The Conquering Family (44 page)

The effect was felt at once. The interdict was a condition shared by all, but excommunication was a personal ban which cut the victim off from all human relationships, as surely in theory, at least, as a leper was banned in practice. John was marked as accursed, and no one was supposed to speak to him except a few officials whose duties made contact obligatory.

John had been in a smoldering state ever since the laying of the interdict. His own excommunication drove him into an explosive fury. When Geoffrey, the Archdeacon of Norwich, withdrew from the Court of Exchequer with the explanation that it was forbidden to serve a ruler on whom the ban of the Church had been laid, the King struck out viciously. Geoffrey, a man of advanced years, was thrown into prison and a cope of lead was soldered on his shoulders. This form of torture, which slowly broke the bones by the weight of the cope, proved so effective that the archdeacon died within a few days.

Officers of the Church who had remained at their posts up to this time began to desert now. The new Bishop of Lincoln fled the country and betook himself to Pontigny to make his submission to Stephen Langton. Others followed in such numbers that the wearisome business of watching the whole coast line had to be taken up again.

This could not last long, however. The King, realizing that his position was degenerating rapidly, sent an invitation to Cardinal Langton to meet him at Dover, announcing in advance the concessions he was prepared to make. He was ready to have the cardinal installed at Canterbury, to forgive all churchmen who had fled the country or had refused to obey him, and to make financial settlements. The invitation, however, had been addressed to the cardinal and not the archbishop, and so Langton refused to accept it. He stood out, moreover, for an unconditional surrender and the promise of the King to pay for all losses the Church had suffered. John was not yet ready to give in on such terms as these. He snorted, cursed, roared, foamed at the mouth, and sent a venomous refusal.

But the Pope had still another weapon to unsheathe. In 1212 he absolved all subjects of John from their oaths of allegiance, coupling with this the declaration that the ban of excommunication would thenceforth apply to anyone who continued to serve him, who lived in his household, who sat or served at his table, who held the stirrup when he set forth to ride, or who spoke a word to him in public or private.

If the royal staff shrank as a result, it was barely perceptible. By this time men were accustomed to the situation. They had to live in spite of all the banning and fulminating and the rumble of sacerdotal storms.
The King held his ground. He was beginning to think that England could be made a self-contained corner where the writ of the Vatican would not run nor the papal thunder be heard.

John, in fact, was more disturbed by the prediction of a hermit named Peter of Pontefract, who had given it out that he had only one year to reign and that on the following Ascension Day he would cease to sit on the throne. The hermit was brought to Windsor, and the King demanded to know what grounds he had for such treasonable utterances. Peter of Pontefract was a slow-witted countryman who fitted a term much used at the time, edmede, meaning humble and gently disposed. There was nothing he could say except that the conviction had been lodged in his mind by an agency he believed divine. It had been like a vision, and a voice had said he must tell what he had heard and seen. The prophet was sent to Corfe Castle to await developments.

Pope Innocent now went to the final extreme. He summoned before him all the cardinals in Rome and solemnly declared the deposition of John as King of England. He then took the desperate step of announcing that the crown would be given to Philip of France, a man more capable of ruling nobly and well than the deposed monarch.

Philip had been consulted in advance, of course, and had agreed to act in accordance with the papal policy. He had been eager to start, for this would be the final stage of the plans which had taken possession of the mind of an angry boy under the oak of Gisors. He held a great council at Soissons on April 8, 1213, and gained the consent of the nobility of France to the invasion of England. Having dismembered the limbs of Angevin power, he was now to strike at the very heart of it. He went jubilantly to work to raise the largest army France had yet seen and to assemble in the ports of Normandy a fleet estimated at seventeen hundred ships. All France rang with military preparations. Once again Englishmen looked across the Channel, as they had done in the days of the Conquest and as they were to do many times thereafter, and waited for the ships of the invader to appear.

