William Marshal was afforded little time to savour the victories of 1217. With Louis of France’s departure, the immediate threat of Capetian aggression was at an end, but the huge challenge of restoring England to a state of peace and order remained. The kingdom had been ravaged by years of baronial insurrection. Crown authority had collapsed, and the Royal Exchequer, the main organ of financial administration, had not sat since 1214. The Welsh and the Scots had also capitalised upon the English civil war and French invasion by clawing back lost territory. Stabilising the kingdom would have been a monumental task even for a vigorous adult monarch, yet Henry III remained a minor, and his ‘guardian’, Earl William, was entering his seventies.
WILLIAM MARSHAL AS ‘REGENT’
Marshal held the office of ‘guardian of the realm’ – serving to all intents and purposes as Henry III’s regent – for another nineteen months, dedicating himself to the unforgiving and unglamorous business of governance, striving all the while to secure the best possible future for his young king’s regime. The ills of the realm were not cured at a stroke – Marshal was no magician. But given the staggering scale of the problems faced, and his own advanced age and limited previous experience of wielding executive power, the progress made was remarkable. Belying his years, William set to work with enormous energy. Much of his time was spent in London and West minster, but he also moved between Striguil and one of his favoured manor houses at Caversham, on the banks of the River Thames, across from Reading.
As the elder statesmen of the realm, Marshal proved to be an effective figurehead – his peerless reputation as a paragon of chivalry helping to legitimise the ‘regency’ government. It also enabled him to arbitrate in disputes over land (which were legion), and to oversee the restitution of hostages and payment of ransoms. There was no scent of overbearing tyranny, and only the barest hint of partisan self-service, to Earl William’s rule. He shared authority with Guala of Bicchieri until the late autumn of 1218, when the papal legate returned to Rome (complaining of exhaustion) and was replaced by Pandulf, who had recently held the office of papal chamberlain. Peter des Roches, the bishop of Winchester, and Hubert of Burgh also played leading roles in the administration. Through the collaborative efforts of these men and others, William’s term of office witnessed a gradual restoration of the systems of royal justice and crown finance. A new version of Magna Carta was issued on 6 November 1217, under the seal of the papal legate and William Marshal (who, in spite of his status as regent, continued to employ the same diminutive die he had used as a knight). The document had been further reworked to restore some aspects of royal authority, but it still contained critical clauses dealing with rights to justice, fair trial and freedom from tyranny.
Earl William enjoyed some success restoring England’s borders in the north, as the Scots agreed to return the lands they had seized during the baronial uprising. The native Welsh were another matter. Wales continued to be beset by insurrection, with Llewellyn ap Iorwerth in resurgent mood, and Marshal’s neighbours on the southern Welsh March in Caerleon going on the rampage. Significant losses were sustained across the province, including the fall of Carmarthen and Cardigan in west Wales. The entire region would remain a troublesome thorn in the side of the English monarchy for much of the thirteenth century.
Earl William did show some favour to the members of his dynasty and household in the course of his regency, but his actions were generally restrained and far from predatory. Young William Marshal was granted rights to Marlborough Castle – the fortress he had sought during the rebellion – and a valuable slice of the profits from royal exchanges (in centres such as London, Winchester and York). John Marshal was given oversight of the royal forests throughout the realm, while John of Earley and Jordan of Sauqueville received handsome rewards of land. The earl also appointed his long-standing advisor, Master Michael of London, as royal procurator (or legal representative) in the papal court in Rome. William took relatively little for himself, save the custody of Gloucester Castle and the right of free passage for ships to New Ross in Leinster.
Marshal’s resignation from office
By the start of 1219, William had done what he could to consolidate King Henry III’s position, rebuilding the crown’s relationship with the aristocracy and resurrecting the framework of government. But the incessant demands of office eventually took their toll. In January of that year, he travelled from Marlborough to Westminster, but fell ill on his arrival. Marshal had always been extraordinarily healthy throughout his long life, but according to the biographer, he was ‘plagued by illness and pain’ in the weeks that followed, and it gradually became clear that, after some seventy-two years, his body was finally failing him.
