Runnymede and Lincoln Fair: A Story of the Great Charter

CHAPTER XIII
EVACUATION OF THE TOWER

IT was agreed between the Earl of Pembroke and Robert Fitzwalter that John should evacuate the Tower of London, without, however, handing it over to the barons. In fact, it was to remain in the custody of Stephen Langton till the king granted the demands of the confederate nobles; and, seeing that the Archbishop of Canterbury was a personage in whose good faith both parties might have confidence, no objections were openly made to this arrangement, though some of the royalists shook their heads and muttered discontent over their cups.

Without delay, however, John prepared to leave London for Windsor; and, forthwith, the neighbourhood of the Tower was the scene of such confusion as generally in that age prevailed when kings were about to remove from one residence to another. “When the king sets out in the morning,” says Peter of Blois, “you see multitudes of people running up and down as if they were distracted – horses rushing against horses, carriages overturning carriages, players, cooks, confectioners, mimics, dancers, barbers, all making a great noise, and an intolerable jumble of horse and foot.”

It was in the midst of this excitement and disorder that Oliver Icingla, while making ready to mount and accompany the king to Windsor, was summoned to the royal presence, and went in no joyous mood, being uncertain whether or not he might be handed over, without ceremony, to the executioner. The countenance of John, however, reassured him; and he began to hope that at length the king had been convinced that the royal cause was not likely to derive much benefit from the execution of a squire capable of wielding his sword against foes with courage and dexterity.

“Master Icingla,” began John, apparently forgetting that he had once been on the point of sending the youth to the gallows, “you know, doubtless, in what peril you have been placed by the treachery of your kinsman, Hugh de Moreville?”

Oliver bent his head to indicate that he did, and, in spite of the position in which he stood, refrained, with no small difficulty, from denouncing De Moreville as the worst of humankind for having knowingly led him into a snare.

“Nevertheless,” continued John, “I have, at the instance of the Lord Neville and William de Collingham, resolved to overlook your kinsman’s treachery, so far as you are concerned; and I expect that you will show your sense of my clemency by your zeal and activity in my service. Nay, answer not. I comprehend what you would say; but listen. William de Collingham is about to ride for Savernake to conduct my lady the queen thence to Gloucester, and you will accompany him. He has a safe-conduct, and the errand is likely to entail no danger. But he does not return, and I would fain be assured that the journey has been accomplished in safety. Wherefore my command is this, that you hasten back without delay, and bring thy report to me at Windsor. And hark you, youth,” added John, speaking in a low tone, “you, as I learn, know something of the country through which you are to pass, and have, likewise, as I hear, seen something of war in Spain and Flanders, and can guess by appearances what is going on – as regards preparations – in a country which war threatens with battles and sieges. Make the best use of your eyes wherever you pass, or wherever you halt, or wherever you lodge, and come not to me as if you had ridden blindfold through the land. Now away. Bear in mind what I have told you for your guidance, and, moreover, that a silent tongue makes a wise head.”

Much relieved by the information that his life was no longer in danger, and elated at the prospect of such an adventure as escorting a queen, even as the companion of a man who, a few weeks earlier, had been a forest outlaw, Oliver Icingla hastened to array himself for the journey, and to mount his black steed, Ayoub; and when the king, and his knights, and squires, and standard-bearers, and multitudinous attendants, rode from the Tower and emerged from the gates of London, which John was not destined again to enter, William de Collingham, mounted and armed as became a knight, but still carrying with him the iron club which had distinguished him as a man of the forest, with the young English squire riding at his right hand and a band of stout horsemen at his back, preceded the royal array and took the nearest way to Wiltshire, with the object of reaching Savernake.

“By the mass!” exclaimed Collingham, suddenly breaking the silence he had hitherto maintained since leaving London; “I much marvel that the king, old and experienced as he is, and so much accustomed to deal with men – both priests and laymen – can credit the possibility of Stephen Langton restoring the Tower.”

“And wherefore not?” asked Oliver, but with less surprise than might have been expected under the circumstances. “Is not my lord archbishop a man of honour and probity?”

