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William Marshal had been right to fear that an offensive would be launched against Leinster during his absence from Ireland. According to the History, Meiler FitzHenry had instructed his kinsmen and followers to ‘wage war on the Marshal’s men as soon as they knew that the others had arrived in England’, with a view to doing ‘harm and damage to the Marshal’s lands’. In the early autumn of 1207, Meiler’s forces attacked the key settlement of New Ross, setting ‘fire to the earl’s barns . . . reducing them to ashes’ and seizing plunder. Twenty of William’s men were slain in the course of this destructive assault. This marked the start of a period of ‘upheaval and war on a grand scale [fought] throughout that land’.
THE DEFENCE OF LEINSTER
Countess Isabel and the earl’s leading knights held their own through the winter of 1207. Cut off from the outside world by the closing of the sea-lanes, they had to fend for themselves, and appear to have done a commendable job of defending Leinster in Earl William’s absence. They sustained no major losses of territory and captured a number of Meiler’s troops, including one of the justiciar’s leading knights and lieutenants. Up until the early weeks of 1208, the measures put in place by William proved effective. This meant that when Meiler and Philip Prendergast crossed the Irish Sea, they discovered that ‘the land was not so free of the Marshal’s men as [they] thought it would be’.
Nonetheless, Meiler had one crucial weapon in his arsenal: the royal summons issued to John of Earley, Jordan of Sauqueville and Stephen of Évreux, demanding their attendance at royal court within fifteen days. These orders were delivered soon after the justiciar made landfall in Ireland, and immediately threatened to undermine the Marshal dynasty’s hold over Leinster. According to the biographer, all three knights met ‘in secret conclave to consult privately’ about their response to King John’s demand and the prospect of forfeiting their own lands should they demure. The underlying intention of the summons was obvious. Even if immediate travel back to the mainland proved impossible because of the stormy seas, the three warriors could only hope to avoid crown punishment by submitting to Meiler, the king’s representative. John, Jordan and Stephen now faced a test of loyalty. By this point, they must have heard that Earl William had been betrayed at Woodstock; that Philip Prendergast and even John Marshal had turned against him. The question was whether they would now follow this example, salvaging their own fortunes?
Their response to this dilemma revealed the depth of their dedication to William Marshal, and underlined the intimate bonds of allegiance that united military retinues in this period. John of Earley was said to have told his compatriots that he had no desire to ‘lose the love of our lord’, the man who had ‘committed [his estate] to us to guard’, and Stephen and Jordan likewise refused to ‘[abandon] the earl’s land’. These same ties of affection and fidelity had linked Marshal himself to the Young King Henry, and his father Henry II. But the events of 1208 also suggest that the ideal of chivalry – and in particular, the intertwined notions of shame and honour – exerted an increasingly profound influence over knightly conduct.
According to the History, Earley made ‘a magnificent speech that was full of wisdom’ in the course of this meeting. This indicates that his recorded words were intended to represent a praiseworthy example of chivalric reasoning. His declaration is particularly fascinating because it did not simply trade in abstract notions of emotion or fidelity. Instead, John suggested that he and his peers should be moved by personal interest. Two distinct forms of loss or reward hung in the balance: land and reputation. Should they follow the king’s orders, the knights would preserve their material wealth, but suffer public shame as a result – for, as Earley reputedly argued, it would be a ‘most disgraceful thing to leave the earl’s land’ and to do so would mean that ‘our own honour would be diminished’. Arguing that a knight should ‘be concerned with his honour, so that no tale of our wrongdoing can be told’, Earley concluded that enduring a loss of territory was preferable, as ‘shame lasts longer than destitution’.
This was obviously an idealised reconstruction of the debate, and the recent actions of Philip of Prendergast and John Marshal demonstrate that not all members of the warrior class prioritised honour over power and wealth. Even so, it was the case that John, Jordan and Stephen decided to reject the king’s orders and defend Leinster in early 1208, and this choice does not seem to have been rationalised simply as an act of selfless altruism, but rather as a form of chivalric self-preservation.
Having chosen to stand their ground, the three knights went on to consider what strategy could be employed to defeat Meiler FitzHenry. A crucial decision was made to seek an alliance with the Lacy dynasty, who held power to the north of Leinster, and Jordan of Sauqueville duly travelled to Ulster in the hope of forging a pact with Earl Hugh of Lacy. No record of their dealings survives, so it is not clear what arguments or enticements Jordan used, but his mission proved a success. Hugh marched into Leinster in support of the Marshal family with some sixty-five knights, all ‘well armed and riding chargers’, 200 men-at-arms and around 1,000 lightly equipped infantry. These significant reinforcements shifted the balance of the conflict, allowing Earl William and Countess Isabel’s men to move on to the offensive.
