11
William Marshal failed to turn the tide of the war in 1203, serving a king who could not command the loyalty of his Norman subjects, and who lacked the requisite vision and determination to face Philip Augustus. The final axe fell in 1204. Château Gaillard – the Lionheart’s grand ‘Castle of Impudence’ – surrendered on 6 March, the pitiful remnants of its garrison having been starved into submission. With no possible hope of holding out against the Capetians, Peter of Préaux opened the gates of Rouen on 24 June and returned to England. Philip swept up the rest of the duchy with ease.
The news from the south was equally grim. Queen Eleanor died at Fontevraud on 1 April, and with her demise, the last link to the glory days of Angevin authority was broken. The barons of Aquitaine paid homage to Philip Augustus, leaving him free to occupy Poitiers in August, while Iberian forces from Iberian Castile crossed the Pyrenees to claim Gascony. By year’s end, only a string of ports on the Atlantic Coast, running north from Bayonne to La Rochelle, remained in Angevin hands. The garrisons of Chinon (under Hubert of Burgh) and Loches made brave efforts to stave off defeat, but were eventually overrun. Barely a shadow remained of the once mighty empire forged by King Henry II. His youngest son – the ‘Softsword’ – had presided over a period of catastrophic decline.
A REALM DIVIDED
King John’s personal prestige and reputation now lay in tatters, and the disastrous events of 1202 to 1204 would hang over the remainder of his reign. The collapse of the Angevin realm, and the previously unimaginable loss of Normandy, would also have far-reaching consequences for the history of England. But in the immediate wake of these events, William Marshal, and his fellow barons, had to face an unsettling new reality. The vast majority of the ‘Angevin’ English nobility was Anglo-Norman by birth. When the duchy fell to the French, their Norman ‘homeland’ was effectively lost, and this heralded a crisis of identity and allegiance. As many magnates held land on both sides of the Channel, they now had to decide where their loyalties lay. Most followed the preponderance of their estates. The Préaux family was a case in point. The elder brother, John of Préaux, relinquished his English lands and remained in Normandy, retaining control of his family’s major lordship (north-east of Rouen) and becoming a vassal of Philip Augustus. His sibling Peter gave up the small parcels of property he held in Normandy and lived out the rest of his life in semi-retirement on his far larger estates in southern England. King John made some attempt to soften the blow of this partition by reapportioning English territory to barons such as Baldwin of Béthune (who now lost the honour of Aumale), but a significant level of disruption to long-established patterns of landholding was unavoidable.
A step too far
The sudden contraction of the Angevin realm forced William Marshal to reconsider his own position and the future of his nascent dynasty. It was now obvious that any hopes of strengthening and extending the Marshal power base would have to be redirected, away from the Continent. But William was also one of the few magnates who sought to resist the forfeiture of his Norman estates. Like so many of his peers, Marshal felt a strong affinity for Normandy – the land of his adolescence and a region in which he had spent much of his adult life, and unlike Peter of Préaux and Baldwin of Béthune, William was not willing to relinquish his valuable lordship at Longueville, in Upper Normandy.
In May 1204, Marshal was sent, along with Earl Robert of Leicester (who also held major estates in Normandy), across the Channel by King John to discuss terms of peace with Philip Augustus. The French monarch remained disinterested in negotiation, but he saw a valuable opportunity to sow seeds of discord within the Angevin ranks. William and Earl Robert were given a chance to salvage their Norman estates, but had to agree to the strict provisions laid out by King Philip. The terms settled upon were described in theHistory, but were also preserved in a copy of the contract, lodged in the French royal archive. Marshal and the earl of Leicester were to surrender their property to Capetian forces, on the understanding that it would be returned, so long as they ‘paid homage’ to Philip Augustus for these lands within the space of a year. For the privilege of this period of grace, both men had to pay the sum of 500 silver marks.
By giving ‘homage’, William and Robert would formally acknowledge King Philip’s overlordship in Normandy – and hold their Continental lands from him – yet remain servants of King John in England. There was some precedent for this type of arrangement. In the past, a small number of nobles who held lands on either side of the Norman-French border had paid homage to both the Capetians and the Angevins; but crucially they had always identified only one king as their primary ‘liege-lord’ – the monarch alongside whom they would fight at times of war. This might seem like an arcane, legalistic argument, but for medieval noblemen like William Marshal, the traditions surrounding feudal obligations could be of critical importance. They offered a mechanism for reconciling the day-to-day realities of landholding, with the more ephemeral notions of allegiance. In May 1204, Marshal seemed to have found a way to retain the estate of Longueville, and he had twelve months in which to persuade King John to accede to this arrangement.
An undercurrent of hubris appears to have blinded William to the inherent danger of these dealings. He evidently believed that he could manipulate ‘feudal’ custom, and exploit his eminent position, to achieve what others could not, and thereby maintain his foothold in Normandy. The extent of his fidelity to John must also be questioned, because it is clear that Marshal put his own interests ahead of those of the crown in this period. William had not followed others into open acts of ‘treachery’ by disavowing the Anegvin king, but his dedication to the capricious ‘Softsword’ seems to have wavered.
