Eleanor Of Aquitaine (45 page)

In the meantime Geoffrey and his partisans had already roused the citizenry of the capital over the outrage of his treatment in the dungeon of Dover. When the Reading council pursuing the chancellor reached London, it was night and the city gates, by Ely's orders, were closed against them. Certain custodians, however, fearing to bar the gates in the face of the king's brother and the assembled magnates, let them come inside where excited streams of burghers were pouring into the dark streets with lanterns to learn what was afoot.

The next day in a public gathering under the very shadow of the Tower, in presence of ten thousand Londoners, the chancellor was called to account for his administration.
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Up to this moment Ely had felt himself so panoplied with civil and ecclesiastical authority as to be beyond the reach of rabbles. The consolidation of the regency into a party of opposition armed with a super-mandate, together with the popular uprising, overwhelmed him with astonishment and panic. Facing that hostile throng almost alone, the chancellor answered the charges against him with a show of boldness, reaffirming his loyalty to the king. Then before the whole gathering he hurled defiance at John. He warned the magnates publicly above all things to beware of the youngest Plantagenet, who was beyond any doubt bent upon usurping his brother's crown while that brother was signed with the cross and absent upon crusade. However, when he fronted John and the magnates, says Devizes, "he was as pale as one who treads upon a snake with his bare feet."

Two days later an assembly at Saint Paul's decreed the chancellor's banishment from Britain and placed at the head of the government the Archbishop of Rouen under the mandate which he and the queen had forethought-fully procured in Rome the previous spring. In the new dispensation, John fared well. His valor and forthrightness in defying the chancellor buttressed the courage of the new regency. The prince was made chief justiciar and recognized as heir of Britain. But the magnates at the same time drew in his rope a little. John surrendered the custody of his castles for the time being, though continuing to enjoy large revenues. The members of the reconstituted government then pledged their oaths anew to the absent king. The Bishop of Ely, thrown into utter panic by his reverses, escaped from Britain ignominiously, as if in fear of his life, in the disguise of a woman.
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In the meantime the people, who had witnessed these movements and exerted their pressures upon them, had learned a useful lesson in how to be rid of tyrants; and they had taken the measure of John's brilliant audacity.

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Sometime after her return from Sicily, Eleanor stationed herself in Rouen at the very center of the agitations that raged about her. With the expulsion of Ely late in October, the confusions that had disordered Britain leapt the Channel and brought to her palace gates dilemmas so grave that her right hand hardly dared to know what her left hand was doing. She now had the firebrand Bishop of Ely in her own bailiwick, and he was by no means extinguished. Once on the safe side of the water, he quickly recovered his aplomb, and although he had been excommunicated at Reading, he erected himself again to his full stature as chancellor and legate. The queen was faced with the immediate dilemma of trying to keep the injured chancellor from the camp of the enemy in Paris without at the same time obstructing the operations of the regency to keep him out of Britain. However, as if moved by a law of nature, the offended prelate took the way of all those who bore grievances against the Angevins straight to the seat of the Capets. In Paris, says Benedict, he paid the bishop of that city to receive him processionally with all the honors due the dignities he had once possessed.
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In addition to this comfort, whether by arrangement or by chance, the deposed chancellor seems to have encountered two cardinals arriving from Celestine
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and to have received from them the renewal of his legateship, with which he was presently seen to be fortified.

The queen was of course wary of cardinals. It was spread abroad that the new arrivals had come to reestablish the peace between the Bishops of Ely and Rouen and thus clarify the somewhat ambiguous policy of Rome toward the regency. But since it was Eleanor's acute desire not to precipitate anew the crisis between the one-time chancellor and the regency, even to have it resolved by arbitration, she had no mind to negotiate with emissaries bringing a cool and dispassionate justice from Rome. In the back of her mind too was an uneasy misgiving lest the cardinals, who had sojourned in Paris on their way, might have some undisclosed mission for the Capets and might, if once they set foot in Normandy, raise questions about Gisors and the unhappy prisoner in the tower of Rouen.

