The Last Days of King John

King John died on this day in 1216. Here's my account of his final days, taken from my recent book. 

[For context: John was at this point engaged in a desperate war against his own barons, and their ally, Louis, the son of the king of France, who had invaded England earlier in the year.]

Precisely what John's next move would have been is uncertain. The rebels who had been pursuing him had given up the chase after his flight from Cambridge and gone to join Louis, who was still besieging Dover. Although the king was heading south, he appears to have been planning a northern campaign. On 9 October he left Lincolnshire and went to King's Lynn in Norfolk, then one of the most prosperous ports in England, to arrange for supplies to be sent to several of his northern castles.

At that point, however, John fell ill. Ralph of Coggeshall claims it was dysentery, and assumed it was caused by an excessive intake of food and drink; Roger of Wendover famously but unreliably describes a dish of peaches and new cider. More likely a body racked by exhaustion was to blame: for the previous four weeks the forty-nine-old king had been travelling at a relentless pace, often riding more than thirty miles in the space of a single day.

Two days after arriving at King's Lynn, despite his illness, he set out again, heading back in the direction of Lincolnshire. Still in a hurry, he decided to save time by taking a short-cut across the great tidal estuary of the Wash, at the point where the River Wellstream merged with the sea. Disaster struck when parts of his baggage train, both men and packhorses, were sucked down into the treacherous sands. According to Coggeshall, the king lost all the precious items of his chapel, including his collection of holy relics. He may even have lost his crown and other regalia, since they do not figure in later royal inventories.

Wracked with grief on account of this loss, John struggled to Swineshead Priory in Lincolnshire, then after two more days pushed on to the bishop of Lincoln's castle at Sleaford. There he was met by messengers from Dover with even worse news. Louis had undermined and partially collapsed the castle's main entrance. Hubert de Burgh and his men had prevented the French army storming the breach, but they could not hold out for much longer. A truce had been agreed to allow the defenders to seek the king's help, or else his permission to surrender.

This news, says Coggeshall, caused John such distress that it brought on the return of his illness. An attempt to alleviate his condition by bleeding him seems to have made no difference, and on 15 October he wrote to the pope, describing how he was suffering from 'a grave and incurable infirmity'. The pope in question was not the formidable Innocent III, whose pontificate had done so much to shape the king's reign. Innocent had died on 16 July, to be replaced by Honorius III. John now addressed the new pontiff 'on bended knee', and committed his kingdom to the Church's protection, without which he could see no hope of saving the succession for his heirs.

Having composed this letter, the king continued with his desperate journey. Too ill to ride, he was carried in a litter from Sleaford a further twenty miles west to Newark, another castle confiscated from the bishop of Lincoln. It was probably there that he dictated his last will and testament, the original copy of which still survives. John began by assigning the administration of his affairs to thirteen of his faithful servants, including William Marshal, Ranulf of Chester, Peter des Roches and the papal legate, Guala. These men were to make amends to the Church for the damages and injuries he had inflicted, and to arrange for aid to be sent to the Holy Land. They were to help his sons obtain and defend their inheritance, and to ensure that his other faithful servants were rewarded. Lastly, they were to distribute money to religious houses and to the poor for the salvation of the his soul.

Had the imminent prospect of death and the danger to his soul brought any repentance? Eight days earlier, after the first onset of his illness at King's Lynn, John had given permission to Margaret, wife of Walter de Lacy, to found a religious house in Herefordshire in memory of her father, William de Briouze, her mother Matilda and her brother William.

On the night of 18 October, a great gale howled through the town of Newark, with such intensity that the citizens feared that their houses would be destroyed. The abbot of Croxton must have been grateful to be safe within the walls of the castle. He had been summoned to the king's bedside because of his medical expertise, but by this point his patient was beyond saving. Instead he heard the dying man's confession, and administered the last rites.

Taken from King John: Treachery, Tyranny and the Road to Magna Carta, pp. 282-4

Castle Acre and the Warennes

Castle Acre, a wonderful little village in Norfolk, offers the most amazing three-for-one deal. A really splendid Norman fortress, so impressive in scale that it could command attention all by itself. A gorgeous priory, the best preserved example of its kind in England. And, as if these two were not enough, there’s also a medieval town there too, still discernible from the layout of its streets, its earth ramparts and a well-preserved stone gate. As the new interpretative displays and audio tour of the priory explain, it’s one of the best locations in Britain for seeing how the forces of violence, religion and commerce combined in the Middle Ages to shape the landscape that we see today.

We owe this concentration of quality sites to a family by the name of Warenne, so called because they originally hailed from a town called Varenne in Normandy. Like so many men of those parts, the Warennes backed the winning horse in 1066. ‘My ancestors came with William the Bastard and conquered their lands with the sword’, said one of the their number some two centuries later, brandishing an ancient, rusty blade to prove his point. It was a exclamation born of frustration with the interference of royal government, but such conflict with the Crown was exceptionally rare. The story of the Warennes is, in fact, proof positive that the way to get ahead in medieval England was to swing a strong right arm in the service of the king.