It looked, at first, as though the plan to retain Longueville would pass without a hitch. Marshal and Robert of Leicester returned to England, and when the latter died in late 1204, the task of convincing John to sanction the bargain fell to William alone. According to the History, he succeeded, receiving official letters of authorisation from the king in the spring of 1205. Marshal apparently pleaded, saying: ‘You can see that the time is nearly up as regards my land in Normandy. I do not know what to say: if I don’t pay [King Philip] homage, I will sustain [a] heavy loss’ of land. John supposedly replied: ‘I know you to be . . . a loyal man [and] I am very willing for you to pay him homage, [for] the more you have, the greater will be your services to me.’ No official record of this endorsement survives, though Marshal’s heirs would later testify to the existence of a formal royal licence. It is unlikely that William would have been foolish enough to take the next step without permission, but he had failed to account for John’s changeable nature and the guile of Philip Augustus.
In April, William Marshal travelled to France with the intention of giving his oath to the Capetian king. But when they met at Anet (the scene of some of Marshal’s most famous tournament triumphs) Philip insisted upon a more binding promise – one that went far beyond a mere acknowledgement of overlordship. William was required to recognise the French monarch as his liege-lord ‘on this side of the sea’ (in France), or else forfeit Longueville. This would be tantamount to Marshal declaring that he had two masters: one, King Philip, whom he would serve on the Continent; the other, John, who would remain his liege-lord in England. When looked at in the cold light of day, there was no escaping the fact that this represented a grave division of loyalty – not least because the Capetians remained the arch-enemies of the Angevin dynasty. Yet backed into a corner, William agreed nonetheless. By this act, Marshal preserved his hold over the valuable lordship of Longueville – an estate that he would now be able to pass on to his heirs. He had defended the rights of his dynasty, but he had also made a serious miscalculation.
Sailing back to England, William seems to have convinced himself that any difficulties with King John could be smoothed over, not least because he had carried the monarch’s letter of licence. On arrival, however, he discovered that one of the archbishop of Canterbury’s representatives (who had also been in France) had returned ahead of him, and had informed the king of the specific terms of Marshal’s oath. John was understandably furious and accused William of ‘acting against me and against my interests’. Not surprisingly, the History sought to defend William’s reputation, condemning those who spoke against him at this point as ‘base flatterers and traitors’, and maintaining that Marshal had not ‘committed the slightest crime’.
Standing before his incensed king, William reputedly protested: ‘My lord, I can tell you straight out that I did nothing against you, and what I did, so it please you, I did with your leave.’ In one respect Marshal was right – John had consented to an act of homage. But he had not condoned the far more serious liege-oath demanded by the wily Philip Augustus. William also was foolish to think that a man of King John’s unpredictable and suspicious nature would easily be persuaded to see reason. As it was, the English monarch flatly denied ever issuing ‘this permission of mine you speak of’ and the History observed that from this point onwards ‘the Marshal was on bad terms with the king for a long time’.
Into the cold
William Marshal’s fall from royal favour was sealed in June 1205. By this time, King John had laid plans for a major military offensive, hoping to recover ground in the Angevin heartlands by sailing with a large fleet to Poitou, and then launching a full-scale invasion inland. This was a bold scheme, and the king had taken careful steps to assemble ships, supplies and arms, but it was also deeply unpopular with a large section of John’s leading barons. According to the contemporary chronicler Ralph of Coggeshall, the proposed campaign was seen as an act of folly that would leave England exposed to invasion, and it was feared that John ‘would lose what he held, by trying to recover what he had lost’. Many also doubted that the king could actually defeat Philip Augustus in the field.
As the expedition was being debated, the king confronted Marshal. According to the History, he commanded William to follow him to Aquitaine and join in the ‘fight against the king of France’. But the earl demurred, stating that to do so would be both ‘wicked’ and a ‘crime’, because outside of England he was now King Philip’s ‘liegeman’. A bitter and protracted argument ensued, in which both parties sought to defend their positions in front of a crowd of nobles. John accused Marshal of being ‘the king of France’s man’, while William offered to defend his honour in a trial by combat. The History suggested that Marshal prevailed in this argument: his old ally Baldwin of Béthune spoke in his favour, and no one was willing to take up William’s challenge. But the biographer could not conceal the underlying equivocation of the assembled knights and magnates. Most had no desire to sail to Poitou, but they also had good cause to question William’s motives and his claim that he had never intended to be ‘disloyal’ to the crown. Tellingly, the Historydescribed how ‘the barons looked at one another, and then drew back’ in silence, shocked by the spectacle of such a quarrel. No one, it seems, quite knew how to react to this public confrontation between the king and one of the greatest magnates in England – a man so long esteemed as a paragon of fidelity.
The dispute ended in stalemate, with Marshal maintaining his innocence and John nursing a cold fury. William was said to have warned his peers: ‘Be on your alert against the king: what he thinks to do with me, he will do to each and every one of you.’ Archbishop Hubert of Canterbury later implored the king to ‘abandon the expedition’ to Poitou ‘lest the whole kingdom be thrown into confusion by his departure’, and lacking the general support of his nobles, John reluctantly agreed to cancel the offensive – much to the dismay of the thousands of sailors who had assembled at Portsmouth.