“Tush!” replied Collingham, impatiently. “Stephen Langton is, no doubt, a good and honest man, as times go, and eager enough for the public weal. But he is heart and soul with Fitzwalter and De Vesci, and is either dictating their measures or doing their bidding. In neither case, credit me, will he ever again admit the king to London, save as the slave or tool of the confederates; and I see clearly that John has pride enough left never to come on such terms. By the mass, we are only at the beginning of this struggle; for I know that the king – albeit he seems now in their toils – will yet lead the confederates a dance on which they are far from counting; and, frankly, so far as they are concerned, I should not grieve on that account; for I sadly doubt their sincerity, albeit they bawl so loudly upon justice and righteousness.”

“What, sir knight,” asked Oliver, “deem you so lightly of their sincerity?”

“By my faith, I do,” replied Collingham, bluntly; “and only give them credit for having a very sharp eye after their own interest. Never a word should we have heard from them of old charters and ancient laws but for the question of the scutages, with which the king was, doubtless, inclined to deal more severely than was prudent or politic.”

“Explain more fully,” said Oliver, who was interested in such conversation, and anxious to comprehend the merits of the controversy.

“By my faith, it is simple enough,” resumed Collingham, who, however, it ought to be remembered, regarded several of the oligarchy as personal enemies, and was by no means likely to do full justice to their motives. “In the reign of King Henry the barons commuted their personal services for money, and, as they at first relished the system, and the scutages were moderate, they paid without trouble. But when John came to the throne the barons found that the scutages were vastly enhanced, and, what was still more, they had either to pay them, or found their estates seized in default thereof; and so now they want so to manage matters as neither to render the personal services nor to pay the scutages, and every one of them to be king in his own territory. Hence all this cry about righteousness and freedom, with which they have bribed the clergy and fooled the citizens.”

“But you hardly deem the struggle likely to end to their advantage?”

“No, by rood and mass! but, nevertheless, it may end to the advantage of the country, as many such contests have done before. But here, as my memory recalls to me, is the path which we have to pursue; and, as we part from the king for the time being, I take leave to thank the saints that you are safe and at liberty, and neither on gallows nor in dungeon; for, by the bones of Becket, you, Master Icingla, have had a narrow escape.”

“And so hath King John,” observed Oliver, quietly.

“The king!” exclaimed Collingham, starting with surprise. “How, sir squire, has the king had a narrow escape?”

“Even in this wise,” answered Oliver, calmly. “If he had sent an Icingla to the gallows for the treachery of a Norman lord, not ten men of English race would have drawn their swords in defence of his crown.”

Collingham smiled as if amused; and they rode on.

CHAPTER XIV
A HEROINE IN DANGER

IT must not be supposed that the England of King John bore much more resemblance to the England of Queen Victoria than the London of Constantine Fitzarnulph to the London of our own day. It was a country with much waste land, immense and widely-extending forests, chiefly of beech and oak trees, in whose branches the hawk built, and from whose branches dropped acorns, on which herds of swine daily fed; and the forests were frequented by the bear, the wild boar, the wolf, and the wild bull, and not seldom tenanted by men without the pale of the law, and at war with society. Of course the aspect of the country was picturesque. Here was a Norman castle, there a Saxon hall; here a flourishing walled town, there a poor hamlet; here a rich monastery, there the cell of some hermit – the entire population not exceeding two millions. In fact, the eastern counties, from Lincoln to Sussex, were dreary swamps, almost undrained: and the whole of that once wealthy and great province beyond the Humber, known as “Northumbria,” though gradually recovering, still bore terrible traces of the devastation wrought by the Conqueror.

