The Conquering Family (37 page)

It must be stated in fairness to this much-derided ruler that history has been too prone to saddle him with all the blame for the breaking up of the Angevin empire. The French possessions formed a ramshackle structure, joined together in the first place by such intangibilities as royal marriage ties, held by nothing more durable than the vows of the ruling families. The brisk people of England had nothing in common with the easier-going inhabitants of Aquitaine. Their interests were as far apart as the tongues they spoke. The English had grown tired of shedding their blood and emptying their pockets in the endless strife of ducal factions abroad. They had reached the point where they flatly refused to shoulder war burdens which brought nothing but a sense of importance to their kings.

The magic of Richard’s name had kept the empire intact, even though the tides of separation were rising high in his time. With John came the deluge. The last of the sons made a pitifully poor attempt to hold back the flood, but the result would have been the same if he had been a great
military leader and a political genius combined; though perhaps in that case the triumph of the French would have been slower and more costly.

John was the complete tyrant, and the people of the island kingdom suffered injustice and deprivation under him. Inasmuch as his oppression led to Magna Charta, however, he was the first and most noteworthy of the bad kings out of whose evil rule came good. The loss of Normandy and the Angevin provinces, although it humbled the pride of the nation, was another great benefit which grew out of disaster. As will be demonstrated later, it blew away the final trace of racial disunity in England. The Saxon and the Norman merged at last into the Englishman when the King ceased to be a colossus with one foot in London and one in Rouen.

These two developments of such major importance, and the fact that his reign provides history with one of its great unsolved mysteries, make the years of John of the deepest interest, even though they are filled with evidences of a depravity fit to chill the blood.

The story of John begins with his contest for the crown, and this leads at once into the intricacies of the aforesaid mystery.

England could boast at this time of a fine knight who has appeared once briefly in these pages: when Richard, pursuing his sick and beaten father from Le Mans, found himself facing a man who treated him with the scorn he deserved. This was William Marshal, so called because he held the high post of marshal of England. He was now the Earl of Pembroke and military commander in the Rouen district. Later a detailed account of this remarkable man will be given, but at this point, with a new-made grave still to be closed and a successor to be chosen with a loud clatter of arms, it will suffice to say that William Marshal was the greatest fighting man of the century (not excluding the doughty Coeur de Lion with his battle-ax) and a fine, human fellow of high character and undeviating principles.

It was in the late hours of the evening that a servant wakened the marshal from sleep with news of the death of Richard. The soldier, who was now in his middle fifties and inclined to sleep heavily, roused slowly and sat up in bed, exposing his bare torso and long muscular arms. He did not at once take in the full significance of what he had been told, then he sprang energetically from bed and struggled into his camise. Over this he hastily dropped the gambeson, a padded shirt to protect the body from contact with the metal. Then came a hauberk of jazerant work which was much used at the time, a coat of steel plates attached to a base of canvas. Sleeveless surcoat and a pair of heavy leather boots reinforced with metal completed his costume.

Rouen was packed to the eaves with the birds of prey who collect at the first taint of blood on the air: mercenaries who swaggered in the streets and swilled in the taverns, announcing themselves as not engaged by a careful absence of color in their clothes, even to a discarding of scarves; heavy-chested Flemings, flaxen Germans and Danes, dark and sallow condottieri from the boot of Europe, all waiting to sell themselves to the highest bidder; tougher and more evil than these, the contractors with supplies to sell, diabolically clever fellows with paid bravoes at their heels; and, of course, spies, informers, secret agents, pimps. Rouen after nightfall could be likened only to the back streets of hell. Here a dagger thrust in the ribs was as common and as little thought of as an oath. Although William Marshal had never known a moment of fear in his life, he was too old a campaigner to risk the blackness of the streets without an adequate guard. The wind and the rain, the oldest of campaigners themselves, were on the attack when he started out, with sudden swoops which made the lantern dance on the brown-bill carried in front of the party and caught the midnight wayfarers full in the face, so that rivulets of water ran down their necks under the open iron pots they wore on their heads and got into the armor where it could not be dislodged. All through the centuries man has devised one absurdity after another in the way of apparel, but never has there been anything to equal the discomfort of body armor in a heavy rainstorm.