Marshal had been able to stand behind the shield of his reputation when confronted by the king, but in real terms, the balance of power remained with John. And, as the History observed, he now sought to ‘exact his revenge’. His first step was to request that William hand over Young William Marshal – ‘the eldest son who was most dear to him’ – so that he might be taken into the care of the crown. The boy was now around fifteen, so this could be passed off as a form of royal wardship, but it was obvious that he would be held as a hostage – as surety for Earl William’s reformed behaviour. Perhaps this awoke painful memories of Marshal’s own time as a child captive in the early 1150s, but he was in no position to refuse this request. To do so would have been tantamount to declaring himself a traitor – thereby allowing the king to confiscate his lands, and subject him, and perhaps the rest of his family, to imprisonment. The biographer admitted that William ‘surrendered [his son] readily to the king’, adding that he did so because ‘he was a man who would have nothing to do with evil-doing, or ever thought of such’ – a clear indication of the type of accusations that would have been levelled against Marshal had he declined. Nonetheless, the grim rumours circulating about John’s treatment of Duke Arthur, and the other prisoners taken at Mirebeau in 1202, must have caused William to feel a degree of anxiety about his son’s safety.
In the months that followed, King John gradually edged Marshal out of the Anegvin court. There appears to have been no grand ostracism, just the slow, but unmistakeable, withdrawal of royal favour and support. The rewards of land and office ceased and were replaced by blank disregard. For the first time in more than twenty years, William experienced the powerful effects of this type of estrangement. He had flourished under Henry II and Richard I, and enjoyed manifold rewards at the start of John’s reign. Now he was pushed out into the cold. In 1206, Marshal disappeared from royal records altogether, having withdrawn to Striguil. With the collapse of the Angevin realm on the Continent, and his rift with the king, there would be no prospect of advancement in France or England. If William wished to strengthen his position, and secure the future of his dynasty, he would have to look to the west.
THE PURSUIT OF POWER IN PEMBROKE AND LEINSTER
Marshal re-orientated his career after 1206. Up to this point, the clear focus of his activities and ambitions had been in England and France, but his life now shifted away from the north-south axis – running from the English realm, through Normandy and the Angevin heartlands to Aquitaine – that had defined his earlier years. From his powerbase at Striguil, on the Welsh March, Marshal began instead to channel his energies westwards into Wales itself, and even further afield into Ireland. These regions, on the fringes of Angevin royal authority, were almost akin to the medieval Wild West. They offered the prospect of fresh conquests and opportunities to forge a semi-autonomous earldom. As William approached his sixtieth year, he became increasingly intent upon the need to secure the future of the Marshal dynasty by constructing a grand lordship that could be bequeathed to his heirs. He also looked to reward his faithful retainers with lands and honours. These were objectives that could be best fulfilled in Wales and Ireland.
After more than two decades of regular attendance at the Angevin court, in royal service, William withdrew from the front line of politics and war. This was a direct response to his estrangement from King John, but the earl seems to have embraced the prospect of stepping back from the crown, severing his close association with a dangerously unpredictable and predatory monarch. Marshal may well have made a conscious decision to extract himself from the maelstrom of John’s court, judging this detachment to be the safest course and best hope of surviving the capricious king’s reign. William was not the only magnate to pursue this course of action. Though only in his mid-thirties, Marshal’s northern neighbour, Earl Ranulf III of Chester – who ruled over a mighty lordship on the northern March – already had a long track record of faithful service to the Angevin cause. He had fought to recover Normandy alongside Richard the Lionheart in the late 1190s, and supported John on the Continent in the early years of the new century. After the fall of Normandy, however, Ranulf dedicated an increasing amount of his time to the needs of his own earldom, securing Chester’s status as north-west England’s leading port, and a centre of trade and commerce.
In the course of his own long career, William Marshal had made his fortune as a knight and royal servant, and though he had been a landed baron since the late 1180s, he had never truly dedicated himself to the business of local governance, administration and territorial consolidation within the Marshal lands. He had served the king first, and dealt with the needs of his lordship and then earldom second. But in this new phase of his career, after 1206, William sought to assert himself as a fully fledged Marcher baron in his own right. This brought Marshal face to face with the fresh challenges of direct rule – forcing him to rely to an even greater extent upon the support of his household and his wife, Countess Isabel – and meant that he had to grapple with issues of military confrontation and conquest as a leader of men, not merely a follower of the crown. This was a critical transformation: Earl William, the lord and master, stepped forward in the early thirteenth century. He would not enjoy an untrammelled record of success and, though he sought to escape the shadow of John’s regime, Marshal’s interest in Ireland would once again bring him into direct and deadly conflict with the king.
Medieval Wales and Ireland
Before 1066 and the advent of the Normans, Wales had been the domain of some of the earliest settlers of the British Isles – the Britons or Celts – who are generally thought to have migrated from Continental Europe some three centuries before the birth of Christ. Anglo-Saxon conquerors had pushed these communities westwards out of England from the fifth century AD onwards, and they became known as the ‘Wallenses’ (literally the ‘borderers’). Early medieval Wales consisted of a complex patchwork of determinedly independent, rival provinces and realms, with three major principalities – Gwynedd, Powys and Deheubarth – coming to prominence. In the view of many ‘cultured’ Anglo-Normans, the Welsh (and their Celtic neighbours in Ireland) did not adhere to the norms of society. They were regarded as ‘barbarians’: people who thought nothing of adultery and incest, and had a marked propensity for violence and extreme brutality. According to one mid-twelfth century Anglo-Norman chronicler, they would ‘fight against each other like animals’, murder their prisoners and make routine use of blinding and castration to eliminate their enemies. In short, the native Welsh and Irish were not to be trusted, but ironically this jaded perception meant that the Anglo-Normans and Angevins often employed far more vicious and merciless tactics when dealing with the Celts than they ever would among themselves, arguing that atrocities such as mass execution and torture were either necessary or justified against this ‘alien’ enemy.
