"The finest knight in all the world, part 2: William Marshal, baron, earl, and regent of England

In the second half of “The finest knight in all the world: the practical chivalry of Sir William Marshal,” Ellen and I examine the career of William Marshal as baron, earl, and, ultimately, regent of England for a child king.  The challenge William Marshal  faced as a baron was to retain possession of all his lands while still preserving his vaunted reputation for loyalty, a seemingly impossible challenge under the rule of the mistrustful and vindictive King John. 

Episode 6 is on the long side because Marshal's life intersected with many key events in medieval English and Irish history.

Listen on Podurama https://podurama.com

Intro and exit music are by Alexander Nakarada

If you have questions, feel free to contact me at richard.abels54@gmail.com

Transcript

Richard: Welcome to today’s episode, “The finest knight in all the world”: the practical chivalry of Sir William Marshal, part 2. In part one we saw how William Marshal rose high in the households of the Young King Henry and his father Henry II by demonstrating the qualities that would earn him praise as the “finest knight in all the world,” prowess in combat, prudence as a courtier, and a reputation for unshakeable loyalty. It is easy to be loyal to a successful and generous lord. But William Marshal cultivated his reputation for loyalty by faithfully serving a series of lords to  the bitter end on the losing side. 

In part 2, Ellen and I will examine the career of William Marshal as baron, earl, and, ultimately, regent of England for a child king.  The challenge William Marshal  faced as a baron was to retain possession of all his lands while still preserving his vaunted reputation for loyalty, a seemingly impossible conundrum under the rule of the notorious King John. 

Richard:          At the end of episode 5 we left William Marshal at the abbey of Fontevrault, where King Henry II’s body was lying in state, awaiting the arrival of Henry’s eldest remaining son, Count Richard of Poitou, better known as Richard the Lionheart. Fontevrault was crowded with barons and knights, mostly supporters of King Henry against Richard, who  nervously discussed their prospects under the new king. The one thing Henry’s supporters agreed on was that William had the most to fear, as he had recently killed Richard’s horse from under him, and they generously offered William aid if Richard chose to confiscate the fief of Cartmel and take away his promised bride, the heiress, Isabel de Clare. 

Ellen: How do we know this was actually what happened?

Richard: The scene is in “The History of William the Marshal,” the long biographical poem commissioned by William’s son and successor a few years after the Earl’s death.  As I said in the previous episode, the author, John the Troubadour, credits John of Earley, William Mashal’s intimate friend and household knight, as his main source. One of King Henry II’s first gifts to William Marshal when he entered his service in 1186 was guardianship of the teenage John of Earley, heir to a minor baronage in Berkshire near the Marshal family’s main holdings. John of Earley was an eyewitness of many of the events we will talk about in this episode. Of course, John of Earley was recalling an event that happened about 35 years earlier, and his memory may have been shaped by his admiration for his late friend.

According to “The History,” Marshal responded by thanking them but refusing their generosity, saying that it would shame him to take their gifts without having the means to repay them. Marshal assured them that he felt no shame at all for having killed Richard’s horse, and that he relied on God as he always had.  This was a display of the chivalric quality of mesure, the ability to control the expression of emotions.

Ellen:   Even if the account is accurate, I suspect that Marshal wasn’t as confident as he made out.  It didn’t matter that Henry II had promised her to Marshal. A king’s promises died with him, and Richard owed William Marshal nothing.  Richard as count of Poitou and duke of Aquitaine had lived up to the literal meaning of his—and your—name, Ric—ruler--and  hard—firm, harsh. Richard the Lionheart was such a hard-ass count and duke that the barons of Poitou and Aquitaine had risen in revolt against him, which he put down brutally.

Richard: Some midshipman may have thought I lived up to my name, although the word they used was “demanding.” But I was really more of a softy, at least when it came to grades.  

Ellen: You may get some messages on Facebook from former students disagreeing with you about that—I mean the softy part. 

When I read Sidney Painter’s biography of William Marshal, I got the impression that he was motivated solely by honor and loyalty. But that doesn’t seem realistic. 

Richard: It isn’t. No one in Marshal’s position could have served without expectation of reward.  We know that the real William Marshal had a healthy appreciation of what his service was worth because of a document discovered in 1996 by the historian Nicholas Vincent.  It is a military summons sent by Henry II to William Marshal in 1188 to join the army he was raising to retake the valuable frontier castle of Chateauroux from the French king, Philip Augustus. In it, Henry instructed William to come “fully equipped as soon as may be, with as many knights as you can get.” That is boiler-plate language for late twelfth-century English military summonses. What comes next isn’t. “You have ever so often moaned to me,” wrote King Henry, “that I bestowed on you a small fief (referring to the 28,747 acre lordship of Cartmel). Know for certain that if you serve me faithfully I will give you in addition Chateauroux with all its lordship and whatever belongs to it as soon as we may be able.” If the campaign had been successful, William would have exchanged the heiress he had in hand, Heloise of Kendal, and her minor barony in Yorkshire for the far more attractive—at least in terms of land and wealth—Denise of Chateauroux. 

