Blood Cries Afar (37 page)

This promotes scepticism for the suggestion that John was trying to catch Alexander on his return to Scotland. The Barnwell chronicler reports that John moved into Norfolk and ‘occupied the places through which Alexander was about to return home’;
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but this does not necessarily mean that he was waiting to fight him, but might be that he was simply disrupting Alexander’s movements and denying him supplies. One lesser chronicle says that John was making blocking movements, ‘destroying bridges, immobilising boats, excavating fords, and stationing troops in ambush positions’.
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This was harassment, not engagement. And it was a failure: not only did Alexander’s army march unscathed back home, it was at this time they even managed to ransack one of John’s camps.

Thus it was on the night of 17 September at Cambridge that when John’s scouts warned him of the approaching enemy force from Windsor he once again took to his heels, ‘like a cunning traveller’ says Wendover, and went further north to Stamford having first made a clever, counter-intuitive short march southwards which wrong-footed his pursuers. No battles for John, he did what he always did, resorting to the same old policy of hugely destructive
chevauchée
. John was good at this; it may have been the one military activity he was truly comfortable with. His incendiaries scorched their way through enemy territory in Norfolk and Suffolk, destroying harvests and undermining his enemy’s economic capacity to wage war, John was at one and the same time punishing rebellious barons and trying to force them into submission, ‘burning their houses and crops and inflicting great damage to his enemies’, says Wendover, reporting the ‘King’s ‘fury’ against the lands of the Earl of Arundel, Roger Bigod, William de Huntingfield, Roger de Cresy and other barons: ‘the cruel destruction which he wrought among the houses and crops of the barons afforded a pitiable spectacle to all who saw it.’ Laying waste was a powerful diversionary weapon. As John headed rapidly out of the southern theatre of operations, the force from Windsor headed south again, to London says Wendover, gaining consolation by ‘devoting’ themselves in turn to the rapine and plunder of Cambridgeshire once again, while the Count of Nevers ensured Alexander’s safe passage past Cambridge as the Scottish King made his way to Gilbert de Gant’s small containing force at Lincoln.

