Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

C >> Charlotte Mary Yonge >> Cameos from English History, from Rollo to Edward II

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In this haunted castle the Queen contrived to gain a reputation for
sorcery and poisoning, and the connection brought no good on her royal
son, for she involved him in a war with France on behalf of her husband.
He met with no success, and his French domains were at the mercy of
Louis IX.; but that excellent prince would not pursue his advantage.
"Our children are first cousins," he said; "we will leave no seeds of
discord between them." He even took into consideration the justice of
restoring Normandy and Anjou, but concluded that they had been justly
forfeited by King John.

Four young Lusignans, or, as they were generally called, De Valence,
were sent by Isabelle to seek their fortune at the court of their
half-brother, who bestowed on them all the wealth and honors at his
disposal; and gave much offence to the English, who beheld eight needy
foreigners preying, as they said, upon the revenues.

Feasts and frolics, songs, dancing, and pageantry, were the order of the
day; romances were dedicated to the King, histories of strange feats of
chivalry recited, the curious old lays of Bretagne were translated and
presented to him by the antiquarian dame, Marie. Italian, Provencal,
Gascon, Latin, French, and English, were spoken at the court, which the
English barons termed a Babel, and minstrels of all descriptions stood
in high favor. There was Richard, the King's harper, who had forty
shillings a year and a tun of wine; there was Henry of Avranches, the
"archipoeta," who wrote a song on the rusticity of the Cornishmen,
to which a valiant Cornishman, Michael Blampayne, replied in a Latin
satire, politely describing the arch-poet as having "the legs of a
sparrow, the mouth of a hare, the nose of a dog, the teeth of a mule,
the brow of a calf, the head of a bull, the color of a Moor!" There was
poor Ribault the troubadour, whose sudden madness had nearly been fatal
to Henry. Imagining himself the rightful King, he rushed at midnight
into a chamber he supposed to be the King's, and was tearing the bed to
pieces with his sword, when Margaret Bisset, one of the Queen's ladies,
who was sitting up reading a book of devotions, heard the noise; roused
the guard, and he was secured. There, too, was the half-witted jester,
who, we are sorry to say, was a chaplain, with whom the King and his
brother Aymer were seen playing like boys, pelting each other with
apples and sods of turf.

The King was fond of ornamenting his palaces with curious tapestry
and jewelry, worthy of the wedding-gift his wife had received from her
sister, Queen Marguerite, namely, a silver ewer for perfumes, in the
shape of a peacock, the tail set with precious stones. He adorned the
walls with paintings; there were Scripture subjects in his palace at
Westminster; and at Winchester, his birthplace, were pictures of
the Saxon kings, a map of the world, and King Arthur's round table,
inscribed with the names of the knights, and Arthur's full-length figure
in his own place. It has survived all changes; it was admired by a
Spanish attendant at the marriage of Philip II. and Queen Mary; it was
riddled by the balls of the Roundheads, and now, duly refreshed with
paint, hangs in its old place, over the Judge's head in the County Hall.

To do Henry justice, he spent as freely on others as on himself; he
clothed and fed destitute children; and when in his pride, at the goodly
height of his five-year-old boy, he caused him and his little sisters to
be weighed, the counterpoise was coined silver, which was scattered in
largesse among his lieges.

Henry's special devotion was to a Saxon saint, the mild Confessor, to
whom his own character had much likeness, and whose name he bestowed on
his eldest child, while he presented a shrine of pure gold to
contain his relics, and devoted L2,000 a year to complete the little
West-Minster of St. Peter's, the foundation and last work of St.
Edward. He rendered it a perfect specimen of that most elegant of all
styles, the early-pointed, and fit indeed for the coronation church and
burial-place of English kings.

There was soon an end of Henry's treasure, however; and no wonder, when,
besides his own improvidence, the Pope was sucking out the revenues
of the country. _Talliages_, of one tenth or one-twentieth of their
property, were demanded of the clergy; the tax of a penny, usually
called Peter-pence, was paid to him by every family on St. Peter's Day,
and generally collected by the two orders of begging friars, who rode
about on this errand in boots and spurs, and owning the rule of no one
but the Pope, were great hindrances to the bishops and parish clergy.
Still worse was the power the Pope assumed to himself of seizing on
Church patronage, and thrusting in Italian clergy, often children or
incapable persons, and perfectly ignorant of the language. At one time
7,000 marks a year were in possession of these foreigners, one of whom
held seven hundred places of preferment at once!