The famous churchman, courtier and historian, Gerald of Wales – who was born of mixed Anglo-Norman and native Welsh parentage, and grew up in south-west Wales – offered a far more nuanced appraisal of the country’s indigenous inhabitants. He acknowledged that they could be hot tempered, quarrelsome and ‘fierce’, but also noted that ‘the Welsh are very sharp and intelligent’. Theirs was a land of ‘generosity and hospitality’, he contended, where ‘no one begs’; rich in culture, and filled with the sounds of harmonious singing and the music of the harp, pipe and ‘crowder’ (an early stringed instrument). Gerald also maintained that the Welsh were marked out by their distinct physical appearance, noting that both men and women cut their hair short and ‘shape it round their ears and eyes’, men shave their beards, but keep moustaches and ‘both sexes take great care of their teeth, more than I have seen in any country . . . constantly cleaning them with green hazel-shoots and then rubbing them with woollen cloths until they shine like ivory’.
Few Anglo-Normans shared Gerald’s interest in, or respect for, the customs of the Welsh. Most simply saw Wales as a valuable prize – a region replete with abundant natural resources, ‘a land of wood and pasture, abounding in deer and fish, milk and herds’, and thus a natural target of conquest. Under the thin pretext of bringing peace and law to the supposedly savage Welsh, territory along the Welsh March, including Striguil itself, was forcibly settled after 1066. The rugged inland terrain of Wales, especially in the mountainous north, proved virtually impossible to suppress, so most Anglo-Norman settlements beyond the supposed ‘border of the March (at the River Wye in the south and along the Dee in the north) were either on the coast – at sites like Pembroke and the new town of Cardiff – or accessible via easily navigable rivers, such as at Brecon. Many of these sites were essentially isolated outposts of ‘foreign’ rule, connected only by water-borne communication links, with much of the surrounding inland territory still under the control of the indigenous Welsh.
During the twelfth century, this frontier environment gave birth to a number of powerful, independent-minded dynasties, including the Clare family into which William Marshal married. It also led to a degree of social and cultural interaction, and intermarriage, between the Anglo-Norman settlers and the native population. By the second or third generation, many of the great ‘Anglo-Norman’ colonising dynasties of this area had native Welsh ancestors in their bloodlines, and thus viewed themselves as a breed apart – hence Gerald of Wales’ own mixed heritage.
This process of intermingling was further complicated by the Anglo-Norman/Angevin conquest of Ireland. One of the first colonisers was Countess Isabel’s father, Richard Strongbow, a member of the Clare dynasty who sought new territories across the Irish Sea and joined forces with King Henry II in the early 1170s when the Angevin monarch descended on Ireland with a massive fleet of 400 ships. At the same moment that a youthful William Marshal was serving the recently crowned Henry the Young King in England, Strongbow was busy conquering eastern Ireland.
Most of these invaders held deeply disparaging views of the supposedly ‘primitive’ and ‘savage’ native Irish; a people who showed little interest in building towns or engaging in trade (though in reality, parts of Ireland enjoyed long-established links with regions such as Brittany). Gerald of Wales visited Ireland, and wrote detailed accounts of its topography, natural history and conquest, but he proved far less cautious or sympathetic in his appraisal of its inhabitants, branding them as treacherous and claiming that they were ‘the most jealous people on earth’. In terms of military technology, the mail-clad, mounted knights of Henry II and his followers were light years ahead of the Irish, many of whom still rode bareback and un-armoured. As a result, the conquerors easily achieved dominance over a swathe of territory. Henry II proclaimed himself ruler of Ireland, taking the major ports of Wexford, Waterford and Dublin for the crown. His youngest son, John, was designated as ‘lord of Ireland’ in 1177, and the future king led his own, largely ineffective expedition to the region in 1185.
Other territories were either seized or apportioned to Marcher lords. Strongbow asserted his rights to the region of Leinster, in south-east Ireland, and as part of this process married Isabel’s mother, Aoife, princess of Leinster (daughter of Dermot MacMurrough). Other Marcher lords, like Hugh of Lacy in Meath (north of Leinster), followed suit – claiming lands, marrying native Irish heiresses – creating a dizzying web of marital connections and nuanced, hybrid identity. Later, the Lacy family also took hold of Ulster in the far north-east, while the Briouzes gained rights to Limerick in the south-west. During the last decades of the twelfth century, Anglo-Norman conquerors pushed much of the native Irish ruling elite to the fringes of Ireland, while the colonists set about developing new towns, roads and bridges, and built a network of castles (often of the basic timber and earthwork form). Feeling themselves to be largely detached from the direct control of the Angevin crown, these hard-nosed frontier settlers came to expect, and to enjoy, a high degree of autonomy.