But the campaign failed, as did the subsequent war Henry fought against his son Richard and King Philip Augustus. In the last months of Henry’s life, the ailing king was desperate to ensure the loyalty of the men upon whom he most depended. As the lordship of Chateauroux was now out of reach, Henry promised the ever loyal and apparently ever complaining William Marshal marriage to an heiress considerably more valuable than Heloise of Kendal, Isabel de Clare, daughter and heir to the vast holdings of Earl Richard de Clare. Back to the story

Ellen: When Richard arrived at Fontevrault, he immediately went into the Church and stood by the head of his father’s corpse for a long time without displaying any emotion whatsoever. John of Earley, who was present, said that no one could tell whether he felt grief or joy. Another of William Marshal’s biographers, David Crouch, interprets this as a display of Richard’s mesure. On the other hand, given their complicated relationship, Richard might not have known how he felt staring at the face of his dead father. 

Richard: After what seemed to be a long time, Richard called for William Marshal to step outside the Church with him.  Richard opened the conversation, observing that the last time they had met, William was trying to  kill him, and that he had only saved himself by deflecting William’s lance with his arm. Marshal seems to have taken that as an affront to his prowess. “Sire,” he said, “I had no intention of killing you, nor did I try. I am still strong enough to direct a lance, and if I had wished to strike your body, I would have.”  William added for good measure that if he had killed Richard, he wouldn’t have considered it a crime, and that he had no regrets about killing his horse. Left unsaid but understood by both men was Marshal’s defense: he was acting to protect his lord against a man who wished him harm, father or not. 

Richard was pleased by the answer, and pardoned William. It’s likely that Richard had been teasing Marshal and that he had intended to take him into his service regardless of how he answered. Richard had a ready-made assignment for his new courtier.  William was to go to England to ensure that Richard’s mother Eleanor of Aquitaine was released from her fifteen-year confinement, and to deliver a letter naming her as regent in Richard’s absence. 

Ellen: Our listeners probably would like to know why Eleanor was in prison for 15 years. 

Richard. Not so much in prison as under house arrest in Winchester castle. Her crime was conspiring to depose her husband Henry II. She was complicit in, and may even had been the architect of, the rebellion of their sons Henry the Young King, Geoffrey, and Richard in 1173-4. 

Ellen: Possibly the only thing those three ever agreed on.

Richard: I don’t know. They might have agreed that their younger brother John was a waste of space. 

Legend has it that Eleanor’s enmity against her husband was because of his passionate and public love affair with the beautiful and much younger Rosamund Clifford. That might have had something to do with it, but Eleanor’s true love was her duchy of Aquitaine. The root cause of Eleanor’s anger and resentment was more likely Henry’s attempt to impose his authority over her duchy. Henry II would have flunked pre-school. He was not good at sharing his toys.

 Ellen:  Eleanor was lucky that she was married to Henry II rather than Henry VIII. Okay, back to the story

Richard: The big question now had to do with Isabel de Clare.  Henry II’s chancellor, who had joined the conversation, reminded Richard that his father had given the lady of Striguil with all the de Clare lands to William. Richard responded—I imagine with a smile--that his father had only promised Isabel to William. It was he that now gave Marshal the lady. 

Ellen: Painter thought that Marshal’s unapologetic response appealed to Richard’s “somewhat Quixotic nature” and sense of chivalry. Maybe it did, but there is a more pragmatic explanation. A match between William Marshal and Isabel had a real upside for Richard. Marshal was loyal and capable, but just as importantly, he was a political and social nobody. A marriage between Isabel and a baron of equal rank would make her husband an uncomfortably powerful noble. By allowing the marriage to Marshal, Richard gained a baron of proven loyalty who owed Richard a debt that he could never repay. 

Richard:  At the price of giving away a valuable heiress who would have brought Richard a tidy sum at auction. Unlike his father and his eldest brother, Richard was eager to fulfill the crusader vow that he had taken in 1187, and for that he needed to raise a lot of money for men, ships, and provisions.  Roger of Howden, a cleric and chronicler in Richard’s service, wrote that King Richard “put up everything for sale—offices, lordship, earldoms, sheriffdoms, castles, towns, lands, the lot.” Among the king’s most valuable commodities were royal wards, and of those, Isabel topped the list.

Ellen: This doesn’t sound all that chivalrous. How does this market in heiresses fit in with courtly love and the service to women?

Richard: It doesn’t.  “Fin amour”—“fine love”--was a courtly game.  Noble marriages were serious business. They represented not just the union of two individuals but the merger of noble families and bloodlines. To quote Tina Turner, “What’s love got to do with it?”

Ellen: Which is why Countess Marie de Champagne judged marriage to be incompatible with true love, and another medieval writer compared marital love to “licking honey off a thorn.” 

Richard: Eew. Thank you for that mental image.

Ellen: You’re the medieval historian. You should have known the source of that quotation.

