HISTORY has depicted John as a monster of wickedness and his reign as an unrelieved record of cruelty and oppression. The once landless prince who succeeded to the throne in spite of being the fourth of Henry II’s stalwart and healthy sons was probably as bad as he has been presented, selfish, cruel, shameless, cynical, lustful, dishonorable, and utterly false. The available facts justify this far from pleasant portrait.
He was not one of the fair-haired and handsome Plantagenets. It has already been noted that he was somewhat fattish as a boy, and he had now developed into a broad and heavy man, almost squat, and with a square face which was showing more than a trace of jowl. His eyes were dark and he wore a black beard which avoided stringiness by a process of much curling and waxing. But in spite of not possessing that outward guise of nobility which the rest of the brood had and which sometimes concealed the lack of it within, John had a way of making friends. The facetious strain which had cropped out first in William Rufus had been handed on to him and, when he wished, he could be highly amusing. There is too often about men of the worst character a capacity to compel interest and sometimes admiration. The picture of Satan which has been conceived and developed over the years is proof of the fascination he exerts on most people—the hypnotic eye, the strongly marked features, the polished and sophisticated manner. There was something mephistophelean about the new King. Men enjoyed his company, and he had a definite attraction for women. Those who yielded to this attraction always had reason to regret it. He had so little honor in him that the plucking and crushing of a bud were almost simultaneous, and he was so lacking in what might be termed the decencies of dalliance that he would seduce a woman one night and boast of it openly at supper the next.
He had the same irreverence as Richard, but unlike the lionhearted brother who could blaspheme freely and refuse the sacrament for seven years without any feeling of penitence or fear, John had such a belief in later punishment that his slips from grace were invariably followed by much frantic seeking for forgiveness. There was in him a noticeable tendency to model himself after the great brother in small ways. “By God’s feet!” had been the invocation which Richard had rolled out in his fine voice at moments of stress and anger. John, whose voice could be a little shrill, made his, “By God’s teeth!”
Strangely enough, he had more of a turn for scholarship than any of the kings from William the Conqueror down, including that so-called man of learning, Henry I. He was known to have read Hugh of St. Victor on the sacraments, the Sentences of Peter Lombard, The Romance of the History of England, and The Treatise of Origen, which was an extensive browsing into the field of learning for a king in those days. He was a hard worker and a continuous traveler.
Such, then, was the man. There is even less good to be said for him as a king. He ruled as though only his own interests and desires counted. He had no wisdom and not a trace of statesmanship, but on many occasions he showed a degree of political craft. If he failed in the resolution to fight an issue or a battle to a finish, he had some sagacity both in government and generalship. He possessed a keen capacity in money matters. One instance will show how much shrewdness he could show on occasion. The city of Liverpool owes its early rise in importance to a flash of good sense which John had the first time he passed the Mersey and saw that here was the place for the much-needed northern port. There was ruthless management in the way he changed the little collection of mud huts into a flourishing town, planning it himself in the form of a cross with seven side streets, and allowing immunity to runaway villeins and slaves while there (how the lords of the manor protested!) and their freedom if they remained a year and a half. Such episodes, unfortunately, were not frequent.
It must be stated in fairness to this much-derided ruler that history has been too prone to saddle him with all the blame for the breaking up of the Angevin empire. The French possessions formed a ramshackle structure, joined together in the first place by such intangibilities as royal marriage ties, held by nothing more durable than the vows of the ruling families. The brisk people of England had nothing in common with the easier-going inhabitants of Aquitaine. Their interests were as far apart as the tongues they spoke. The English had grown tired of shedding their blood and emptying their pockets in the endless strife of ducal factions abroad. They had reached the point where they flatly refused to shoulder war burdens which brought nothing but a sense of importance to their kings.
The magic of Richard’s name had kept the empire intact, even though the tides of separation were rising high in his time. With John came the deluge. The last of the sons made a pitifully poor attempt to hold back the flood, but the result would have been the same if he had been a great military leader and a political genius combined; though perhaps in that case the triumph of the French would have been slower and more costly.
John was the complete tyrant, and the people of the island kingdom suffered injustice and deprivation under him. Inasmuch as his oppression led to Magna Charta, however, he was the first and most noteworthy of the bad kings out of whose evil rule came good. The loss of Normandy and the Angevin provinces, although it humbled the pride of the nation, was another great benefit which grew out of disaster. As will be demonstrated later, it blew away the final trace of racial disunity in England. The Saxon and the Norman merged at last into the Englishman when the King ceased to be a colossus with one foot in London and one in Rouen.
These two developments of such major importance, and the fact that his reign provides history with one of its great unsolved mysteries, make the years of John of the deepest interest, even though they are filled with evidences of a depravity fit to chill the blood.
The story of John begins with his contest for the crown, and this leads at once into the intricacies of the aforesaid mystery.
England could boast at this time of a fine knight who has appeared once briefly in these pages: when Richard, pursuing his sick and beaten father from Le Mans, found himself facing a man who treated him with the scorn he deserved. This was William Marshal, so called because he held the high post of marshal of England. He was now the Earl of Pembroke and military commander in the Rouen district. Later a detailed account of this remarkable man will be given, but at this point, with a new-made grave still to be closed and a successor to be chosen with a loud clatter of arms, it will suffice to say that William Marshal was the greatest fighting man of the century (not excluding the doughty Coeur de Lion with his battle-ax) and a fine, human fellow of high character and undeviating principles.