The earl was joined by his wife, Lady Isabel, and a number of doctors sought to minister to him, but with little effect. On 7 March, he was able to ride to the Tower of London, but was said to be ‘suffering much pain and discomfort’, and by the middle of that month he recognised that his end was approaching. William decided to leave London, for ‘if death was to be his lot’, the History noted, ‘he preferred to die at home [rather] than elsewhere’. Young William Marshal and John of Earley made the necessary arrangements, and Isabel and the earl were taken up the Thames in a pair of boats, travelling at a measured pace, to reach the manor house at Caversham on 20 March. Marshal seems to have yearned for the clean air of the countryside and a calm space where he could be surrounded by his family and closest retainers. The estate also boasted its own chapel, presided over by Augustinian monks from Notley (in Buckinghamshire), who could tend to the earl’s spiritual well-being. Yet first, he needed to free himself from the responsibilities of office.
William continued to manage the affairs of state from his bed for a number of weeks, while King Henry III took up residence across the river at Reading, along with Peter des Roches. But the earl was wracked by intense pain and had no appetite for food, so he took the final steps to relinquish his authority as regent. On 8 April 1219, the eleven-year-old monarch and his leading counsellors all crowded into Marshal’s bedchamber to begin two days of debate. Peter des Roches sought to press his own claim to the regency, arguing that he had been appointed as a form of guardian in October 1217, but William’s mind was still sharp enough to see through this ruse. Des Roche had been a competent ally, but William seems to have distrusted his insatiable ambition and doubted that he could command the loyalty of the barons. As a result, Marshal placed Henry III into the care of the papal legate, Pandulf, and even took the precautionary step of sending his son, Young William, to watch the public proclamation of this act so that des Roche could not intervene.
Before the meeting broke up, Earl William called the young king to his bedside. According to the History, Marshal offered one last piece of advice to the monarch whose cause he had done so much to champion. William spoke of his hopes that Henry would ‘grow up to be a worthy man’, but he also issued a stark warning. If the king were to follow ‘in the footsteps of some wicked ancestor’ then Marshal prayed that God ‘does not give you long life’. There was no more that William could do, but hope that young Henry would not repeat the sins of his father. With that, power passed from Marshal’s hands, and he was said to have felt that he had been ‘delivered of a great burden’.
THE LAST DAYS
Over the course of the next month, William Marshal’s life slowly ebbed away, until his days finally came to an end. This famed knight – the veteran of so much war and turmoil – was granted a peaceful death, secure in the comforts of his Caversham manor. His wife, Isabel, was present throughout, as was his son, Young William. The earl’s daughters arrived, and the youngest of them sang to him, bringing gentle comfort through his hours of pain. The leading members of Marshal’s retinue also gathered at Caversham, John of Earley chief among them. Their enduring fidelity through these last days laid bare the deep sense of affection and loyalty that they felt for their great lord. They stood in constant vigil over the earl, with never less than three knights in attendance, while Young William insisted on staying by his side through the dark hours of the night. In this way, Marshal was loved and honoured to the last.
The kings that William served had all suffered tortured, or sudden, deaths. Young Henry’s final, agonising days had been passed as a rebellious son, denied succour by his father. Old King Henry himself had been hounded to his grave, while the Lionheart fell to a tragically wasteful wound and John met his end as a reviled figure of hate. Earl William was not spared the pain of death – the debilitating disease that snatched away his strength, left him often in agony, and he was barely able to consume food in his last twenty days. But he was afforded the time to prepare for his demise. The History recorded an intensely detailed account of these last weeks, describing how Marshal sought to set his affairs in order, and it is perhaps these closing sections of the biography that offer the clearest picture of the inner man, as we learn what mattered most to William in his dying days.