It was these waves of Anglo-Norman conquest that brought William Marshal his claims – through marriage to Richard Strongbow’s half-Irish daughter and heir, Isabel of Clare – to both Pembroke and Leinster. Both were valuable territories, boasting expanses of richly fertile lands and promising opportunities to harness trade. But neither region would be easy to dominate. West Wales was threatened by the rising power of the native Welsh, especially that of Llewellyn ap Iorwerth (later known as Llewellyn the Great), prince of Gywnedd in the north; while Leinster was ruled over by a mixture of first- and second-generation colonists, most of whom were fiercely independent and promised to be little impressed by a soft-born Angevin courtier. Marshal might be regarded as a great tournament champion, warrior and paragon of chivalry in England and France, but that storied reputation would count for little in the Wild West.
Marshal’s first steps in the west
William Marshal made some attempt to pursue his claims in west Wales and Ireland at the start of King John’s reign. A brief tour of these territories was conducted at some point between the autumn of 1200 and the spring of 1201, and it was probably no accident that Countess Isabel accompanied her husband during this journey. She was the heiress through whom Marshal’s rights to Pembroke, and particularly Leinster, were derived – the symbol of legitimacy, with a bloodline connection to the Celtic world. William and his wife probably sailed from Striguil itself, hugging the coastline of south Wales to reach the peninsula of Pembrokeshire.
Here a rugged, majestic coastal landscape shielded rolling, verdant inland terrain. Gerald of Wales painted a vivid picture of this region, his homeland. He considered it to be ‘particularly attractive because of its flat lands and long sea-coast’ and claimed that ‘of all the different parts of Wales [this] is at once the most beautiful and the most productive’, being ‘rich in wheat [and] fish from the sea’. Its capital was the town of Pembroke, ‘built high on an oblong plateau of rock’, above ‘an inlet of the sea which runs down from [the estuary of] Milford Haven’, thus offering a well-sheltered, natural harbour.
Through his connection to the Clare dynasty and the grant awarded by King John, Marshal could stake a claim to the full extent of this peninsula, but the northern half had been lost to the native Welsh. William took possession of Pembroke itself, and may have initiated work on a major new stone fortification: the great round tower that now lies at the heart of the larger late medieval castle at Pembroke. This is a tremendously impressive structure, rising through four storeys to a height of almost eighty feet, with twenty-foot-thick walls at its base and topped by a domed, stone roof. It was designed to dominate the landscape and send an inescapable message about the earl of Pembroke’s might.
Given the significant threat of native Welsh attack and invasion, Pembrokeshire was also defended by a network of royal fortresses, such as Haverford and Manorbier. In the early years of the thirteenth century, William Marshal managed to strengthen his hold over the region, gaining custody of the royal fortress at Cardigan in 1202, and retaking the neighbouring castle of Cilgerran (with King John’s permission and military support) two years later. Pembrokeshire was undoubtedly an extremely valuable territory in its own right, but it was also subject to an extensive degree of crown control and exposed to aggression on the part of the indigenous Welsh. On the whole, Earl William seems to have viewed Pembroke as a stepping stone to Ireland, and what he came to regard as the more promising Irish territory of Leinster.
Pembrokeshire was the main point of embarkation for the journey across the Irish Sea. Gerald of Wales described how one could look out from the peninsula’s south coast and see a stream of passing traffic, as ‘boats [made] their way to Ireland from almost any part of Britain’. He also claimed (rightly) that ‘in clear weather the mountains of Ireland can be seen from St David’s’, on Pembrokeshire’s northwestern coast. From Pembroke itself, the crossing could usually be made ‘in one short day’, but the waters were ‘nearly always tempestuous’ according to Gerald, because they were ‘surging with currents’.
Though the History made no record of the journey, it seems certain from other contemporary evidence that William and Isabel sailed from Pembroke to Ireland, probably in the first months of 1201. Marshal had made a half-hearted attempt to assert rights to Leinster soon after his marriage in 1189, but it was not until the early thirteenth century that William began to take a more direct and active interest in Ireland. His first crossing of the Irish Sea was a desperately unpleasant experience – caught in a severe storm, Marshal seems to have feared for his life – but safe landfall was eventually made, probably at the royal port of Wexford.
The lordship of Leinster lay to the south of Dublin (which was held by the English crown) and extended in an arc inland, seventy miles deep at its apex, to enclose the regions of Ossory and Offaly, the fortresses of Kildare and Carlow, and the major castle at Kilkenny. In comparison to the surrounding territories, such as Meath, Leinster was relatively mountainous, rising beyond the rolling lowlands along the coast to the Blackstair range and the broken hill country beyond, and enclosed to the north by the looming Wicklow Mountains.
Gerald of Wales described Ireland as the ‘the most temperate of countries’, where ‘you will seldom see snow’ and ‘the grass is green in the fields in winter, just the same as in summer’. He wrote that ‘the land is fruitful and rich in its fertile soil and plentiful harvests. Crops abound in the fields, flocks on the mountains and wild animals in the woods’, and boasted that the province was replete with lush ‘pastures and meadows, honey and milk’. He was particularly enamoured of its ‘healthy’ and ‘sweet-smelling’ air – which, he asserted, imbued residents with almost miraculous physical well-being – but less impressed by the ‘ever-present over hanging of clouds and fog’ and frequent ‘storms of wind and rain’, complaining that ‘you will scarcely see even in summer three consecutive days of really fine weather’ in Ireland.