There was a decisive confrontation between Meiler and Marshal’s men in early 1208, but not in the way that King John reported to William Marshal outside Guildford. The monarch’s claim that both Stephen of Évreux and John of Earley had died was a barefaced, malicious lie, designed to torment Marshal and elicit an un-courtly loss of composure. In reality, the combined might of the Marshal and Lacy forces prevailed in the Leinster war, such that, in the words of the biographer, ‘the damage that Meiler sought to do to the earl’s lands was done to him by the earl’s men, for they devastated his own property’. The justiciar was captured, along with the turncoat Philip Prendergast, whose property was also seized. Both men were forced to make peace with Countess Isabel and had to give their sons into custody as hostages, while a number of other opponents had likewise to hand over kinsmen, ‘for the earl’s men would not accept other pledges’.
News of the actual course and outcome of this conflict finally reached England in late February or early March. Unsurprisingly, the king was apparently ‘not amused at all’ by these tidings, while William Marshal was said to have been ‘overjoyed at heart’. On 5 March, King John summoned the earl to a formal audience at Bristol, but Marshal still had to tread with exceptional care. Any attempt to shame the king over the spiteful lies spoken outside Guildford, or hint of gloating over the victory in Leinster, might alienate and enrage John. As a result, William decided to feign ignorance of the events in Ireland. In their meeting the king showed no flicker of remorse for his recent ill-treatment of Marshal, but was said to have declared: ‘I shall give you good and welcome news – your men are in fine health and spirits [as is] the countess herself.’ According to theHistory:
The Marshal paid great attention to his words, as if he knew nothing about the matter, and replied in a wise and moderate manner: ‘Sire, thanks be to the Lord our God, but not for a moment did I think, on the day I left my land, that I had an enemy who would wage war on me.’
This feat of control permitted King John to save face and draw back from continued confrontation. Official records confirm that a reconciliation was achieved later that month. In return for royal recognition of his full rights to Leinster, Marshal reaffirmed his status as John’s subject in Ireland, and conceded some powers over the appointment of bishops and legal jurisdiction to the crown. This compromise curbed Earl William’s independence in Leinster to an extent, but still left him with far more autonomy than most barons enjoyed in England. The king also wrote to Meiler, instructing him to return Offaly to Marshal without delay or argument.
William had survived the storm. He was granted permission to return to Ireland in April 1208, but a barely submerged current of tension still coloured his relationship with John. It was probably at this point that the monarch demanded that a second hostage – Marshal’s son, Richard – be given into custody. The biographer intimated that Countess Isabel was disquieted by this ‘villainous request’, but as always, the foreboding threat of retribution forced William to comply. The wisdom of that choice would soon be made clear in the starkest terms.
The lord of Leinster triumphant
William Marshal returned to Ireland that spring to secure control of Leinster. Upon his arrival, the earl was greeted by John of Earley and Jordan of Sauqueville, though the former was still wearing a mail hauberk – a clear sign that the region had yet to be wholly pacified. On the following day, William was reunited with his wife Isabel at Kilkenny, who must by this stage have given birth to the child she had been carrying. The biographer recorded that the countess was intent upon exacting ‘savage revenge’ against the barons and knights who had supported Meiler, but Marshal insisted on pursuing a more measured approach. Perhaps imitating the magnanimity shown by King Henry II after the rebellions of his eldest son had been quelled in 1174 and 1183, William resisted the temptation to take direct and violent retribution, relying instead upon the force of his presence and reputation to impose order.
He seems to have been aware that ‘there were many who greeted him’ upon his return ‘whose hearts belied their smiling countenances’, but most of the hostages held from these lords were returned. There is no record of John Marshal’s treatment in the immediate aftermath of these events, but he seems to have been swiftly forgiven for his moment of disloyalty, probably because he had not actively gone to war alongside Meiler. Some of those who betrayed the earl at Woodstock, or fought against his men in Leinster, received somewhat harsher treatment. They were said to have come before Marshal ‘in fear and trembling’, begging him for mercy ‘with tears in their eyes’. David de la Roche and Philip of Prendergast tried to declare their enduring loyalty, but John of Earley openly testified to their treachery. Though William agreed to give them the kiss of peace, both men were publically shamed. Prendergast’s son remained a hostage for at least the next seven years, while de la Roche became a social pariah. He was shunned by his peers and, in future, knights refused to sit next to him at social gatherings.
