Acknowledgements
Writing my third book, the first for Pen & Sword, has been an incredible experience and I would like to thank everyone who has helped and encouraged me throughout the process. I would like to thank the staff at Pen & Sword, especially my editors Claire Hopkins and Danna Messer for giving me the opportunity to write this book and for their continuous support.
I would particularly like to thank Amy Licence, whose help, advice and friendship has been invaluable to me in my journey to become an author. I am also grateful to my fellow authors, Kristie Dean, Annie Whitehead and Susan Higginbotham, who have offered advice and encouragement throughout. Thanks to the wonderful Anna Belfrage and Elizabeth Chadwick, for all the little messages of support and discussions about our favourite women throughout history. And thank you to Darren Baker for allowing me a sneak peek at his latest book, The Two Eleanors, and for clearing up a couple of queries for me.
I owe a great debt to Rich Price, owner of the Facebook group King John’s Letters, who continues to do an incredible job of following John’s itinerary and transcribing his Patent and Close Rolls – and with whom I have had various discussions about John and his life, and his barons. Thank you, Rich, for all your help and for being a wonderful sounding board and fount of information on John’s reign. I would also like to thank Rachael Rogers of Abergavenny Museum for all the chats we’ve had over the years about Matilda de Braose, chats that helped this book become a reality. Thank you, Rachael, for all the wonderful support you have always shown me, and to artist Frances Baines and Abergavenny Museum for allowing me to use the drawing of the Christmas Dinner at Abergavenny Castle. I am also grateful to Dean Irwin, whose knowledge and insights of the period and frequent suggestions of further reading have been invaluable to me.
Writing can be a lonely experience, you spend your time reading books for research, or sitting, staring at the computer screen, trying to think of something to write. But social media has changed all that, there are always friends just a ‘click’ away to give you a diversion or encouragement. I would therefore like to thank the readers of my blog, History … the Interesting Bits for their wonderful support and feedback. A special thank you goes, too, to my friends in the online community, whose amusing anecdotes and memes have given me that boost when I needed it, particularly Karrie Stone, Tim Byard-Jones, Karen Clark, Geanine Teramani-Cruz, Anne Marie Bouchard, Harry Basnett, Derek Birks and every one of my Facebook friends and Twitter followers. Also, the online author community has proved invaluable to me. So, I would like to extend a special ‘thank you’ to Mike Jones, Julian Humphreys, Nathen Amin, S.J.A. Turney, Tony Riches, Sarah Bryson, Matthew Harffy, Dr Janina Ramirez, Giles Kristian, Justin Hill, Mary Anne Yard, Paula Lofting, Samantha Wilcoxson, Bev Newman, Stephanie Churchill and Prue Batten for all your support and encouragement with this book and the previous ones.
And thank you to the various historical sites I have visited, including the British Library, Doncaster Museum, Conisbrough Castle, Lewes and Pevensey Castles, Lincoln Castle and Cathedral, and all the wonderful staff who have been happy to talk about all things Magna Carta. I would like to include some ‘thank yous’ to those who supported the release of my first two books, Heroines of the Medieval World and Silk and the Sword: The Women of the Norman Conquest. Particular thanks have to go to Sasha and Gill at Lindum Books for hosting my author talks and being so supportive of this local author and to Victoria, Nicola (no ‘h’) and everyone at Gainsborough Old Hall, for hosting my book signings and being my place of refuge when I need to get away from the computer.
Thanks go to Kristie Dean, Anne Marie Bouchard and Jayne Smith for their kind permission to use their wonderful photos, and to Daniel Gleave for taking a special trip to Westminster Abbey, just to get a photo for my book! A thank you must also go to my friends closer to home, particularly Sharon Gleave, Jill Gaskell, Di Richardson, and all my local friends, for their wonderful support and for dragging me out for a coffee every once in a while. I reserve a special thanks to my family, especially my sister, Suzanne, whose support has been incredible and very much appreciated, and my brother Stephen. And to my mum and dad for all their love and encouragement, and for their own passion for history. A huge thank you also goes to my research assistant and son, Lewis Connolly, who has travelled to various wonderful places with me in the process of making this book a reality and has turned into a fabulous sounding-board for my ideas and arguments. And to my husband, James, thank you for putting up with all the history talks. I could not have done it without all of you.
I also owe a debt of gratitude to the great historians who have gone before me, who gallantly edited and translated the great chronicles of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, so that they are accessible and readable for all of us who have an interest in the period.
Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of this book. However, any errors that may occur are entirely my own.