It was in the late hours of the evening that a servant wakened the marshal from sleep with news of the death of Richard. The soldier, who was now in his middle fifties and inclined to sleep heavily, roused slowly and sat up in bed, exposing his bare torso and long muscular arms. He did not at once take in the full significance of what he had been told, then he sprang energetically from bed and struggled into his camise. Over this he hastily dropped the gambeson, a padded shirt to protect the body from contact with the metal. Then came a hauberk of jazerant work which was much used at the time, a coat of steel plates attached to a base of canvas. Sleeveless surcoat and a pair of heavy leather boots reinforced with metal completed his costume.
Rouen was packed to the eaves with the birds of prey who collect at the first taint of blood on the air: mercenaries who swaggered in the streets and swilled in the taverns, announcing themselves as not engaged by a careful absence of color in their clothes, even to a discarding of scarves; heavy-chested Flemings, flaxen Germans and Danes, dark and sallow condottieri from the boot of Europe, all waiting to sell themselves to the highest bidder; tougher and more evil than these, the contractors with supplies to sell, diabolically clever fellows with paid bravoes at their heels; and, of course, spies, informers, secret agents, pimps. Rouen after nightfall could be likened only to the back streets of hell. Here a dagger thrust in the ribs was as common and as little thought of as an oath. Although William Marshal had never known a moment of fear in his life, he was too old a campaigner to risk the blackness of the streets without an adequate guard. The wind and the rain, the oldest of campaigners themselves, were on the attack when he started out, with sudden swoops which made the lantern dance on the brown-bill carried in front of the party and caught the midnight wayfarers full in the face, so that rivulets of water ran down their necks under the open iron pots they wore on their heads and got into the armor where it could not be dislodged. All through the centuries man has devised one absurdity after another in the way of apparel, but never has there been anything to equal the discomfort of body armor in a heavy rainstorm.
The shaven-poll who admitted them into the courtyard of the archbishop’s palace turned them over to a brother inside and then ran for the cover of his wicket at the gate, knowing the playful habit soldiers had of beating the buttocks of priests with bill handles or treading on their toes with iron shoes. Those inside were equally expeditious in leading the marshal to the bare apartment where the old primate was still bending over his endless documents.
Walter of Rouen heard the news with such a sense of shock that for several moments he said nothing. Then he pointed out the danger of delay in getting the succession settled, and the two of them fell into a serious debate. The archbishop took the stand that Arthur of Brittany, the heir of Geoffrey, who had been born between Richard and John, had first right to the throne; which was correct, according to the accepted law of primogeniture. Marshal shook his grizzled head in denial. Arthur might have the right, but it would be a bad thing to choose him King. He was a foreigner, this boy named after the great Celtic King, and by report he was as proud and tricky as his father had been (the handsome Geoffrey had always been counted the troublemaker of the family) and as strong-willed as his mother, Constance of Brittany, who hated the Plantagenets. England needed a man, declared the marshal, and it would be better to take John.
They discussed the matter with full consciousness that the succession might hinge on what they decided. Between them they could put the might of Normandy back of their choice. Should it be John, who had been born in England and had friends there in spite of everything? Or should it be the unknown quantity, this boy of thirteen who had never been in England and had scarce a drop of Saxon blood in his veins; whose character, moreover, had not yet formed sufficiently to allow them to reach any judgment?
The marshal stuck aggressively to his selection: John, whose faults were all known and who was wanted by the people of the island with a degree of unanimity hard to believe in view of the reputation the sole surviving son had acquired.
The archbishop sighed finally and gave in. John, then, it would be.
“Nothing of which you have done, Marshal,” he declared, shaking his head dolefully, “will you have such cause to repine as this.”
Although the archbishop was right about what would happen if John were made King, the marshal’s choice was that of England. Across the Channel the feeling against the young prince as a candidate was running high. The evidence on this point is so convincing that it can be taken as fact that Arthur would never have been accepted as King of England, even if all the French possessions had declared for him.
In the meantime the adherents of Arthur had received the news of the King’s death, and Brittany had blazed into excited support of the prince. Anjou, Maine, and Touraine threw in on the same side. Philip of France turned against his old partner in perfidy and espoused the cause of his nephew. The French monarch announced his readiness to take the field and summoned Arthur to Paris to live in his household and receive education with his own son and heir. In Normandy, which counted most, the strong stand taken by the Earl of Pembroke was keeping the people from joining in the rather hysterical swing to the heir of Brittany. Aquitaine, that loyal land, was standing behind Eleanor and was ready to accept whatever decision she might make.
Eleanor, naturally, chose her only remaining son. John had been so much the favorite of Henry in the bitter last days that there had been restraint sometimes in her attitude toward him. Now this was all swept away. Although she knew full well that John had great faults, she was prepared to battle for him against the grandson who had been trained to hate her by his high-tempered mother.
Eleanor’s support was what John needed at this critical moment. Touraine had declared for Arthur, but the imperious old Queen instructed the seneschal to turn over the treasure of that province to John, and this was done at the castle of Chinon on April 14. At the same time a few of the nobility swore fealty to him. From Chinon, John rode north into Normandy, where he found that William Marshal had kept the old duchy loyal to him. He was crowned duke by Walter of Rouen on April 25.