Innocent IV., who was chiefly guilty of these proceedings, was engaged
in a long struggle with Frederick II. of Germany, respecting the kingdom
of the two Sicilies, and the Guelf and Ghibelline struggle forever
raging in Italy, and it was this apparently remote quarrel which was in
reality the cause of the oppression and simony that so cruelly affected
England.

The English bitterly hated the foreign clergy, and quarrels were forever
breaking out. When Otho, the legate, was passing through Oxford, and
lodging at Osney Abbey, a terrible fray occurred. The students, a
strange, wild set, came to pay him their respects; but his porter, being
afraid of them, kept them out, and an Irish priest, pressing forward to
beg for food, had some scalding water thrown in his face by the clerk of
the kitchen, the brother of the legate, who, used to Italian treachery,
entrusted to no one the care of his food. A fiery Welsh scholar shot
the legate's brother dead with an arrow, and a great riot ensued. Otho
locked, himself up in the church-tower till night, then fled, through
floods of rain, hunted by the students, all yelling abuse, and getting
before him to the fords, so that the poor man had to swim the river five
times, and came half dead to the King at Abingdon. Next morning the
scene was changed. Earl Warenne and his bowmen came down upon Oxford,
forty of the rioters were carried off in carts like felons, interdicts
and excommunications fell on the university, and only when doctors,
scholars, and all came barefoot to ask the legate's pardon, was the
anger of the Pope appeased.

Moreover, there was a widespread confederation among the gentry
against these Italians, and rioters arose and plundered their barns,
distributing the corn to the poor.

Walter do Cantilupe, the young Norman Bishop of Worcester, was thought
to be among those in the secret, and the outrages grew more serious when
an Italian canon of St. Paul's was seized and impressed by five men in
masks. Des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, who had returned home,
and was very jealous of Hubert de Burgh, thought this a fit time for
overthrowing him, and publicly accused him of being in the plot. A young
knight, Sir Robert Twenge, came forward and confessed that he had been
the leader of the rioters under the name of Will Wither, and that the
good old justiciary had nothing to do with them. He was sent to do
penance at Rome, and Hubert's enemies continued their machinations.

Henry and his Queen were tired of the sage counsels of the brave knight,
and open to all Des Roches' insinuations, forgetting the wise though
punning warning of the wonderful Franciscan friar, Roger Bacon, who told
Henry there was nothing so dangerous in a voyage as "_les Pierres et les
Roches_." At Christmas, the Bishop invited them to Winchester, and there
his sumptuous banquets and splendid amusements won the King's frivolous
heart, and obtained his consent to dismiss Hubert from all his offices,
even from the government of Dover, which he had saved. Soon after
orders were sent forth for his arrest, that he might be tried for the
disturbances against the Italians, and likewise for having seduced the
King's affections by sorcery and witchcraft.

Hubert placed his wealth in the care of the Templars, and took sanctuary
in the church of Merton, in Surrey; but the Mayor of London was ordered
to dislodge him, and the whole rabble of the city were setting forth,
when the Archbishop and Earl of Chester represented the scandal to the
King, and obtained letters of protection for him until the time for his
trial, January, 1233. Trusting to these letters, he set out to visit his
wife at Bury, but at Brentwood was waylaid by a set of ruffians called
the Black Band, and sent by the Bishop of Winchester. He retreated into
the church, but they dragged him from the very steps of the altar, and
called a blacksmith to chain his feet together.

"No, indeed," said the brave peasant, "never will I forge fetters for
the deliverer of my country."

However, he was led into London with his feet chained under his horse.
There the Bishop of London, threatening excommunication for the
sacrilege, forced his enemies to return him to Brentwood church, which,
however, they closely blockaded till hunger forced him to deliver
himself up to them.

He bought his life by giving up his treasures, and was imprisoned at
Devizes. Shortly this castle was given to Des Roches; and De Burgh, who
knew by experience how the change of castellane often brought death to
the captive, sought to escape. He gained over two of his guards, who
carried him to the parish church, for he was too heavily ironed to
walk, and there laid him down before the altar. They could take him no
further, and the warden of the castle cruelly beat him, and brought
him back; but, as before, the Bishop maintained the privileges of the
sanctuary, and forced the persecutors to restore him, and though he was
again hemmed in there by the sheriff, before he was starved out a party
of his friends came to his rescue, and he was carried off to the Welsh
hills, there remaining till recalled by the influence of the Archbishop.
He was restored to his honors, and though he once again had to suffer
from Henry's fickleness and the rapacity of his court, his old age was
peaceful and honored, as befitted his unsullied fame.