The most severe punishment was meted out to Meiler FitzHenry, but restraint was shown even here. Meiler had to relinquish control of his major stone castle at Dunamase and concede that all of his lands would pass to Marshal on his own death. Hostages taken from his family were also kept for years to come. The failed plot of 1208 marked a decisive fall from royal favour for the justiciar, who was now branded a ‘cruel and savage man’ and the ‘root of all the evil done’. By early 1209, Meiler had been replaced in Ireland by a new royal justiciar – John of Gray, bishop of Norwich – and the disgraced baron lived out his remaining years in Ireland (until 1220) in abject impotence, looking on from the sidelines.
With peace restored, William Marshal was free to continue the work of strengthening his power base in Leinster. Well-earned rewards were apportioned to his steadfast retainers. John of Earley was given land in County Kilkenny, thus establishing a settlement that still bears his name to this day – Earlytown. Jordan of Sauqueville, Stephen of Évreux and Henry Hose likewise received territories of their own. Earl William dedicated much of the next four years to the management of his Leinster estates, constructing a secure, prosperous and enduring satellite of Marshal authority in Ireland. A limited range of evidence survives for this period, but William appears to have been firm, yet fair minded, in the treatment of his own vassals, but a scourge to the neighbouring native Irish and their churchmen.* Marshal also became increasingly focused upon the need to secure advantageous marriage alliances for his children. His eldest son had already been betrothed to Alice, the daughter of Baldwin of Béthune – a long-standing ally of the family. A union between the earl’s eldest daughter Matilda and Hugh Bigod, heir to the earldom of Norfolk, was also arranged. This process of dynastic and territorial consolidation was briefly interrupted and threatened, however, in 1210, when King John sought once again to assert his will in Ireland. But on this occasion the monarch came in pursuit of a different quarry.
A KING’S VENGEANCE
The grim fate suffered by William of Briouze and his family offers an apposite lesson in the dangers of opposing a monarch like John. It also goes some way to highlight the mixture of astute judgement, deft skill and pure luck that had so far enabled William Marshal to negotiate a path through this most tumultuous of reigns. Briouze was Marshal’s social peer, his neighbour in Ireland and on the Welsh March, and a relatively close associate and friend. A notable royal favourite from the start of John’s reign and an unfaltering supporter of the king, Briouze had also played some part in the disappearance and likely murder of Duke Arthur of Brittany, John’s nephew, in April 1203. As time went on, Briouze also amassed a burdensome array of debts to the crown from fines owing for the lands and honours he had received. By 1208, in Ireland alone he still had 5,000 marks to pay for rights to the lordship of Munster, and £2,865 outstanding on the fine related to Limerick. This financial liability was manageable so long as one retained the king’s favour, but if John suddenly insisted on all of these monies being repaid in short order, Briouze would be placed in an impossible position.
In the spring of 1208, William of Briouze suddenly lost his monarch’s trust and support. One cause of this estrangement may have been tangentially related to William Marshal. In March of that year the Leinster dispute was resolved, but John remained suspicious and thus seems to have requested that Marshal place another hostage into the custody of the crown. Around the same time, the king asked William of Briouze to hand over his own eldest son, perhaps as a precautionary measure, given Briouze’s known connection to Marshal. Had Briouze followed Marshal’s example in acceding to this demand, the whole incident might have passed unnoticed. But, according to the chronicler Roger of Wendover, when the king’s men arrived at the family’s estate, Briouze’s wife Matilda openly declared that she would never hand over her own sons to the man who had ‘murdered Arthur, his own nephew’. When this desperately incautious remark was reported to John, a calamitous rift opened.
William Briouze tried to recover his position, agreeing by way of atonement to return the Marcher castles of Hay, Brecon and Radnor to the crown, but he was later accused of attacking these same fortresses and burning half of Leominster in open defiance of the king – charges that may well have been invented in order to cover John’s subsequent actions. The Briouze family’s lands were summarily confiscated and their arrests ordered. With the world fast crumbling around him, William of Briouze fled with his wife and two of his sons to Ireland, hoping to escape the king’s wrath and find refuge with Walter of Lacy, his son-in-law (through marriage to one of Briouze’s daughters).
