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William Marshal’s decision to support young Henry’s claim to the English crown was critical to the fortunes of the royalist cause. A handful of other magnates might have championed the boy-heir, had William stepped back from the fray or decamped to the baronial faction, but none possessed Marshal’s breadth of experience or his illustrious reputation. Yet, having bound himself to Henry on the road near Malmesbury and escorted him to Gloucester, the earl had to make a swift and determined effort to uphold the boy’s interests. In these first days, speed of action was paramount. Henry was only nine years old, but his rights to the English crown had to be asserted immediately, for fear that Prince Louis of France might seek to have himself proclaimed king – not least because the rebels and their French allies controlled access to Westminster Abbey, outside the walls of the city of London, the traditional venue for royal coronations.
THE ADVENT OF KING HENRY III
The royalists did enjoy one significant advantage: the unswerving support of the papal legate Guala of Bicchieri, and the bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches – a rather disreputable, but nonetheless formidable, character. With the backing of the Church, a coronation was hurriedly arranged for 28 October 1216, and regal robes were cut down in size to fit the diminutive Henry. Custom dictated that only a dubbed knight could become king, so Marshal duly performed the ceremony. The boy was then crowned and anointed as King Henry III by Bishop Peter, with Guala presiding over the ceremony in Gloucester Cathedral, and affirming the young monarch’s status as the pope’s ‘vassal and ward’.
With the new king proclaimed, all thoughts turned to the impending civil war, and the question of who should lead the royalist faction. As a churchman, Guala was in no position to command military forces, and while Peter des Roches was more than happy to engage in combat, he remained a divisive figure. The only obvious candidates for the office were William Marshal and Ranulf of Chester, who had yet to reach Gloucester. Earl William made no move to snatch power that day, despite vocal calls raised in the immediate aftermath of the coronation for him to step forward and ‘protect the king and the kingdom’ as overall leader. Marshal recognised that consensus would be crucial in the struggle ahead, and he understood that he could ill afford to alienate a key ally of Ranulf’s standing, but he also appears to have been unsure of his own position. Begging for time to consider his next step, and await the imminent arrival of the earl of Chester, William retired to his rooms.
The role of William Marshal
That evening, Marshal sought the advice of his closest confidants, seemingly plagued by real doubts over which course to follow. Probably drawing upon the testimony of John of Earley, the History recalled the heated debate that followed. John Marshal apparently emphasised the great ‘honour’ that might be earned from leading the new king’s armies. It was also suggested that, as leader, Marshal would ‘be in a position to make all your men – rich if it so please you’. This might seem like an astonishingly mercenary sentiment, but it simply reflected the well-established notion that a lord was obliged to reward his knights – indeed, William Marshal may have mobilised precisely the same argument himself some four decades earlier as a member of Henry the Young King’s retinue.
As the discussion continued, only John of Earley was said to have objected, concerned that his beloved master – the man he had served for more than thirty years – might be broken by the looming conflagration. Marshal was now nearly seventy: a remarkably advanced age in an era when most men were fortunate to live past their forties. Earley cautioned the earl, saying ‘your body is in decline, both through your exertions and old age’, and pointing out the stark fact that ‘the king has barely any resources’. He concluded with a blunt warning: ‘I fear greatly the pain and great trouble involved will be difficult for you to endure.’
This scene, as portrayed in the History, cannot necessarily be taken at face value. Earley was an eyewitness, but he also seems to have been at pains to emphasise his own role in offering sage counsel. Perhaps William Marshal did harbour serious misgivings about shouldering the onerous burden of leadership on the night of 28 October, or was suddenly struck by a wave of apprehension, once the stark reality of his position alongside Henry III hit home. The account could also reflect the memory of a broader discussion that actually began once news of King John’s death was received. Of course, it may be that the biographer constructed the whole debate to counter any suggestion that Marshal pursued power out of self-interest; playing on the age-old theme of the great man reluctant to accept office and honour.