It was, however, through the more fertile and less rugged part of England that William de Collingham and Oliver Icingla took their way, and for days rode on through bridle-roads which are now railways, and through forests which are now corn-fields, and past castle-protected hamlets which are now considerable towns. Nor were there many signs either in the appearance of the country or in the manner of the inhabitants to indicate that national affairs had reached a crisis which made civil war too probable. The herdsman drove out his cattle, the shepherd his sheep, and the swineherd his grunting herd; the charcoal-burner his cart, the waggoner his team of oxen; and the peasantry, in their smock-frocks, girt round the loins, and barely reaching to the knee, and their heads covered with a kind of hood – some of them with shoes and stockings, others with bare feet – went about their usual occupations as if peace had smiled on the land. Once the knight and squire met a pilgrim from the Holy Land carrying a palm-branch to deposit on the altar of his parish church, and other wayfarers whose errands, to judge by their looks, were equally peaceful.

 
“Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,
An abbot on an ambling pad;
Sometimes a curly shepherd lad,
Or long-hair’d page in crimson clad.”
 

But it seemed as if the mandate sent throughout the land to lords and warriors to join the baronial standard had not been readily responded to, for hardly one band of armed men crossed their path. In fact, most people, except those who were very nearly concerned with the dispute between the king and the barons, were little disposed to involve themselves in a contest which was so problematical in its issue, and were rather inclined, so long as the contending parties left them at peace, to look quietly on, and await the result of a struggle which, they felt strongly, was too serious for them to take part in unless as a matter of necessity.

It was a warm day in the month of June, and the sun shone bright on woodland and plain, when Collingham and Oliver approached the royal palace in the forest of Savernake, where the wife of King John was then residing, and suddenly found themselves in the vicinity of a merry party of ladies, with hounds and hawks, and attended by falconers, huntsmen, and pages, and several men-at-arms to guard them from any danger that might present itself. The knight and the squire halted to survey the party and watch the sport; and, in truth, the temptation was well-nigh irresistible; for what with their rich dresses, their mettled palfreys, and their equestrian grace, the dames and demoiselles, whoever they might be, were somewhat fascinating to the eye of chevaliers. But one among them arrested Collingham’s whole attention, and also, though a moment later, that of Oliver. She was a woman of thirty or thereabouts, with a fair and delicate complexion, an oval face, features of singular regularity and majesty, and a figure which, for grace and symmetry, might have compared to advantage with the finest creations of the sculptor. She wore a green habit which much became her, and a bonnet decked with plumes; and she rode, not a palfrey but a steed which, so far as spirit was concerned, seemed much fitter to have carried a warrior to battle-field than to amble with the fair being who was now restraining its fiery ardour with some difficulty, though evidently without trepidation.

“By the mass!” exclaimed Collingham, gazing very intently on this interesting personage, “I should know that face and figure. What if she were Queen Isabel?” asked he, laughing.

“On my faith!” exclaimed Oliver with enthusiasm, “she is fair and fascinating enough to be the Queen of Elfland. What if we approach nearer?”

“Nay, by no means,” replied Collingham in a jocular tone; “now that you take her for a being of another world, I have no heart to intrude into her presence, lest the fate of Young Tamlane or of Actæon should befall me for a lighter fault.”

“Actæon?” said Oliver, inquiringly. “I remember the story of Young Tamlane being carried away by the Queen of Faerie and her ladies into Elfland, and of his having a narrow escape of being devoured when the foul fiend visited that region to claim his tithe of the inhabitants. But,” continued Oliver, musingly, “the name of the other dwells not in my memory. I pray you, sir knight, to inform me what manner of man he was, and what wondrous adventure befell him as you hint. Name you him Actæon?” added he, inquiringly.

“Yes. Heard you never of Actæon, of whom ancient writers tell a marvellous adventure, which I lately heard my Lord Neville relate when at the Tower? Well, be it known to you that this Actæon was a brave and accomplished knight, who loved dogs and the chase above all things; and one day, being eager in pursuing a stag, he came to a large meadow, surrounded, like this before us, with high trees, in which was a fountain where the goddess of chastity, whom they call Diana, was bathing with her nymphs, and that so suddenly that he was too far to retreat ere they were aware of his approach; and the goddess, to punish him for what was his misfortune and not his fault, cried out, ‘Actæon, whoever sent thee here has no great love for thee; and for the outrage thou hast committed I will make thee perform a penance. I therefore change thee into the form of the stag thou hast this day hunted.’ And,” added Collingham, “he was instantly transformed into a stag.”