In the course of this flight, the Briouzes sailed to Leinster, probably in early 1209, narrowly avoiding shipwreck during a terrible winter crossing of the Irish Sea. They remained in Marshal territory for twenty days. The History acknowledged that King John ‘conceived such hatred for [Briouze]’ that ‘no peace could ever be made between them’, but the biographer refused to explain the precise cause of this enmity, stating bluntly that, ‘I do not know the reason for the banishment, nor would it be wise for me, even if I did, to speak of it or even undertake to do so.’ This wording suggests that the author of the History did at least know that a dark scandal lay at the bottom of this whole affair. Briouze must have offered some explanation to William Marshal for his sudden appearance, though it is not certain that he confessed any involvement in Duke Arthur’s disappearance at this point.
King John’s envoys soon tracked the Briouzes to Ireland, and informed the new justiciar, John of Gray, of the order for their arrests. William Marshal was subsequently instructed to hand over Briouze and his family, and accused of having ‘housed a traitor to the king’, but Earl William tried to cover his tracks. He flatly denied all knowledge of the fact that charges had been levelled against Briouze, and stated that as the family was under the protection of his hospitality he would escort them safely beyond the boundaries of his lands. Marshal took a significant risk in refusing the justiciar’s official request, but the earl found himself in a compromising position and could hardly have guessed what would follow. The Briouzes were ushered out of Leinster with polite haste and took sanctuary with Walter of Lacy in Meath. Earl William must have hoped that he had extricated himself from this dispute without undue penalty.
King John descends on Ireland
In fact, King John was utterly determined to pursue the Briouze family and also intent upon demonstrating the full force of his royal authority in Ireland. Over the course of the next year, John made extensive preparations for a massive military campaign, and in the late spring of 1210, mustered a 700-ship armada in west Wales, ready to transport no less than 800 knights and an army of Flemish mercenaries across the Irish Sea. Judging that this expedition posed an irresistible threat, William Marshal hastily sailed to Pembrokeshire to offer a renewed submission to the king, thereby making it clear that he had no intention of lending any further support to the Briouze family or their allies. In some respects, there was an unpleasant edge of self-serving treachery to this decision. Marshal had turned his back on a former friend to safeguard his own position and family, but having already endured one period of conflict with the king, he seems to have had a better understanding of exactly what was at stake than many of his peers in Ireland. William’s bond of allegiance to the Briouzes did not extend to dynastic suicide.
The king’s mighty host landed near Waterford on 20 June 1210, and proceeded to march through Leinster. William Marshal was obliged to feed and entertain John and his troops at massive personal expense, until the army finally moved on to the royal city of Dublin. Walter of Lacy quickly recognised that he was facing impossible odds and submitted to the king’s mercy, but was stripped of all of his estates in Meath (and these were not returned for another five years). His brother, Hugh of Lacy, earl of Ulster, made the mistake of trying to resist the crown, but his own forces were no match for those assembled by John. Hugh eventually retreated with the Briouze family to his fortress at Carrickfergus, and later fled to Scotland, leaving the king free to confiscate Ulster.
William of Briouze fled to France, where he died in exile in 1211 (but not, it would seem, before telling the story of Duke Arthur’s murder). His wife Matilda and eldest son were less fortunate. Taken prisoner by King John, they were thrown into a cell in Windsor Castle and slowly starved to death. Chroniclers later reported that their bodies were found in a chillingly gruesome pose: Matilda kneeling before the corpse of her son, having been driven by unbearable hunger to gnaw upon the flesh of his cheeks.
The merciless pursuit and cruel mistreatment of the Briouze family, and the associated ruination of the Lacys, caused widespread outrage across the realm. This singular act of royal retribution alienated many barons in England, igniting deep resentment of an already unpopular monarch. William Marshal had escaped the worst, but there was still a price to be paid for having harboured the ‘traitorous’ Briouzes in early 1209. He was summoned before John in Dublin to answer for this indiscretion in August 1210. Just as he had in 1205, when confronted over the issue of Normandy, Marshal offered to undergo trial by combat to prove his innocence, but even though he was now in his early sixties, no courtier was willing to meet his challenge. William also repeated the excuse that he had originally offered to the justiciar John of Gray, arguing that he had been ignorant of the dispute and noting that the king had still been ‘on very good terms’ with Briouze when Marshal left England in April 1208.