William Marshal seems to have received a rather frosty reception upon his arrival in 1201. The long-established Anglo-Norman/Irish nobles of Leinster were proud, hard-bitten warlords, accustomed to self-governance. William made some limited progress in asserting his authority: the local landholder Adam of Hereford appears to have recognised his overlordship; friendly relations were also established with the Anglo-Norman bishop of Ossory. It was probably also at this point that the first steps were taken to establish a new settlement and port on the River Barrow – the main waterway that wound its way inland through Leinster – that was christened Newtown (almost certainly on the site of modern New Ross). This would be a major development, designed to offer Leinster its own centre of communication and trade, independent of the local crown-held ports of Wexford and Waterford.
Marshal also set in motion plans to establish two new Cistercian monasteries in Leinster: one, a colony of Tintern (on the Welsh March) named Tintern Parva, was founded in thanks to God for surviving the recent crossing from Wales; and another was initiated at Duiske. All in all, it was hardly a disastrous first venture on to Irish soil, but in the main William’s appearance was greeted with grudging acknowledgement, not open welcome. During the spring of 1201, the bulk of the Marshal party returned to the mainland. William’s well-established household knight Geoffrey FitzRobert was left behind to oversee his lord’s interests in Leinster, serving as seneschal (or steward). Geoffrey’s marriage to Strongbow’s illegitimate daughter Basilia may have enhanced the legitimacy of his position in the eyes of the established colonists. William took the further step of sending his nephew John Marshal to assist in the governance of Leinster in 1204, probably for the term of one year.
In reality, all of these measures represented somewhat desultory or intermittent attempts to engage with affairs in his western lands, at a time when the main focus of Marshal’s energy and ambition remained in England and France. Even so, these forays must have opened William’s eyes both to the rich potential of a region like Leinster and to the significant commitment of time and resources required to bring the province to heel. After the fall of Normandy and his withdrawal from court, Marshal was at last willing to make that determined effort.
THE LORD OF LEINSTER
William Marshal spent much of late 1206 laying plans for a full-scale expedition to Ireland. He would once again be accompanied by Countess Isabel, but their party would also be bolstered by a large portion of the Marshal household. Geoffrey FitzRobert remained in Leinster, but William now decided to bring many of his most trusted and able knights and retainers on this journey westwards. These included his kinsman John Marshal, the ever-faithful John of Earley and Jordan of Sauqueville, the knight who helped to defend Upper Normandy. All of these men were becoming established landholders in their own right, having been granted estates by King John, yet they chose to remain in Earl William’s service.
Some prominent members of Marshal’s retinue had moved on to fresh ventures by this time. William Waleran married and took possession of lands in Gloucestershire. Alan of St-Georges returned to Sussex to take up his inheritance, but he was replaced in the earl’s entourage by a near neighbour from the Rother Valley, Henry Hose, who hailed from the village of Harting, at the foot of the South Downs. Another notable recruit was Stephen of Évreux, a well-established knight whose family held lands in Herefordshire (on the Welsh March) from the Lacy dynasty, and who came to be trusted for his cool-headed judgement. Both would play significant roles in the Leinster campaign. Two other familiar faces also made the journey to Ireland: William’s devoted counsellor and clerk, Master Michael of London, and the knight Philip of Prendergast. The latter had a close connection to Ireland, as his father Maurice had fought in Leinster alongside Richard Strongbow in the 1170s, and Philip himself was of mixed Norman-Irish birth.
William Marshal was by no means abandoning his lordship in Striguil after 1206, but the decision to employ so many of his leading supporters on the coming expedition suggests a clear recognition of the challenges that would be faced, and a determination to see them overcome. As was customary, Earl William also sought official licence from King John to travel to Leinster, and this was duly issued on 19 February 1207. Final arrangements were made for the departure from the southern Welsh March. Less than ten days later, however, a crown messenger arrived at Striguil with disturbing news. The capricious monarch had reconsidered his position, and was no longer happy for Marshal to make his journey to Ireland.
King John perhaps failed to give sufficient consideration to William’s initial request, or it may be that this change of heart was simply a product of his notoriously inconsistent nature. In any case, the king now sought to restrict Marshal’s movements. At one level, John appears to have been concerned by Earl William’s growing influence and independence, but the monarch also had a more direct and self-serving reason to interfere in the proposed Leinster campaign. As ‘lord of Ireland’, John had his own ambitions there and, in many respects, saw the province as his own pet project – a region that had resisted his will in 1185, but would now, in the new century, be curbed by his royal might. From 1200 onwards, the king had been sponsoring the forcible imposition of his own rights in Ireland, happily trampling over the claims of other lords (including those of William Marshal in Leinster). At the same time, John sought to destabilise potential opponents by encouraging infighting between the native Irish and Anglo-Norman colonists, and power struggles among the settler barons themselves. The crown’s representatives had enjoyed considerable success, so John was not enamoured by the prospect of Earl William making a bold and determined entry into the Irish world.