The care of Marshal’s dynasty and men
The future of the Marshal dynasty weighed heavily on William’s mind. His last will and testament was prepared with the utmost care, so as to ensure the preservation of his legacy. As a younger son, William had inherited nothing from his own father, but over seven decades Marshal had amassed an extraordinary assortment of lands and honours. At a personal level, this was perhaps the greatest achievement of his life. He had lifted his family’s name to unimagined heights and was now determined that these efforts should not be wasted. All of the provisions of his will were recorded by William’s personal almoner, Geoffrey the Templar. John of Earley was named as one of Marshal’s executors, and the written terms were formally confirmed by Pandulf, the papal legate, and Stephen Langton, archbishop of Canterbury. Nothing was to be left to chance. The first thought, of course, was given to Isabel. She would retain rights to all of the lands he had gained through her hand in marriage thirty years earlier until the time of her own death, after which point the territories would be divided according to Earl William’s wishes.
Young William was to receive the core estates of the Marshal dynasty – the lordships of Striguil, Pembroke and Leinster – as well as the lands held by the Marshal family elsewhere in England, including Hamstead Marshall. As second son, Richard Marshal was granted Longueville in Normandy, but instead of confining his holdings to France, William also allotted him the Buckingham shire manor of Crendon. Gilbert Marshal was destined for a career in the Church and thus received no estates, but the earl’s fourth son, Walter, was promised custody of Goodrich Castle, on the Welsh March. The earl’s initial instinct was to leave nothing to his youngest son, Ancel, who was still but a child. Not, it would seem, for lack of love, for Marshal was said to have declared that ‘[he] is very dear to me’, but because William believed Ancel should make his own way in the world, as he himself had done – finding ‘someone who will love and honour him greatly’. Yet, in the end, John of Earley intervened on the boy’s behalf, and he was apportioned Irish land worth £140. Four of Earl William’s daughters were already married, but he granted a small income to the fifth, Joan, in anticipation that she would soon be wed.
With the safety of his family secured, Marshal’s mind turned to the well-being of his knights. He had spent the first forty years of his own life in service, and cherished the intimate bonds of friendship and trust forged with the members of his own mesnie. Most of William’s closest retainers had already been well rewarded with lands and offices, but the obligation to provide for his warriors remained a pressing concern. In these final weeks, one of Marshal’s clerks suggested that the store of eighty fine, fur-trimmed scarlet robes held in the manor house might be sold off. He apparently told the earl that the money raised could be used ‘to deliver you from your sins’, but William was appalled by this suggestion. ‘Hold your tongue you wretch,’ he reputedly countered, ‘I have had enough of your advice.’ Marshal’s firmly held view was that these robes should be distributed to his men, as a last token of his duty to provide for their needs, and he bid John of Earley to commend him to all the household knights to whom he had been unable to speak in person. Beyond the inner circle of his family, the mesnie had been the cradle of William’s life – a priceless sanctuary – and it remained so to the very end.
The fate of William’s soul
As Marshal’s time drew to a close, thoughts of the afterlife and the judgement of souls spoken of by the Church began to press in upon his mind. With death approaching, he was said to have declared: ‘[I must] take great thought for the salvation of my soul, for my body is now in peril.’ Earl William revealed that he had prepared carefully for this moment decades earlier. The ever-faithful John of Earley was sent on a special mission to the southern March. William told him to bring ‘the two lengths of silk cloth which I gave to Stephen [of Évreux] to look after [and] make haste to return here’. Earley duly performed this task, and the History detailed the intimate scene that played out upon his return.