The shaven-poll who admitted them into the courtyard of the archbishop’s palace turned them over to a brother inside and then ran for the cover of his wicket at the gate, knowing the playful habit soldiers had of beating the buttocks of priests with bill handles or treading on their toes with iron shoes. Those inside were equally expeditious in leading the marshal to the bare apartment where the old primate was still bending over his endless documents.

Walter of Rouen heard the news with such a sense of shock that for several moments he said nothing. Then he pointed out the danger of delay in getting the succession settled, and the two of them fell into a serious debate. The archbishop took the stand that Arthur of Brittany, the heir of Geoffrey, who had been born between Richard and John, had first right to the throne; which was correct, according to the accepted law of primogeniture. Marshal shook his grizzled head in denial. Arthur might have the right, but it would be a bad thing to choose him King. He was a foreigner, this boy named after the great Celtic King, and by report he was as proud and tricky as his father had been (the handsome Geoffrey had always been counted the troublemaker of the family) and as strong-willed as his mother, Constance of Brittany, who hated the Plantagenets. England needed a man, declared the marshal, and it would be better to take John.

They discussed the matter with full consciousness that the succession
might hinge on what they decided. Between them they could put the might of Normandy back of their choice. Should it be John, who had been born in England and had friends there in spite of everything? Or should it be the unknown quantity, this boy of thirteen who had never been in England and had scarce a drop of Saxon blood in his veins; whose character, moreover, had not yet formed sufficiently to allow them to reach any judgment?

The marshal stuck aggressively to his selection: John, whose faults were all known and who was wanted by the people of the island with a degree of unanimity hard to believe in view of the reputation the sole surviving son had acquired.

The archbishop sighed finally and gave in. John, then, it would be.

“Nothing of which you have done, Marshal,” he declared, shaking his head dolefully, “will you have such cause to repine as this.”

Although the archbishop was right about what would happen if John were made King, the marshal’s choice was that of England. Across the Channel the feeling against the young prince as a candidate was running high. The evidence on this point is so convincing that it can be taken as fact that Arthur would never have been accepted as King of England, even if all the French possessions had declared for him.

In the meantime the adherents of Arthur had received the news of the King’s death, and Brittany had blazed into excited support of the prince. Anjou, Maine, and Touraine threw in on the same side. Philip of France turned against his old partner in perfidy and espoused the cause of his nephew. The French monarch announced his readiness to take the field and summoned Arthur to Paris to live in his household and receive education with his own son and heir. In Normandy, which counted most, the strong stand taken by the Earl of Pembroke was keeping the people from joining in the rather hysterical swing to the heir of Brittany. Aquitaine, that loyal land, was standing behind Eleanor and was ready to accept whatever decision she might make.

Eleanor, naturally, chose her only remaining son. John had been so much the favorite of Henry in the bitter last days that there had been restraint sometimes in her attitude toward him. Now this was all swept away. Although she knew full well that John had great faults, she was prepared to battle for him against the grandson who had been trained to hate her by his high-tempered mother.

Eleanor’s support was what John needed at this critical moment. Touraine had declared for Arthur, but the imperious old Queen instructed the seneschal to turn over the treasure of that province to John, and this was done at the castle of Chinon on April 14. At the same time a few of the nobility swore fealty to him. From Chinon, John rode north into Normandy, where he found that William Marshal had kept the old duchy
loyal to him. He was crowned duke by Walter of Rouen on April 25.