Here is a law which is above the King and which even he must not break. This reaffirmation of a supreme law and its expression in a general charter is the great work of Magna Carta; and this alone justifies the respect in which men have held it.
Winston Churchill.1
Magna Carta is probably the most significant charter in English history and, today, its importance extends beyond England’s shores, holding a special place in the constitutions of many countries around the world. Despite its age, Magna Carta’s iconic status is a more modern phenomena, seen in the influence it has had on nations and organisations throughout the globe, such as the United States of America and the United Nations, who have used it as the basis for their own 1791 Bill of Rights and the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, respectively.
After more than 800 years, there are only four original copies of the 1215 charter which remain in existence. The best preserved of these four is thought to have arrived at Salisbury Cathedral within days of it being issued on 15 June 1215 and is housed in an interactive exhibition in the cathedral’s Chapter House. A second is owned by Lincoln Cathedral, and is now housed in a new, purpose built, state-of-the-art underground vault in the heart of Lincoln Castle. The remaining two are owned by the British Library in London, one of which was badly damaged by fire in 1731 and has deteriorated over the years; however, the other is on display in the Treasures exhibition, a magnet to visitors from all over the world, who wish to see the iconic Magna Carta (for a full transcript, see Appendix A).2
Originally called the Charter of Liberties, it was renamed Magna Carta, or Great Charter, in 1217, when the Charter of the Forest (see Appendix C) was issued. Sealed (not signed) in the meadow at Runnymede in June 1215, the legacy of Magna Carta, down through the centuries, has enjoyed a much greater impact on history and the people of the world than it did at the time of its creation. As a peace treaty between rebellious barons and the infamous King John, it was an utter failure, thrown out almost before the wax seals had hardened, not worth the parchment it was written on. The subsequent armed rebellion saw a French prince invited to claim the English throne – if he could wrest it from John’s hands – and John spent the last year of his life clinging desperately to his crown and lands. Just fifteen months after Magna Carta was sealed, King John was on his deathbed; he died in his forty-ninth year, at Newark Castle on the night of 18/19 October 1216. His 9-year-old son, Henry III, inherited a country mired in civil war, with half of it occupied by a French army.
The one good thing going for Henry III was that he was so young; his youth protected him from any association with his father’s actions and allowed many rebel barons to see a way back into the king’s peace. They could submit to Henry, where they would never have sought peace with John. The second advantage that Henry had was in the regent appointed to take charge of the country, while Henry was still too young to take on the personal rule of England: William Marshal. The first Earl of Pembroke was a man of reputed integrity, earning him the moniker of ‘the greatest knight’ from historians and novelists alike. One of Marshal’s first acts as regent was to reissue Magna Carta and it would be issued again several times in the thirteenth century and beyond. It was revived again in the seventeenth century when the king was in conflict with the senior men of the land, who invoked Magna Carta in both the 1628 Petition of Right and the 1641 Grand Remonstrance. The English Civil War and Charles I’s execution followed.
Of the sixty-three clauses, two stand out as the guarantors of liberty and the law, not only in England, but around the world. Clause 39 ensures that ‘no man shall be taken or imprisoned or deprived or outlawed or exiled or in any way ruined, nor will we go or send against him, except by the lawful judgement of his peers or by the law of the land.’3 This guarantee of justice for all may well have been inspired by John’s treatment of Matilda de Braose, wife of William de Braose, Lord of Bamber, who was one of John’s foremost supporters in the early years of his reign, but later fell afoul of the king and saw his family hunted and hounded, almost to destruction. This clause is supported by the one following, clause 49, which states categorically; ‘To no one will we sell, to no one will we deny or delay right or justice.’4
The Magna Carta of 1215 reflects the needs and events of the time in which it was issued; an England on the brink of civil war, disaffected barons demanding redress, the church and cities such as London looking for protection. It was drawn up by barons looking for reparation and legal protection from a king whose word could no longer be trusted, who meted out arbitrary punishments and heavy taxes. It was not a charter that was intended to form the protection and legal rights of every man, woman and child in the land; though it has come to be seen as just that in subsequent centuries. Indeed, the common man does not get a mention, and of the sixty-three clauses, only eight of them mention women as a gender.