This Archbishop was Edmund Rich, who had been elected in 1232, after two
short-lived primates had succeeded Langton. He was of a wealthy family at
Abingdon, and had been brought up entirely by an excellent mother, his
father having retired into a monastery. His whole childhood had been a
preparation for holy orders, and when he went to study at Oxford, he
led a life of the strictest self-denial, inflicting on himself all the
rigorous discipline which he hoped would conduce to a saintly life. When
he had become a teacher in his turn, such was his contempt for money,
that, when his pupils paid him, he would sprinkle it with dust, and say,
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," and would let it lie in the window,
without heeding whether any was stolen. When, shortly after, made
treasurer of Salisbury, he kept an empty dish by his side at meals, and
put into it what he denied himself, sending it afterward by his almoner
to the sick poor. He was a constant reader of the Scriptures day and
night, always kissing the holy volume before commencing, and thus he
derived the judgment and firmness which enabled him to battle with the
evils of his day.

Gifts were especially held in scorn and contempt by him. He was wont
to say, that between _prendre_ and _pendre_ there was but one letter's
difference; and in a court so full of corrupt and grasping clergy, this
gave him untold power.

Peter des Roches was the head of these, representing King John's former
policy, and uniting himself with the young Gascon relations of the King,
who were wont to say, "What are English laws to us?"

The family of Pembroke, Earls Marshal of England, were especially
obnoxious to this party, as resolute supporters of Magna Charta, and of
much power and influence. William, the eldest son of the late Protector,
was married to Eleanor, the King's sister. He died early, and this party
tried to deprive his brother Richard of his inheritance; then, when this
did not succeed, Des Roches wrote letters in the King's name to some of
the Norman-Irish nobles, offering them all his lands in that island,
provided they would murder him, ratifying these promises with the great
seal.

The assassins stirred up the Irish to attack Pembroke's castles, so as
to bring him to Ireland; they then pretended to join with him in putting
down the rebellion, and, in the midst, waylaid him, and attacked him
while riding with a few attendants. Some of these he ordered at once to
convey his young brother to a place of safety, and gallantly defended
himself, but his horse was killed, and he was stabbed in the back; his
servants, returning, carried him home to his castle, but there the
letter purporting to be from the King was shown him, and his grief was
so great that he would not permit his wounds to be dressed, and died in
a few hours.

Archbishop Edmund procured letters exposing this black treachery, and
read them before the whole court. Henry and all present burst into
tears, and the poor careless King confessed with bitter grief that he
had often allowed Des Roches to attach his seal to letters without
knowing their contents, and that this must have been one of them. Des
Roches was dismissed, and sent to his own diocese, where he soon after
died at his castle of Farnham. He was the founder of many convents,
several in Palestine, and others in his own diocese, among which was
Netley, or Letley (_Laeto Loco_), near Southampton, a beautiful specimen
of the pointed style.

Edmund could not prevent the King from intruding on the see of
Winchester the giddy young Aymar de Valence, already Bishop-designate of
Durham. "If my brother is too young, I will hold the see myself," said
the King.

Every attempt Edmund made to repress the grievous evils that prevailed
was frustrated by the authority of Rome.

The imperial family of Hohenstaufen were held in the utmost hatred by
the Popes; and Frederick II., being likewise King of Naples and Sicily,
was an object of great dread and defiance. Fierce passions on either
side were raging, and Innocent IV. regarded his spiritual powers rather
as weapons to be used against his foe the Emperor, than as given him for
the salvation of men's souls.

As a warrior, he needed money: it was raised by exactions on the clergy,
going sometimes as far as demanding half their year's income; as head
of a party, he needed rewards for his friends, and bestowed benefices
without regard to the age, the character, or the fitness of the nominee;
moreover, he trusted to the religious orders, especially those called
Mendicant, for spreading his influence, and he did not dare to restrain
or reform their disorders.