On the following day, Ranulf of Chester rode into Gloucester. Some members of his retinue complained that the coronation should have been postponed until he arrived, but Ranulf himself ignored these jibes, and seems to have openly encouraged Marshal to accept the position of regent. At this stage, Ranulf appears to have been understandably wary of becoming the figurehead of such an embattled party, though he would later make a brief and fruitless attempt to convince Guala to divide the responsibility of leadership between himself and Earl William. On 29 October 1216, however, it was agreed ‘by common counsel’, that Marshal should be appointed as the secular leader of the royalist cause. As papal legate, Guala offered William a hugely compelling reward in return for this service – a full ‘remission and pardon of his sins’. As a result, the earl agreed, and was said to have declared himself ready ‘to take on this role as regent . . . whatever it may cost me’.
Marshal thus assumed the position of ‘guardian of the realm’. Together with Guala, he now bore full responsibility for the royalist cause and the defence of King Henry III’s rights, though the day-to-day care and custody of the young monarch was apportioned to Peter des Roches, because William himself needed to be free to move through the realm as regent. Marshal’s willingness to assume this office later earned him high praise in a royal letter authorised by Guala. His ‘devotion and constancy’ was applauded, and he was commended above ‘all other magnates of our kingdom, since in our necessity he has proved himself like gold in the furnace’ – seemingly a scriptural allusion to the testing of men’s hearts.
Later that day, William met once again with Earley and John Marshal. According to the History, the earl confessed himself to be daunted by the task now set before him, saying: ‘I have embarked upon the open sea’ like a sailor who has no hope of finding the ‘bottom or shore, and from which it is a miracle if he reaches port and a safe haven.’ John of Earley comforted his lord, and together they resolved to remain steadfast. Should England fall to Louis of France, Earley argued, they could retreat to Ireland, gaining ‘high honour’ for their resolute loyalty. At this, William was said to have declared: ‘If everyone abandons the boy but me, do you know what I shall do? I will carry him on my back, and if I can hold him up, I will hop from island to island, from country to country, even if I have to beg for my bread.’
William Marshal had risen to an unimaginable height. The landless younger son was now effectively ruler of England. It was an unprecedented ascent; the apogee of his career. But this honour also meant that William’s fate, and that of his dynasty and leading knights, was irrevocably interwoven with that of the young King Henry III.
RESTORING THE FORTUNES OF THE CROWN
William Marshal, Guala and the other leading members of the royalist faction travelled south to Bristol in early November 1216, convening a major council of all those loyal to King Henry III and the Angevin cause. To have any hope of guiding this party to victory, Marshal would have to draw upon the many skills he had acquired in the course of his life: the intimate knowledge of warfare and astute grasp of generalship, honed alongside Richard the Lionheart; and the political acuity, diplomatic sense and tempered judgement, proven in the royal court and tested on the international stage.
William also possessed a finely tuned appreciation of the baronial mindset and the power of chivalric ideals. He understood the system of patronage, the potent allure of land and office, and the importance of honour and knightly service – and thus knew how to harness these forces and impulses to secure the new king’s position and, with luck, prise away supporters from the rebel faction. In this regard, Earl William’s near-legendary status as a renowned warrior and paragon of virtue lent a compelling, totemic power to his leadership. He was a living relic of the bygone age of Angevin glory; a man who could readily command respect and allegiance.
In the course of the assembly at Bristol, Marshal’s pre-eminent position within the royalist faction was confirmed and his formal title agreed. There was no legal precedent for his office. Regents were customarily expected to possess a hereditary or familial link to the crown, but William could boast no such connection. As a result, he adopted the more ephemeral title of ‘guardian’, and thereafter was described within documents issued in Henry III’s name as ‘rector nostri et regni nostri’ (‘our guardian and the guardian of our realm’). With this formality attended to, the council turned to the more pressing business – the king’s prospects in the civil war.
The baronial faction had suffered some notable losses in recent months. Geoffrey Mandeville, earl of Essex, was slain during a sporting joust with the French, while Eustace of Vesci had died after being shot through the head by an arrow during an attack on Durham, in northern England. Nonetheless, the rebels still clearly held the balance of power and resources. They continued to dominate much of northern, eastern and south-eastern England, including London; and they enjoyed the backing of the Scots. Most importantly of all, the barons’ alliance with Prince Louis of France meant that the internecine conflict had assumed an international character, with the might of the Capetian dynasty brought to bear in England.