“Ah,” said Oliver, gravely, “I now remember me of having, in the days when I was being taught grammar and letters in the company of Constantine Fitzarnulph, heard or read something of this Actæon of whom you speak, and also how other goddesses besides Diana were wont to change men whom they disliked into beasts, and women into birds; and I know full well that many believe that such things may have taken place when the world was full of pagans and idolaters; but, for my part, I hold such stories as mere fables, and such as ought not to weigh with a brave man who holds the Christian faith; and as touching the dame before us – be she goddess or Queen of Elfland – I must own she is parlous handsome, and bewitching to look upon.”

“I gainsay not that,” said Collingham, gazing at the person alluded to; “but,” added he, “methinks that anyhow the fair lady has mistaken her strength of wrist and hand when she mounted a steed which peradventure Cœur de Lion had found less uneasy under him than he relished.”

“In good faith,” observed Oliver, gravely, “I cannot but deem that she is in more peril than she fancies.”

At that moment, however, the hounds gave tongue, and the eyes both of knight and squire were attracted by a heron which arose from a sedgy pool. Immediately the lady whom they had been so attentively observing let loose her falcon, and, followed by the party, went off in pursuit, every eye directed towards the soaring heron and the wheeling falcon. Sharing the excitement, Collingham and Oliver Icingla set spurs to their horses and followed, but at such a distance as not to attract the observation of the party; and, while the ladies slackened their pace and reined in their steeds in a broad, grassy plain to watch the sport, the knight and squire halted at a spot where the plain was bounded by a rivulet, with steep and precipitous banks, haunted by the eagle, and the beaver, and the otter. And exciting was the spectacle which met their eye. Ascending in circles till they became mere specks, and almost disappeared in the sky, the heron and falcon excited the interest of the spectators to the highest degree, till, locked in a death struggle, they dropped screaming, leaving a track of plumes in the sky, and came down struggling almost on the head of the fair horsewoman, the falcon striking his claws into the heron’s neck, almost under the feet of her horse. It was enough. The steed instantly became more refractory than before, bounded, plunged, and, wheeling round, broke away in spite of her efforts, and rushed wildly, with outstretched neck and tail erect, towards the most precipitous part of the bank on which Collingham and Oliver had taken their station. Both uttered a cry of horror. But the idea of rendering aid appeared so hopeless that Oliver could only mutter a prayer for Heaven to interpose. Collingham’s presence of mind, however, did not desert him. Leaping from his charger at a bound, he placed himself at the root of a tree that grew near the verge of the precipice, and the steed came on, snorting fire. One chance only intervened between the lady and destruction. It was an awful moment for all concerned. But, even in this emergency, such was Collingham’s nerve that his heart was steady and his hand firm. One bound, one grasp, one tremendous effort such as might have torn an oak-tree from the ground, and the steed, arrested in its headlong and terrible course, was thrown back on its haunches, and next moment the lady, saved from the danger which threatened her, was lifted by Oliver Icingla from its struggling limbs and laid gently on the grass, unhurt, but fainting from agitation and terror.

At this moment the pages, falconers, and demoiselles who formed the hunting party came gradually up; and, as means were taken to restore the fainting fair one to consciousness, Oliver, with much curiosity, asked a falconer —

“Who may she be?”

“Why, young gentleman,” replied the falconer, looking rather suspiciously at his questioner, “I could have sworn that was a question which thou hadst no occasion to ask. Marry, I’ll scarce credit but that thy comrade knew better when he put his life so freely in peril to save hers. Would he have done as much to save a milkmaid, thinkest thou?”

“Mayhap the knight would, and mayhap he does know somewhat of the lady he has rescued,” remarked Oliver, not without exhibiting impatience that he, albeit a young warrior who had fought in Castile and Flanders, should thus be played with. “I can answer only for myself and my own knowledge, sir falconer; and I tell thee, on my faith, that I, on my part, am ignorant who the lady is.”

“Why, then, I will tell thee, sir squire,” said the falconer, eyeing Oliver with an air of good-humoured superiority; “she is no less a person than our Lady the Queen.”