Archbishop Edmund, with his two friends, Robert Grosteste, Bishop of
Lincoln, and Richard Wych, Chancellor of Canterbury, did their best.
Robert's history is striking. He was a nameless peasant of Suffolk, of
the meanest parentage, and only called Grosteste from the size of his
head, needing plenty of stowage (says Fuller) for his store of brains.
How he obtained education is not known, but he worked upward until he
became a noted teacher at Oxford, and afterward at Paris, where he
lectured on all the chief authors then known in Greek and Latin. He
wrote two hundred books, many on sacred subjects, and several poems
in Latin and French; for he was a great lover of minstrelsy, and his
contemporary translator tells us that

"Next his chamber, besyde hys study
Hys harper's chamber was thereby."

This poet and scholar was a most active, thorough-going, practical man,
and, when chosen as Bishop of Lincoln, showed his gratitude for the
benefits of his education by maintaining a number of poor students
at the University. He set himself earnestly to reform abuses in his
diocese, forcing the monasteries which held the tithes of parishes to
provide properly for their spiritual care, and making a strict inquiry
into the condition of the religious houses. They, however, appealed to
Rome; and Innocent, who had at first sanctioned his proceedings, was
afraid of losing their support, and ordered Grosteste to desist. The
resolute Bishop set off to Rome, and laid the Pope's own letters before
his face.

"Well," said Innocent, "be content; you have delivered your own soul. If
I choose to show grace to these persons, what is that to you?"

Robert was anything but content, but he went home, and manfully
struggled with the evils that were rife, sometimes prevailing, sometimes
disappointed, always honest and steadfast. The more gentle Archbishop
gave up the contest, worn out by the vain attempt to preserve purity
and order between the fickle King, the oppressive Pope, the turbulent
nobles, and the avaricious clergy. Orders to him, to Robert, and to the
Bishop of Salisbury, to appoint no one to a benefice till three hundred
Italians were provided for, seemed finally to overpower him; he, with
Richard Wych, secretly left London, and arrived at Pontigny, where,
three years after, he died, in 1142, and has been revered as a saint.

Canterbury remained vacant for several years, the revenues being
absorbed by the King, and the refractory chapter tailing upon them
to quarrel with Grosteste, and going so for as to excommunicate him;
whereupon the sturdy Bishop trod the letter under foot, saying, "Such
curses are the only prayers I ask of such as you."

After three years the King appointed to Canterbury the Queen's uncle,
Boniface of Savoy, a man of no clerical habits; but the Queen wrote a
persuasive letter, by which she obtained the consent of Innocent.

So many monstrous demands had been made by the Pope, that, in 1245,
the nobles sent orders to the wardens of the seaports to seize every
despatch coming from Rome, and they soon made prize of a great number of
orders to intrude Italians into Church patronage. Martin, the legate,
complained to the King, who ordered the letters to be produced, but the
barons took the opportunity of laying before the King a statement of the
grievances of the Church of England, 60,000 marks a year being in the
hands of foreigners, while the whole of the royal revenue was but
20,000. Henry could only make helpless lamentations, and, under pretext
of a tournament, the Barons met at Dunstable, and sent a knight to
expostulate with the legate. This envoy threatened him, that if he
remained three days longer in England, his life would not be safe--an
intimation which drove him speedily from the country.

The barons, hearing that the Pope was holding a council at Lyons, sent
deputies thither, with a letter drawn up by the Bishop of Lincoln, so
powerfully enforced by William de Powerie, their spokesman, that the
exposure of the enormities permitted in England called up a deep blush
on the face of Innocent, and he allowed that he had been wrong in
thrusting in these incompetent Italians. There was one good effected
at this council, namely, the appointment of Richard Wych to the see of
Chichester.

Richard was the son of a Worcestershire yeoman, and was early, with his
elder brother, left an orphan. He was a studious, holy, clerkly boy,
looked on as fit for the cloister: but when his brother came of age,
it was found that the guardians had so wasted their goods, that their
inheritance lay desolate. The brother was in despair, but young Richard
comforted him, bade him trust in God, and himself laying aside the
studies he delighted in, look up the spade and axe, and worked
unceasingly till the affairs of the homestead were in a flourishing
state. Then, when prosperity dawned on the elder brother, the younger
obtained his wish, and went to study at Oxford, where he was so poor
that he and two other scholars had but one gown between them, lived
hard, and allowed themselves few pleasures; but this he was wont to call
the happiest time in his life.

