History of England 1-6

From their stronghold of London the barons called upon the aid of King Philip of France. They resolved to offer the crown to his son, Louis, whose wife was connected in blood to the Plantagenets. In the spring of 1216 Louis landed at Dover and marched unopposed to Rochester. His success was followed by his capture of Guildford, of Farnham, and, most importantly, of Winchester. It must have seemed that God, or good fortune, was on his side. The great earls of the kingdom, many of them hitherto supporters of the king, submitted to him. John retreated to the west, and spent the summer months of 1216 in various sorties throughout Dorset and Devon. In the early days of September he broke out and led his army to the east; he went into Norfolk and Lincolnshire, without achieving any great success. From this last expedition comes the now accepted legend that he lost his treasure in the Wash, when the tide rose too rapidly. It was reported that the crown itself was engulfed by the swirling waters. It was a very convenient story for those of his immediate entourage, who would have been happy to enrich themselves on the principle of sauve qui peut. The truth is also lost in the shifting tide.

He must in any case have known that he was reaching the end of his days. Kings die when they feel that their power is fading. He became ill of a fever, and of dysentery; he died in the fortress of the bishop of Lincoln at the age of forty-nine. ‘Hell’, wrote one chronicler, ‘felt herself defiled by his admission.’ John had another destination in mind. He was interred in the cathedral at Worcester and at his own request his tomb lay in the shadow of the shrine of the eleventh-century English saint, Bishop Wulfstan. In 1797 the king’s sepulchre was opened by curious antiquaries. It was reported that ‘the remains of the Illustrious Personage appear entire’. His height was 5 feet and 5 inches (1.65 metres). On one side of him lay his sword, in knightly fashion, with ‘the bones of his left arm lying on his breast, his teeth quite perfect’. He was the first king, since the time of the Normans, both to be born and to die in England.

What can be said of a king whose memory has been universally execrated by the chroniclers of his own time and of subsequent centuries? In his rapacity and greed he did not materially differ from his predecessors. He was characterized by the harshness and inflexibility of all previous Norman and Angevin rulers. Yet it was his misfortune to aspire to royal domination in singularly unhappy circumstances – his loss of the Angevin Empire at the hands of a wealthier and mightier king, the havoc of steeply rising prices, and the alienation of his barons, all darkened the picture of his reign. It needed only a few vignettes of his rapacity or cruelty to complete the chroniclers’ description of an utterly unfit king.

Yet out of his rule emerged a new or at least an intensified sense of the nation. That is the meaning of the Magna Carta. The English people of the early thirteenth century were already familiar with the notion of ius commune or common law; they were accustomed to the role of guilds and fraternities. John himself, in pursuit of the throne, had in 1191 accepted the right of London to form its own commune as a self-governing and self-elected body of the richer citizens. From this time forward communal archives and records were placed in the guildhall. The momentum of the age was behind this new form of identity. Many other towns asserted their own communitas during the reign of John, with the election of mayors and the creation of municipal seals. The members of the commune swore an oath to preserve the town and its liberties.

So it was perhaps inevitable that the barons, in rebellion against the king, would assert the values of the communa of England and would introduce the concept of the communa totius terra with its attendant liberties. It became known, in the thirteenth century, as ‘the community of the realm’. There even grew, at the end of that century, a recognition of ‘the community of the vill’ or village. These were all stages in the growing selfconsciousness of England. This is the meaning of the ‘field full of folk’ that William Langland invokes at the beginning of Piers Plowman. He saw, in vision, a community.

16

Crime and punishment