The coronation was conducted with all the old Norman rites. The ducal coronet, which was made in the form of a wreath of golden roses, had always looked out of place on the heads of the hard-bitten men who had worn it. John had broadened out so much that the dainty circlet made him rather absurd. Perhaps he sensed this himself. At any rate, as he took the spear, which was handed to him in place of a scepter according to the Norman custom, he turned and winked at the spectators. At a later stage of the ceremony he let the spear fall out of his hand, and it crashed loudly on the stone paving before the altar. An uneasy silence settled over the cathedral. This was believed a sign that he was doomed to lose the duchy.
The reception he received in England, where he went immediately after being crowned in Normandy, showed how correct William Marshal had been in his estimate of the temper of the English people. They wanted him to be King, and not a single voice was raised in favor of the young prince. The coronation took place on Ascension Day, May 27, and Hubert Walter officiated. Whether it was done as a sop to the nation in view of the poor caliber of the new King, or whether it was the first of the checks which all men knew would have to be imposed on him, the primate solemnly intoned the words of the old ritual which declared him King by choice of the people. Years after, the archbishop confided that he had used that form of oath because the violence of John’s character rendered the solemn admonition necessary. It made no difference, of course, so far as John was concerned.
For many centuries before the Normans came, and all through the sanguinary stages of the Conquest, the Welsh people had remained in their mountainous corner of the island, refusing stoutly to be incorporated in the growing nation. They were of the same racial stock as the people of Brittany and with the same traditions and ideals, the same dislike for Saxons and Normans and Frenchmen. One great faith sustained these Celtic peoples in their determination to remain apart and independent, and this was the legend of Arthur, the Pendragon, the most enlightened and chivalrous of men. Out of this faith had grown the belief that someday, when the need would be great, Arthur would come back to earth with his sword Excalibur and lead his people again.
Stories continued to grow around the Arthurian legend as time went on. It was generally believed that Glastonbury, where the old Benedictine monastery stood, was in reality the Avalon to which the body of the King was taken after his last battle. This did not prevent rumors of the finding of his grave elsewhere. Crusaders came back from the East with various stories. Some said he lay at the foot of Mount Etna, others said on Mount Sinai. One belief was universal: that anyone who ventured into the woods at midnight would hear the sound of ghostly horns and see a train of hunters ride by like shadows through the glades with the grave-faced Arthur in the lead. He was as much alive in Celtic minds as any king of the day, and the conviction that he would return was at the core of Welsh resistance to English encroachments.
Toward the end of the reign of Henry II an announcement had been made which stunned all believers in the legend. Henry of Blois, the abbot of Glastonbury, gave it out that, acting on the revelations of a Welsh bard, he had made a search of the abbey vaults. At a considerable distance down had been found a huge coffin of oak containing the bones of Arthur and his Queen Guinevere, who had been buried with him. The unusual size of the bones made it certain that they had belonged to the tall Pendragon. The golden hair of the beautiful Queen was seen when the coffin was opened, but it had crumbled into dust as soon as exposed to the air. The main piece of evidence, however, was an inscription on the side of the coffin:
Hic jacet sepultus inclitus Arthurus in insula Avalonia.
If this was really the body of Arthur, he became a man and could no longer be thought of as a god. After the first sensation had died down and the bones had been reinterred in a magnificent sarcophagus, the people of Wales and Brittany rejected the story as a deliberate imposture designed to destroy their faith in the future of the Celtic race. There were repeated demands to see the coffin with the inscription, but the abbot failed to produce it. In time it was generally believed that the discovery had been planned for political reasons, perhaps on the insistence of Henry himself.
It was soon after this that a posthumous son was born to Constance of Brittany, the widow of Henry’s third son, Geoffrey. Henry was delighted, for this was his first grandson, and he decided the boy should be given his name. This was not acceptable to the mother. Constance did not like the King or his wife (Eleanor reciprocated most heartily) and, in fact, wanted nothing to do with the English royal family. She called in the leading men of Brittany and asked their opinion about the naming of the infant duke. Unanimously they said he must be named for the Pendragon, who would return to earth in his own time in spite of lies and impostures, and so Arthur the boy was called. One troubadour declared that the King who founded the order of the Round Table had come back; that his soul had entered the body of the child cradled safely in the ducal palace behind the Mordelaise Gate.
Eleanor had disliked her Breton daughter-in-law from the beginning. There is evidence that she was fond of Berengaria, and no hint can be found in the records that her feeling had not been friendly to the French princess who married her son Henry. She seems to have accepted Isabella of Angoulême, who later married John. But Constance of Brittany she did not like, and it may have been that her antagonism grew out of the attitude of the latter. Henry had felt the same way, believing that Constance urged Geoffrey to dispute his authority and to keep the family strife stirred up. Her insubordination in connection with the naming of the infant son was the final proof. Eleanor was in custody at Winchester when this happened, and so no share of the blame can be charged to her. It was Henry’s own decision that the young widow must remarry at once and to a man who would always act in accord with the kingly plans. He was concerned chiefly with the fear that his grandson would fall into the wrong hands, but there was another reason for the speed with which a second husband was found. Young Prince John, who could not resist pretty women, was very much attracted to his Breton sister-in-law, and an end had to be put to that.