The long-hidden silks were presented, but at first one of the earl’s knights seemed unimpressed, saying: ‘I find them a little faded, unless my eyesight is blurred.’ William ordered the cloths unfolded. Perhaps in that moment he wondered if his memory of this treasured fabric had been at fault. But once they were laid out, Marshal was relieved to see that ‘they looked very fine and valuable’ and were obviously ‘choice cloth of good workmanship’. The earl called in his son and then explained: ‘I have had these lengths of cloth for thirty years; I had them brought back with me from the Holy Land [so that they might] be draped over my body when I am laid in the earth.’ William then charged Earley with performing this task and even instructed him to use coarse cloth to protect the silk in case of bad weather, so that it would not become ‘damaged or dirtied’. This was how Marshal had long envisaged the honouring of his corpse, and he was determined that this ritualised union with a relic of sacred Jerusalem be performed to the letter.
Towards the middle of May, a messenger arrived at Caversham bearing the news that the papal legate, Pandulf, had granted Marshal a special reward. He was told that the ‘legate absolves you of all the sins you have committed in your lifetime and which you have truly confessed’, and as theHistory pointedly observed, William wisely made sure to offer confession throughout this period. The earl also made additional donations to religious houses in his last days and was said to have asked that alms be given to the needy, and food, drink and clothing be set aside for ‘one hundred of the poor’ after his death.
When viewed from a distance, these elaborate preparations might seem to suggest that Marshal was fanatically obsessed with the fate of his soul – or, at least, that the biographer wished to present him as such. But in truth, William was merely following the established customs of his day; taking due precautions for what all Western Christians then believed would be the moment of ultimate judgement before their God. One further incident, reported by the History, seems to reveal that, as a knight, Marshal held a distinct view of Christian doctrine and his own spiritual well-being. While confined to his bed, William apparently struck up a conversation with some of his household knights. One of them recalled that he had heard clergymen claim that ‘no man will find salvation on any account if he does not return what he has taken’, and thus wondered if the earl intended to renounce all his worldly goods.
Marshal’s fascinating response, as described by the biographer, is worth quoting in full, for even if it was not a precise record of his words, it offers a unique insight into the knightly mindset – exposing the ways in which medieval warriors sought to reconcile the essential needs of their profession with the teachings of the Latin Church. This, then, was Earl William’s reported reply:
‘Churchmen are too hard on us, shaving us too closely. If, simply because I’ve taken 500 knights and kept their arms, horses and all their equipment, the kingdom of heaven is closed in my face, then there is no way for me to enter in, for I am unable to return these things. I believe I can do no more as regards God but surrender myself up to him as a penitent for all the sins I have committed and all the wrongs I have done. They might well wish to push me, but they can push me no further; either their argument is false on this score or no man can find salvation.’
Death and burial
In William Marshal’s last days ‘he was unable to eat or drink’, and though his servants tried to feed him with mushrooms, and a few crumbs of white bread, ‘his heart became weak and his natural functions stopped’. Around this time, the earl divulged his secret agreement with the Templars. Back in the 1180s, he had decided to enter the ranks of that Order before his death and wished to receive a burial at the brethren’s hands. In return for this service, he would be leaving the Templars a ‘fine manor in Upleadon to enjoy in perpetuity’. In William’s mind, induction into this esteemed knightly Order must have seemed a fitting end to a warrior’s life. His friend Aimery of St Maur, the master of the Templars in England, travelled to Caversham to perform the rite in person. One year earlier, Marshal had issued instructions for a special white Templar robe, emblazoned with a red cross, to be prepared ‘without anyone knowing of its existence’. The garment was now produced, but William then called for Isabel to come to his room. The biographer described how:
The earl, who was generous, gentle and kind towards his wife the countess, said to her: ‘Fair lady, kiss me now, for you will never be able to do it again.’ She stepped forwards and kissed him, and both of them wept.
His daughters, who were also present, were said to have ‘stood round him in deep grief’, and eventually had to be ushered outside. Once the ritual was complete, Aimery apparently offered William some parting words of comfort, saying: ‘you have known higher honour in this world than ever any other knight had, both in respect of your valour [and] your wisdom and loyalty.’ He then went on to assure the earl that God ‘wishes to have you for his own’.