On 21 September John headed west from Stamford to reach Rockingham. Before he set out for Lincoln himself to prevent a stronger baronial investiture of the castle, a tale is told of John by Matthew Paris that depicts his vengeful anger – and possible frustration – at its height. Burning his way through Oundle and the manors of the Abbey of Peterborough, John, Savary de Mauléon ‘and their nefarious accomplices perpetrated unheard of wickedness’.
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According to Paris, John ordered Savary to torch Crowland Abbey and its village while the King watched on. Savary did not carry out the order directly; instead he accepted from the fearful monks a sum of money as protection against destruction and brought this to the King. Such protection offerings, especially from monasteries, was a normal feature of the war, but John was enraged and hurled violent invective at his captain. He then picked up a torch and personally set alight the harvest fields, Paris depicting an apocalyptic figure of the King running through the flames and black smoke like a deranged demon. There may well have been method in John’s madness, for Gilbert de Gant and his men had the fear of God put into them: leaving Lincoln in a hurry, they ‘fled before his face, dreading his presence as if it were lightning’.
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John had brought relief to Windsor and now, very briefly, to Lincoln, and still he waged war with relentless energy and stamina, sometimes covering 40 miles a day. He pursued Gilbert’s force to the Isle of Axholme, terrorising the land around ‘by sword and fire’ between 26–28 September.
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In this brief time away, the Barnwell chronicler claims that Alexander had spent a couple of days at Lincoln during the King’s absence. If John had really been after Alexander, this was a missed opportunity. John’s scouts had been keeping him well informed of enemy movements, as had Alexander’s for him; so who was avoiding whom? On 30 September John dispatched Savary back to Crowland Abbey to root out ‘the king’s enemy knights and sergeants hiding in secret places’ in the surrounding area.
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Not finding his intended prey, and probably hesitant to return to his master empty-handed, Savary forced his way into the abbey and dragged from its cloister church men and a great deal of booty, bringing these back to John, who by 9 October was in King’s Lynn. The King, for his part, had kept his momentum and the fires going through early October, marching and destroying through Grimsby, Louth, Boston and Spalding. At King’s Lynn, a port whose importance was exceeded only by Boston, Southampton and London, he received a very warm welcome and was laden with gifts. From here John planned to arrange for provisioning and reinforcements for his northern campaign. He had no intention of easing up. As he indulged excessively in a feast in his honour, John may have been reasonably satisfied at the gains of his persistent and energetic counter-attack. If so, his satisfaction was fleeting – perhaps only hours, if that – and crushed beyond hope in the week that followed.
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It is believed that John fell ill at King’s Lynn with a major attack of dysentery, probably precipitated by exhaustion; according to Coggeshall, insatiable gluttony was the cause. Nevertheless, he set out for the north on the morning of 11 October, having left Savary behind in King’s Lynn to fortify and defend the town. There is uncertainty over the exact date and location of what happens next, but Holt is convincing in arguing that John crossed the nearly five-mile wide estuary of the Wellstream (now the Nene) in the Wash between Long Sutton and Walpole Cross Keys on the morning of 11 October around low-tide (11:15 am).
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Not only was John attempting a well-known short-cut, but he was also avoiding the roads in the rebel-dominated Fenlands. Stringer suggests that Alexander’s movements imposed ‘a sense of urgency’ on John.
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John’s haste went against him. Wendover’s no doubt exaggerated account vividly relates what happened as the King’s baggage train made the crossing: ‘The land opened up in the middle of the waves and caused whirlpools which sucked in everything, men as well as horses, so that no one escaped.’ John only narrowly got away in time, but he lost ‘all his carts, wagons, baggage horses, his money, precious vessels and everything he treasured’. Wendover, like John, was on uncertain ground for this episode. It may have been the case that John did not wait until the waters had fully receded, making navigation across the natural causeway extremely treacherous. Explorations have revealed a thick layer of wet quicksand from medieval times at this point. There was clearly a desperate struggle by his men to escape the catastrophe. This famous disaster of John’s lost treasure in the Wash may well be a myth, for reasons discussed in the next chapter. Coggeshall records the event as a noteworthy one but does not resort to hyperbole: he mentions the loss of life, the royal Chapel and its relics and some pack-horses. No victim is of sufficient rank to be named by either chronicler, but both reveal how badly the King was affected by the loss; Wendover attributes John’s onset of illness to ‘anguish of mind over his possessions swallowed up by the water’, causing him to be ‘seized with a violent fever’.

John gathered himself at Wisbech and spent the night of 12 October at the Cistercian Abbey of Swinesford. By this stage John is thought to have been extremely ill, but if so this did not affect his appetite, Wendover claiming that the notoriously gluttonous King made himself worse by stuffing himself with peaches and by drinking new (not fully fermented?) cider. Comfort eating and drowning his sorrows left him in a worse state than ever in the morning, and as he made for Sleaford on 14 October he was apparently in great pain. However, the well-placed Barnwell chronicler claims that it was at Sleaford that John began to fall ill, which would explain his feasting and what has been seen by some as a catastrophic attack of indigestion.
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Fearing the worst, John wrote to Honorius III ‘in grave illness’ and pleaded ‘on bended knee’ that the new pope would protect his heir against the enemies of the King and the Holy Father.
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We have noted Warren’s observation that John could not resist kicking a man when he was down; now John felt what is was like to be on the receiving end. At Sleaford he received the news from Dover that Hubert de Burgh and Gerard de Sotteghem had arranged a truce with Louis. They had held out valiantly for nearly three months but knew they could not resist the French siege operations for much longer. The time was granted them to approach John for either help or for permission to surrender. The truce came into force on 14 October. The news ‘greatly angered the king’ says the Anonymous, who claims that it was after this that the King fell ill.
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Coggeshall, a man with medical interests, says that the blow brought on a more severe fever and the King had to be bled, but this did nothing to improve his deteriorating condition.