The husband Henry selected was one of his close adherents, a certain Ranulf, Earl of Chester, a black-a-vised and generally ill-favored little man for whom the young widow conceived an immediate dislike. Her feelings were given no consideration at all. Knowing that her son would be taken away from her if she refused, Constance went through the wedding ceremony with this unattractive bridegroom. It seems improbable that the marriage was consummated, for Constance made it clear from the beginning that she detested her new spouse. Henry was well enough content; he did not want any more Breton grandsons to complicate matters later. Ranulf played his part, literally, to the King’s taste. He took the reins into his own hands and drove Brittany in the straight path of Angevin policy. It is quite likely that he made no effort to take the nuptial couch by storm. The people of Brittany hated him, but they were in no position to get the yoke from their necks. They gave passive obedience and bided their time.
Arthur, in spite of all efforts to the contrary, was reared as a Breton. His youthful mind was filled with the past glory of his race, and the ambition was fostered in him to become another king such as the great Pendragon Arthur. He was an active lad and showed signs of proving as skilled in the use of arms as his father had been. When he was admitted to knighthood at a very early age, he took as his device the lion, the unicorn, and the griffin, which had been worn by the illustrious monarch for whom he was named.
When Richard failed to bring a son into the world, young Arthur became the heir apparent. The quietly fanatical group around him began to see visions in real earnest. The old prophecy would be fulfilled when a Celtic prince sat once more on the throne of England.
When Richard’s illness led to his reconciliation with Berengaria and set him thinking about the future generally, he decided to declare Arthur his successor. With this in mind he asked Constance to send her son to him, to be raised at the court and educated under the royal eye. Arthur was then nine years old, and his mother had introduced him a short time before to the Brittany Assembly and had won their consent to his being associated with her as head of the state. She was instantly suspicious of the King’s suggestion, fearing that Richard’s purpose was to get the boy into his hands. When she held back, Richard sent her an impatient demand to meet him at Pontorson to discuss the situation. This made her more hesitant than ever, and he issued peremptory orders to her husband to make her a prisoner. The ever-pliant Ranulf obeyed his King by lodging his wife in one of the castles of Brittany.
The people were ready to rise in her defense, but Constance sent secret instructions to their leaders that no time was to be wasted in efforts to release her. One thing only counted: Arthur must be kept out of the hands of the English. They obeyed her by making one of their number, the Sieur de Vitré, guardian of the young prince. The Sieur de Vitré proved a resourceful custodian, flitting about the country from one hiding place to another and defeating all efforts to locate his charge. Ranulf of Chester, finding himself unable to cope with the situation, called for help. Richard answered by sending in a body of his Brabançons, and there was much useless fighting and bloodshed. In the end the prince was spirited out of Normandy and placed in the care of the King of France. Richard then threw up his hands, gave orders for the release of his sister-in-law, and from that moment lost all interest in Arthur as his successor. When he died he named John as his choice for the throne.
The likeliest explanation of Richard’s course is that he began with the intention of acknowledging Arthur as his heir and that the antagonistic attitude of the mother stirred him to peremptory methods. Such was Richard’s way in everything. It is inconceivable that he intended to get rid of the boy, as Constance feared. He had been given so much reason to suspect the motives of John that he would not have stained his own name with murder to secure the succession of his perfidious brother. The blame for the impasse must at least be shared by the haughty and impetuous Constance.
Now that Richard was dead it seemed certain that the quarrel over the succession would embroil England and France in another long and bloody war. Constance, that intense and bitter woman, was as suspicious of Philip, however, as she had ever been of the English, and with the soundest of reasons. The French King had espoused the cause of Arthur with open professions of disinterest, but it had soon developed that he was thinking of nothing but his own gain. His intention was to incorporate Brittany and the provinces of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine into his dominions and to make Arthur a vassal. The young prince, who was still at the French court, realized the truth after the capture of certain towns in Anjou which had held out against the French forces. Philip proceeded to raze the walls and dismantle the forts, at the same time punishing the inhabitants with the utmost severity. Arthur remonstrated at this treatment of people he regarded as his own subjects. Philip did not think it necessary to dissemble. He answered, “Am I not at liberty to do what I want in my own territories?” The purpose of the French King was now so clear to everyone that a bard at his court addressed a poem to him in which he said, “Thou art bound to plant thy tents and enlarge thy states that thou mayst possess in full the dominions of thy ancestors, that the stranger may no longer occupy ought within our borders, but the white dragon and his venomous brood be extirpated from our gardens!”
Arthur made his escape from the French court and reached his native land. His mother, whose wild flights of passion involved her in one mistake after another, was now convinced that her son could no longer hope to sit on the throne of England. She decided that the only thing left for them to do was to concentrate their efforts on achieving for him his full rights as Duke of Brittany. To accomplish this she handed Arthur over to John! She was, clearly, a woman of faulty judgment and furious impulses, but this move was a mistake of such magnitude that it is difficult to conceive of the reasoning which led her to it, unless she thought that John’s one-time liking for her would make him partial to her son. She alienated Philip—a small loss, perhaps, in view of his professed intentions—and by making Arthur swear homage to John as King of England she destroyed the validity of her son’s claim. When the prince strove later to regain his rights, he was technically a disobedient vassal, and John was afforded that much justification for the violent course he followed.
The desertion of the Breton prince left Philip without any reason for continuing the struggle. He had suffered some reverses and he was now anxious to terminate the contest. Eleanor took it on herself to seize this golden opportunity. Her wisdom had been increasing with each passing year and, as she had now reached the age of seventy-eight, she was a very wise woman indeed. She had assumed again the government of her own dominions and, as the people of Aquitaine were as loyal to her at seventy-eight as they had been when she was lovely and fifteen, she was having success in establishing order. She did homage to Philip for Aquitaine and she arranged with him for the marriage of his son Louis to her own granddaughter, Blanche of Castile.