The royalists’ strategy
Henry III’s supporters retained control of a number of significant castles embedded in enemy-held territory – most notably Dover, Windsor and Lincoln – and had a relatively firm grasp over west and south-west England, with Bristol as an administrative centre. They could also call upon the services of some notable military commanders, such as Hubert of Burgh and Faulkes of Bréauté. But in other respects, William Marshal and his allies were in a desperately weak position, short of money and manpower, and bereft of allies. Earl William and Guala now set out to address these deficiencies, taking a number of carefully considered steps designed to spark a renewal of the royalists’ fortunes.
To assert the legitimacy of Henry III’s reign, they made a calculated effort to distance the boy-king from his late father’s detested regime. A royal letter was distributed, in which Henry mentioned the ‘quarrel’ of the past, but stated in clear terms that ‘we wish to remove it for ever since it has nothing to do with us’. Most importantly, Marshal and Guala issued a redrafted version of Magna Carta in Henry III’s name on 12 November 1216. This document was the equivalent of a political manifesto – a statement of intent, declaring Henry’s willingness to rule with a fair and even hand, for the ‘common utility of all’. This new Magna Carta restated many of the key principles of the 1215 charter – with promises to uphold justice and ancient custom, and rebalance the relationship between the king and his subjects – but it was shorter and more focused, with just forty clauses, rather than sixty-three. A number of the more controversial terms agreed at Runnymede were excised, including the panel of twenty-five barons, and the text also made it clear that the stated terms would be open to further negotiation.
The 1216 Magna Carta was distinctive in two further regards. It was not a mere peace treaty, extracted under duress from an embattled monarch, but a freely given assurance of rights. Crucially, the document was also issued with the full and unequivocal support of the papal legate, Guala. It bore his seal and that of William Marshal, the ‘guardian of the realm’. As such, it was imbued with a far greater sense of permanence. Its text could no longer be casually nullified by Rome. It was this document, validated by Guala and Marshal, which resurrected Magna Carta – the discarded pact of 1215. This development represented a critical step in English history, for without this reissue and those that followed in later years, the Great Charter would have been forgotten.
The 1216 Magna Carta was published in the hope of broadening Henry III’s base of support and winning over members of the baronial party to the royalist cause. In pursuit of this goal, William Marshal followed the same approach to reconciliation that he had employed in Leinster in 1208. Rebels who returned to the king were to be shown leniency, not punished out of hand. They were offered guarantees of safe conduct to discuss terms, and the restitution of lost lands. This was a sound policy, but as yet it elicited little or no response. Most advocates of the baronial cause still believed that Prince Louis of France would eventually be proclaimed as the rightful king of England, and expected to receive ample rewards of lands and offices from the new monarch. While these ingrained, vested interests remained in place, there would be few converts to the royalist faction.
William Marshal also made a concerted effort to address Henry III’s dire lack of financial resources. Outstanding debts to King John’s mercenaries had to be paid and the defence of royalist outposts funded. William took the bold step of liquidating John’s royal treasures, then stored in Corfe Castle and the stronghold at Devizes. The latter fortress alone produced a bewildering array of rings set with precious and semiprecious stones – fifteen with diamonds, twenty-eight with rubies and no less than 218 set with either emeralds or sapphires. Much of this haul went to Hubert of Burgh at Dover Castle, the lynchpin of royalist resistance in the south-east. Marshal likewise made further attempts to call for taxes and other forms of royal revenue, but the system of crown administration lay in ruins, so these measures proved largely ineffective. The issue of liquidity was of critical importance. Earl William recognised that the royalists could not afford to wage a prolonged military campaign against the baronial rebels and their French allies for the simple reason that Henry III would soon be penniless. This meant that the only viable course of action was to seek a swift and decisive confrontation.
The sparks of hope
The royalists limped on through December in a forlorn state, but with the dawning of the New Year their prospects began to improve. Prince Louis had a firm hold over eastern England and retained control of London, but he believed that, to press home his advantage and complete the conquest of England, a fresh influx of manpower and resources would be needed. As a result, the Capetian agreed a truce with the royalists in January 1217 and promptly sailed back to France to raise reinforcements. During the subsequent lull in hostilities, a number of rebel barons finally responded to William Marshal’s overtures and declared their allegiance to King Henry.