The end came near midday, on Tuesday 14 May 1219. John of Earley had been trying to ease Marshal’s position in his bed, when ‘the final throes of death, against which he had no defence, took him in their grip’. William implored Earley to open the doors and windows of his room, and to call his family. John ‘took the earl in his arms’ and watched as his ‘face grew paler, and became livid because death was pressing him and wounding him to the heart’.
Young William, Isabel and Marshal’s knights arrived, and the earl spoke his last words, saying: ‘I am dying, and commend you to God. I am no longer able to think of your needs, for I cannot fight against death.’ Young William then took his father in his arms and ‘wept tears of pity, as was natural, quietly and openly’. A cross was brought to the bed and placed before the earl and then, as the abbot of Notley performed a final rite of absolution, William Marshal set his eyes upon the crucifix, ‘joined his hands together’ and died. The author of the History confidently declared that: ‘we believe he is saved and sits with God and His company [because] he was a good man in death as in life.’
Later that day, the earl’s body was embalmed, prepared for burial and covered in Marshal’s treasured silken cloths. On 15 May, his corpse was transported to Reading Abbey, where it was carried in solemn procession and the ritual of full Mass was sung. Lady Isabel followed the remains of her late husband, but it was said that her grief rendered her unable to walk. Marshal’s body was then carried towards London. On 18 May a large crowd of barons escorted the funeral procession to Westminster Abbey for a further vigil and Mass, performed amid a ‘magnificent display of candles’. Finally on 20 May 1219, two years after his famous victory at Lincoln, the earl was laid to rest in the round Temple Church in London – the space that evoked Christ’s own Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The archbishop of Canterbury presided over the funeral, alongside the bishop of London, and in his oration, Stephen Langton was said to have described William Marshal as ‘the greatest knight to be found in all the world’. And there, the tomb effigy of this peerless warrior – the architect of England’s salvation – can still be seen to this day.
AFTERMATH
Lady Isabel did not long survive her husband. She died in 1220, in her mid-forties, and was buried at Tintern Abbey, north of Striguil. Together, she and Earl William had established the Marshal dynasty as one of the leading baronial families in England. Yet for all their efforts and dedication, the fortunes of the Marshal house were broken within a quarter of a century. In part, the dynasty fell prey to the upheavals of King Henry III’s tumultuous reign. England was saved from the immediate renewal of French aggression by King Philip Augustus’ own demise in 1220. When his son and successor, Louis VIII, passed away just six years later, his young son and namesake acceded to the Capetian crown, leaving France to endure its own period of regency government. Even so, under Henry III, England continued to struggle with the consequences and aftershocks of the baronial rebellion. Magna Carta was re-issued once again in 1225 (achieving its definitive form) and the young king’s minority finally came to an end in 1227. But the early years of Henry III’s reign were disrupted by power struggles as Hubert of Burgh and then Peter des Roches sought to exploit their influence over the crown for personal gain.
The fall of the Marshals
Responsibility for the collapse of the Marshal dynasty cannot be laid solely at the feet of any one family member, nor can it be explained by grave deficiencies of character. William Marshal’s heirs were neither indolent, nor foolish, but they did lack their father’s inimitable ability to navigate the fractious world of medieval politics. Most crucially of all, they proved unable to sire heirs. The earl’s first successor, his eldest son, William II, enjoyed considerable success and continued to benefit from John of Earley’s loyal service to the Marshal family, until the latter’s death in 1229. William II was responsible for commissioning the History of William Marshal in celebration of his father’s extraordinary career. An Anglo-French scribe working in England, named John, wrote this account – the first known biography of a medieval knight. He drew upon written evidence and the oral testimony of those who had known Earl William in life, including most notably John of Earley, and the text was completed soon after 1226.