CHAPTER XV
ISABEL OF ANGOULÊME

IT was not, as has been mentioned, under the very happiest auspices that King John, in the autumn of 1200, celebrated his marriage with Isabel of Angoulême, at Bordeaux, when he was rather more than double her age, and with a reputation and temper decidedly the worse for the wear.

Isabel, however, had just the kind of imagination to be dazzled by the brilliancy of her position as wife of a man on whose head had been placed, not only the crown of England, but the coronal of golden roses which formed the ducal diadem of Normandy, and who, moreover, was heir to the provinces over which the old Counts of Anjou and the old Dukes of Guienne had reigned with power and authority. At first, therefore, she was highly gratified with the fortunate accident which had thrown her in King John’s way, and substituted him, as a husband, in the place of the Count de la Marche; and, after the royal pair came to England, matters went pleasantly enough for years, so far as could be judged by appearances, and Isabel became the mother of two sons and three daughters – Henry, the eldest of her children, being a native of Winchester, where he first saw the light in 1207, while his father was pursued by the enmity of the Pope, and threatened by the hostility of the French king and the Anglo-Norman barons.

So far life went smoothly enough, to all appearance, with the King and Queen of England. But ere long their domestic affairs assumed a much less satisfactory aspect. In fact, Isabel did not find her position quite the bed of roses she had probably anticipated when she consented, for the sake of a crown, to give the Count de la Marche the slip. With a temper which became worse under the influence of trials and reverses, John not only proved a very disagreeable companion to the young lady whom he had carried off, so much to the mortification of the Continental magnate to whom she was betrothed, but he involved himself with women of various ranks, whose memories are still preserved in chronicle or tradition – from Constance, Countess of Chester, to the miller’s wife of Charlton, whose frailty is annually commemorated by the Horn Fair, at the Feast of St. Luke – in a series of vagrant amours, which, besides being of a scandalous kind, could not fail to wound the queen’s vanity and alienate her regard. Moreover, the splendour which had tempted her was fast disappearing. The coronal of Normandy was gone; the crown of England was in great danger of following. It really must have seemed that the glory was departing from the House of Plantagenet; and, after many musings and reflections, Isabel, doubtless, began to think very pensively of the sacrifice she had made to unite her fate with one who showed so little respect for her feelings. Unfortunately, she was not a woman to act with much discretion and dignity in very trying circumstances; and the serious domestic quarrels of John and Isabel gave rise to rumours and stories which were far from raising the king’s character for humanity, or the queen’s reputation as a wife, in the opinion of the world. “His queen,” says the chronicler, speaking of John, “hates him, and is hated by him, she being an evil-minded woman, often found guilty of crimes, upon which the king seized her paramours, and had them strangled with a rope on her bed.”

It is to be hoped, for Isabel’s sake, that this story was merely the invention of an enemy. But little doubt can be entertained that the domestic quarrels were serious. Indeed, during the year when John submitted to Rome, matters reached such a stage between the royal pair, that the queen, then twenty-seven years of age, was consigned to the castle of Gloucester, and there kept, by command of her husband, in safe custody as a captive. A reconciliation, however, did take place, and there was some prospect of a better state of feeling in future. But when the scandal about John and Maude, the daughter of Robert Fitzwalter, reached the queen’s ears, the matrimonial feud was renewed; and Isabel, almost frantic with jealous rage, declined to see her husband’s face. Subsequently, however, a second reconciliation was brought about; and, after some correspondence, a meeting between the king and queen had been appointed to take place, when the sudden seizure of London by the confederate barons threw all John’s plans into confusion, and forced him not only to postpone his visit to Isabel till a more convenient season, but to take measures for her security, lest she and her son, Prince Henry, should fall into the hands of the barons, and be used as instruments to complete his ruin.