Some appear to have been disenchanted with their ill-mannered French allies. Others had become understandably concerned that Louis was planning to distribute the lion’s share of any forthcoming conquests to his Capetian followers, thus depriving the English nobles of their expected rewards. Under these circumstances, backing the royalist camp seemed to offer the best chance of advancement. The ‘reversi’, or ‘returners’ as they were described in royal records, were welcomed without punishment. The most important convert, William Longsword, earl of Salisbury – King Henry III’s half-uncle – came back into the fold on 5 March, and he brought his close friend and ally, Young William Marshal, with him.
In this same period, Guala of Bicchieri took the extraordinary step of proclaiming the war in support of Henry III to be the equivalent of a crusade. The pope had declared, in somewhat vague terms, that this struggle ‘earned glory in the eyes of men and merits in the eyes of God’, but his legate went further. Guala permitted the royalists to bear the cross of a crusader on their clothes and promised them a remission of their sins. William Marshal would now be leading a holy war in England, sanctioned by the papacy. This was a remarkable transformation. As one contemporary observed: ‘Those who once called themselves the army of God, and boasted that they fought for the liberties of the Church and the kingdom, were [thereafter] reputed to be the sons of the Devil and compared to infidels.’ Even so, when Louis of France returned to England in late April with fresh troops, and the civil war drew towards its climax, it seemed that Marshal and his allies would need a miracle if they were to prevail.
THE BATTLE OF LINCOLN
In the late spring of 1217, it fell to William Marshal – now some seventy years old – to fight for King Henry III’s right to rule England. The earl understood that only a clear-cut victory against the French would cement the young monarch’s legitimacy and snuff out the baronial rebellion. William drew up his forces at Northampton, in the centre of the country, waiting for any opportunity to strike. Then suddenly, in early May, a slim chance presented itself. Prince Louis was determined to sweep up the remaining pockets of royalist resistance in eastern England before driving westwards. With this objective in mind, he divided his army in two, leading a force to besiege Dover Castle on 12 May, while a second contingent was sent north.
This Anglo-French host contained many prominent rebels, including Robert FitzWalter and Saer of Quincy, along with more than 500 English knights, and around seventy Capetian knights alongside a large detachment of infantry, under the French commander Count Thomas of Perche. Together, these allies marched north to the walled town of Lincoln – a royalist stronghold that had already endured a long siege at the hands of the northern rebels and a sizeable party of Capetian troops.* Lincoln’s outer battlements had fallen, but Lady Nicola de la Haye retained control of its heavily fortified castle. The Anglo-French army now intended to bludgeon her garrison into submission.
The renewed assault on Lincoln posed a grave threat, but William Marshal also saw it as an opportunity to confront, and hopefully defeat, the allies when their army was not at full strength. Assembling every available ounce of fighting manpower, William mustered the royalist forces at Newark, the site of King John’s death, twenty-five miles southwest of Lincoln. Troops started to arrive on 17 May, and a number of contemporary sources offer quite precise estimates of their numbers. The biographer claimed to have access to an array of written sources at this point, so it is quite possible that he was working from an official muster list. The royalist army appears to have been made up of 406 knights, 317 crossbowmen and a large mixed force of ‘followers’, some of whom were non-combatant supporters and servants. Earl William held overall command, but other leading figures were also present, such as the armour-clad bishop Peter des Roches, Ranulf of Chester, William Longsword, Faulkes of Bréauté, John Marshal and Young William Marshal.
Earl William probably guessed that he would be heavily outnumbered in the fight ahead. Once the Anglo-French host joined up with the existing besiegers, Thomas of Perche and Robert FitzWalter must have had well in excess of 600 knights and several thousand infantry at their disposal. Marshal was only too aware of the dangers posed by a direct military engagement, but he judged that a gamble had to be taken, for if this enemy force could be confronted and defeated, it might tip the balance of the entire civil war. William resolved to risk the future of the Angevin dynasty, and his own career and life, on a pitched battle at Lincoln. In the words of the History, he was ready to ‘play for the highest stakes’.