It seemed at first that Pope Innocent, in making his last extreme move, had defeated his own purpose. Englishmen, fearing invasion above everything, armed themselves behind their derided and hated King. An army grew along the coast of Kent as if by some kind of magic evoked by national necessity. The main camp was at Barham Down near Canterbury, and here sixty thousand men were soon assembled. Smaller camps were located at Dover, Faversham, and Ipswich. John took up his post at the hotel of the Templars at Ewell, occupying himself largely with the need for money to pay the cost of this great rally. He ransacked the monasteries and the closed churches and emptied the pockets of the Jews. It was at this time that he enforced his demands on one Isaac of Bristol for ten thousand marks by ordering that a tooth be extracted
from his jaw each day until the money had been paid. Dentistry was one of the functions of the barbers, many of whom wore strings around their necks containing all the teeth they had drawn. The royal practitioner, into whose hands Isaac was put, had six more teeth to display before the reluctant donor gave in. Everyone was giving in and paying, although not under such extreme pressure. The whole kingdom groaned under the exactions, but in the face of the emergency most men found the means to pay their share.

A blow which might have proved decisive was dealt the French by the eldest son of the Fair Rosamonde who, as was related earlier, was known to men as William Long-Espée. The sons brought into the world by that gentle lady were stout fellows who, on any plane of comparison, measured above the legitimate issue of the great Henry. William Long-Espée had always been a favorite with John. The illegitimate half brother accompanied the King everywhere. There never seems to have been a serious rift between them, which suggests that this son of the unfortunate lady lacked the stanchness of the other, Geoffrey of York. John had made a fine match for William, marrying him to Ela, the heiress of Salisbury. Ela, a lady of beauty and high spirit, had become known as the Mystery Maiden after the death of her father in 1196. She disappeared, and it was generally feared that she had been done away with so that one of her paternal uncles could take the title and the enormous wealth of the family. A young knight-errant named William Talbot followed the example of Blondel, however, and sang English ballads under windows in all the castles of Normandy until he received a response. The rescue of the imprisoned maiden resulted, and the gallant knight had the satisfaction of seeing her restored to her family and her rights. The story did not end in the usual way. Ela did
not
fall in love with the devoted William Talbot and she did become very much attached to the middle-aged husband selected for her by the King; and Talbot had to content himself with remaining a close friend of the happy pair. Assuming the title of Earl of Salisbury, the son of Fair Rosamonde played an important part in national affairs and in his declining years built Salisbury Cathedral. The disconsolate Ela founded Lacock Abbey after his death.

William Long-Espée was of a sufficiently complaisant nature to ride in the train of John. When put in command of the naval forces, however, he showed his real mettle. On May 30 he directed an attack on the French vessels in the port of Dam, now known as Dollart Bay, and scored a complete victory. Many of the French ships were captured and at least three hundred of them were burned. The doughty bastard came sailing back to a wildly jubilant country.

But John lacked the fortitude for as stern a struggle as this. Before the victory had been scored over the French fleet he had succumbed to the arguments of Pandulfo, the papal legate. Pandulfo paid him a secret
visit and frightened the King by the description he gave of the might of the French army. John capitulated without waiting to see how the first test of strength would come out.

All credit for this sudden collapse must not be given, however, to the wily Pandulfo. John had been uneasy ever since the hermit of Pontefract had predicted the end of his power. The King of Scotland had added to his panic by informing him that a conspiracy was on foot among his barons to dethrone him. The wife of Leolin, one of the princes of Wales, had whispered the same news in his ear. The conspiracy, it was said, had grown out of the efforts of Stephen Langton, who still occupied much of his time at Pontigny by corresponding with men of importance in the kingdom. John did not doubt the truth of the story. He began to suspect every man who came near him. His temper became more violent with each passing day. His hands played nervously with the relics strung around his neck or gripped with sudden passion the hilt of his beaked dagger. Once he burst out with a furious speech which showed how firmly convinced he was that Stephen Langton was at the bottom of everything. “Never shall that Stephen,” he cried, “obtain a safe-conduct from me of force sufficient to prevent me from”—his hands clawed at the air—“from suspending him by the neck the moment he touches land of mine!”