William II recovered territory in west Wales, consolidated his family’s hold over Leinster and presided over a significant period of castle-building in the Marshal domains, with major extensions made to fortresses such as Striguil and Cilgerran. Following the precipitous death of his first wife Alice (the daughter of Baldwin of Béthune) after barely a year of marriage, William II wed King Henry III’s own younger sister, Eleanor, in 1224, but their union proved childless. On 6 April 1231, while in London to attend the second marriage of his widowed sister Isabella, William II died suddenly of unknown causes in his early forties. He left no heir, and was buried in Temple Church alongside his father.
The earldom of Pembroke thus passed to his younger brother Richard, who had inherited the Marshal estates in Normandy in 1219 and spent twelve years serving as a noble in the French court. After returning to England to lead the Marshal dynasty, Richard gained renown as a warrior – being described by one contemporary as ‘the flower of chivalry in our time’ – but he also became embroiled in an armed insurrection against Henry III’s increasingly unpopular regime. Richard fought on the March in alliance with the Welsh Prince Llewellyn ap Iorwerth, then sailed to Ireland, where the king’s justiciar had sought to seize Leinster, with the connivance of the Lacys.
Earl William Marshal had survived just such an attack, but his son proved less fortunate. Richard was persuaded to a parley with the justiciar near Kildare, on 1 April 1234, but this turned out to be a trap. Rather than discuss terms of peace, the justiciar launched an attack with 140 knights, and Richard’s Irish vassals betrayed him by refusing to fight in his defence. Forced to mount a hopeless last stand alongside fifteen loyal members of his household, Richard fell beneath a torrent of blows. He was carried to Kilkenny Castle and died of his wounds two weeks later, like his brother before him, leaving no heir.
As a result, Gilbert Marshal was forced to renounce his clerical orders and take up leadership of the Marshal dynasty, but he never prospered at royal court. Ironically, he met his end during a tournament held at Hertford in 1241, trying to emulate his father’s legendary feats of prowess. Gilbert lacked skill as a horseman and found himself struggling to control his spirited warhorse. Unfortunately, the members of his retinue had ridden off in pursuit of glory and plunder, so there was no one to assist him. Gilbert was thrown from his mount, but his foot became stuck in a stirrup, and he was dragged along the ground for a considerable distance, sustaining mortal injuries. He was succeeded by his two remaining brothers. Walter was appointed as earl of Pembroke in 1242, and briefly fought in a royal campaign in southern France, but passed away in 1245. The youngest brother, Ancel, died barely one month later. Neither left legitimate heirs.
As a result, the Marshal estates – so carefully accumulated during Earl William’s career – were broken up and parcelled out among the heirs of his daughters. In 1246, the title of Marshal of England passed to Roger Bigod, the son of William Marshal’s eldest daughter Matilda. Through lack of luck, long life and fertility, the male line of the Marshal dynasty was brought to a desperately premature end.
Medieval England and knighthood
The English monarchy remained enfeebled through much of the thirteenth century. Henry III faced a second full-scale baronial revolt after 1258 and was forced to accept the imposition of consultative, parliamentary government. This was one of the most significant consequences of King John’s reign and William Marshal’s involvement in Magna Carta: nobles and knights were no longer the mere agents of royal will, they now served as the check and balance against crown authority.
The loss of Normandy and the other Angevin territories on the Continent, and Earl William’s defeat of the French in 1217, also contributed to the emergence of a far more pronounced and pervasive sense of English identity in the course of the thirteenth century. By the end of Marshal’s life, English was already emerging as the dominant language of the aristocracy. The days of the hybrid, cross-Channel society drew to a close. The ruling elite no longer regarded themselves as Anglo-Normans, or Angevins, but as English – not least because they continued to find themselves pitted against the Capetian French.
The kings of England and their leading nobles remained haunted by memories of the ‘glorious’ Angevin realm throughout the Middle Ages. Little progress was made on the Continent in the thirteenth century, but the obsession with re-conquering France proved inescapable and eventually prompted the outbreak of the Hundred Years’ War in 1339. While locked into this seemingly perpetual struggle, the ‘Plantagenet’ dynasty founded by Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine finally came to an end with the overthrow and death of King Richard II in 1399.