This evasion was only partially successful. King John forced Earl William to relinquish control of Dunamase Castle, and required him to place a number of his most valued knights in crown custody. John of Earley was sent to Nottingham Castle, ‘where he suffered much hardship and tribulation’, while Jordan of Sauqueville was confined in Gloucester. They emerged after one year, but Geoffrey FitzRobert, who was sent to Hereford, fell ill and died towards the end of his imprisonment.* William Marshal had managed to avoid being caught in open defiance of the king and thus saved his own dynasty from decimation, though his eldest sons remained as royal hostages. Earl William was now in his twilight years – an elderly man by the standards of the time. Many of his contemporaries had already withdrawn from public life or passed away. In the aftermath of this fraught period of disruption between 1207 and 1210, William appears to have made a conscious decision to step back from the front line, entering retirement. He still sought to engineer the release of his children, but otherwise the earl remained in Leinster, looking to preserve the Marshal estates and secure the best future possible for his dynasty. It seemed that Earl William’s days as a great magnate of the realm were drawing to a close.
THE DOWNWARD SPIRAL
William Marshal had little cause to love King John. If bonds of affection had ever linked the two men, they had surely been grievously eroded by recent events in Ireland and beyond. Yet, although William may have distrusted, disliked and perhaps even feared his monarch, it turned out – somewhat ironically – that he was still the closest thing to a friend that John had among the English nobility. This meant that, as the king’s reign entered its second decade and spiralled into an ever-deepening crisis, Marshal was inevitably drawn back into the centre of events.
By 1212, John had accumulated a long list of embittered enemies. The king’s heavy-handed and unpredictable treatment of the aristocracy had earned him the abiding antipathy of many English nobles, especially those in the north. After the fall of Normandy and most of the other Angevin territories on the Continent, John had also promoted a number of his ‘French’ supporters from these regions to positions of power within England. Many of these ‘outsiders’ gained unsavoury reputations. Peter des Roches, from the Touraine, was an able administrator, closely involved with the work of the royal ‘chamber’ (with oversight of the king’s money) and a loyal crown servant. But his appointment as the new bishop of Winchester raised eyebrows, not least because the prelate had a distinct fondness for the battlefield. In spite of the Church’s official prohibition against the shedding of blood by clerics, Peter was often to be seen, clad in armour, leading military expeditions, and contemporaries mockingly proclaimed him the ‘warrior [of] Winchester’, noting that he was ‘keen on finance’, but ‘slack at the scriptures’.*
One of King John’s leading military commanders, Faulkes of Bréauté, also became a figure of hate. Faulkes’ origins are obscure. He appears to have been the bastard son of a Norman knight, and it was said that his unusual first name had been earned when he used a scythe (or ‘faux’ in French) to kill a man in his younger days. The king’s patronage lifted this low-born ‘foreigner’ to prominence in England, and Faulkes proved himself to be a fearsomely effective warrior, emerging as the crown’s leading enforcer. But his ruthless approach to war and a marked penchant for the systematic despoliation of enemy lands also caused him to be branded as the ‘scourge of the earth’ and the ‘most evil robber’.
After 1206, John’s increasingly exploitative approach to the governance of the realm also inspired wider discontent. The king was determined to refill the royal treasury, hoping to finance a grand campaign of re-conquest on the Continent. Victory in France would silence his critics – he would be the ‘Softsword’ no longer. Fixated upon this goal, John was willing to use every conceivable means to bleed England dry. A swingeing wave of taxation was imposed, money was squeezed from the Jewish moneylenders (which in turn impacted upon their debtors) and exorbitant fines were extracted from the nobility at every possible turn (whether for rights to inherit, marry or hold office). A mighty war chest of some 200,000 marks was amassed by this relentless drive, but the cost to John’s standing and reputation in the realm was ruinous. The monarch, already regarded by many as cruel and untrustworthy, was now cast as a tyrant. After 1210, increasing numbers of nobles demonstrated their deep dissatisfaction by refusing to participate in the king’s military campaigns or to pay scutage (the ‘shield price’ owed in lieu of military service).
King John was also embroiled in a damaging dispute with the Roman Church. In common with most medieval crown monarchs, he wished to influence, if not directly control, appointments to key ecclesiastical offices within his realm. After all, prelates were not just spiritual figureheads – they exercised political and military power. However, the current pope, Innocent III, was an ardent reformer and determined to uphold the rights of Rome. When Hubert Walter died in 1205, a prolonged quarrel erupted over the choice of the next archbishop of Canterbury. Innocent’s preferred candidate was Stephen Langton – an esteemed theologian and ardent supporter of papal authority. But John regarded Langton with suspicion, in part because the churchman had spent years studying in the Capetian capital, Paris (at what would become one of Europe’s first universities). This raised understandable doubts about Langton’s loyalties and his potential sympathy for the cause of the French crown.