The preparations for battle
The royalists made careful preparations in these final days, girding themselves for war. Guala proclaimed the excommunication of the French army and their allies, and performed the ritual of Mass for the supporters of Henry III’s cause, absolving them of their sins. In their own minds at least, Marshal’s troops would take to arms as holy warriors, bearing white crosses on their surcoats. According to the History, Earl William delivered a number of rousing speeches to his troops in this period, and while these cannot be taken as verbatim records, the terms and imagery used are revealing.
He was said to have exhorted his men to fight, ‘in order to defend our name, for ourselves and for the sake of our loved ones, our wives and our children’, but also ‘to defend our land and win for ourselves the highest honour’. This powerful appeal played upon notions of chivalry, sovereign allegiance and familial obligation. But William also warned that the French had come ‘to take for themselves the lands of our men’ and stated that ‘they seek our total destruction’, phrases that emphasised both the threat to personal property and the enemy’s supposed savagery.
Marshal then seems to have made an effort to stiffen the royalists’ resolve. ‘Let us make sure there is no coward amongst us,’ he reputedly declared, for ‘it is God’s wish that we defend ourselves’ – a clear evocation of the army’s sanctified status. Finally, he cautioned his troops to ready themselves for a bloody mêlée. ‘The road that lies ahead’ must be freed ‘with blades of iron and steel’, he argued, but ‘nobody should hold back [because] a man takes full revenge for the wrong and shame done to him’. The speech, as recorded by the biographer, was a model of inspirational battlefield rhetoric, leading the audience from the justification of conflict, through to potent appeals for steadfast courage and ruthless ferocity.
By 19 May, the royalists were ready to march on Lincoln. The shrewd strategy employed by Earl William in planning his advance was shaped by the nature of local topography – knowledge of which was probably gleaned from Peter des Roches, who had been attached to Lincoln Cathedral earlier in his career – and informed by Marshal’s own rich military experience. Lincoln was built on the northern banks of the River Witham, with a circuit of ancient Roman walls running in an extended rectangle from the lower town, north up a steep slope – rising 175 feet in less than three-quarters of a mile – to a long ridge. Here the battlements enclosed an imposing twelfth-century Norman castle in the west and a towering cathedral to the east. The outer ring of defences was punctuated by at least five major gateways. The French and the rebel barons were stationed inside the town walls, and were trying to break through the castle’s inner defences using siege engines and stone-throwing machines.
William Marshal recognised that any attempt to march directly on Lincoln from Newark would be fraught with danger. Should they arrive from the south, the royalists would be forced to confront the enemy across the bridge spanning the River Witham, and would then have to make an exhausting climb up a sharp incline from the lower town, fighting as they went. The earl decided to negate these obstacles by circling around from the west in a wide arc, and then ascending the main ridge, to advance on Lincoln from the north-west. This would allow his men to attack from the north, giving them the benefit of fighting downhill once they pushed through the upper town. It might also enable the royalists to link up with the castle’s garrison before the Anglo-French could mount a counter-attack. Given that William’s major objective was to inflict a crushing blow against his opponents, the one potential drawback of this strategy was that it left the allies with a clear route of escape to the south, if they chose to flee rather than fight.
After the first day’s march, the royalists camped about eight miles to the north-west of Lincoln. Then, rising before dawn, they mounted the ridge and marched on to the town in seven detachments, with crossbowmen in the vanguard and the baggage train bringing up the rear. They arrived at Lincoln not long after 6 a.m. on Saturday, 20 May 1217. According to a song composed after the battle, the morning sun glinted off their helmets and armour as they approached. Marshal was again reported to have called out to his troops, telling them to seize this ‘chance to free our land’, to seek the ‘eternal glory’ of victory and feel no fear because any who fell would soon find themselves ‘in paradise’. ‘God knows who are his loyal servants’, William supposedly declared, ‘of that I am completely certain’. He would reward the faithful, while sending the French ‘down to Hell’.