It was at Savernake that Isabel was residing while the barons assembled at Stamford, and marched, by Brackley, and Northampton, and Bedford, to London. Only vague and indistinct intelligence as to their movements reached her in her retreat; and, buoyed up by the king’s confident assurance that he would crush any attempts at insurrection, she delighted her soul with visions of reigning as a queen in reality, and occupied her time with repairing the palace of Savernake, and appears to have meditated housekeeping on a very extensive scale, since she added kitchens with fires for roasting oxen whole. It was not pleasant to be disturbed in the midst of such projects by news that her husband’s crown was at stake; and, when Isabel had been conveyed home after her fright and her escape, and sufficiently restored to be informed that a knight and squire sent by the king were awaiting an audience to deliver a message, she felt instinctively that something was wrong; she wrung her hands, and exclaimed to her ladies —

“My heart misgives me; I fear me they bring tidings of woe.”

But, at the same time, her impatience to know all made her anxious to receive them without delay; and, having arrayed herself so as to appear to the best advantage – for her vanity as woman was quite as strong as her ambition as queen – she ordered them to be conducted to her presence.

It was in a spacious chamber, royally adorned after the fashion of the age, and magnificent, according to the ideas of that generation, that Isabel of Angoulême, seated on an elevated chair resembling a throne, with two of her ladies behind her, received the knight and the squire. Her taste was displayed in her dress, which was such as to set off her natural charms. She wore a green robe, lined with sarcenet, and girdled round the waist with a belt sparkling with precious stones, and a collar of gold round her neck, which was graceful as the swan’s, and her hair, not concealed, as that of ladies then usually was, with kerchief or veil, but inclosed in a caul of golden network, and ornamented with an elegant chaplet. Her bearing was majestic in the extreme, and as she sat formally waiting their coming, she looked every inch a queen. But no sooner did Collingham approach, and bend his knee, than she stared as if she had seen a ghost, and fluttered perceptibly.

“William de Collingham!” said she, after a pause, during which she seemed to examine her boots, which were curiously embroidered in circles round the ankles, “I deem that you were in exile or – ”

“Or dead, you would have added, madam,” said Collingham, smiling. “However, I am alive and in England, as you perceive, and, let me add, wholly at your service.”

Isabel’s colour went and came so as to make Oliver Icingla look and wonder; but the knight took no notice of her agitation. As if to relieve her from the embarrassment which she appeared to feel, he drew forth the king’s letter, and, with great respect, presented it on bended knee. Isabel took it, tore it open, ran her eye over the contents, and uttered a cry of disappointment.

“Alas! alas!” exclaimed she, looking the picture of distress, “I have been deluding myself with the hope of receiving a far different message. It was but yesterday, as it seems to me, that my lord the king wrote these words: – ‘I have now made peace with Philip of France, and I have the means of putting mine enemies under my feet, and making myself both king and lord in England;’” and, as Isabel repeated the words used by the king, she wept, and looked so lovely in tears that both the knight and squire were deeply moved.

“Madam,” said Collingham in a voice expressive of sympathy, “be not cast down by adversity, but take comfort. Fortune is much given to change. To-day she favours the king’s enemies; to-morrow she may declare for the king. But anyhow, royal lady, it is best to meet the future with a brave heart; and, for the present, the king deems it expedient that your safety and the safety of your son should be insured by a removal to Gloucester, which is a strong and loyal city, and to which I have orders to conduct you; so that, tide what may, you may feel that you and the prince are secure against the king’s enemies and your own.”

“Gloucester is a place associated in my mind with no pleasant memories,” said the queen with a sigh; “but it is vain to strive against fate, and I submit. I will be prepared to set out on the morrow, sir knight. Oh, vanity of vanities!” exclaimed she, sighing more deeply; “all is vanity and vexation of spirit.”

And, sinking back in her chair, Isabel of Angoulême looked the picture of disappointment.

Next day Isabel of Angoulême and her son, Prince Henry, left Savernake under the escort of William de Collingham and Oliver Icingla, and journeyed by rapid stages to Gloucester, a city so strongly fortified and garrisoned that the queen might, within its walls, congratulate herself on the fact that there at least she was, in some degree, secure against any attempts on the part of the baronial party to interfere with her personal liberty, or any attempt on their part to get possession of her son.