King John’s relations with Rome deteriorated to such an extent that, in March 1208 – just as William Marshal was returning to Ireland after the dispute over Leinster – England was placed under papal interdict, a sanction that would remain in place for the next six years. Church bells fell silent across the kingdom, no burials on consecrated ground were performed, nor was Sunday Mass celebrated. In November 1209, John was himself formally excommunicated. In official terms, this meant that he had been expelled from the body of the Church. With their king exiled from the Christian community, the English were free, in theory at least, to select a new ruler – their bonds of allegiance to John having been dissolved. The actual effect of the interdict and royal excommunication should not be overstated. Christian England did not grind to a halt in 1208, nor was there immediate or wholesale rebellion against royal authority in 1209. In part this was because, in the course of the last century-and-a-half, the Roman Church had made over-frequent use of these penalties, such that their sting and impact became blunted. Nonetheless, John’s ostracism gifted ammunition to his opponents.
Outside of England, the king faced outbursts of aggressive militancy from the native Welsh, largely inspired by Llewellyn ap Iorwerth, but Philip Augustus remained John’s most troublesome rival. The Capetian monarch had achieved spectacular success on the Continent between 1202 and 1205, but his ambitions were by no means sated. By 1212, Philip was training his gaze upon England itself, only too aware of the discontent within the realm, and happy to exploit John’s schism with Rome. The French king was particularly keen to pursue fresh conquests because his eldest son and heir, Prince Louis, was now in his twenties and hungry for power. Louis’ marriage to Blanche of Castile – King Henry II’s granddaughter and thus John’s niece – gave the Capetian prince a tenuous claim to the English crown. Such was the depth of antipathy for King John’s rule that in some quarters an idea that would once have been unthinkable now began to gain real traction. Perhaps a Capetian overthrow of the despised Angevin regime might actually be acceptable.
William Marshal’s return to the fold
All of these pressures and threats – which had been gradually building during William Marshal’s extended absence from royal court – combined to spark a crisis in August 1212. King John had gathered an army that summer with the intention of attacking France, but an outburst of native Welsh insurrection forced him to redirect his resources. In retribution, he hanged twenty-eight Welsh hostages at Nottingham Castle and then initiated preparations for a full-scale invasion of north Wales. In mid-August, however, John caught wind of disturbing rumours. A conspiracy had been hatched to overthrow his reign. According to one chronicler, he was told of a plan ‘to drive him and his family from the kingdom and choose someone else as king in his place’, while another account suggested that his murder had been plotted, such that, in the course of the coming expedition ‘he would either be slain by his own nobles, or given over to the enemy for destruction’. Long paranoid about precisely this type of threat, John took these reports seriously. The incursion into Wales was called off. The king’s eldest son and heir, Henry (who had been born in 1207), was placed under close protection and John surrounded himself with a sizeable armed guard.
It is impossible to know the extent to which this supposed ‘plot’ was a reality. It was certainly the case that two leading nobles immediately fled the country, which may indicate a measure of guilt. The northern baron, Eustace of Vesci, crossed the border into Scotland, while Robert FitzWalter escaped to France, and John ordered two of the latter’s strongholds to be demolished, including Baynard’s Castle in London. The king also arrested and imprisoned three royal administrators, and demanded hostages from many of his magnates. Isolated and fearful, John now ‘had almost as many enemies as barons’ according to one chronicler.
It is clear that the king suspected William Marshal of being involved in this conspiracy, as one royal commander was specifically warned to watch for an attack launched from Leinster. But, in fact, Marshal chose to extend a hand of friendship to his monarch at this point, making a clear show of support. William somehow convinced twenty-six Anglo-Irish barons to renew their oaths of allegiance to the crown, and wrote to John himself, offering to travel to England in all haste so as to lend his assistance, while also recommending that the king agree terms of peace with the pope. The text of John’s letter of reply offers a remarkably candid insight into the sudden thawing of his relationship with Earl William. Its conciliatory tone indicates that the king was now desperate to secure Marshal’s loyalty. John wrote of his ‘eternal gratitude’ to the earl, acknowledging that it was William’s ‘counsel and encouragement’ that had persuaded the Irish to affirm their fidelity. He also thanked Marshal for his willingness ‘to come to England’, though he asked him to remain in Ireland for now, assisting the justiciar, John of Gray.