The founder of the family’s fortune, and therefore putative owner of the rusty sword, was William de Warenne. One of the Conqueror’s closest companions, he was at the front of the queue when the spoils were being dished out. Extensive lands in Sussex were given to him when he was barely off the boat, and he set about organizing them around the town and castle of Lewes. Other prizes soon followed. By the time Domesday Book was compiled in 1086 William was the fourth richest individual after the king himself, and owned estates in more than a dozen English counties. The overwhelming bulk of them were concentrated in East Anglia, and centred on what would become known as Castle Acre.

Castles were, of course, one of the most striking innovations that the Normans introduced to the English countryside, and the earliest examples tended to be built to a common-or-garden design. A great mound of earth raised the lord’s residence high above its surroundings, and a larger, lower enclosure accommodated his household and their horses. Such castles, as every schoolgirl knows, we now call ‘motte-and-baileys’.

At first glance, the structure created by William de Warenne at Castle Acre would seem to be a prime example of this type. Initial appearances, however, can be deceptive. Archaeological investigation has revealed that, whilst the bailey probably dates to William’s time, there was originally no motte at all. William had instead settled for a much shallower, lightly defended enclosure, in the middle of which he built a rather luxurious stone house (the foundations of which can still be seen). It was only his later descendants, living through the uncertainty of a civil war, who decided that a large mound of earth would be a good idea after all. Castle Acre, therefore, presents a uniquely peculiar case, a motte-and-bailey without a motte. Curiously, and by contrast, William’s other castle at Lewes has not one motte but two. One cannot help wondering if part of his intention was to frustrate castle historians of the future.

Unconventional he may have been when it came to building castles, but in all other respects William was a textbook Norman Conqueror, a warrior who carved out an empire for himself and ran it with ruthless efficiency. Such men wanted not only glory but profit – hence, in part, the need for a town at Castle Acre. They also needed to atone for a lifetime of maiming and killing. In the 1080s William set off on pilgrimage to Rome, but in the event got no further than Burgundy and the great abbey of Cluny. Suitably inspired, he returned to England and founded two priories of his own, one at Lewes, the other at Acre. As the earlier of the two, Lewes had the greater claim on the Warenne’s loyalties. When William died in 1088 – killed, appropriately, by an arrow-wound sustained during a siege – he was buried there, as were all his later descendants. But Lewes Priory suffered severely in later centuries, not least from having a railway driven through its precinct. Castle Acre Priory, by contrast, is a wonderfully well-preserved ruin, located in as serene a setting as could be imagined. Visit on a fine day, and you’ll almost wish they were still looking for new monks.

Shortly before his death, William de Warenne was created earl of Surrey – a rare distinction, and a final confirmation of his highly successful career. It was a success replicated by his descendants who, over the next three centuries, emulated his model of dynamic lordship and service to the Crown to maintain their place at the top of society. But in the fourteenth century, the story came to an abrupt end. John de Warenne, seventh earl of Surrey, was by no means incompetent either as a soldier or as a politician, but his personal life was a disaster. His marriage, forced on him by Edward I, was doomed from the start: he was not quite twenty, his new wife not quite ten. But, since she was the king’s granddaughter, the match proved hard to dissolve, and successive popes refused to grant a divorce. The earl’s case was not helped by his notorious way with the ladies: he had at least two mistresses, and later confessed to having had an affair with his wife’s aunt, a decidedly loose-living nun. Earl John ended his days living with a certain Isabella Holland, referred to in his will as ‘my companion’. Through these various liaisons he had at least six children, but none by his wife. Thus, when he died in 1347, his vast estate passed by law to his legitimate but distant relatives. Castle Acre, where generations of his family had kept company with kings, fell quickly into ruin. And so passed the Warennes, one of the greatest dynasties in medieval England, their fortune won with the sword, but lost through lust and love.

This article is published in Kings and Castles

King John's Treasure Found in the Wash

Alas, no. It is 800 years since John lost his treasure. It's also April 1.

Framlingham Castle and the Bigods

If you want to imagine yourself in the guise of a medieval warrior – and, let’s face it, who doesn’t – there are few better places to visit than Framlingham Castle in Suffolk. Approach as if to attack, and you are confronted with one of the most impressive and impregnable-looking fortresses in England: a mighty ring of stone walls, thirteen metres high, surrounded by a broad, deep ditch. Twelve surviving towers stand taller still, and are amply supplied with arrow-loops. Make no mistake about it: this is a fantastically tough old building, designed in expectation of trouble.