Either that night or the next day John travelled to the Bishop of Lincoln’s castle at Newark. Wendover says that he reached there on horseback only with great difficulty. Matthew Paris’s account tells of how the King suffered so much from riding that, ‘moaning and groaning’ he ordered a litter to be made for him. This was roughly put together from trees along the road and seems to have piled even greater agony upon the failing King who cried out that it was killing him. At Newark Castle, the Abbot of Croxton, renowned for his medical knowledge, took charge of the fully coherent royal patient who continued to see to urgent business. Most urgent of all was his soul. He confessed his sins to the Abbot and received Holy Communion. Coggeshall writes that about midnight of 18/19 October a mighty wind arose over Newark; it was so fierce the inhabitants of the town feared their houses would be blown down. Perhaps the chronicler interpreted it as the King’s spirit leaving his body, for King John died that night. His death changed everything.

T
here were many contingent parts to the war in England between 1215 and 1217: militarily the role of castles, foreign mercenaries and generalship were vital; politically and diplomatically, the role of patronage, finance, the handling of great lords and relations with the Papacy were central. But an overarching, dominating theme was personality; and now, with John’s death, an overarching dominant personality disappeared from the cast. Even the majority of those who fought for John had little respect for the arbitrary, unstable despot; they were bound to him more by vested interest and fear than by honour and loyalty. His death was not greeted in the chronicles with a sense of respectful sympathy. The Barnwell writer offers this judicious epitaph to John: ‘He was generous and liberal to foreigners but a despoiler of his own people. Since he trusted more in foreigners than in them, he was abandoned before the end by his own people, and in his own end he was little mourned’; while Matthew Paris’s unsparing verdict reflected the feelings of many: ‘With John’s foul deeds all England is stinking / As does hell, to which he is now sinking.’
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Speaking ill of the dead did not trouble Matthew. Over in France, William the Breton was no more sympathetic in his
Philippidos
, declaring that John’s sins had caught up with him before highlighting his family values: ‘condemned by the just judgment of the clergy and the people for he had been the cause of the death of his father, traitor against his brother and murderer of his nephew’; then adding, to further chasten the King’s departed soul, ‘O Louis, the English nation wanted to raise you on his throne.’
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In the days before his death, John had ordered his affairs carefully. He named his nine-year-old son Henry as his heir and made his intimate household members around him swear their allegiance to him. He had letters dispatched under his seal to all the sheriffs and castellans of England ordering them to recognise Henry as their new lord. In his testament, transcribed onto a single sheet of vellum, John leaves his affairs in the hands of the arbiters of the will, to see to ‘making satisfaction to God and holy church for damages and injuries done to them’.
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These arbiters, most of whom were present, were the legate Guala; Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester; Richard Bishop of Chichester; Silvester Bishop of Worcester; Brother Aimery de St Maur; Ranulf Earl of Chester; William Earl Ferrers; Walter de Lacy; John of Monmouth; Savary de Mauléon; Falkes de Bréauté; and William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke who, at nearly 70 years of age, was elected regent (humbly and reluctantly, according to his biographer). This was, in effect, John’s minority council for Henry.

Stephen Church’s article on John’s last few days shows the King concerned for the military situation his son would inherit. One of the John’s actions on the last day of his life was the supply of extra funds to Hubert de Burgh in order that he could maintain the defence of Dover Castle; if Dover fell, it was likely that Louis, not Henry, would rule England.
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Nichola de Haye was rewarded for her defence of Lincoln with the custody of the city, thus tying her even closer to the royalist cause. The powerful mercenary commander Falkes de Bréauté received the Luton estates of Baldwin of Béthune, Count of Aumale who had died in 1212; this reinforced Falkes’s position as castellan of Bedford Castle and strengthened the chain of his other crucial midlands strongholds of Hertford, Northampton, Buckingham, Cambridge and Oxford. Eager to reach out on his deathbed to rebel lords and the vacillating vassals who were forever changing sides as new opportunities arose, John offered safe conducts to those who reconciled themselves to the crown through Savary de Mauléon. He also placed Savary in charge of his 300 Welsh archers, who presumably had been with the King at the skirmish at Windsor. Savary’s role, however, was to be limited, for by December he had returned home to Poitou.