The cardinals, remarks Devizes dryly, appeared to suppose that Normandy was a province of the French domain, for they had not taken the precaution to obtain from the queen letters of safe-conduct for the passage of the frontier. Since the days of Becket's appeals to Rome and his fulminations against the Angevins, Henry had made it peculiarly difficult for alien prelates to rove about Normandy. Accordingly, when the Cardinals Jordan and Octavian drew up their cohorts before the castle of Gisors with the intention of traveling thence to Rouen on their mission, they found the drawbridge raised and the seneschal on hand to explain about the indispensable letters of safe-conduct. This functionary cited Richard's right as a crusader to protection from the penetration of his territory by any foreign agents whomsoever without royal letters patent.

Since the legates were in possession of Celestine's letters patent, arguments ensued. As the cardinals scanned the sheer walls of the fortress, the moat, the raised drawbridge, and the firm portcullis, their dignity "rose and swelled with rage."
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They threatened to employ that spiritual weapon that overleaps barriers of water, stone, and oak. But "they did not plead with boys," observes the chronicler. The garrisons with swords, the burghers with drawn fists, made countermovements of menacing import. The cardinals thereupon withdrew their cavalcade, "rejoicing," as the records say, because "it is meet for the servants of the Lord to suffer contumely from His adversaries."

In the course of her days the queen had learned how to deal with the fulminations of ecclesiastics hurled forth to impede the operation of civil powers, and she had even found ways of turning them to profit. She knew how to appreciate the value of anathema in certain circumstances without overrating its efficacy in others. But the tempest of fulminations that now descended on the domains of the Plantagenets brought all her experience into play. A sulphurous pall settled over both sides of the Channel as Advent approached, and in this murky atmosphere it was difficult to plot an undeviating course.

The cardinals excommunicated the Seneschal of Normandy and his garrison and put the whole province under interdict, but without touching the person of the queen. In the meantime Ely, fortified by his new legateship and disregarding his own excommunication at Reading, excommunicated the regency in England severally and by name, saving only John and one lone justiciar who had remained at least neutral in the late upheavals. As if caught up in the spirit of the time, Geoffrey of York, for interests of his own, excommunicated his suffragan, the Bishop of Durham.
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Since it was unlawful to eat or drink with excommunicates, to buy from them or sell to them, or to have any commerce with them, the effect of these operations was confusing and not all fulminations could be duly honored. It became a nice question as to who had prior and superior rights to excommunicate whom. The cross fire of blast and counterblast, and the defiance of resolute sinners cut off from grace, made it difficult, even for bishops and barons, to decide with which of their confreres they might sit down and dine.

The flaw of the system was of course that the fulmination, to have its intended effect, had to completely overawe the miscreant. Thus groups were more likely than individuals to defy a sentence. In this instance the regency disregarded the operations of the excommunicate Ely with respect to themselves and, instead of succumbing, put the chancellor's own diocese under interdict and confiscated all his properties. Thus, with Christmas at hand in 1191, whole provinces were cut off from sacraments. There was no communion, no marriage, no lighting of altars, no ringing of bells, no ritual for the burial of the dead, who lay in fields awaiting the return of their parishes to the mercies of salvation.

In the midst of the confusions produced by the cardinals in Normandy, Ely entered the province, doubtless to intercede with Eleanor for a return to England. Here, although provided with his new legateship, he found himself, to his deep chagrin, regarded as excommunicate, and so turned back from an interview that might have proved difficult for Eleanor in her unsteady role as custodian of such peace as prevailed. It can thus be seen how, in her dilemmas, the queen let excommunications in one way or another serve her ends. In the case of Ely, she respected fulminations and so avoided a painful session with him; but in the case of the cardinals she resisted their ban by appealing to Celestme, who promptly lifted it.
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For the moment she did not interfere with the interdict upon the diocese of Ely, but later, in 1192, having visited the diocese and seen with her own eyes the miseries of the people denied the sacraments even for burial, she demanded and obtained from the Archbishop of Rouen the removal of the ban. "To meet her there," says the chronicler, "there came out of hamlets and manors, wherever she passed, men, women, and children, a piteous company, their feet bare, their clothes unwashed, their hair unshorn. Their flowing tears spoke for them."