Richard: I will when I have time to google it. 

William did better than he could ever have hoped by marrying Isabel. She was young—at least twenty years his junior—and is described in “The History” as “the good and beautiful damsel of Striguil.”  But a prospective wife’s attractiveness had less to with physical beauty that with the lands and family connections she brought to the union. William Marshal probably had never laid eyes on Heloise or Denise or Isabel, but what did that matter? Marshal would have been just as incredulous as Monty Python’s lord of Swamp Castle’s about his son Herbert’s resistance to marrying Princess Lucky: [sound bite]

Ellen: Which brings us back to episode one, “There is more truth in Monty Python and the Holy Grail than you might think.” 

Richard: Sorry. Couldn’t help it.  

As daughter of Earl Richard de Clare and the Irish princess Aoife (pronounced Eefa), Isabel de Clare’s inheritance consisted of the earldom of Striguil in south-east Wales, the former kingdom of Leinster in Ireland; 65 and a half knight’s fees scattered across England, and the valuable lordship of Longueville in Normandy. In addition, William Marshal had his eye on the earldom of Pembroke in south-west Wales that King Stephen created as a reward for Richard de Clare’s services, and which Henry II had confiscated as soon as he became king. William Marshal thought of it as part of his wife’s inheritance. King Richard apparently didn’t, and it was John, rather than Richard, who made William earl of Pembroke. 

Ellen: The medieval lordship of Leinster was huge. It encompassed six current Irish counties and it accounts for about one eighth of the whole island. Richard de Clare had claimed Leinster both by conquest and marriage. He had been hired to recover it by its ousted ruler King Diarmaid. The reward for his success was marriage to his employer’s daughter. But in 1189 Leinster may have been the least valuable of William’s new possessions.  While Isabel remained unmarried, her Irish lands were administered by the Lord of Ireland, Prince John, in theory on her behalf. As hard it is to believe, Prince John abused his authority by distributing virtually all the land as fiefs to his own followers. The nice thing about having the wardship of an underage heir is that it provided an opportunity for a king or baron to reward his men’s service at no cost to himself.  When this was brought to Marshal’s attention, he protested to King Richard that in Leinster he had received nothing but an empty title. Richard agreed, and over the objections of his younger brother and despite dubious authority to do so, Richard ordered that all of John’s tenants give up their fiefs. Richard threw his brother a sop by allowing John’s butler in Ireland to keep his fief.  But until William traveled to Ireland in 1201 to tour his lands, Leinster remained only notionally his.  

Richard: The de Clare manors in England were held by feudal tenants as knights’ fees. As soon as William received their homage, the knights who held them would owe him the service of 65 and a half knights—not really a half a knight but only half the service of one knight—for the customary 40 days, or a cash commutation known as scutage, ‘shield money’.  The de Clare honor also included three valuable demesne manors in England, estates that Richard de Clare had in personal lordship, but two of these were held for life by Isabel’s mother Aoife. 

Ellen: Many of our listeners probably haven’t a clue what you meant by “the de Clare honor.”  An “honor” in medieval England was a large estate held directly from the king consisting of multiple manors that could be widely separated geographically.  Given that a noble’s personal honor was his status among other nobles, and wealth was a key factor in establishing that status, it makes sense that a baron’s landed holdings should be termed an honor.   

Richard: The lordship of Longueville did not pass to William automatically with the marriage. Isabel’s rights over it were contested, But Richard, who was already busily raising funds for his crusade by selling off offices and heiresses to the highest bidder, was happy to confirm William’s lordship for a relief payment of 2,000 marks or 1,333 pounds, nearly 320,000 pennies, the only minted coin at the time. William, who probably couldn’t even imagine that much money, readily agreed. It was his very first act as a wealthy baron. And it is not coincidental that William insisted on visiting Longueville to stake his claim to the lands before embarking to England.

The most important part of the de Clare inheritance in terms of status and power was the earldom of Striguil in south-east Wales.  Possession of Striguil made William what was called a “marcher lord.” A march, or mark, was a borderland, a buffer zone protecting the heartland from outside attacks. For the sake of military efficiency, the Norman and Angevin kings of England allowed the marcher lords on the Welsh, Scottish, and Irish frontiers to rule their lands as independent principalities. Marcher lords owed the English king military service and did homage to him for their lands, but otherwise were nearly autonomous.

Ellen: In the “legalize” of English Common Law, the king’s writ did not run in the Marcher Lordships.  These barons appointed officials and pocketed revenues that elsewhere would have belonged to the Crown.

Richard:  William Marshal lost no time in marrying “the good and beautiful damsel of Striguil.” As soon as he had delivered Richard’s letter to Eleanor in Winchester, he rushed to London to collect his bride from her guardian, who only reluctantly gave her up.  Marshal had insufficient liquid funds to hold a proper marriage celebration, but his new status brought him new friends who willingly footed the bill. 

