John Lackland. Kate Norgate
rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_0b50b36b-d89f-5634-ba38-ffe372cb0a61">[146] and also to two castles which Richard had expressly granted to him—Bolsover and the Peak. Any new castles built since the king’s departure were to be razed, and no more were to be built till his return, save, if necessary, on the royal demesnes, or elsewhere in pursuance of special orders, written or verbal, from himself. No man was to be disseised either by the king’s ministers or by the count of Mortain, save in execution of a legal sentence delivered after trial before the king’s court; and each party was pledged to amend, on complaint from the other, its own infringements of this rule, which was at once applied to the case of Gerard de Camville. Gerard, having been disseised without trial, was reinstated in his sheriffdom; but his reinstatement was ordered to be immediately followed by a trial before the Curia Regis on the charges brought against him, and the decision of the Curia was to be final; if it went against him, John was not to support him in resistance to it; and John was further bound not to harbour any known outlaws or enemies of the king, nor any person accused of treason, except on condition of such person pledging himself to stand his trial in the king’s court. The archbishop of Rouen received a promise from John and from the chancellor, each supported by seven sureties, that they would keep this agreement. After it was drawn up, a postscript appears to have been added: “If any thing should be taken or intercepted by either party during the truce, it shall be lawfully restored and amends made for it. And these things are done, saving always the authority and commands of our lord the king; yet so that if the king before his return should not will this agreement to be kept, the aforesaid castles of Nottingham and Tickhill shall be given up to Lord John, whatever the king may order concerning them.” The last clause is obscure; but its meaning seems to be that if the arrangement just made should prove to be, in the judgment of the king’s ministers, untenable, it was to be treated as void, and matters were to be restored to the position in which they had been before it was made.[147]
The contingency which seems to have been contemplated in this postscript very soon occurred. Some mercenaries whom the chancellor had summoned from over sea landed in England, and he at once repudiated the agreement, declaring there should be no peace till either he or John was driven out of the realm.[148] Hereupon it seems that Venneval and the Marshal, in accordance with the clause above quoted, restored the castles of Tickhill and Nottingham to John. On the other hand, an outrage on John’s part, which is recorded only as having occurred some time in this year (1191), certainly took place before October, and most likely before the middle of September. Roger de Lacy, the constable of Chester, who was responsible to Longchamp for the safe keeping of these two castles, made a vigorous effort to bring to justice the subordinate castellans to whom he had entrusted them, and who had betrayed them to John. Of these there had been two in each castle. Two managed to keep out of Lacy’s reach; the other two he caught and hanged, although one of them offered to swear with compurgators that he had never consented to the treason of his colleague, and even brought a letter from John requesting that the compurgation might be allowed—the chancellor, to whom the question had been referred, having remitted it to the decision of Lacy. While this man’s body was hanging in chains, his squire drove the birds away from it; whereupon Roger de Lacy hanged the squire. Then John took upon himself to avenge them both, not only by disseising Roger of all the lands which he held of him, but also by ravaging the lands which Roger possessed elsewhere.[149]
Some time in August or September another assembly was called to endeavour after a pacification between John and the chancellor. Three bishops and twenty-two laymen were appointed arbitrators—the laymen chosen by the bishops, eleven from the party which had hitherto adhered to William, eleven from the followers of John. The terms which these twenty-five laid down amounted to a decision wholly in John’s favour. They did, indeed, again require him to restore the two royal castles of Nottingham and Tickhill; but they made the restoration an empty form. They decreed that the chancellor should put these castles under the control of two men whom they named, William of Venneval and another friend of John’s, Reginald de Vasseville. These two were to hold the castles for the king and give William hostages for their fidelity; but if Richard should die before reaching home, they were at once to surrender the castles to John, and William was to restore their hostages. The arbitrators further confirmed Gerard de Camville in the constableship of Lincoln castle; they ordered the chancellor to remove the constables of royal castles situated within the lands of the count of Mortain, and appoint others in their stead, “if the count showed reason for changing them”; and they added that “if the king should die, the chancellor was not to disinherit the count, but to do his utmost to promote him to the kingdom.”[150] This last clause was pointed at a negotiation which William had been carrying on with the Scot king, for the purpose of obtaining his recognition of Arthur of Britanny as heir-presumptive to the English Crown. The negotiation was secret; but John had discovered it,[151] and the discovery was a useful weapon in his hands. William’s dealings with Scotland were most probably sanctioned by Richard; their object was certainly in accord with Richard’s own plans for the succession at this time; but Richard’s choice of Arthur as his heir was probably unknown as yet to the majority of his subjects, and if it was known to them, it could not commend itself to their ideas either of policy or of constitutional practice. In their eyes the king’s next-of-kin and natural successor was not his boy-nephew, but his brother. It was therefore easy for John to win their sympathies by representing the scheme as part of a plot contrived against himself by the chancellor.
The new agreement lasted no longer than its predecessor. Scarcely was it drawn up when there occurred an excellent opportunity for John to secure for himself a new and valuable ally in the person of his half-brother Geoffrey, the eldest son of Henry II. and the predecessor of Longchamp in the office of chancellor of England. Geoffrey, like John, had in the spring of 1190 been sworn to keep out of England for three years; but, like John too, he had obtained from Richard a release from his oath.[152] His election to the see of York had been confirmed by the Pope on May 11, 1191,[153] and it was known that he intended to return to England immediately after his consecration.[154] Richard had given him a written release from his vow of absence,[155] but had neglected to apprise the chancellor of the fact; William therefore no sooner heard of Geoffrey’s purpose to return than he issued, on July 30, a writ ordering that the archbishop should be arrested on landing.[156] Geoffrey had written to John, begging for his help; John in reply promised to stand by him.[157] On August 18 Geoffrey was consecrated at Tours,[158] and John then urged him to come over at once.[159] On September 14 Geoffrey reached Dover; he escaped from an attempt to arrest him as he landed, but four days later he was forcibly dragged from sanctuary in S. Martin’s priory and flung into prison in the castle.[160]
John immediately wrote to the chancellor, demanding whether these things had been done by his authority. According to one account, William answered that they had.[161] A letter from William himself to the chapter of Canterbury, however, declares that he had merely ordered his officers to administer to Geoffrey the oath of fealty to the king (which it was usual for a bishop to take before entering upon his see), and if he refused it, to send him back to the Continent.[162] However this might be, it is clear that, outwardly at least, the chancellor had put himself in the wrong.