More surprising still was John’s attempt to engender a sense of warm familiarity and amity with William, a man whom he had so recently hounded and harassed. The king’s letter made repeated references to his dutiful, almost avuncular, stewardship of Marshal’s son, Young William – now a knight in his early twenties, yet still described as a ‘boy’. John noted that Young William needed ‘horses and a robe’, but wrote that he would furnish these himself for now, casually adding that Marshal could pay him back at a later date. The missive also stated, in almost nonchalant manner, that the king was happy to ‘hand [Young William] over to one of your knights, perhaps John of Earley, or one of his men’, adding that ‘if you want it otherwise, let me know by letter that he is to stay with the court’. Taken as a whole, the message represented an impressive feat of dissimulation. To all appearances, this was a relaxed exchange between two intimate friends, not a delicately worded olive branch, extended to a former opponent.
The underlying motive behind John’s placatory approach is readily apparent. The steadfast support of a man of Earl William’s stature and renown was a massive boon for the faltering monarch, so the king had every reason to mollify Marshal. William’s reasoning is more difficult to divine. It is likely that, at first, his overwhelming priority was to secure the release of his two sons. This was achieved in relatively short order. By early 1213, John of Earley had taken custody of Young William, and Richard Marshal had also been freed. Marshal’s heirs had been pried from John’s clutches at last. Had that been Earl William’s sole objective, he might perhaps have withdrawn back into retirement, seeking to maintain a studied neutrality through the troubled years that lay ahead.
Instead, he allowed himself to be pulled back into the world of politics and war; indeed, in some respects he pushed himself to the fore. William must have entertained hopes that a renewal of royal favour might bring rewards – the return of lost lands and rescinded honours – and these were indeed forthcoming. In the years that followed, Marshal recouped many of his losses. King John took particular care to bolster the earl’s position in Wales, hoping to enlist his aid in suppressing the Welsh. William regained control of Cardigan, but was also granted custody of the major Pembrokeshire port and stronghold of Haverford, and command of Carmarthen and the Gower peninsula. Other members of Marshal’s circle also benefited: John Marshal was appointed as custodian of the Welsh March in Shropshire; while John of Earley was confirmed in the office of hereditary royal chamberlain and given care of the county of Devon.
But it is likely that William Marshal was also driven by an authentic sense of duty to the crown (regardless of its incumbent) and devotion to the Angevin dynasty, the family to whom he had dedicated his adult life. Like John of Earley in 1208, he may have wished to avoid the shame of disloyalty. Marshal certainly demonstrated a remarkable capacity to overlook King John’s shortcomings and his recent attempts to seize Leinster. As the History noted, William now seemed to forget ‘the king’s cruel conduct towards him’, and the biographer sought to explain this by stating that the earl ‘was ever a man to espouse the cause of loyalty’. In fact, Marshal would prove to be one of John’s most important allies and unflinching servants from this point onwards, even as almost all others fell away and the tide turned irrevocably against the king.
To the brink
By the early spring of 1213, King John’s position had become so precarious that he deemed it necessary to summon William Marshal from Leinster. By this stage, Pope Innocent III had authorised the Capetian French to cross the Channel, depose John and take possession of the realm. Philip Augustus had even formalised an agreement with his son, whereby Prince Louis would rule England, but be subject to his father’s supervision and authority. That April, a large French force was assembled at Bruges in Flanders, and a sizeable fleet readied. An invasion was about to be launched.
Earl William brought a sizeable force from Ireland to Kent, joining a general muster of those forces still loyal to the king. John’s half-brother, William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, and the earl of Essex, Geoffrey FitzPeter, were also present. The king was persuaded that the only way to avert this dire threat was to forge a settlement with Rome. John duly met with Pandulf, the papal legate, on 15 May near Dover. Marshal may have played a role in orchestrating this meeting, as it was held in a Templar house. He had established a link with the Order when he visited the Holy Land in the 1180s and then developed a close friendship with the Master of the Templars in England, Aimery of St Maur, in the early part of John’s reign. William also appointed a Templar named Geoffrey to serve as his personal almoner in this period, who distributed the earl’s charitable donations to the poor.