Ellen: One of Marshal’s first acts as a baron was to establish a priory. The ethos of reciprocity—that every gift looked for a return—shaped aristocratic culture in general, including knightly piety.  God had given Marshal good fortune, and it was only right that he should acknowledge it in a manner appropriate for a baron by endowing an Augustinian priory on the only land that he could claim as his own, the manor of Cartmel.  

Richard: The foundation charter for Cartmel reads like a medieval Academy Award acceptance speech, with William thanking just about everybody who helped him in his career. Marshal gave this land to the Church “for the soul of the lord King Henry II; and for the for soul of the Young King Henry, my lord; and for the soul of King Richard; and for my soul and that of my wife Isabel, and those of my ancestors and successors and our heirs.” William Marshal used Cartmel to pay off his debts to both his heavenly and earthly lords.

Ellen: So far we’ve looked at the marriage completely from Marshal’s perspective. Do we know what Isabel thought of the match? What did she get out of it?

Richard: The author of “The History” assures us that the marriage proved “to be much to her benefit also.  She grew in status and dignity, thanks be to God and to the Marshal, for he was so good and so loyal that she and all those close to her gained much.” 

I think that he doth protest too much. Some of Marshal’s modern biographers like to think that the 18 or 19 year old Isabel would have been thrilled at the prospect of marrying the 40 year old William Marshal. I’m not so sure. She was the daughter of an earl; he was basically a famous tournament knight who brought nothing to the match. Uneven matches of this sort were regarded by barons as a major abuse of the royal prerogative, so much so that the sixth clause of the Magna Carta prohibited them. They were an insult to the honor of a baronial family.

Ellen: In medieval terms, the marriage was good. Marshal had neither mistresses nor bastard children. That sounds like a low bar, but it really did distinguish Marshal from many of his fellow barons. The “History” presents William and Isabel as a loving couple. In the most touching scene in the poem, a dying William Marshal turns to his wife

“to whom he was always loving, kind and good.  ‘Kiss me now, my dear love; you will never do so again.’ She drew close and kissed him; he wept and so did she, and all the good people present shed tears of love and pity.”

Richard: William Marshal was uxorious. (A great scrabble word.)  Isabel bore him ten children. The first came nine months after the wedding ceremony. That, however, had little to do with love or even lust. It was a practical necessity for William. If Isabel should die before they conceived a child, her lands would revert to her family. 

Ellen: Marshal didn’t go in for courtly love. The closest that The History comes to a medieval romance is when envious household knight spread a rumor that William was having an affair with the Young King’s wife, Margaret of France. They did this to ruin him. The distraught and outraged Marshal demanded to meet his accusers in trial by combat. William’s relationship to the games of courtly love were about as distant from Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s as one could get and still be within the confines of chivalry. 

Richard.  The History is more of a medieval bro-mance. The truly significant love in it is the reciprocal love between a man and a lord. 

          Back to our story. William Marshal’s service to King Richard was shaped by Richard’s Crusade and the war he fought upon his return to recover lands lost to King Philip Augustus of France during his absence. King Philip Augustus of France had also taken a crusader vow. Given the seemingly perpetual border war between the Plantagenets and Capetians, the safest thing for both kings was to go on crusade together. Agreeing that if either returned early, he would refrain from seizing lands from the other, Richard and Philip departed on Crusade in 1190. Richard was not to return to England until 1194. For the last two of those years he was a prisoner of the Holy Roman Emperor Henry VI. 

Ellen: Given William Marshal’s reputation for military savvy and prowess, it seems odd that King Richard left him behind.

Richard. Crusades were armed pilgrimages, and crusaders took the Cross voluntarily. For Marshal it was ‘been there, done that.’  He had already received the papal indulgence that was the spiritual wages of the crusader. King Richard was just as glad that William preferred to remain in England. He had need for trusted and capable men to keep order and defend his kingdom in his absence.  

Because of his confidence in Marshal’s loyalty and good judgment, Richard appointed him to a council of four associate justiciars who were to assist and advise Richard’s joint-justiciars, the royal chancellor William de Longchamp, bishop of Ely and papal legate to England, and the bishop of Durham. (Richard appointed seneschals to govern his continental possessions.) On paper this looked like a good arrangement. The fact was that Henry II had so systematized and institutionalized English government, that it could operate even without a king. 

The greatest threat to Richard’s rule was his younger brother John. Richard dealt with this by making John the richest and most powerful magnate in the Angevin Empire. He made John count of Mortain in Normandy, and confirmed him as Lord of Ireland. In England John was given control over and all royal revenues from two north Midlands counties and a bloc of four counties in the Southwest. John’s control over southwest England was made complete by his marriage to Isabelle of Gloucester, the richest heiress in England. Richard hoped that John would think twice before risking all of this in a rebellion.

 John resented that Richard had made the lowborn Longchamp regent rather than himself, which was made worse by Richard compelling John to swear that he would not set foot in England for three years or until Richard returned from Crusade. Given the irascible temperaments of the two men and their conflicting interests, it was perhaps inevitable that Longchamp and John would come into conflict. 