Battle joined – 20 May 1217
Despite his remarkable old age, William Marshal had no intention of directing the battle of Lincoln from a distance. He planned to throw himself into the thick of the fighting, leading his force by example. However, Marshal had first to engineer a confrontation. The royalists were ready to face the enemy on the ridge running north from Lincoln, though an engagement on this open ground would allow the Anglo-French allies to capitalise on their numerical advantage by bringing their full weight of numbers to bear. As it was, William’s opponents refused to attack. Once alerted to the royalists’ approach, the allied commanders rode out of Lincoln to survey the field. Robert FitzWalter and Saer of Quincy argued for an immediate frontal assault, but Thomas of Perche (not unreasonably) saw no reason to risk such a direct strike, and withdrew inside the town walls, deploying troops to defend the battlements and hold the northern gate.
Earl William now had to find a way to force an entry into Lincoln. The royalists had not come equipped with heavy siege machinery; nor could they afford to settle in for a prolonged investment of the town walls, as the resultant delay might allow Prince Louis time to march north and bolster the Anglo-French position. The castle, held by Lady Nicola de la Haye, could be entered through a gate from the west, where its ramparts abutted the main town wall, but the idea of leading the entire royalist army into this fortress was rejected. This was probably because the stronghold’s east gate, which gave access to the upper town and the area in front of the cathedral, was heavily guarded by the besieging allied forces.
Marshal therefore dispatched a number of reconnaissance parties to search out other points of access. One of these was led by John Marshal, but it seems to have been Peter des Roches’ group who made a crucial discovery: a sizeable gate, in the north-western quadrant, that had been blocked by masonry and rubble. The Anglo-French had evidently judged this entryway to be securely barricaded, but when des Roches reported back to Earl William, he argued that, with enough men, it could be cleared and a path into Lincoln opened. This would allow the royalists to launch an unheralded and deadly strike into the heart of the upper town.
William Marshal set about creating a diversion, so that this work could begin unseen. Ranulf of Chester was keen to lead the first charge of the day, so he was sent to attack the northern gate. At the same time, Faulkes of Bréauté led a large contingent of crossbowmen into the castle, positioned them on the walls facing into the town and began peppering the Anglo-French troops within, inflicting terrible damage. The task of clearing the north-western gate proved laborious, and perhaps took a number of hours, but this effort escaped the notice of the allies within – as fighting continued in front of the castle and the north gate – and the work was eventually completed around midday.
The royalists now had a route into Lincoln. As a large force of knights mounted their warhorses in advance of launching a blistering charge, the excitement of the moment seems to have overwhelmed Earl William. According to the History, he pushed to the front and, bellowing ‘Ride on!’, spurred his mount forward through the newly opened gate. But in his eagerness to enter the fray, the elderly Marshal had forgotten to don his helmet – a potentially lethal mistake. A young squire rushed forward to rein him in and politely pointed out this oversight. Once William and all of his comrades were fully armoured, they poured through the north-west gate and the assault began.
Earl William led the way, along with his son Young William Marshal, Longsword and Peter des Roches. Riding together, they raced down Westgate Street and then turned right (to the south), to emerge in front of the castle. Here Faulkes of Bréauté’s crossbowmen were still wreaking havoc among the enemy – one chronicler noting that the horses of the rebel barons were being ‘mown down and slaughtered like pigs’. Marshal’s force suddenly burst on to this chaotic scene, charging at full pace into the Anglo-French ranks. William was said to have ‘plunged into the very thick of them’, surging forward to the depth of three spear lengths. Amid this first cacophonous crush of combat, des Roches apparently shouted, ‘This way! God is with the Marshal’, and battle was joined.
The dramatic arrival of William Marshal’s contingent shocked the allied forces stationed in front of the castle, as they were wholly unaware that Lincoln’s outer defences had been breached. One of their engineers, who was busily operating a stone-throwing machine, mistook the earl’s men for his own troops and turned back to his siege engine. He was just preparing to unleash another missile on the castle, when the royalist knights raced past and ‘cut off his head without any further ceremony’. In the aftermath of the initial charge, the fighting inside Lincoln quickly dissolved into a frenzied mêlée. This was the same frantic, close-quarter combat on crowded streets that Marshal had mastered in his younger days at the likes of Neufchâtel and Le Mans, but as a seventy-year-old, he was hard-pressed to hold his own.