In the course of this assembly, King John took the massive, but necessary, step of submitting the kingdom of England to the authority of the papacy. John formally acknowledged Innocent III to be his liege-lord, declaring his ‘homage and sworn allegiance’ to the pope and his successors. He also agreed to an annual tribute of 1,000 marks to Rome as a token of obedience. These terms were confirmed in a charter, witnessed by William Marshal among others. On that day, the king turned his realm into the equivalent of a papal state.* This was a grievous concession of sovereignty, but it also signalled an immediate transformation in Pope Innocent’s attitude. At a stroke, John was turned from Rome’s arch-enemy into its most favoured son. The king’s sentence of excommunication was lifted by none other than Stephen Langton on 20 July. More importantly, the pope rescinded his support for the imminent French invasion. An enraged Philip Augustus was forced to back down, grumbling that he had already spent 60,000 marks preparing for war.
This diplomatic coup was followed by a military victory. On the advice of Marshal and Longsword, John ordered a swift naval strike against the assembled French fleet, then harboured at Damme. Longsword led the attack on 30 May and managed to torch many of the Capetians’ ships. According to one contemporary, ‘it was a very bitter thing for the king of France to see his vessels . . . burning and belching forth smoke, as if the very sea were on fire’. With William Marshal’s help, the kingdom had been brought back from the brink of disaster.
THE CATASTROPHE AT BOUVINES
It must have been obvious to all, nonetheless, that this only represented a stay of execution. The threat from France had been forestalled, but not extinguished. And as part of his submission to the papacy, King John was forced to accept Stephen Langton’s appointment as archbishop of Canterbury. His arrival in England was followed by the return of the ‘conspirators’ Robert FitzWalter and Eustace of Vesci, emboldening the many barons who nursed a deep resentment of the king. John’s position was also weakened by the death of Marshal’s old ally Geoffrey FitzPeter, in October 1213. He was replaced as justiciar of England by the unpopular Peter des Roches, further alienating the Anglo-Norman aristocracy.
King John had one final chance for success. Drawing upon his remaining financial resources and military support, he sought yet again to launch a grand campaign of re-conquest on the Continent, hoping to recover the Angevin realm. John was able to exploit the growing sense of disquiet among the potentates of north-western Europe over King Philip Augustus’ seemingly inexorable rise to a position of pre-eminence. An alliance was patched together with Otto IV, emperor of Germany, and the counts of Boulogne and Flanders – England’s established trading partners. The coalition’s strategy called for a two-pronged offensive. John was to sail to Aquitaine and lead an invasion force out of Poitou (mirroring the scheme thwarted in 1205). At the same time, William Longsword, earl of Salisbury, would prosecute a forceful invasion of Normandy, alongside the massed ranks of England’s northern allies. Meanwhile, William Marshal was to remain in England, defending the March against a Welsh counter-attack.
The basic idea of stretching Capetian resources by attacking on two fronts was sound, but it required careful coordination. Unfortunately for John and his allies, the slow muster and advance of Otto IV’s German forces undermined the entire plan. The English king enjoyed some initial success in the south, after landing at La Rochelle in mid-February 1214, with gains made in Aquitaine and parts of Anjou. By early summer, John was able to enter the city of Angers, but his advance was arrested by the need to capture the neighbouring castle of La Roche-aux-Moine, recently constructed by William des Roches. A siege began on 19 June, but the French garrison refused to buckle, and when a Capetian relief force approached under the command of Prince Louis, John wrongly assumed that he was facing the full force of the French army and thus ordered a hasty retreat on 2 July.
With the English king stymied in the south, Philip Augustus was able to focus his attention upon Normandy, where the northern coalition’s tardy incursion was not launched for another four weeks. On Sunday 27 July, the two sides clashed in a rare pitched battle at Bouvines, just south of Lille (in north-eastern France). Both armies were relatively evenly matched in numerical terms, but the Capetian troops seem to have been more disciplined and effective, benefiting from the presence in their ranks of both William des Barres – a storied champion, whose skills and reputation equalled those of Marshal himself – and the renowned William des Roches.
A vicious and bloody confrontation played out over the course of some three hours, with the French gradually gaining the upper hand. Longsword was taken captive, as were the counts of Boulogne and Flanders, while Emperor Otto was driven from the field by a contingent of knights led by William des Barres. Philip Augustus was left in control of the field, having scored a resounding victory. This was the crowning glory of his reign – one that confirmed Capetian ascendancy in Europe. The battle of Bouvines heralded an end to Otto IV’s reign in Germany and proved an utter catastrophe for King John in England. Having been forced to agree to the punitive terms of a five-year peace (including a payment of damages to the French, rumoured to total 60,000 marks), John returned to England in October a broken king. His war chest had been squandered. There was no famous victory with which to quell dissent at home, only humiliation. After Bouvines, a historic reckoning in England was unavoidable, and its course and outcome would reshape William Marshal’s career.