their corpses were found huddled together, with the boy bearing tooth-marks on his body from where his mother had tried to eat him. xviii
Although increasingly hostile to the monarch, barons also fought among themselves. All major lords had their own private armies, composed of bannermen sworn to do service, and their disputes often spilled over into violence. Various methods were used to promote peace: the Earls of Leicester and Chester, constantly squabbling over their lands, agreed to give each other 15 days’ notice on any war. But whereas after 1066 the French-speaking barons had been tied to the monarch by a common fear of the English peasantry, those differences with the common people were beginning to fade.
The king was getting madder and madder. In 1212, a man called Peter of Wakefield prophesised that John would not make his 14th anniversary in charge, and so when the day came John celebrated by having Peter – and his son – hanged. On his journeys, the king would send his baggage train, packed with booze, secretly on ahead of him. He would not sleep anywhere but in his own castles (he had amassed 50 such royal residences) for fear that his barons might betray him. He would wake up before dawn and slip away. The king had become so paranoid that he developed a complex code to be used when he wished orders to be carried out. It was so complex he sometimes forgot it himself.
Things came to a head with the final military defeat in July 1214 at Bouvines, and in January 1215 the king met 40 barons in London, where they demanded that John obey the Charter of Liberties that had been issued by Henry I in 1100. He stalled and then double-crossed them; in response, on May 5, 1215, a group of rebel barons renounced homage and fealty.
They were led by Robert Fitzwalter, whose daughter the king had raped, and with his mostly northern barons he raised an army in the spring and headed to Northampton. After the king had failed to show, Fitzwalter declared himself ‘Marshall of the Army of God and the Holy Church’, and marched on London, where they were welcomed. With all-out civil war looming, Archbishop Langton acted as peacemaker and brought the king and the barons together at Runnymede on June 15. There they drew up a series of 63 clauses by which the sovereign would agree to rule; it became known as the Great Charter, or Magna Carta, to distinguish it from another charter about forests.
But true to form, the king reneged on the deal, claiming it was signed under duress, and civil war broke out. John besieged Rochester Castle in the autumn, trying to undermine his enemies – literally – by digging a tunnel underneath the castle walls and pouring in 40 pigs’ worth of fat, setting it alight.
While John was trying to win back London, the King of Scotland invaded to annex Northumberland, as agreed with the barons. In January 1216 John marched north and captured Berwick, then Scotland’s largest city, and declared he would get his revenge on the Scottish king – ‘by God’s teeth, I will run the little sandy fox-cub to earth’. This he wasn’t able to do, so instead he just burned down Berwick out of spite, personally setting fire to the house he had stayed in, and headed south. By March he had taken back East Anglia, but had now run out of money, and there John died of gluttony-induced dysentery, after having lost the crown jewels in the Wash. In the words of one chronicler of the king: ‘Hell herself felt defiled by his admission.’
His nine-year-old son Henry was proclaimed king. Before John died, however, the barons had invited over Prince Louis, son of the King of France, to be ruler, and the country now had to deal with a French invasion, which was beaten away by a force led by William Marshal, who had vowed to carry the king ‘on his shoulders’.
Marshal died in 1219, and two not so dutiful regents squandered all the crown’s money, so that by the time Henry III assumed full control there was
Although increasingly hostile to the monarch, barons also fought among themselves. All major lords had their own private armies, composed of bannermen sworn to do service, and their disputes often spilled over into violence. Various methods were used to promote peace: the Earls of Leicester and Chester, constantly squabbling over their lands, agreed to give each other 15 days’ notice on any war. But whereas after 1066 the French-speaking barons had been tied to the monarch by a common fear of the English peasantry, those differences with the common people were beginning to fade.
The king was getting madder and madder. In 1212, a man called Peter of Wakefield prophesised that John would not make his 14th anniversary in charge, and so when the day came John celebrated by having Peter – and his son – hanged. On his journeys, the king would send his baggage train, packed with booze, secretly on ahead of him. He would not sleep anywhere but in his own castles (he had amassed 50 such royal residences) for fear that his barons might betray him. He would wake up before dawn and slip away. The king had become so paranoid that he developed a complex code to be used when he wished orders to be carried out. It was so complex he sometimes forgot it himself.
Things came to a head with the final military defeat in July 1214 at Bouvines, and in January 1215 the king met 40 barons in London, where they demanded that John obey the Charter of Liberties that had been issued by Henry I in 1100. He stalled and then double-crossed them; in response, on May 5, 1215, a group of rebel barons renounced homage and fealty.
They were led by Robert Fitzwalter, whose daughter the king had raped, and with his mostly northern barons he raised an army in the spring and headed to Northampton. After the king had failed to show, Fitzwalter declared himself ‘Marshall of the Army of God and the Holy Church’, and marched on London, where they were welcomed. With all-out civil war looming, Archbishop Langton acted as peacemaker and brought the king and the barons together at Runnymede on June 15. There they drew up a series of 63 clauses by which the sovereign would agree to rule; it became known as the Great Charter, or Magna Carta, to distinguish it from another charter about forests.
But true to form, the king reneged on the deal, claiming it was signed under duress, and civil war broke out. John besieged Rochester Castle in the autumn, trying to undermine his enemies – literally – by digging a tunnel underneath the castle walls and pouring in 40 pigs’ worth of fat, setting it alight.
While John was trying to win back London, the King of Scotland invaded to annex Northumberland, as agreed with the barons. In January 1216 John marched north and captured Berwick, then Scotland’s largest city, and declared he would get his revenge on the Scottish king – ‘by God’s teeth, I will run the little sandy fox-cub to earth’. This he wasn’t able to do, so instead he just burned down Berwick out of spite, personally setting fire to the house he had stayed in, and headed south. By March he had taken back East Anglia, but had now run out of money, and there John died of gluttony-induced dysentery, after having lost the crown jewels in the Wash. In the words of one chronicler of the king: ‘Hell herself felt defiled by his admission.’
His nine-year-old son Henry was proclaimed king. Before John died, however, the barons had invited over Prince Louis, son of the King of France, to be ruler, and the country now had to deal with a French invasion, which was beaten away by a force led by William Marshal, who had vowed to carry the king ‘on his shoulders’.
Marshal died in 1219, and two not so dutiful regents squandered all the crown’s money, so that by the time Henry III assumed full control there was
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