John’s main ambition was to be king, and Richard’s Crusade gave him hope.  Crusades were dangerous, particularly for someone like Richard who fought from the front. If Richard didn’t fall in combat, he might die in a ship wreck or from illness. Richard was as yet unmarried and only had a bastard son who was ineligible to succeed him. John viewed himself as Richard’s natural successor, although their three year old nephew Arthur, count of Brittany was by the rule of primogeniture next in line to the throne.

The crowning blow to John’s ambitions—pun intended—took place in Sicily, where Richard and Philip harbored the fleet to gather supplies. Richard sent back word to England that he had decided to name Arthur as heir to the throne, and that he was marrying Berengaria of Navarre. Richard’s thinking might have been that a three year old posed no threat to usurping the throne, and that the English nobility would not rally to a Breton prince.

Ellen: And Richard really believed that was going to work? Didn’t he know his brother? He showered John with land and offices that made him a threat to Longchamp, and  then took away John’s hope of succeeding to the throne. Didn’t anybody say, “with all due respect, sire, are you really sure about this”?

Richard:  One thing I learned at the Naval Academy, when dealing with admirals, never begin a sentence with, “with all due respect, sir.” They know that whatever follows will not be respectful. No, nobody apparently did. Not even the blunt and outspoken William Marshal.

Soon after Richard sailed, Longchamp forced the bishop of Durham to resign his office, and became de facto ruler of England in Richard’s absence.  Longchamp assumed both the authority and trappings of a king, much to the disgust of the English magnates who saw him as a jumped up cleric of low birth. John took advantage of the complaints of the nobility to renounce his oath and return to England, ostensibly to restore order to his brother’s realm. War broke out. John claimed the regency, and pressured the barons to acknowledge him as Richard’s successor. Longchamp fled England. 

Ellen: And what position did William Marshal take in the dispute between Longchamp and John? It was one thing for William Marshal to show steadfast loyalty as a household knight whose fortunes rested on the favor of his lord. It was quite another for William Marshal as baron, whose newly acquired lands and wealth were now at stake. 

Richard: Although “The History” is coy about it, William seems to have supported John, which is not really surprising.  John was his lord for the county of Leinster in Ireland and the manor of Cartmel in Lancashire.  As earl of Gloucester, and lord of Glamorgan in Wales, John was also William’s most powerful neighbor. Longchamp, for his part, quickly identified the Marshal family as potential enemies and acted to lessen their authority. 

When the tensions between the king’s Justiciar and Prince John erupted into violence, William Marshal and his three colleagues on the regency council prudently chose to report this to Richard and ask for instructions. Richard responded by sending Walter of Coutances, archbishop of Rouen to assess the situation and replace Longchamp as justiciar if he thought it necessary.  Archbishop Walter did, and Longchamp once again withdrew from England.  Eleanor persuaded Walter to allow John to remain on his properties in England.

Ellen: We now move into Robin Hood territory. Philip Augustus left the Crusade immediately after the citadel of Acre was taken. Ignoring his oath, he took advantage of Richard’s absence to seize castles on the borderlands between Angevin territory and the royal domain. Eleanor pressed Richard to return, and after negotiating a truce with Saladin, he sailed for home. He didn’t make it. Richard had made many enemies, among them Duke Leopold of Austria and the Emperor Henry VI of Germany.  He made the mistake of trying to travel  incognito through Austria and was captured. John saw this as his opportunity to usurp  the throne. Philip Augustus was more than willing to help, especially after John promised to cede him half of Normandy. Despite his ties to John, Marshal remained loyal to Richard. In response to orders from the Justiciar Walter of Coutances, he besieged John’s castle at Windsor.

Meanwhile, the justiciar and Eleanor raised the money that Henry VI demanded for Richard’s ransom. Upon the receipt of 100,000 pounds, Henry VI released Richard after nearly two years in captivity.  The rebellion fizzled out. John, realizing the game was up, threw himself on the mercy of his brother. The “History” reports that Richard received his tearful and  repentant brother with good-humored contempt, excusing him with the cutting words, “You are a child. You just had bad companions.” The 27 year old John accepted this public humiliation as a cheap price for Richard’s forgiveness.

Richard: William Marshal had passed his first serious test as a magnate. He had emerged from this mess without having alienated either Richard or John. If anything, he had bolstered his reputation for wisdom as well as prowess. 

Ellen: The remainder of King Richard’s reign was dominated by war in France to recover the lands and castles in France that Philip Augustus had seized while Richard was on crusade and in captivity. In this conflict, both John and William acted as military commanders and royal counselors.  

          On 20 March 1199, Richard was killed by a crossbow bolt while besieging the castle of Chalus-Chabrol.   On his deathbed, Richard named John as his heir, passing over the claims of their young nephew, Count Arthur of Brittany. 