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The queen, having just weathered these thunderblasts and averted interference with her affairs, was holding her modest Christmas court in Bures near Rouen
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when news reached her that Philip Augustus, returning from his brief expedition overseas, blessed by the Pope with cross and palm, had been welcomed processionally in Paris and had convened his Christmas court in Fontamebleau.

With Philip came a feast of news for a news hungry world, which was now regaled with the choicest morsels. The tidings were firsthand, vouched for by the heroic King of the Franks, who had been in the thick of things in Palestine. The eager world learned for certain that it was only the valor of the Franks that had brought down the banners of Saladin from the ramparts of Acre;
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heard that Philip's devastating malady had issued from a poison cup;
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that he had left the Holy Land in fear of his life because of the treachery of his sworn allies. The king and his following detailed the impious bickerings of Coeur de-Lion with Saladin.
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As Philip mounted the stairs of his indignation, incidents multiplied and wonders grew. The Flanders affair… the infamous matter of Alais… Did not such violations of the oaths of Vézelay, sworn on the evangels and the relics of Saint Mary Magdalene, call for redress? Philip went straightway to Saint Denis and thanked God publicly for having so far delivered him from the perils that threatened his health, his life. Even in his own city of Paris he went about with armed guards and carried a bludgeon himself to protect him from the long arms of assassins.
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In the meantime he directed his engineers to perfect the fortifications he had ordered built in divers places during his absence. The armorers of Paris kept their forges roaring day and night.
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The King of the Franks counted his serviceable knights. It was manifest that he was about to execute in summary fashion a justice too long delayed. Normandy first.

These astonishing eruptions in the Ile de France greatly disquieted Queen Eleanor in Bures, but without suggesting major movements. She strengthened border castles, issued directions to seneschals, looked to the manning of garrisons, and then waited for eventualities. She had not long to wait. On the 20th of January Philip Augustus, having requested an interview, met the Seneschal of Normandy between Gisors and Trie, near the old trysting place by the stricken elm where Henry had so often contrived to put Louis Capet off with promises and excuses.
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Philip offered for the seneschal's inspection the written compact of Messina with authentic seals attaching to it, and demanded the delivery of his sister Alais and the surrender of Gisors, Aumale, and Eu without evasion or delay. The seneschal, who was not taken by surprise, repeated the refusal he had offered to the cardinals and stood upon it in the face of threats. Unable to breach the gates of Gisors with menaces, Philip returned to the Ile and raised an armed force to give effect unilaterally to the worthless compact of the Plantagenets.

While the queen was anxiously scanning the frontiers of Normandy for signs of action, the most alarming news came from the opposite direction, that is, from Britain. She was credibly warned that her son John had assembled a force of mercenaries, which he had gathered in his domains, and that he was about to lift sail in Southampton for Channel ports. He was on his way, she learned, to join Philip Augustus, to offer homage to the King of the Franks as his overlord, to open the stubborn gates of Normandy, take to himself the disprized prisoner of Rouen, and thereupon receive investiture as Duke of Normandy.
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By these stark reckonings, the King of England counted no more among the living. The objective of John was fully disclosed. The catastrophe of the Plantagenets rose before the vision of the queen, with every role personified. She was left alone to defend the Angevins, the Poitevins, the heritage of Coeur-de-Lion against a rising tide of malice and of power.

With a dispatch that must have reminded her escort of Henry's embarkations, the queen put forth upon the wintry Channel and landed in Portsmouth on February 11, before John could get the wind in his sails.
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She sought no arguments with her son, but went straight to the magnates,
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who, if they dared, could shut off the prince's revenues and so impede his crossings. The barons were dispersed upon their eyres and evidently hardly interfering with the muster of the forces in Southampton. They must have been convinced by the rumors sedulously spread from Paris that Richard would return no more and to have believed that John was merely taking precaution to secure his heritage, which they themselves had recognized.