The knightly class, which William Marshal had come to epitomise, endured throughout this period, yet its ideals and practices underwent dramatic changes. Many facets of chivalric culture were increasingly defined. Knightly training became more sophisticated and regimented, and the ritual of dubbing was formalised. Techno logical advances in metallurgy and smithcraft also meant that the mail hauberks worn by William Marshal and his contemporaries were first augmented, and then wholly superseded, by plate armour – giving rise to the burnished suits of elaborate, full-plate worn by knights from the mid-fourteenth century onwards. The extraordinary level of protection afforded by later medieval armour meant that the type of slashing or concussive weaponry popular in Earl William’s heyday as a tournament champion came to be replaced by sharper-pointed swords, daggers and spears, capable of targeting and piercing vulnerable joints. Heavier armour, in turn, produced the need for larger and stronger warhorses.
All of this changed the way in which knights fought, but it also significantly increased the cost of equipment. Even towards the end of William Marshal’s life, the expense associated with becoming a knight and then maintaining that station was prohibitive. This process of inflation, combined with the gradual shift in emphasis from the warrior aristocracy of the eleventh and twelfth centuries to the land-holding nobility of the thirteenth (of which Earl William was himself a part), made knighthood an increasingly rarefied profession. Before long, the expenditure and responsibilities involved left many wondering why they should bother to become knights when they could be better served by holding and administering estates as members of what would later be termed the ‘gentry’.
In the decades that followed Marshal’s death, England faced an increasingly severe shortage of knights. The crown took to imposing fines (known as ‘distraint’) upon aristocrats who refused to join the warrior class, but it also had to lower the numbers of knights that lords and barons were expected to put into the field at times of war. Estimates indicate that there were approximately 4,000 knights in England in the later twelfth century; this total had fallen to 1,250 by the end of the thirteenth. This drastic reduction was partially reversed under Henry III’s militaristic son and heir, King Edward I – known to history as the ‘Hammer of the Scots’ – but even he was forced to use a system of direct payment for knightly service by contract.
Yet, though the number of knights fell, aristocratic culture harkened back to the supposed ‘golden age of chivalry’ witnessed during William Marshal’s lifetime. Notions of shame and honour came to hold even greater importance, while the lavish pageantry of tournaments and jousts reached its apogee in the fourteenth century, under King Edward III. His famous son, Edward the Black Prince, sought to rejuvenate the ideals of chivalry by introducing a new elite cadre of knights – the Order of the Garter – and the French followed suit with their Order of the Star. But this could not arrest the slow decline and eventual disappearance of the knightly class in the centuries that followed. The mounted, armour-clad warriors like William Marshal, who had done so much to mould the history of medieval Europe, would have no part to play in the dawn of modernity.
WILLIAM MARSHAL: IN LIFE AND LEGEND
In many respects, William Marshal was the archetypal medieval knight. His qualities epitomised, perhaps even defined, those valued in late twelfth- and early- thirteenth-century Western European aristocratic culture. His storied career stood as testament to what knights could achieve: the heights to which they could rise and the extent to which they could shape history. In spite of Archbishop Stephen’s reputed pronouncement at his funeral, Marshal was not the only great knight of his generation. Other warriors, such as William des Barres and William des Roches, could match his prowess and reputation. Yet they never reached such astonishing heights. William Marshal’s life represents both a model of knightly experience and a unique example of unparalleled success, for in the end, his story transcended the normal boundaries of his warrior class.
William’s remarkable achievements can be explained, to an extent, by his personal qualities. In the military arena, his unusual physical strength and resilience lent him a natural advantage. Masterful horsemanship helped him to dominate the tournament circuit, while the experience of war gleaned under leaders such as Henry II and Richard the Lionheart enabled Marshal to emerge as a highly skilled battlefield commander and strategist. Unlike many of his knightly contemporaries, William was able to temper his martial ferocity in the setting of the royal court. He possessed a rare ability to exercise ironclad emotional restraint and knew enough of politics to avoid confrontation, and engage in a measure of calculated machination.