Afterward he went to Bologna, and, after seven years there, returned,
and was made Chancellor, first of Oxford, and afterward of Canterbury.
There was a most earnest attachment between him and St. Edmund, whom
he followed into his exile. The Bishop whom the King had appointed to
Chichester was examined by Grosteste, and found deficient in theology,
and the chapter and Pope agreed in choosing Richard Wych, who was
consecrated by Innocent himself. Henry, in displeasure, took all the
temporalities of the see into his hands, and for a year Richard lived
at the expense of a poor parish priest named Simon, whom he strove to
requite by working in his garden, budding, grafting, and digging, as he
had once done for his brother.

He went about his diocese visiting each parish, and doing his work like
the early bishops of poorer days, and all the time making his suit to
the King to do him justice; but whenever he went to Westminster, meeting
only with jests and gibes from the courtiers.

The Pope was too busy to attend to him. That council at Lyons had ended
in sentence of deposition upon Frederick, and the combat raged in Italy
till his death, when Innocent, claiming Sicily as a fief of the Church,
offered it, if he could get it, to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who had
too much sense to accept such a crown.

It then was offered to Henry for his son Edmund, whom he arrayed in the
robes of a Sicilian prince, and presented to the barons of England,
asking for men and money to win the kingdom. Not a man of them, however,
would march, or give a penny in aid of the cause, and therefore Innocent
raised money from the Lombard merchants in the name of the King of
England.

No wonder Henry could not pay. His own household had neither wages,
clothes, nor food, except what they obtained by purveying--in their case
only a license to rob, since no payment was ever given for the goods
they carried off. His pages were gay banditti, and the merchants,
farmers, and fishers fled as from an enemy when the court approached;
yet, at each little transient gleam of prosperity, the King squandered
all that came into his hands in feasting and splendor, then grasped at
Church revenues, tormented the Jews, laid unjust fines on the Londoners,
or took bribes for administering justice, and all that he did was
imitated with exaggeration by his half-brothers, uncles, and favorites.

His chancellor, Mansel, held seven hundred benefices at once, and
so corrupted the laws, that one of the judges pronounced the source
poisoned from the fountain. Another chancellor was expelled from the
court for refusing to set the great seal to a grant to one of the
Queen's uncles of four-pence on every sack of wool, and at one time
Eleanor herself actually had the keeping of the seal, and when the
Londoners resisted one of her unjust demands, she summarily sent the
Lord Mayor and Sheriffs to the Tower.

Isabel Warenne, the King's cousin, and widow of the Earl of Arundel, an
excellent and charitable lady, still young, came to the King's court to
seek justice respecting a wardship of which she had been deprived. She
spoke boldly to Henry: "My Lord, why do you turn your face from justice?
Nobody can obtain right. You are placed between God and us, but you
govern neither yourself nor us. Are you not ashamed thus to trample on
the Church, and disquiet your nobles?"

"What do you mean, lady?" said the King. "Have the great men of England
chosen you for their advocate?"

"No, sir," said the spirited lady; "they have given me no such charter,
though you have broken that which you and your father have granted and
sworn to observe. Where are the liberties of England, so often granted?
We appeal from you to the Judge in heaven!"

All Henry could say, was, "Did you not ask me a favor because you were
my cousin?"

"You deny my right; I expect no favor," and, so saying, Isabel left him.

After two years, Richard of Chichester was permitted to assume the
temporalities of his see, and most admirably he used them, doing every
kindness to the poor in his diocese, and always maintaining the right,
though more gently than his friend at Lincoln. Those were evil days, and
men's sense of obedience and sense of right were often sorely divided.
Richard died in the year 1253, after a short illness, in which he was
attended by his friend Simon, leaving the memory of his peaceful,
charitable life, much beloved in his diocese, and was shortly after
canonized. "Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us," were among his
last words.

The champion Robert Grosteste had one more battle to fight ere following
his two saintly brethren.

He was wont always to compare each bull which he received with the
Gospels and the canon law, and if he found anything in it that would not
stand this test, he tore it in pieces. In 1254, one of these letters
commanded him to institute to a benefice a nephew of the Pope, a mere
child, besides containing what was called the clause "_non obstante_"
(namely, in spite of), by which the Pope claimed, as having power to
bind and loose, to set aside and dispense with existing statutes and
oaths, at his pleasure.