To make sure there would be no slip and no delay, this indomitable woman rode all the way to Spain, over many hundreds of miles of bad roads from her Aquitainian home to the high passes of the Pyrenees, and then across the rough trails of Navarre to the arid plains of Old Castile. The weather was unusually warm and the land they passed was baked and the heat was sometimes almost unbearable. Eleanor bore up under Count of Marche. The girl had been sent to one of his castles for the same reason that princesses were conveyed early to the country of the man they were to marry. She was content with her lot, being as much in love with the fine, upstanding Hugh as one of her egocentric nature could be. Hugh the Brown was completely enamored of her and was urging that she had now reached the age to marry.
(3) A recent view of the interior of Fontevrault where four great figures in English history were buried. They are Henry II, his consort Eleanor of Aquitaine, their son Richard the Lion-Hearted, and the wife of King John, Isabella of Angoulême. When viewed at close range the smallness of Isabella’s bier supplies proof of the story of her long concealment in the secret room of the convent. (BILDARCHIV FOTOMARBURG)
Having concluded peace with Philip, the newly crowned King of England decided he would follow his mother’s advice and make a royal processional through his western dominions. She had mentioned in particular the wisdom of forming an alliance with the Count of Marche. His first stop was Angoulême to receive the homage of Count Adhémar. The count and his wife, an ambitious pair, wanted to make the best possible impression on the new head of the Angevin empire. What better could they do than have their beautiful Isabella there to receive him? Perhaps their purpose ran deeper. At any rate, they arranged for their daughter to pay them a visit during the time that John was there.
He saw her first beside her mother at the ceremony. She was wearing a plain gold circlet on her head from which a cloud of diaphanous veiling fell over her shoulders. He thought perhaps that she was a sprite rising from the mist, but a second glance convinced him she was lovelier than any water sprite could be. Her gown of scarlet and gold had been fitted closely to her fine figure, and it showed considerably more of her white shoulders than was customary. It was not just beauty she possessed; she had ways of her own, ways of carrying her head, of walking so that her long, brocaded skirts did not move. She was in fact, irresistible.
John was thirty-two and she was fifteen. He was married. He could pick and choose among the best-looking women of his court; and, to do him credit, he did. If there was one woman he should treat with distant respect and nothing more, it was this future daughter-in-law of the Count of Marche. But after one long and breathless look John decided that he would disregard all dictates of policy and decency and common sense, that he would divorce his wife and marry Isabella of Angoulême.
Unfortunately for all concerned, the shrewd parents of the radiant little coquette observed how deeply the King was smitten. They would rather have the King of England as a son-in-law than the comparatively humble Hugh the Brown. Isabella seems to have agreed with this view of things, even though her personal preference was for the handsome Hugh rather than the thickset John.
The upshot was that Hugh of Lusignan and his brother, the Count of Eu, were sent to England to lead a foray along the western marches. It is quite possible that the plotters against his happiness hoped he would suffer the fate of Uriah, but no brand or arrow penetrated the armor of the gallant Hugh. The only purpose the campaign served was to afford time for the wedding arrangements to be made.
John’s wife Avisa was a granddaughter of that great leader and knight of the bend sinister, Robert of Gloucester, and so they were cousins a few times removed. There had been opposition to the match on that account, and the Pope had been fulminating about it ever since, even demanded that they separate. It was an easy matter, therefore, to break the bond. The Archbishop of Bordeaux called a synod to consider the problem, and it was solemnly declared that the marriage to Avisa was null. Soon afterward John and Isabella were married in the cathedral of that city.
Hugh the Brown came back from England to find that his Bathsheba had been stolen in his absence. He issued a furious challenge to his successful rival to meet him in mortal combat. John accepted but said he would appoint a champion to fight in his place, his life being too important to risk in a personal quarrel. The slighted Count of Lusignan protested angrily that he would fight John himself or no one. The case split the Angevin world wide open, and it was plain to the least discerning eye that the King’s action had shaken the loyalty of the nobility he must depend on in any future trouble with France.
John did not care. He was so infatuated with his girl wife that nothing else mattered. He neglected his duties to dance attendance on her. It was the custom for kings to retire early and rise at five to begin the labors of the day. It would be noon before the uxorious King would emerge from the curtains of the nuptial couch and call huskily for the royal wine cup. Sluggard was the most complimentary term that his people began to call their liege lord. As for Isabella, they termed her a siren and a Messalina.
The newly wedded pair left for England as soon as possible, and Isabella was crowned Queen at Westminster on October 9. It was a very elaborate ceremony, but it served to bring out a bad trait of John’s to which no reference has yet been made, parsimony. Although thirty-three shillings were paid for strewing the abbey with fresh rushes and twenty-five to the choir for the singing of the Christus Vicit, the King would allow his wife, whose greatest passion was for fine clothes, no more than three coronation cloaks and one pelisse of gray. There is no mention in the records of gifts of jewelry, although John had chests full of bracelets and rings and chains, the accumulated loot of all the Norman kings. He appeared at the coronation himself like a glittering Eastern potentate, bespangled with rubies and emeralds, and with sapphires sewn on his white gloves. John, in fact, was a dandy and loved to bedeck himself in this way. It was inevitable that the young Queen, thus made aware painfully of another flaw in the character of her royal spouse, would think wistfully of the generosity that Hugh the Brown had always shown.