William’s behaviour was also informed (and, at times, conditioned) by the precepts of chivalry. But his actions did not always conform to our modern fantasies of knightly gallantry. Marshal lived in an age when the public display of prowess and the acquisition of honourable reputation were paramount. He was naturally materialistic – especially in his younger days – because visible wealth served to affirm status in his society. Similarly, his decision to pursue an honourable course of action was often grounded in an acute sense of social expectation. William’s capacity for steadfast loyalty might be laudable, but it was also self-serving, in that it safeguarded his good name and allowed him to avoid the potent stigma of public shame.
Marshal was a driven and deeply ambitious individual. At certain moments, the surviving evidence allows us glimpses of his abiding appetite for wealth and power, or his capacity to promote his own interests. Before the summer of 1188, William lobbied King Henry II incessantly for rewards. During Richard the Lionheart’s reign, he danced around the issue of his relationship with John so as to preserve his claim to Leinster. And in 1205 Marshal equivocated over the oath of homage to King Philip Augustus, hoping to protect his rights to the Norman lordship of Longueville. Even so, these moments have to be balanced against William’s unusual willingness to risk his own fortunes in service to the crown: most notably, the faithfulness shown to Henry II in 1189; and his defining decision to support the future King Henry III in 1216.
By the end of his long life, contemporaries recognised the scope of William’s achievements – not least his defence of the Angevin dynasty and defeat of the French. For many, he was the peerless knight; Lancelot brought to life. Marshal seems to have served as an inspiration for writers of medieval Arthurian literature. Indeed, the Comte Guillaume (Count William) to whom the elusive, but highly influential, Marie de France dedicated her translation of Aesop’s Fables may well have been William Marshal. It is little wonder that, while grounded in fact, his biography, the History of William Marshal, was fashioned in Anglo-French verse to resemble an Arthurian epic. With the fracturing of the Marshal dynasty, however, that text fell out of circulation, and the associated celebration of his exploits gradually subsided. By the end of the Middle Ages, the History had been forgotten and William became merely another name in the dusty annals of the distant past.
William Marshal never dropped out of memory entirely. He appeared in Shakespeare’s play King John as the minor figure Pembroke – though the text borrowed little from historical fact. In the early modern era, he was recalled as a leading figure behind the forging of Magna Carta and a champion of the royalist cause. When the Palace of Westminster was rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1834, a special Fine Arts Commission (chaired by Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert) was established to coordinate its decoration. A series of statues of those involved in the drafting of Magna Carta were commissioned for use in the House of Lords, and on the advice of the historian Henry Hallam, William Marshal – as a ‘a very eminent man’ – was given a prominent place, to the left of the royal throne: quite literally represented as the figure behind the crown.
Yet even then, only the bones of William’s career were known from references in medieval chronicles and royal documents. The human story – his rise from obscurity to the highest office in the land, the ideals that conditioned his behaviour, and the bonds of service and friendship that defined his life – had been lost. The wheel only began to turn when Paul Meyer walked into Sotheby’s on 6 February 1861 and stumbled upon the intriguing ‘Norman-French chronicle on English Affairs (in Verse)’. The rediscovery of the biography brought its hero back into the light, but still today he remains largely unknown outside academic circles. With the 800th anniversaries of the great battle of Lincoln and William Marshal’s death approaching, this once fêted figure surely deserves wider recognition.
William died in a different England to the one in which he had been born, but it was a country that he had been instrumental in shaping. For centuries thereafter, England would be ruled by kings supported, but also checked, by a warrior aristocracy. And the ideals that they hammered out on the tournament field, in the politics of the court, in the blood of civil war and, ultimately, in Magna Carta, form the basis of the principles by which much of the world is now governed.