Richard: During the succession debate, William Marshal was among John’s most vocal supporters.  “The History” relates a story meant to display Marshal’s sense of propriety and loyalty that unintentionally lets us glimpse how others viewed his dealings with Prince John. King Richard, intent on restoring his authority, ordered the barons of Ireland to do homage to him for their holdings. He technically had no right to do so, as he had confirmed John as Lord of Ireland. William Marshal alone refused. He told King Richard he could not in good conscience obey his order because he had already done homage to John as rightful Lord of Ireland. William Longchamp, who stood high in King Richard’s favor having negotiated his release, snidely asked, “Planting vines, Marshal?”

Ellen: And those vines appear to have borne fruit. Upon ascending the throne, King John rewarded William by adding Pembroke to his Welsh holdings and bestowing upon him the title and office of earl. (Before this he was simply the husband of a countess.). William Marshal became an even more prominent member of King John's court than he had been in Richard’s. From 1200-1203 his name appears regularly in witness lists to the John's charters, which means that he was frequently in the court as it itinerated through the king’s lands. 

Richard:  For the author of the History, Richard the Lionheart was the model of the courtly king. His brother John, however, was another matter. The poet pointedly played off William Marshal’s noble restraint as a courtier, his mesure, against the discourteous, erratic, and intemperate behavior of King John, traits that other contemporary writers also criticized in the king. King John’s reign was marked by conflict with his barons, culminating in the rebellion of 1215 that led to the coerced signing of Magna Carta.

 John’s problems stemmed, in large measure, from his leadership style and vindictive and suspicious personality. Despite a real talent for administration, a flair for strategic planning, and a dedication to the judicial responsibilities of kingship, John was a wretched failure as a king. Good kings ruled in partnership with their barons and bishops. John’s relationship with his barons and the Church were, in the best of times, strained. All medieval kings, including John, ruled through a combination of reward through royal patronage and threat of punishment. Cruelty was not necessarily a vice in medieval rulers. Henry I, John's great grandfather, ordered the mutilation of royal agents who abused their offices, lopped off the hands of counterfeiters, and blinded traitors. But he did so with consistency and at least the veneer of justice. His cruelty was 'well committed,' the firm hand of a rex pacificus (a king of peace) who 'did not bear the sword in vain'. John's cruelty, in contrast, seemed capricious and disproportionate. 

John’s reign began well with a successful military campaign against his teenage nephew Arthur, supported by—you guessed it--King Philip Augustus.  Even after Philip had been forced to recognize John’s claims to the Angevin lands in France, Arthur continued to fight on, until he was defeated and captured in the battle of Mirabeau in 1202. Arthur was imprisoned at Rouen under the custody of John’s loyal follower, William de Braose. 

John snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. Enraged by the Breton uprising, John murdered his nephew. He may have strangled the kid himself. The only witness was William de Braose. Years later de Braose’s wife would imprudently refuse to hand over a son as a hostage to John, because of what he had done to his nephew. John’s response was to persecute and destroy the entire de Braose family.

Ellen: But what brought John to ruin was stealing another man’s wife. One of his great French vassals, Hugh de Lusignan, count of La Marche, had been betrothed to Isabela of Angouleme, heiress to a neighboring county. In order to forestall a familial alliance that threatened his control over Poitou, John decided to cast  marry the 12-14 year old girl himself, although to do so he had to repudiate his prize wife of ten years, Isabella of Gloucester. (Isabella must have been a really popular name for noblewomen in the 1170s and 1180s.) Hugh and his family rose in revolt, and when John crushed it, Hugh appealed for justice to their common overlord, King Philip Augustus of France. This was the opportunity that Philip had been waiting for. The French king ordered John as his vassal for Poitou to appear in his court at Paris to answer the charges against him. When John refused, Philip declared all of his holdings in France forfeit. The result was war.

Richard: Between 1203 and 1205, Philip Augustus conquered Normandy, Maine, and Anjou.  John in his early years was mocked as Lackland. The nickname he got stuck with now was Soft-sword. This created a dilemma for William Marshal and other barons who held land in both Normandy and England. Most nobles accepted the loss of one or the other. William, who had been land poor for so much of his life, looked for a way to keep everything. While serving as John's ambassador to Philip in 1204, William agreed to do homage to Philip for his Norman lands if John had not recovered Normandy within a year.  John approved the deal, but William apparently had not told him that King Philip insisted that William do liege homage to him for his lands in France. This meant that King Philip would be William’s primary lord in France and, consequently, that William could not personally take arms against him if John launched a campaign to recover his lost territories. John would have the 65 and a half knights William owed from his lands—or more likely a scutage payment for them—but William himself would stand on the sidelines. 

By doing homage to Philip, William saved his French holding of Longueville but at the cost of the favor of King John and a smudge on his reputation for loyalty. When William refused to accompany John’s army to Normandy, pleading his liege homage to the French king, John was royally pissed. He accused Marshal of cowardice and disloyalty and demanded that the barons of the court adjudge him a traitor. Marshal replied that had no objection to being tried, but warned the barons that what the king planned to do with him, he would do to them, or worse. No baron was willing to step forward. Nor were any of John’s household knights, who knew that Marshal would defend himself in trial by combat.  John had to content himself with demanding William’s eldest son as a hostage. William, of course, complied.  From this point until 1212 William was out of royal favor. 
  