Marshal now faced a difficult decision. He still possessed a formal royal licence for his expedition that had not been rescinded, but according to the History, the king’s envoy made it clear that John’s ‘sole wish is that you should not go to Ireland.’* Any journey to Leinster would not be illegal as such, yet there could be little doubt that failure to back down would result in a measure of punishment. William took time to consult in private with ‘the countess and some of his closest retainers’. Having weighed up the prospects awaiting in Ireland – plus the time and resources already expended in preparation for the venture – against the penalties that might be exacted by the crown, Marshal made a bold choice. The royal envoy was informed that ‘whether for good or ill’ William still intended to sail to Ireland. King John soon made his displeasure apparent. Marshal’s rights to the fortresses of Carmarthen and Cardigan in west Wales were rescinded on 9 April 1207; four days later he lost the custody of Gloucester Castle, the Forest of Dean and St Briavels Castle. But by that stage, Earl William and Countess Isabel had arrived in Ireland.
William Marshal’s return to Leinster
Earl William enjoyed a somewhat warmer reception from many of Leinster’s nobles in March 1207 – including Adam of Hereford and another local landholder, David de la Roche – largely because he was seen as a potential counter to King John’s overbearing influence. The monarch’s leading representative and justiciar in Ireland since 1199, Meiler FitzHenry, had become increasingly unpopular, having adopted an acquisitive and predatory approach to governance. Meiler was a formidable figure – a grizzled veteran of the first wave of Anglo-Norman conquest in Ireland, he was only marginally younger than Marshal himself. Gerald of Wales painted a vivid picture of Meiler from first-hand experience, describing him as a broad-chested man of below medium height, with strong muscular limbs, ‘a dark complexion, with black eyes and a stern, piercing look’; and characterised him as a skilled warrior who relished combat, but loved glory even more. Meiler was undoubtedly a canny, ambitious and unscrupulous figure, with long experience of warfare. He would prove to be a dangerous enemy. He also boasted an impressive familial heritage – his father having been one of King Henry I of England’s many bastards, his mother a Welsh princess of near-legendary beauty – so was hardly overawed by Earl William’s own status and pedigree.
Meiler was opposed to William Marshal’s plan to assert his authority in Leinster on a number of levels. As justiciar of Ireland, Meiler regarded himself as the king’s right hand and leading power in the province, and like John, he was hardly minded to welcome the advent of a forceful Anglo-Norman rival, especially one who had fallen from the crown’s favour. Meiler also held lands in Leinster itself, most notably the imposing stone castle of Dunamase, and was trying to press his own claim to rule over the region of Offaly in the north-west, which he argued had been confiscated by royal order. All of this guaranteed that the justiciar would seek to thwart William at every step.
Nonetheless, it seemed initially that Meiler had overplayed his hand. Upon his arrival in Ireland, Marshal was quickly able to build a coalition of disgruntled local lords in Leinster and neighbouring Meath (to the north), where Walter of Lacy held the reins of power. In May 1207, the ‘barons of Leinster and Meath’ sent a formal letter of complaint to King John, demanding that Meiler FitzHenry relinquish his hold over Offaly and return the territory to its rightful lord. Earl William was not directly named in this missive, but the implication was clear. Marshal must have imagined that the sheer volume of Anglo-Irish support for his cause might force John to reprimand his justiciar, but he was badly mistaken. The king’s letter of response was full of embittered rage at the ‘unheard of’ affront to his majesty, and declared in decisive terms that ‘what you ask is neither right, nor has any precedent’. William had overstepped the mark, and would now have to pay the price.
In the months that followed, Meiler appears to have been in direct communication with John, plotting Marshal’s downfall. It was probably at the justiciar’s urging that the king issued an official royal summons in late summer 1207, instructing the earl in strict terms ‘not to fail for any reason to come to him’ in England. William was to attend an audience, along with Meiler and the leading Leinster lords who had complained about the issue of Offaly. These included men such as Adam of Hereford, David de la Roche and Marshal’s retainer, Philip of Prendergast, to whom he had granted land in County Wexford. In this meeting, John would pass fair judgement over the disputed territory.
At first glance, this might have appeared to be an act of conciliation, but according to the History, when William, Isabel and their leading retainers met in council to debate this message, all ‘greatly feared [that] the king’s sending for him was a trick, designed more for harming him than for his good’, and the countess expressed grave doubts about ‘the king’s word’. Just as when John asked in 1205 to take custody of his eldest son, Earl William now found himself facing an ominous choice. Any refusal to respond to a crown command of this type would expose him to accusations of treachery, yet Marshal ‘had no doubt that once he left the land there would be strife and war between those men he left behind’ and Meiler’s forces. The earl’s absence in England would offer a perfect opportunity for the justiciar’s men to attempt the seizure of key fortresses like Kilkenny, driving the Marshal dynasty from Leinster.
William might have considered a full withdrawal from Ireland at this point, essentially forsaking his claim to Leinster, but this would have been a severe blow to his prestige and a massive concession of rights. Countess Isabel was pregnant once again, and thus not well disposed to the perilous voyage across the Irish Sea. Marshal resolved instead to stand his ground, attending the meeting in England along with two of his most trusted knights – his nephew John Marshal and retainer Henry Hose – while making detailed preparations for Leinster’s defence. Like King Richard the Lionheart before the start of the Third Crusade, Earl William had to devise a system of governance and defence that could function in his absence. At this moment of looming crisis, William looked to bulwarks of his household. Jordan of Sauqueville was appointed as guardian of the north-eastern half of Leinster, covering Carlow, Wicklow and Kildare, while John of Earley would protect Ossory in the south-west, holding the likes of Kilkenny and Wexford, with Stephen of Évreux serving as his advisor.