John’s English subjects were pleased with the beauty of the girl Queen, but this did not wipe out unpleasant memories of the way she had been stolen, and they were still distressed at the cavalier setting aside of Avisa of Gloucester. They need not have wasted sympathy on the first wife. She was married twice later and was relieved, no doubt, to escape participation in the kind of life John proceeded to live.
It was two years later that the storm broke overseas. The Count of Lusignan and his brother had been stirring up disaffection ceaselessly, and now Arthur, free of his uncle’s restraint, came out boldly to assert his rights by force of arms. This was done by prearrangement with Philip, who had veered around again. The French Song moved his army into Touraine at the same time. John was quarreling with the barons of England over the laxity and corruption of his rule and he found it hard to raise a large enough force to protect his interests in France. By the time he landed in Normandy, the French had taken many cities and castles, Lyons, Mortimar, and Boutavant. The situation was beginning to look grave. Arthur was now fifteen and had been knighted by Philip and married to his daughter Marie. He came fiercely down from Brittany with an army at his back, dreaming of military fame. John had taken Isabella with him and was as notoriously a lie-abed as before, a habit which the Queen seems to have encouraged. He was slow in organizing the defense of his wide-flung dominions, and his followers muttered more bitterly than ever.
It remained for Queen Eleanor to set fire to the resolution of her slothful son and at the same time to fill the greatest role of her career. She was now eighty, and there was no longer any denying that her end was drawing near. Nevertheless, she was fulfilling her duties and traveling about as necessity dictated. This took her, as it happened, to the town of Mirabeau just as the young prince issued out from Brittany. Arthur had no feeling of loyalty or affection for his grandmother, and he turned aside with unfilial zest to invest the town.
It should have been an easy matter to take a place as unimportant as Mirabeau. It was not strongly held or stocked to resist a siege. What followed, nevertheless, was a triumph for the Queen. Bent and tired, clutching a cane in one hand, she collected as many men as she could and occupied the keep within the town. She took on herself the direction of the defense, seeing to it that the battlements were manned and that the resolution of her little band remained equal to the task of holding off the forces of Brittany. No details of the siege have been preserved, but it is easy to see the frail figure pacing the ramparts, watching the movements of the hostile troops in the streets which hemmed them about, waiting anxiously for results from the messengers she had sent off to her son. Her voice was shrill as she called orders to her tiny garrison. It was certain they could not hold out long; that, in fact, they would not be holding out at all if she had not been there.
John received the message and came to life with a vengeance. He marched his troops the eighty-odd miles to Mirabeau in two days. His arrival was so unexpected that Arthur and his men were trapped inside the town and had to surrender. Among those taken prisoner was Hugh of Lusignan, which undoubtedly added a note of personal pleasure to John’s pride in his military achievement.
Eleanor was a proud woman when her son came riding into Mirabeau to greet her. She laid stern injunctions on him, nevertheless, knowing the flaws in his character. If he had a shred of statesmanship in him, she said, he would treat Hugh of Lusignan as a chivalrous foe. If he valued his immortal soul, he would not lay a finger on his captive nephew. John, still submissive where his mother was concerned, agreed on both points.
After another forced march by which he relieved the garrison at Arques, which Philip was attacking, the now victorious King took counsel with himself as to what should be done about the prisoners. He had a vindictive streak which made it impossible for him to carry out the promises he had made his mother. The knights captured at Mirabeau were twenty-two in number, including the brave Hugh. They were sent off to England in the most humiliating manner the King could think of, chained together two and two in oxcarts. Hugh was put in Bristol, but the rest were shoved into Corfe Castle, an immensely strong place on a high cliff on the Isle of Purbeck, which John seems to have favored as a prison. The King observed the letter of his promise to his mother in the sense that no violence was offered the prisoners. No food was sent into their cells, however, and most of them died of starvation. An exception was Savaric de Mauleon, a rics-baron of Poitou and a noted troubadour. This resourceful fellow succeeded in making his guards drunk, broke their heads, and escaped. He afterward turned his coat and became a leader of mercenaries for John. He will be heard of later.
Hugh of Lusignan was spared and finally released, because John feared to estrange his young wife.
The captive prince was taken to Falaise and lodged in a cell of the castle. He was protected by the promise John had made his mother and by every consideration of political expediency, for his death would alienate the sympathy of even the closest supporters of the King and strengthen the forces against him. But, knowing John, people waited with the deepest foreboding.
Falaise Castle was familiar to Englishmen, for it had played an important part in the story of Anglo-Norman relations. Here Robert of Normandy had brought the tanner’s daughter and here the healthy child had been born to her who became William the Conqueror. Here the Norman kings had gone most frequently when they returned to the duchy. This tall castle stood so high on a boat-shaped rock between heavily wooded country and the Cleft of Val d’Ante that it had not been thought necessary to equip it with the usual aids to defense, moat and barbican. The walls were nearly ten feet thick and in places they were double, with passages between in which two men could walk abreast. All the cells in Falaise, and there were many of them, were sunk into the walls, as was the comparatively cheerful apartment where the tanner’s daughter had lived.