Ellen: William Marshal, having lost the king's love, left court. He sailed to Ireland in the spring of 1207 to take control of his wife's Irish inheritance, the county of Leinster. Meilyr fitzHenry, the son of a bastard of King Henry I, had been one of Earl Richard of Clare’s original followers.  Now King John's justiciar in Ireland, Meilyr refused to acknowledge William's lordship. In September 1207 William was summoned to England by John, leaving Isabel in Ireland under the protection of John of Earley and two other loyal household knights, serving as his bailiffs. Meilyr used the Marshal’s absence as an opportunity to attack his lands, just as John intended. To deprive William of his military support in Ireland, King John now summoned John of Earley and William’s other two bailiffs to England. Since they held lands “in chief” (directly from the king), a failure to answer the summons meant the loss of those estates. Nevertheless, they chose loyalty to their lord over their private interests and refused the summons. For, as John of Earley said, 

It would be shameful for us to abandon the land entrusted to us by the earl. We must be mindful of honour and avoid reproach; shame lasts longer than poverty. If this land is relinquished, our honour is tarnished. And if we lose both land and honour—and our lord’s love—the king will have beaten us at this game.

John responded by confiscating their lands and taunted William that his men seemed to fare poorly in his service. When this failed to get a rise out of Marshal, John invented a story about how two of his bailiffs had been killed attempting to lift the siege of Kilkenny and the third, John of Earley, lay mortally wounded. This was a flat out lie; the Irish sea was impassable in January, and no ship had arrived for months from Ireland. William quietly responded to the ‘news’: “What a pity about the knights, sire, for they were your men too, which makes the business all the more regrettable.”  

William’s refusal to show any anger or discomfort in the face of provocation seems to have gotten to John.  

In late February a ship arrived from Ireland with the news that William’s men had defeated and captured Meilyr.  John made the best of this bad news and made a compromise agreement with William Marshal, by which the Marshal surrendered Leinster to John, who granted it back to him, but with more limited rights of jurisdiction. 

A year later, William's relations with John took still another turn for the worse. William had given refuge in Ireland to the fugitive baron William de Braose. De Braose was not only William's friend but also his overlord for some land in England. John couldn't prove that William was guilty of treason, but he still demanded further hostages, including his squire and best friend John of Earley. William spent 1211-1212 in Ireland quietly, rewarding his loyal followers with lands and punishing his vassals and tenants who had fought against him.

Richard: In 1212 John, frightened by the rumor of a baronial plot to kill him and wishing to surround himself with men of whose loyalty he could be sure, recalled William to England to fight against the Welsh. John showed his renewed trust in the Marshal by releasing his hostages. After returning to Ireland, William again was recalled in April 1213 to aid John against his rebellious vassals and a threatened “crusade” against him by the French. John had been at virtual war with the papacy over the see of Canterbury. John had refused to accept Pope Innocent III’s choice of Stephen Langton as archbishop. Pope Innocent III placed England under interdict in 1208 and when that failed to move John, who took advantage of it to pocket the revenues of English bishoprics. Innocent III in 1213 deposed him and charged Philip Augustus with executing the order. John’s response was diplomatically brilliant. He made peace with the papacy not only by accepting Langton but by giving the kingdom of England to the papacy and receiving it back from Pope Innocent as a papal fief. What was once going to be a crusade, not would be an attack on the papacy. 

John followed this up by assembling and paying for an impressive coalition of allies, led by his nephew, the Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV. But Philip won a decisive victory at Bouvines on 27 July 1214, preserving his throne—and costing Otto’s his. 

John had spent an enormous amount of money to fund the Bouvines campaign. Its failure further undermined the king’s already tattered military prestige and credibility among the English barons.  When John tried to punish English nobles who had failed to pay scutage for mercenaries and followed this up with a new money demands, a baronial revolt broke out in the north and quickly spread to south.  On 15 June 1215 at Runnymede near London, King John was forced by the rebels to sign Magna Carta. 

Ellen: William Marshal remained firmly loyal to John throughout the crisis. He witnessed Magna Carta as John’s representative and swore to uphold its provisions. John himself had no intention of honoring Magna Carta. He immediately sent a message to Pope Innocent III, his feudal overlord since 1213, begging the pope to release him from the oath he had taken, as it had been coerced rather than given freely. Pope Innocent III, who had little use for rebels against the Lord’s anointed, quashed Magna Carta and threatened excommunication for all those who tried to impose its provisions. 

The rebel barons, disgusted with John and fearing the power of his mercenary army, turned for help to the French king, offering the throne to his eldest son Louis. In response, Philip dispatched an expeditionary force to England led by the young prince.  William's eldest son, William Marshal the Younger, had been one of the rebel leaders, and now declared his support for Prince Louis. William Marshal the Elder, however, remained loyal to John, and led the king’s troops until John's death on 19 Oct. 1216. 