Surrender to the Pope, therefore, carried with it release from such fears. If he hid himself under the wing of Innocent, then all the forces of Europe would be behind him and he could laugh at the efforts of the baronage to unseat him. Perhaps also the mind of this cunning King had cast on into the future and had foreseen other advantages which a close alliance with Rome would bring. If this were true, it was with inner reserve and tongue in cheek that John gave his consent to the humiliating terms the legate had brought from the arrogant man in the Vatican.

The day before Ascension, John appeared in the church of the Temple and a long document was loudly intoned. “Ye know,” it read in part, “that we have deeply offended our Holy Mother the Church and that it will be hard to draw on the mercy of Heaven. Therefore we would humble ourselves, and without constraint, of our own free will, by the consent of our barons and high justiciars, we give and confer on God, on the Holy Apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, on our Mother the Church and on Pope Innocent III and his Catholic successors, the whole kingdom of England and Ireland, with all their rights and dependencies for the remission of our sins; henceforth we hold them as a fief, and in token thereof we swear allegiance in presence of Pandulfo, Legate of the Holy See.”

It was true that four of the great barons of the realm had been consulted—the earls of Salisbury, Boulogne, Warenne, and Ferrars—but to everyone else this announcement was a complete and overwhelming surprise, a thunderclap which left the nation aghast. England a fief of Rome!
It was not to be believed. Why had the King, after rejecting much easier terms, decided suddenly to give everything to the Pope?

These thoughts filled the minds of the barons as they saw Pandulfo, a man of great slyness and, some say, of a mean and slinking appearance, take possession of the royal chair. John knelt before him, lifted up his hands and placed them in those of the legate, and swore fealty to the Pontiff. The King then offered money as a token of submission, and the legate refused to accept it as a sign the Church scorned earthly wealth. When John, who seemed willing to go to the farthest limits of abasement, tendered him the crown the minister of the Vatican (a lowly minister, for Pandulfo was no higher than a deacon) accepted it. He kept it five days, moreover, before giving it back.

Directly after the ceremony it was learned that, in addition to thus surrendering himself to Rome, John had agreed to all the papal terms. Stephen Langton was to be received, all the exiled churchmen were to be reinstated, all losses sustained by the Church during the years of the interdict were to be made up in full, and the Vatican was to be paid one thousand marks a year, seven hundred for England, three hundred for Ireland. It was such an abject surrender that men looked at each other blankly, asking themselves if the King had been under some malign influence.

The amazement grew when it was learned that no promise had been received from Innocent of an immediate raising of the bans.

John had one consolation left him for this bitter moment of capitulation. Ascension Day passed and he still sat on his throne. He sent word to Corfe that Peter of Pontefract was to be questioned further. The hermit proved much bolder than he had been before, declaring that the ceremony in the Temple had been the fulfillment of his prophecy, inasmuch as the King now ruled as a vassal. When this was reported to him, John fell into one of his most extravagant rages and ordered that the hermit and a son who had been imprisoned with him be executed at once. Accordingly the two humble men from Yorkshire were tied to the heels of horses and dragged all the way to Wareham. Here the broken bodies were hoisted up to the gallows and hanged.

On July 20 a second ceremony was observed. Cardinal Langton had landed in England to take up his duties as head of the Church. John was at Winchester and sent word to the primate to join him there. It was in early morning when the two antagonists met for the first time. The King rode out with his usual train to Magdalen’s Hill, a gold circlet on his head in place of a helmet, a look in his eye which was half defiance, half derision. The archbishop was wearing his full canonicals, with all the bishops of England riding in his train. They studied each other for a moment, the massive, violent King and the spare, composed cardinal. John then dismounted and prostrated himself at the feet of the archbishop.
This should have been followed by the kiss of peace, but John was still under the ban of excommunication and so it was forbidden for Langton to embrace him. The King, realizing the difficulty, sprang from his kneeling position, laughed loudly, and threw the primate a kiss with his hand.