Only one clause uses the word femina – woman – and that is a clause which restricts the rights and powers of a woman, rather than upholding them. Clause 54 states: ‘No one shall be taken or imprisoned upon the appeal of a woman for the death of anyone except her husband.’5 At first glance, this has to be the most anti-feminist statement ever made, a woman was not allowed to give evidence of a murder unless it was her own husband who was killed. However, the barons believed they had justification for inserting this clause. In a time when a man had the right to face his accuser in trial by combat to prove his innocence, this right would be automatically removed if his accuser was a woman; women were not allowed to use force of arms. A female accuser was seen as being able to circumvent the law, and therefore the law was open to abuse. It was not just that a woman may bear false witness and the accused would have no right of redress in battle; it was also that a woman may be manipulated by her menfolk to make an accusation, knowing that she would not be required to back it up by feat of arms. Whereas her husband, father or brother may have been challenged to do just that.
However, while it is possible to see why this clause was written, it does not deny the fact that women were treated so differently and denied the fundamental right to justice simply because of their gender. This clause was used on 5 July 1215, when King John ordered the release of Everard de Mildeston, an alleged murderer. Everard had been accused of the murder of her son, Richard, by Seina Chevel. The charge was therefore forbidden under the terms of Magna Carta, and the accused released.6
It is, of course, true that many of the clauses of Magna Carta refer to people in general, rather than just men, and that women are included in such clauses, as well as in the eight which refer to them specifically. However, the significance of women in the Magna Carta story is not just their limited inclusion in the charter itself, but also in their experiences of the unsettled times in which they lived, in their influence on the charter and in their use of its clauses to exact recompence for injustices they have experienced. The political crisis which saw the issuing of Magna Carta, and the civil war which followed, was not just significant to the barons involved, but to their wives and families, tenants and retainers. The conflict tore families apart as they took sides in the struggle and saw more than one baron change sides mid-crisis. Wives and daughters were caught in the middle, often torn by divided loyalties; between their birth family and the family into which they had married; between their fathers and their husbands. For instance, Matilda Marshal was the eldest daughter of William Marshal, a man known for his staunch loyalty to the crown, but she was married to Hugh Bigod, son of Roger, second Earl of Norfolk, one of the leaders of baronial opposition; Roger and Hugh were both named among the twenty-five barons (see Appendix B) appointed to ensure that John adhered to the terms of Magna Carta. Some of the clauses are specific to the people on the political stage in 1215. Clause 59 of Magna Carta, for instance, refers to two particular women, two of the sisters of Alexander II, King of Scots, who had been held hostage by King John since 1209. John had promised to find husbands for the two princesses, preferably within the royal family. However, the marriages had never materialised and, six years on, the young women were now in their twenties, and still unmarried.
It behoves us to remember that John was not unique; in many ways he was a typical medieval king. John’s story and, indeed, his very character, has been shaped and reshaped through the distance of time. Eight hundred years of re-examining King John has left few with the impression that he was a man of impeccable character. However, was he really as bad as he has been portrayed? Kings before and after could be just as ruthless, if not more so. And yet, John is vilified and labelled ‘Bad King John’, probably for eternity. Nevertheless, he did manage to hold onto his throne to the very end; and despite his travails, he did retain the loyalty of a number of high-profile barons, including William Marshal and Nicholaa de la Haye.
Matilda Marshal, Nicholaa de la Haye and Matilda de Braose are three of the best known, non-royal women of the era, but they were by no means alone. Ladies of Magna Carta serves to demonstrate how women influenced – and were influenced by – Magna Carta, and how they were a central part of the struggle to bring about the Great Charter, and to ensure its clauses were adhered to by the king. On the whole, it is within the family environments of these women, that we can see the effects of Magna Carta, and the crisis of which it was a part; in the marriage alliances and family loyalties. As a consequence, I have chosen to present the ladies within the context of their families; the English royal family, the Scottish royals, the Marshals, Warennes, Braoses, etc. Although some women have a chapter to themselves, it is hoped that placing them within their families will help to demonstrate the extent of the influence of Magna Carta and its effect on the family. (I apologise in advance for the number of Isabels and Isabellas in the book and hope to avoid confusion by clearly identifying their family origins and using different forms of the name where I can).
For ease of reference, you will find the full wording of the 1215 Magna Carta, the 1217 Charter of the Forest, and a list of the Twenty-Five Enforcers of Magna Carta in the Appendices at the end of the book. I have chosen to include the original wording of each charter, rather than subsequent versions, but will mention, where necessary, if events and actions have been influenced by the later versions, rather than the original.
The women associated with Magna Carta did not live in a feminist bubble, and so the men in their lives formed a large part of their own stories and I have endeavoured to give you as much of their stories, their lives, their loves and their struggles, as I can, based on what is known and can be inferred from the greater story that is the history of England and the birth of Magna Carta.
To discuss the impact of Magna Carta, however, in relation to these women and their families, we must first examine the life and reign of King John and the events that led to the creation of this Great Charter …