John arrived at Falaise and went to his chamberlain, Hubert de Burgh, who was in charge. Hubert de Burgh was a distant relation of the King, being descended from a half brother of the Conqueror, and he was a stouthearted and generous knight. He had been an indulgent jailer to the despondent young prince, and it was with grave misgivings, undoubtedly, that he considered the meaning of the King’s visit.
Arthur had been allowed some liberty, and it was in a comfortable and even light apartment on the second floor of the keep that he faced his royal uncle. He had donned a tunic with the loose Breton sleeve, and close-fitting trunks; a tall youth, slender and as pliant as a willow bough, his dark eyes showing no fear at all, though he must have known that his position was desperate.
John had a habit of speaking in an almost gentle voice when his designs were most dangerous. He began to urge his nephew to give up all pretensions to a crown he would never wear, and his tone was friendly and forgiving. The prince was not deceived. He knew his uncle hated him. This did not affect the stand he proceeded to take, which was a bold denial that he had been at fault. In fact, he faced the King as determinedly as though their positions were reversed.
When John offered his friendship the boy cried out, “Better the hatred of the King of France!”
The King boasted that his power was now supreme and that his towers were high and strong; so high and so strong that no prisoner could hope to escape him.
“Neither towers nor swords,” declared the boy, “shall make me coward enough to deny the right I hold from my father and my God!”
John abandoned any idea he might have had of coming to an understanding with the prince. “So be it, fair nephew,” he said in the familiar subdued tone as he turned and left the apartment.
Hubert de Burgh knew what the sequel would be and he was apprehensive at once when a party of the King’s men arrived at Falaise shortly thereafter. John had decided, it developed, that he could not fly in the face of world opinion by killing the boy. To take his eyesight would, however, eliminate him as a candidate for power; and so the instructions of the party were to make use of the white-hot irons with which this form of mutilation was performed.
Arthur had already demonstrated his courage. When he learned the purpose of his cruel uncle, however, his resolution failed him. He was still a boy in years and he wanted to enjoy the life which stretched ahead of him. He wanted eyes to lead armies, to fight on the field of honor, to see the children he would beget, to enjoy the rich pageantry of royal existence. To go through the long years with blackened holes in lieu of eyes, to be denied all the sweets of life, was a fate he could not face. He dropped to his knees before the executioners and begged for mercy.
Hubert de Burgh was a man of compassion and, fortunately, of stout heart as well. He had become fond of the boy and, moreover, he knew that the claim of the young prince to the throne of England was a better one than that of John. He made, accordingly, one of those decisions which so often change the course of history. He disregarded the royal order and sent the executioners away. Then, being very much afraid that what he had done might endanger his own eyes or even his life, he resolved on a deception. He had the bells in the chapel toll as though for a death and gave it out that Arthur of Brittany was no more.
The storm which broke over France when this became known was greater even than he had feared. The subjects and supporters of John were as angry and horror-stricken as his enemies. Realizing now the enormity of his mistake, John disclaimed any part in the death of his nephew. Hubert de Burgh was forced to acknowledge the deception and to produce his prisoner as proof that nothing had happened to him. The storm died down, but it did not take men long to fit together the ends of this curious train of events and to come on the truth. John’s reputation suffered almost as much as though his design had been carried out.
It was said that the King was secretly relieved that Hubert de Burgh had disobeyed him. Nevertheless, he had the prince taken from Falaise and imprisoned in Rouen instead. Here a man named William de Braose, the lord of Bramber, was in charge. He was the King’s familiar and confidant, a man of great physical strength and high ambition and, it was believed, of no scruples.
It was generally known that the prince had been imprisoned in Rouen, but after the heavy doors clanged shut behind him he was never seen again. No information could be had from the King’s men who garrisoned the place. Apprehensions which had fed on the fiasco at Falaise flared up. What had been done with the unfortunate youth? Had the King dared to do away with him after all?
John does not seem to have said anything. None of the men under him could be induced to talk. It became apparent finally that the disappearance of the prince was as much a mystery to the underlings as to the world outside the walls. The only exception, perhaps, was William de Braose. That bull-necked baron continued to enjoy the King’s confidence exclusively, and he was as uncommunicative as John himself.
Then rumors began to circulate. The prince, it was said, had been taken from his cell at night and placed in a boat occupied by the King and one other man. He had been murdered by the King’s hand and his body had been weighted and thrown into the Seine. This story contains flaws which make it hard to accept. Why should the victim be murdered in the open, and in a boat where he might resist with more hope of success, when he could have been killed in his cell, where he would have no chance to defend himself or to raise an alarm? This was believed, nevertheless, and it is still the story which is told and accepted.
A deep silence was maintained by the King, and so the disappearance of the brave young prince remained a mystery.
But why should it be considered a mystery? The scant evidence, when viewed in the light of subsequent events, points the way clearly to the explanation.
It has already been stated that William de Braose was in charge of the new citadel at Rouen when the prince was taken there from Falaise. One other man would have to know what happened to Arthur besides the King whose orders were carried out, and that would be the lord of Bramber. He returned to England with John and remained in high favor, such high favor that others became jealous of the power and pretensions of this overbearing nobleman. “Braose was with the King at Windsor,” says one historian, “with him in the court, and with him in the chase.” The emphasis thus placed on the fact that they were always together, the guilty King and the man who, perhaps, had been his instrument, is significant.