Richard: Even William Marshal’s remarkable loyalty to King John during the Magna Carta crisis can be seen as a pragmatic decision.  Since Marshal’s eldest son and heir was among the leaders of the rebels, no matter who won, the Marshal family would come out alright. 

Ellen: John's nine year old son succeeded as King Henry III. John had named his feudal overlord, the pope, as the child’s guardian, which in practice meant the papal legate in England.  But the English barons loyal to the child king looked to one of their own to be the king’s guardian and regent. They turned to William Marshal.  

Richard: William Marshal, who had been a serving knight until the age of 40, had risen to be the most powerful man in England. Marshal’s first order of business as guardian of the king and defender of his realm was to defeat the French invaders and put down the baronial uprising. William Marshal hoped to win back the rebels by diplomacy. Acknowledging their grievances, he ordered Magna Carta to be freely reissued in the new king’s name in 1216 and again in the following year. Magna Carta was thus recast as a legitimate, voluntary grant of privileges by the Crown.  Meanwhile he rallied the royal forces against the French. In this he received the support of the Church.  Since England was a papal fief and Pope Honorius III had accepted the succession of Henry, the pope declared the defense of England to be a holy war. The History makes this explicit. The poet has William Marshal deliver an oration before the battle of Lincoln in which he  promised the “noble, loyal knights … [who] keep faith with the king … redemption and pardon for all our sins,” since by defending their homes they were also upholding “the peace of Holy Church” (ll. 16,147-16,150). Even at the age of 70, Marshal couldn’t resist fighting in the front lines. He was so excited that that he forgot strapping on his helmet until a squire reminded him. William Marshal’s victory at Lincoln in 1217 ended the French threat.  

Ellen: On 14 May 1219 William Marshal died at Caversham near Reading He died as he had lived, as a prudhomme. Recognizing his imminent death, that 72 year old Marshal surrendered his office as regent, and made preparations to give away his lands and possessions to his sons. He had vowed many years ago when he went on crusade that he would become a Knight Templar. He now put on the white Templar robe. He had lived as a knight, but he would die and be buried as a monk, but, as was appropriate for him, a warrior monk.

Richard: Marshal’s piety was conventional for a knight or baron of his day. He had established three religious houses, the Augustinian priory at Cartmel to thank God and his earthly lords for his good fortune in marrying Isabel; the Cistercian abbey of Duiske in Ireland, to mark his lordship of Leinster; and a Cistercian abbey at Tintern Parva, as a consequence of a pledge he made to God when in fear of drowning when caught in a storm on the Irish Sea. The point of these bequests was to have grateful monks pray for his soul and to gain the patronage of the saints to which these churches were dedicated. A nobleman needed patrons in the next life as well as this one.

Undoubtedly Marshal considered himself pious, but his piety was of a peculiarly chivalric nature.

A couple of weeks before he died, he was lying in bed surrounded by his household knights. One of them, Henry fitzGerold reminded William that he should be thinking about his soul and that the clergy taught that tournaments were forbidden by the Church and one could not be saved unless one returned all ill-gotten gains. “Henry, do not be too hard on me,” responded William Marshal, “the clerks are very severe on us and shave us too close. I have captured 500 knights in my lifetime and have kept their arms, their warhorses and their harness. But now I can do no more than give myself to God, repenting for all the wrong that I have done. If God’s kingdom is withheld from me on this account I must resign myself. Unless the monks wish to see me damned, they must pursue me no further. Either their argument is false or no man can be saved.” John of Earley and William’s other household knights agreed.

Ellen: The day before William died one of his chaplains advised him to sell his rich robes in the wardrobe and to use the money for charity to benefit his soul. "Be silent mischievous man," William berated the cleric. "You have not the heart of a gentleman, and I have had too much of your advice. Pentecost is at hand, and my knights ought to have their new robes. This will be the last time that I will supply them, yet you seek to prevent me from doing it." Marshal then ordered that more robes be purchased in London so that none of his men would go without. 

Richard: What I really like about this story is what it says about how knights and barons thought of clergy. They were necessary for rites and prayers—sort of like auto mechanics of the soul—but in extremis William Marshal was certain that God was a true gentleman and would agree with him rather than the cleric.

Ellen: At midday on May 14, 1219, William Marshal told John of Earley: "Summon the countess and the knights, for I am dying. I can wait no longer, and I wish to take leave of them." To his wife and household, he said: "I am dying. I commend you to God. I can no longer be with you. I cannot defend myself from death." 

The abbot of Reading told the dying earl that the papal legate, had granted William a plenary indulgence absolving of all his sins. William then confessed, was absolved, and died.  He was buried as a Templar in the Temple church in London. If you visit it, look out for the stone coffin with his effigy. 

Richard: William Marshal’s peers regarded him as a model of chivalry. Marshal’s chivalric qualities, his prowess and loyalty, brought him to the attention of kings and, combined with his skill as a courtier, ultimately earned him a seat among the highest in the realm.  His was a practical and flexible chivalry.