John Lackland. Kate Norgate
were appointed by Henry, or at least with his sanction, and were in fact his ministers rather than the ministers of his son; but to the new king they owed no obedience save the general obedience due from all English or Norman subjects; from the hour of Henry’s death their service belonged to the “Lord of Ireland” alone, and John thus found himself at the head of a little court of his own, a ready-made ministry through which he might govern both his Irish dominion and the ample possessions which Richard bestowed upon him in England, as freely as the rest of the English realm was governed by Richard himself through the ministers of the Crown.[129]
Of the way in which John was likely to use his new independence he had already given a significant indication. Shortly after Richard’s accession the wardship of the heiress of Leinster, Isabel de Clare, was terminated by her marriage with William the Marshal.[130] Her great Irish fief, as well as her English and Welsh lands, thus passed into the hands of a man who was already one of the most trusted friends and counsellors of Richard, as he had been of Henry, and whose brother had once been seneschal to John himself.[131] No sooner had William entered upon the heritage of his wife than John disseised him of a portion of Leinster and parcelled it out among friends of his own. The Marshal appealed to Richard; Richard insisted upon John’s making restitution, and John, after some demur, was compelled to yield, but not entirely; he managed to secure the ratification of a grant which he had made to his butler, Theobald Walter, out of the Marshal’s lands, although, by way of compromise, it was settled that Theobald should hold the estate in question as an under-tenant of William, not as a tenant-in-chief of John.[132] On the other hand, John did not at once displace the governor whom his father had set over the Irish march four years before, John de Courcy. He had no thought of undertaking the personal government of his dominions in Ireland. To do so he must have turned his back upon the opportunities which Richard’s misplaced generosity was opening to him in England—opportunities of which it was not difficult to foresee the effect upon such a mind as his. As William of Newburgh says, “The enjoyment of a tetrarchy made him covet a monarchy.”[133]
1190
That Richard presently awoke to some consciousness of the danger which he had created for himself and his realm maybe inferred from the fact that in February 1190 he summoned John to Normandy, and there made him swear not to set foot in England for the next three years. The queen-mother, however, afterwards persuaded her elder son to release the younger one from this oath;[134] or, according to another account, to leave the decision of the matter to the justiciar and chancellor, William of Longchamp, bishop of Ely. John was to visit the chancellor in England, and either remain there or go into exile, as William might choose.[135] It is clear, however, that William had no real choice. He was legate in England, and therefore absolution from him was necessary to protect John against the ecclesiastical consequences of a violated oath; but as the violation was sanctioned by the king to whom the oath had been sworn, no ground was left to William for refusing the absolution.
1191
In the course of the year 1190, therefore, or very early in 1191, John returned to England.[136] In February 1191 the sole remaining check upon both John and William of Longchamp was removed: Queen Eleanor went to join her elder son at Messina.[137] As soon as she was gone, the results of the concession which he had made to her wishes in John’s behalf began to show themselves. On Mid-Lent Sunday, March 24, the count of Mortain and the chancellor had an interview at Winchester “concerning the keepers of certain castles, and the money granted to the count by his brother out of the exchequer.”[138] What passed between them we are not told; but it is clear that they disagreed. Three months elapsed without any overt act of aggression on either side. Then, all at once, about midsummer, it became apparent that a party which for more than a year had been seeking an opportunity to undermine the chancellor’s power had found a rallying-point and a leader in the king’s brother. The sheriff of Lincolnshire and constable of Lincoln Castle, Gerard de Camville, being summoned to answer before the justiciars for having made his great fortress into a hold of robbers and bandits, defied their authority on the plea that he had become John’s liegeman, and was therefore answerable to no one except John.[139] The chancellor deprived Gerard of his sheriffdom and gave it to another man, and laid siege to Lincoln Castle.[140] While he was thus occupied, the castles of Nottingham and Tickhill were given up by their custodians to John.[141] Thereupon John sent to the chancellor a message of insolent defiance. If William did not at once withdraw from Lincoln and leave Gerard in unmolested possession, the count of Mortain threatened to “come and visit him with a rod of iron, and with such a host as he would not be able to withstand.”[142] With a cutting allusion at once to the chancellor’s humble origin and to the readiness with which the commandants of Nottingham and Tickhill had betrayed the fortresses committed to their charge, he added that “no good came of depriving lawful freeborn Englishmen of the offices of trust to which they were entitled, and giving them to unknown strangers; the folly of such a proceeding had just been proved in the case of the royal castles which William had entrusted to men who left them exposed to every passer-by; any chance comer would have found their gates open to him as easily as they had opened to John himself. Such a state of affairs in his brother’s realm he was resolved to tolerate no longer.” The chancellor’s retort was a peremptory summons to John to give up the two castles, and “answer before the king’s court for the breach of his oath.”[143] William probably hoped to get John expelled from England, on the plea that Richard had never really consented to his return and that his absolution was therefore invalid, as having been extorted on a false pretence. The summons appears to have been carried by Archbishop Walter of Rouen, who had come from Messina charged with a special commission from Richard to deal with the crisis in England.[144] John, on receiving the chancellor’s message, burst into one of the paroxysms of fury characteristic of his race. “He was more than angry,” says a contemporary; “his whole body was so contorted with rage as to be scarcely recognizable; a scowl of wrath furrowed his brow; his eyes flashed fire, his colour changed to a livid white, and I know what would have become of the chancellor if in that hour of fury he had come within reach of John’s hands!” In the end, however, the archbishop persuaded both John and William to hold another conference at Winchester on July 28.[145]
John secured the services of four thousand armed Welshmen, whom he apparently brought up secretly, in small parties, from the border, and hid in various places round about the city. No disturbance, however, took place; some of the bishops, under the direction of Walter of Rouen, drew up a scheme of agreement which, for the moment, both John and William found it advisable to accept. The castles of Nottingham and Tickhill were surrendered by John to the king {1191 July 28} in the person of his special representative the archbishop of Rouen, who was to give them in charge, one to William of Venneval—a liegeman of the king, but a friend and follower of John—the other to William the Marshal; these two custodians were to hold them for the king till his return, and then “act according to his will concerning them”; but if he should die, or if meanwhile the chancellor should break the peace with John, they were to restore them to John. New custodians were appointed, on the like terms, to six royal castles