According to the History, the aged William Marshal did muster one mighty attack. Robert of Roppesley – one of King John’s former household knights who had joined the baronial party – drove forward, delivering a ‘savage’ lance strike to William Longsword’s body (though his armour saved the earl of Salisbury from major injury). Roppesley’s weapon shattered on impact, but as he charged through and wheeled his horse, Marshal rode up and ‘dealt him such a fierce blow between the shoulders that he almost knocked him to the ground’. The battered rebel knight reportedly crawled to a nearby house, where ‘out of fear, [he] went to hide in an upper room as quickly as he could’.
As the intense fracas raged in the area between the castle and the cathedral, the outcome of the battle hung in the balance. The French commander, Count Thomas of Perche, rallied his troops in the courtyard directly in front of Lincoln Cathedral and made a hard-bitten stand. It was here that the fighting reached a crescendo. Many were said to have been ‘wounded and maimed, trampled on and beaten’. Count Thomas ‘put up a very stern defence’ and began to regain some ground. The biographer claimed that Earl William was still in the very heart of the fray, and took three shuddering blows to the head from Thomas of Perche himself, that left his helmet badly dented. But this detail was not mentioned in other sources, so it may have been added for dramatic effect.
Nonetheless, it is clear that Count Thomas came to a sudden, grisly end, there in the great cathedral’s shadow. One of Faulkes of Bréauté’s knights – a former mercenary named Reginald Croc – pressed forward to assail the count of Perche. Croc delivered a deadly lunge that went ‘through [the] visor’ of Thomas’ helmet and, as ‘the point of the sword’ pierced the count’s eye it drove straight into his brain. ‘Mortally wounded’, Thomas fell from his horse, though Reginald Croc also seems to have been severely injured during this bold attack, and died later that same day.
The sight of Count Thomas’ collapse caused shock on both sides. The Anglo-French forces were ‘greatly dismayed’, and began to make a panicked retreat south, down the steep hill into the lower town. At first, the royalists were also uncertain of what had occurred. It was thought that Thomas of Perche may simply have been knocked unconscious. William Marshal ordered the count’s helm to be carefully removed, and only then did it become clear that ‘he was stone dead’. The violent demise of such a prominent figure was unusual, even in the heat of full battle – a testament to the effectiveness of medieval armour and the general practice of seizing high-value captives for ransom. Even the biographer conceded that ‘it was a great pity that [Count Thomas] died in this manner’.
The battle of Lincoln was not yet over, but its momentum was swinging definitively in the royalists’ favour. Earl William’s forces pursued the fleeing Anglo-French troops downhill and the earl of Chester, who had managed to break through the north gate, joined the fight. With the slope in their favour, the royalists were able to beat back the allies’ forlorn attempt to mount a counter-attack, and a full-scale rout began. Many of the fleeing Anglo-French were caught in the bottleneck of the southern gate and the bridge over the Witham. Others were pursued for many miles to the south of Lincoln. Some were butchered, especially among the infantry, but most were taken as prisoners. Around 200 knights managed to escape, and the History mockingly likened them to rats, scuttling all the way to London.
William Marshal had led the royalists to a stunning victory. Robert FitzWalter, Saer of Quincy and many other leading rebel barons were taken captive, along with a large portion of Prince Louis’ forces. Earl William had taken a huge, yet arguably necessary, risk, but the gamble had paid off. He survived the fearsome encounter, somewhat battered, yet otherwise unscathed, but the heart of the Anglo-French army had been crushed. The English historian David Carpenter has rightly described Lincoln as ‘one of the most decisive [battles] in English history’, concluding that its outcome ‘meant that England would be ruled by the Angevin, not the Capetian dynasty’. With such glorious news to relate, it is little wonder that Marshal rode off to Northampton that same day, even ‘before [taking] any food’ according to Roger of Wendover – determined to tell young King Henry III and Guala that the tide of the civil war had been turned.
WAR’S END
Louis of France learnt of the disastrous defeat at Lincoln on 25 May and immediately broke off his siege of Dover, retreating north to London. William Marshal could perhaps have sought to encircle the great city and capture the Capetian prince, but the earl recognised that the royalists’ resources remained meagre, in spite of their recent triumph. It was now critical that the war be drawn to a swift end, as efficiently as possible, and the key step in this process was to usher Louis out of England.