Braose was married to a most remarkable woman. She had been Maud de Valeri, although in some versions her name is given as Maud de Hay. At any rate, she was a great heiress and had brought her husband many castles along the Welsh Marches, in the valley of the Usk and along the Nedd and the Wye, Castles Radnor, Hay, Brecon, and Bradwardine. She was a handsome woman of the heroic type, a Lady Macbeth in many respects, bold and unscrupulous and intensely ambitious. When her husband was away she took charge and thought nothing of donning armor and leading troops into battle. In fact, she was as quick to string up a prisoner as her violent lord and master. She is said to have been the original of Moll Walbee, the heroine of several old Breconshire romances.
William de Braose and his amazonian spouse were in such high favor during the first years of John’s reign that they married their eldest son to a daughter of the house of Gloucester and their own daughter to the sixth Baron de Lacey, who was also the lord of Trim in Ireland. They were growing wealthy rapidly and, as it was a rare thing for anyone around the King to accumulate money, whispers began to circulate. Braose was believed to have some power over the King. This continued for ten years, an exceptional length of time for anyone to retain the favor of the capricious John.
An end always comes, however, to the tenure of favorites. Perhaps a distaste was growing in the King for this man who was waxing so fat beside him. At any rate, the time came when he needed money himself and he made a bargain with De Braose by which the latter was to buy certain lands in Leinster which belonged to the King. At least the King said they did. It developed immediately that there was some question as to his ownership of the lands in question. Two churchmen, the Bishop of Worcester and a brother of the former Archbishop of Canterbury, claimed ownership of part and they refused, naturally enough, to allow the transfer of title to the prospective purchaser. The price John had set was five thousand marks, a large sum indeed in those days, and the King had no intention of letting it slip through his fingers. Not being able to do anything with the two stubborn churchmen, John brusquely ordered his favorite to pay over the five thousand marks and settle things himself with the other claimants.
De Braose must have been very sure of his position, or of the power he had over the King. At any rate, he refused to do anything about it.
By this time John was experiencing the bitter opposition of the barons. To compel a more complaisant attitude on their part, he had demanded that each member of the nobility place a child in his care as hostage for future behavior. The children were kept at Windsor and Winchester and they waited on the Queen. None of the Braose children had been included, but when the difficulty arose over the five thousand marks, John ordered them to send a son to serve as a royal page. Braose and his wife now sensed that their day of favor was over. In spite of this, the haughty Maud was foolish enough to refuse the royal demand. In the hearing of the King’s officers she declared that “she would not deliver her children to a king who had murdered his own nephew.”
Many people had said the same thing, of course, but never as openly. The statement, coming from the wife of the man who had been the custodian of the Rouen citadel, was almost like a confession. Maud de Braose knew the enormity of her mistake as soon as she had spoken and she hastened to make amends as best she could. She sent to the Queen a herd of four hundred beautiful cattle, all of them pure white except their ears, which were a reddish brown, hoping that this would be accepted as a peace offering. The cattle were kept, but the gift did the outspoken donor no good at all.
The King declared war. If he had been showing favor to De Braose because of what the latter knew, he now went to the other extreme and persecuted him because of it. Orders were given to seize the castle of Bramber. When this home of the once favored companion was found to be an empty shell, the owner having been warned in time to remove everything of value, the King led a force himself to the border marches and took possession of all the castles there which had been part of the dower of the Lady Maud. The now thoroughly frightened and repentant De Braose waited on the King at Hereford and begged for terms. The King demanded that the purchase price for the lands in Leinster be paid in full and that in addition the castles of Radnor, Hay, and Brecon be thrown in. The lord of Bramber agreed to this, having no alternative. However, in a sudden fit of spleen, he set fire to property of the King and fled to Ireland with his family. Later he made another effort to patch things up, keeping at a safe distance, and was told that the price of peace had risen. Never had terms risen more sharply! He was informed that now he would have to pay forty thousand marks, almost a third of the ransom money for Richard, a sum completely beyond the means of any private man.
The sequel to this is one of the grimmest stories in history. Maud de Braose and her eldest son William were captured while trying to leave Ireland for the Scottish coast and were brought to the King. He had them thrown into a single cell in the keep at Windsor with a sheaf of wheat and a flitch of uncooked bacon. The door of the cell was closed upon them.
John seems to have been a believer in the starvation method of getting rid of prisoners. He had employed it with the unfortunate knights captured at Mirabeau, he was to use it on later occasions, but there was something peculiarly repellent in his treatment of the wife and son of the man he now hated so thoroughly.
After eleven days had passed the cell was opened. The two occupants were found dead, each lying in a propped-up position against the wall. It was apparent that the son had succumbed first, for one of his cheeks had been gnawed.
William de Braose fled to France, where he published a statement on what had happened to Arthur. No copy was ever found, unfortunately, of this report of the only surviving eyewitness. A year later the fugitive died at Corbeil.
The death of the unfortunate prince could not have been due to natural causes. In that event the body would have been produced promptly to clear the King of the charge of violence. The young contender was killed, then, and by his uncle’s orders.
Although the story that the murder was committed in a boat on the Seine is a highly improbable version, it may have had some bearing on the truth. It may have been that the prince was removed from the citadel for a prison somewhere else and the opportunity was used to kill him on the way. It seems more reasonable, however, that the killing occurred within the citadel and that the body was taken in a boat and thrown into the water of the Seine. The exaggerated form the story took later was due, no doubt, to the additions achieved in the course of endless repetition.