested itself; and even in London the exploits of the English at the camp of refuge were celebrated in ballads and sung about the streets – the names of William de Collingham and Oliver Icingla gradually becoming so popular that they were on every man’s tongue, and at length reached the ear of the Count de Perche.

Evil was the hour in which this took place.

De Perche was a martial Frank, who frequently exclaimed “Mort Dieu!” and sometimes swore by the bones of St. John the Baptist, which had been secured by Martin Litz as spoil when Constantinople was taken by the Crusaders in 1204, and brought to France, with the arm of St. James and a piece of the true cross, as most precious sacred relics. The count was a handsome personage, with broad shoulders, hazel eyes, and a countenance “prouder than lion or leopard;” and he was cruel towards the people of the country to which he had come as an invader.

One day the count, when about to leave London for the castle of Hertford, and conversing with Constantine Fitzarnulph about the attack made on Prince Louis, suddenly said —

“Foi de mon âme, fair sir, I would you could tell me where lies the domain of this Icingla, for of him I would like well to make an example, in order to encourage others not to follow his footsteps.”

Fitzarnulph smiled at the idea of Oliver’s domain, and explained to the count that the Icingla only possessed an old grange in a woodland occupied by his mother, who was a widow.

“Nevertheless,” rejoined the count, shaking his head, “it is necessary to do something by way of an example; and if, by your favour, I can but find one familiar with the country to guide me to the house of the Icingla on my way to Hertford, mort Dieu! I will teach him, and such as are of his company, to think twice before they defy the authority and attack the person of our good lord Louis.”

Fitzarnulph opened his mouth to speak, then paused, reflected, and hesitated; then struggled with his own sense of what was generous; and finally got over all the difficulty which he felt by shifting the responsibility of this business to the shoulders of a man whom he knew would be very willing to bear the burden, heavy and crushing as that burden might one day become.

“Sir count,” at length he replied, “I swear to you, by St. Thomas, that I scarce know what to do in this matter; for I own that I can hardly, with propriety, aid you in your wish. But,” added the citizen, significantly, “if you will send for that good knight, Sir Anthony Waledger, who is even now at the house of the Lord Hugh de Moreville, in Ludgate, I will answer for his finding you as trusty a guide as you could desire.”

CHAPTER XLI

OLIVER’S DREAM

IN spite of the truce agreed to by Louis and Pembroke, both of whom expected to profit by the delay, much fighting went on in Sussex in the early spring of 1217, during the absence of the French prince from England, and while the Lord de Coucy was acting as his lieutenant. Philip de Albini and John Marshal, Pembroke’s nephew, having undertaken of their own free will to guard the coasts in the neighbourhood of the Cinque Ports to prevent any more of the French from landing, allured many English yeomen to their standard, and were ever on the alert with a body of armed men under their command. William de Collingham, instead of relaxing his efforts, became more and more determined in his hostility to the invaders; and Oliver Icingla, whom, on account of his dress the French called “White Jacket,” made such unlooked-for sallies, and presented himself to the foreigners under circumstances so unexpected, that his name inspired something resembling terror even in the bold heart of Eveille-chiens, who began seriously to wish himself safe back on continental soil and under his native sky.

Nor was Oliver satisfied with displaying his courage against the enemy in the fierce skirmishes that almost daily took place in the vicinity of the camp of refuge. Nothing less, indeed, than taking the town and castle of Lewes from the French garrison would content him, and sometimes, accompanied by bands of ten or twenty, sometimes only by Canmore, the bloodhound, he roamed the country on foot to watch his opportunity and gain intelligence likely to aid him in his project. Nobody, however, sympathised very particularly with his aspiration, and Collingham especially, it was clear, thought that the wood and the morass and the intrenched camp were fitter strongholds for people in their circumstances than the walled town, and the fortified castle. Oliver, however, very slow to embrace this conviction, in spite of remonstrances, pursued his enterprise with ardour and zeal, and, in the course of his adventures, found himself in a situation of such peril that he well-nigh gave himself up for lost.

One spring evening, after having been for hours prowling within sight of Lewes, unattended save by the bloodhound, he retreated to the surrounding forest, and, feeling much more fatigued with the exertions of the day than was his wont, he was fain to seek rest under a giant tree which spread its branches over a wide space of ground. Within a few paces the sward was smeared with blood, and at first Oliver supposed that some fray had just taken place there between the French and a party of his comrades. A closer examination, however, convinced him that one or more of the wild bulls which in that age ran free in the oaken forests of England had that day been slaughtered on the spot, possibly to supply food to the garrison, who, being in a hostile country and in a district which they had early exhausted by their rapacity, were known to be pressed for provisions. Not deeming the matter worthy of prolonged consideration, the boy-warrior returned to the root of the tree and laid down his axe with the expectation of enjoying some repose undisturbed.