Negotiations over a settlement began almost immediately, and initial terms were agreed on 13 June. Marshal’s demands were far from punitive. In return for Prince Louis’ immediate departure, the sentences of excommunication levelled against the French and the rebel baronial allies would be lifted, and the latter would recover their English lands. Prisoners on both sides were to be released, and the ‘liberties and customs of the kingdom of England’ set out in the 1216 re-issue of Magna Carta would henceforth be ‘enjoyed across the realm’. Even so, a stumbling block was hit when the papal legate Guala insisted that the churchmen who had ignored Rome’s express orders by continuing to support Louis of France must remain excommunicate. The Capetian prince refused, quite admirably, to abandon these faithful allies, declaring that ‘there was no way that he would make peace without them’, and the talks thus broke down on 15 June.
The baronial party now began to fracture at a precipitous rate. Over the next eight days, more than sixty nobles returned to the king’s camp, and close to another hundred followed suit in the course of that summer. As before, the vast majority of these reversireceived equitable treatment. The Capetians made a last-ditch attempt to snatch victory in late August, when a large army of French reinforcements set sail from Calais. The fleet of ships carrying them across the Channel was commanded by the infamous mercenary sea captain Eustace the Monk – a man who had renounced his holy orders to become a pirate, and was thus derided with particular vitriol by clerical chroniclers.
On 24 August 1217, a makeshift English fleet set sail from Sandwich to repel this invasion force. For once, William Marshal agreed not to place himself in the front line, allowing Hubert of Burgh to lead the defence in his stead. Earl William watched from the shore, alongside King Henry, and they seem to have enjoyed a clear view of events, as the biographer noted ‘it was a fine day and [thus] possible to see far out to sea’. The battle of Sandwich was a vicious affair that left an estimated 4,000 men dead or drowned. A number of heavily loaded French ships, including Eustace the Monk’s own lead vessel, were rammed and boarded. Hubert of Burgh’s men threw pots of lime powder crashing down on to the enemy decks and, with the acrid air blinding the French, they managed to overcome any resistance with relative ease. The English scored a second historic victory that day, and the remnants of the Capetian fleet beat a hasty retreat. William des Barres, the famed Capetian champion, was captured, as was the count of Blois. Eustace the Monk was apparently found cowering below decks, but was dragged up into the light and summarily beheaded.
After this reversal, Prince Louis’ position in England became untenable. As one chronicler put it, he found himself ‘destitute of present aid and despairing of the future’. William Marshal now moved to encircle London, and peace negotiations began anew on 28 August. It took two weeks of wrangling to finalise terms, but a treaty, closely mirroring that tabled on 13 June, was eventually agreed at Kingston, to the south-west of London. By late September, Earl William was able to escort Louis to Dover and watch, with satisfaction, as the Capetian invader set sail for France.
William Marshal has sometimes been criticised for not forcing more injurious and humiliating conditions upon his vanquished enemy. Indeed, within a generation, rancorous and uncharitable chroniclers such as Matthew Paris would suggest that William had somehow betrayed England in 1217 by not punishing Louis of France with sufficient venom. Marshal does seem to have placed too much trust in the French prince. Louis promised to convince his father, Philip Augustus, to restore the Continental Angevin lands seized from King John to Henry III. Earl William took Louis at his word, rather than requiring him to seal a binding assurance, and the prince subsequently reneged on his oath. But critics like Matthew Paris ignored the continued weakness and instability of the royalists’ position in England during the late summer of 1217. The realm had been broken by the civil war, its finances and systems of governance lay in ruins and its king was barely ten years old. Just as it had been in the immediate aftermath of Lincoln, Marshal’s overriding priority in September 1217 was to secure peace and herd the French out of England before the whole kingdom ground to a halt.
In that aim, William Marshal succeeded. Against all the odds, the ‘guardian of the realm’ had quelled the baronial rebellion and thwarted the most threatening invasion of England since 1066. To contemporaries, the swift defeat of the French seemed to be nothing less than ‘a miracle’. Marshal had made the hardest of choices after John’s death, endangering the fortunes of his dynasty and supporters, by backing the forlorn boy-king, Henry III. But in steering the royalists to victory in 1217, Earl William had secured Henry’s right to rule and saved the kingdom.