The History of England | Page 7

Matthew Paris. Later St. Alban's chroniclers. Other chroniclers
of Henry III. Other monastic annals. Chroniclers of Edward I. Civic
chronicles. Chroniclers of Edward II. Chroniclers of Edward III.
Scottish and Welsh chronicles. French chronicles illustrating English
history. The three redactions of Froissart. Other French chroniclers of
the Hundred Years' War. Legal literature. Literary aids to history.
Modern works on the period. Maps. Bibliographies. Note on authorities
for battle of Poitiers.
INDEX.
MAPS. (At the End of the Volume) 1. Map of Wales and the March at
the end of the XIIIth century. 2. Map of Southern Scotland and
Northern England in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries. 3. Map of France
in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries.
CHAPTER I.
THE REGENCY OF WILLIAM MARSHAL.
When John died, on October 19, 1216, the issue of the war between
him and the barons was still doubtful. The arrival of Louis of France,
eldest son of King Philip Augustus, had enabled the barons to win back
much of the ground lost after John's early triumphs had forced them to
call in the foreigner. Beyond the Humber the sturdy north-country
barons, who had wrested the Great Charter from John, remained true to
their principles, and had also the support of Alexander II., King of
Scots. The magnates of the eastern counties were as staunch as the
northerners, and the rich and populous southern shires were for the
most part in agreement with them. In the west, the barons had the aid of

Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, the great Prince of North Wales. While ten earls
fought for Louis, the royal cause was only upheld by six. The towns
were mainly with the rebels, notably London and the Cinque Ports, and
cities so distant as Winchester and Lincoln, Worcester and Carlisle. Yet
the baronial cause excited little general sympathy. The mass of the
population stood aloof, and was impartially maltreated by the rival
armies.
John's son Henry had at his back the chief military resources of the
country; the two strongest of the earls, William Marshal, Earl of
Pembroke, and Randolph of Blundeville, Earl of Chester; the fierce
lords of the Welsh March, the Mortimers, the Cantilupes, the Cliffords,
the Braoses, and the Lacys; and the barons of the West Midlands,
headed by Henry of Neufbourg, Earl of Warwick, and William of
Ferrars, Earl of Derby. This powerful phalanx gave to the royalists a
stronger hold in the west than their opponents had in any one part of the
much wider territory within their sphere of influence. There was no
baronial counterpart to the successful raiding of the north and east,
which John had carried through in the last months of his life. A
baronial centre, like Worcester, could not hold its own long in the west.
Moreover, John had not entirely forfeited his hereditary advantages.
The administrative families, whose chief representative was the
justiciar Hubert de Burgh, held to their tradition of unswerving loyalty,
and joined with the followers of the old king, of whom William
Marshal was the chief survivor. All over England the royal castles were
in safe hands, and so long as they remained unsubdued, no part of
Louis' dominions was secure. The crown had used to the full its rights
over minors and vacant fiefs. The subjection of the south-west was
assured by the marriage of the mercenary leader, Falkes de Bréauté, to
the mother of the infant Earl of Devon, and by the grant of Cornwall to
the bastard of the last of the Dunstanville earls. Though Isabella,
Countess of Gloucester, John's repudiated wife, was as zealous as her
new husband, the Earl of Essex, against John's son, Falkes kept a tight
hand over Glamorgan, on which the military power of the house of
Gloucester largely depended. Randolph of Chester was custodian of the
earldoms of Leicester and Richmond, of which the nominal earls,
Simon de Montfort and Peter Mauclerc, were far away, the one ruling

Toulouse, and the other Brittany. The band of foreign adventurers, the
mainstay of John's power, was still unbroken. Ruffians though these
hirelings were, they had experience, skill, and courage, and were the
only professional soldiers in the country.
The vital fact of the situation was that the immense moral and spiritual
forces of the Church remained on the side of the king. Innocent III. had
died some months before John, but his successor, Honorius III.,
continued to uphold his policy. The papal legate, the Cardinal Gualo,
was the soul of the royalist cause. Louis and his adherents had been
excommunicated, and not a single English bishop dared to join openly
the foes of Holy Church. The most that the clerical partisans of the
barons could do was to disregard the interdict and continue their
ministrations to the excommunicated host. The strongest English
prelate, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of