With autumn approaching, William Marshal called all of the knights and barons of Leinster to a major assembly at the great stronghold of Kilkenny. The earl arrived at the meeting, hand in hand with his wife, Countess Isabel, and according to the History, delivered an impassioned speech to his Anglo-Irish subjects, imploring them to show continued loyalty in his absence. The recorded wording of his declaration cannot be taken as precise, but the central tenets of Marshal’s appeal may well be accurate. The most telling feature was his repeated emphasis on Isabel, the Anglo-Irish heiress. She was described as ‘your lady by birth; the daughter of the earl [Strong bow]’ – the man who had given them their lands – a woman who ‘by birthright’ deserved their ‘protection’. William shrewdly downplayed his own claim to Leinster, stating that ‘I have nothing but through her’, while emphasising Isabel’s delicate state, noting that ‘she remains amongst you pregnant’. By stressing the legitimacy of the Clare/Marshal rights and his wife’s abject vulnerability, William evidently hoped to secure the fidelity of his subjects ‘until such time as God brings me back here’. Marshal trusted the power of his words, rejecting John of Earley’s suggestion that he demand hostages from his Anglo-Irish barons. This would prove to be a dreadful miscalculation.
A trap is set
After the meeting at Kilkenny, ‘the earl took leave of his men and quickly crossed the Irish Sea’, arriving back in west Wales on 27 September 1207. Meiler FitzHenry travelled separately, but duly appeared in November, when the audience with King John was convened at Woodstock – one of the grandest of all of the Angevins’ royal residences (and today the site of Blenheim Palace). It was here that Earl William was betrayed. John was supposed to adjudicate on the issue of Offaly, but he immediately treated Marshal in a ‘hostile and unpleasant’ manner, and proceeded to teach his once loyal servant a potent lesson about the depth of a king’s power and the weakness of men’s hearts.
The History passed over the close and humiliating detail of this assembly, but an outline of the proceedings has survived in official crown records. King John and Meiler had laid a trap for Marshal. He had been drawn away from Ireland, leaving his lands exposed, coming to Woodstock in the company of his Leinster subjects – the barons who had protested the unlawful confiscation of Offaly. Now, William had to watch as his monarch bought these same men – the likes of Adam of Hereford and David de la Roche – with grants of land, winning their silent acquiescence to Meiler’s claim. Worse was to follow. Two members of Marshal’s own retinue turned against him: Philip of Prendergast was endowed with territory near Cork (south of Leinster); while John Marshal – the earl’s own kinsman – was appointed as marshal of Ireland. As earl of Pembroke, lord of Striguil and Leinster, William Marshal could offer his knights and vassals largesse, but his rewards paled in comparison to those proffered at the font of royal favour. Roundly outbid, William was forsaken by men who saw more profit in direct service to the crown. After the gathering at Woodstock, only Henry Hose remained steadfast beside the earl.
With Earl William stripped of support, Meiler FitzHenry went on the offensive. King John granted his justiciar leave to return to Ireland, and he duly departed in early January 1208. Meiler was also furnished with three letters demanding that John of Earley, Jordan of Sauqueville and Stephen of Évreux all quit their posts in Ireland, and appear before their monarch within fifteen days or forfeit their own estates. Not surprisingly, William Marshal’s request to return to Leinster was flatly denied. Meiler and the treacherous Philip of Prendergast managed to make a successful winter crossing to Ireland, in one of the only ships to do so that season, while Marshal was forced to remain at court, travelling ‘the length and breadth of England’ with the itinerant royal entourage. Throughout this period, John was said to have ‘treated him with such coolness that it was a wonder to behold and all the court marvelled at it’, and no one would speak to the earl.
Throughout the early weeks of 1208, William was left in a state of desperate apprehension, with ‘no knowledge at all’ of events across the Irish Sea. He managed to maintain his implacable veneer of calm, conscious that any public display of fear, worry or emotion would be seized upon as a sign of weakness and exploited. Any attempt to leave the court without the king’s permission would also invite terrible retribution, not least because John still had Young William Marshal in custody as a hostage. Earl William had to force himself to wait for news from Leinster with every ounce of patience he could muster.
Then, on 25 January, as the royal party rode out from Guildford (south of London), King John brought his horse up beside William’s. ‘Marshal, tell me, have you heard any news from Ireland,’ the monarch reputedly demanded. When William replied that he had not, the king said ‘with a laugh’: ‘I can give you news from there.’ As the earl rode on in deepening shock, John proceeded to tell him that Meiler had launched an attack on Marshal’s lands. Countess Isabel had been besieged in Kilkenny and a bloody battle was fought outside the castle, in which ‘Stephen of Évreux was killed’, while ‘John of Earley [had] died from a wound sustained that very day’. At these terrible tidings, William somehow held his composure, but the History admitted that he was ‘greatly aggrieved at heart’.