The coronation was conducted with all the old Norman rites. The ducal coronet, which was made in the form of a wreath of golden roses, had always looked out of place on the heads of the hard-bitten men who had worn it. John had broadened out so much that the dainty circlet made him rather absurd. Perhaps he sensed this himself. At any rate, as he took the spear, which was handed to him in place of a scepter according to the Norman custom, he turned and winked at the spectators. At a later stage of the ceremony he let the spear fall out of his hand, and it crashed loudly on the stone paving before the altar. An uneasy silence settled over the cathedral. This was believed a sign that he was doomed to lose the duchy.

The reception he received in England, where he went immediately after being crowned in Normandy, showed how correct William Marshal had been in his estimate of the temper of the English people. They wanted him to be King, and not a single voice was raised in favor of the young prince. The coronation took place on Ascension Day, May 27, and Hubert Walter officiated. Whether it was done as a sop to the nation in view of the poor caliber of the new King, or whether it was the first of the checks which all men knew would have to be imposed on him, the primate solemnly intoned the words of the old ritual which declared him King by choice of the people. Years after, the archbishop confided that he had used that form of oath because the violence of John’s character rendered the solemn admonition necessary. It made no difference, of course, so far as John was concerned.

For many centuries before the Normans came, and all through the sanguinary stages of the Conquest, the Welsh people had remained in their mountainous corner of the island, refusing stoutly to be incorporated in the growing nation. They were of the same racial stock as the people of Brittany and with the same traditions and ideals, the same dislike for Saxons and Normans and Frenchmen. One great faith sustained these Celtic peoples in their determination to remain apart and independent, and this was the legend of Arthur, the Pendragon, the most enlightened and chivalrous of men. Out of this faith had grown the belief that someday, when the need would be great, Arthur would come back to earth with his sword Excalibur and lead his people again.

Stories continued to grow around the Arthurian legend as time went on. It was generally believed that Glastonbury, where the old Benedictine monastery stood, was in reality the Avalon to which the body of the King was taken after his last battle. This did not prevent rumors of the finding of his grave elsewhere. Crusaders came back from the East with various
stories. Some said he lay at the foot of Mount Etna, others said on Mount Sinai. One belief was universal: that anyone who ventured into the woods at midnight would hear the sound of ghostly horns and see a train of hunters ride by like shadows through the glades with the grave-faced Arthur in the lead. He was as much alive in Celtic minds as any king of the day, and the conviction that he would return was at the core of Welsh resistance to English encroachments.

Toward the end of the reign of Henry II an announcement had been made which stunned all believers in the legend. Henry of Blois, the abbot of Glastonbury, gave it out that, acting on the revelations of a Welsh bard, he had made a search of the abbey vaults. At a considerable distance down had been found a huge coffin of oak containing the bones of Arthur and his Queen Guinevere, who had been buried with him. The unusual size of the bones made it certain that they had belonged to the tall Pendragon. The golden hair of the beautiful Queen was seen when the coffin was opened, but it had crumbled into dust as soon as exposed to the air. The main piece of evidence, however, was an inscription on the side of the coffin:

If this was really the body of Arthur, he became a man and could no longer be thought of as a god. After the first sensation had died down and the bones had been reinterred in a magnificent sarcophagus, the people of Wales and Brittany rejected the story as a deliberate imposture designed to destroy their faith in the future of the Celtic race. There were repeated demands to see the coffin with the inscription, but the abbot failed to produce it. In time it was generally believed that the discovery had been planned for political reasons, perhaps on the insistence of Henry himself.

It was soon after this that a posthumous son was born to Constance of Brittany, the widow of Henry’s third son, Geoffrey. Henry was delighted, for this was his first grandson, and he decided the boy should be given his name. This was not acceptable to the mother. Constance did not like the King or his wife (Eleanor reciprocated most heartily) and, in fact, wanted nothing to do with the English royal family. She called in the leading men of Brittany and asked their opinion about the naming of the infant duke. Unanimously they said he must be named for the Pendragon, who would return to earth in his own time in spite of lies and impostures, and so Arthur the boy was called. One troubadour declared that the King who founded the order of the Round Table
had
come back; that his soul had entered the body of the child cradled safely in the ducal palace behind the Mordelaise Gate.