To say that this is a veritable and venerable fortress, however, is to tell only a small part of its story. Inside those giant walls, the only structure that stands today is a seventeenth-century poorhouse. Now home to the local museum, it’s a building well worth visiting in its own right, with a harrowing history that recently reduced the normally flinty Jeremy Paxman to tears. Medievalists, meanwhile, lament the fact that it was ever built at all, for its stones were salvaged from the castle’s original interior. As a result, the casual observer now has a highly distorted view of Framlingham; one which reinforces the traditional misapprehension that castles were all about fighting, battlements and boiling oil. The reality was, of course, very different.

Framlingham was established by the Bigods, a family who came to England with William the Conqueror in 1066 and quickly established themselves as the most powerful barons in East Anglia – a position officially acknowledged in the middle of the twelfth century when they were invested as earls of Norfolk. A cursory glance at the history of these men suggest that they liked nothing better than a scrap with England’s kings. Earl Hugh Bigod (d. 1177), for instance, unsuccessfully challenged Henry II, with the result that the original Framlingham Castle, a conventional earth-and-timber structure, was torn down by royal command in 1174. The present castle was built by Hugh’s son and successor, Roger (d. 1221), to proclaim that the Bigods were back in business – and ready to challenge King John, who laid siege to the castle in 1216. But in actual fact, the Bigods, like most medieval magnates, almost always worked in partnership with the Crown. Framlingham was hardly ever used as a fortress (even the so-called ‘siege’ of 1216 lasted less than 48 hours). It was, on the contrary, a place where power was expressed in a very different way – through benign local lordship, conspicuous consumption and luxurious living.

Ironically, a fantastic snapshot of ordinary, everyday life at Framlingham has been preserved because of the desperate, extraordinary decision taken by the last of the Bigod line. In 1297, at the end of a long but fairly unremarkable career, Earl Roger IV led a movement of popular resistance against the indomitable Edward I, whose government was widely deemed to have become unjust and oppressive. Although he met with considerable success, the earl was bankrupted by this stand, and so ended up having to cut a deal with the king. In return for an annuity for the rest of his life, Roger agreed to make Edward his heir. Accordingly, when the earl died a few years later, his vast estate in England, Wales and Ireland – Framlingham Castle included – passed to the Crown. And so too did all his estate accounts, some 650 neatly written rolls of parchment, which survive to this day in the National Archives at Kew. It is these documents which permit a unique glimpse into the earl’s private affairs, and a window through which we can look at life inside Framlingham Castle.

Roger himself was only occasionally in residence. Medieval magnates, like modern rock stars, were forever on tour. Nevertheless, in the earl’s absence, the castle did not stand idle. It was from here that his officials oversaw the workings of the entire Bigod administration in East Anglia, and it was to here that money generated on other manors was sent to be kept in the treasury. Framlingham was also an agricultural centre in its own right: the account rolls reveal all manner of produce being farmed, ranging from the expected (dairy, poultry, sheep and cattle) to the surprising (regular wages and robes were given to the earl’s vintner for tending his vineyards). Periodically there were visits from members of the earl’s own household: his knights came to hunt venison or to track falcons in the adjacent park; his accountants to check every bushel and barrel, even as they themselves consumed large quantities of fancy foodstuffs.

When the earl himself was due to arrive, the administration went into overdrive. Roger typically travelled with around fifty people in tow, and the castle had to be brought rapidly up to speed to cater for this entourage. Produce and provender poured in from the outlying manors. Deer were driven from the park, beer was brewed and bread baked. At Easter 1286 it was even necessary to bring in extra crockery from Tattingstone, some twenty miles away. Equally as important, the buildings in the castle had to be cleaned, repaired and, where necessary, rebuilt. The full extent of the castle’s vanished interior stands revealed in the rolls. We read of service buildings, such as the saucery, larder and kitchen, and accommodation, including the chambers of the earl, his steward, his knights and his servants.

The most important building of all was the castle’s hall. It was here that the earl and his household were wined, dined and entertained. Originally located on the eastern side of the courtyard, the hall was moved to face west when the castle was rebuilt around the year 1200, and this move reflects a corresponding shift in the Bigods’ domestic priorities. To the west of the castle, the ground falls away until it reaches a great lake or mere. This itself was a man-made feature, a piece of medieval landscaping. Of course, it could have helped to defend the castle, but its primary purpose was to provide dramatic effect. From afar, the castle’s appearance is greatly enhanced by its own reflection. From within, the views to the west are spectacular, which explains the relocation of the hall. The mere also provides the backdrop to the so-called Lower Court, a levelled area directly below the hall, almost certainly created as a private enclosure for the earl and his family. Whether in the hall or the garden, the Bigods and their guests could watch the sun setting across the water as they dined and relaxed.

Such was the normal life at Framlingham during its thirteenth-century heyday. It was not a place that the Bigods used to confront their kings, but rather to welcome them. In 1256 Roger’s predecessor threw open his doors to Henry III, and Roger himself played host to Edward I in 1277 (sadly, a year for which no accounts exist). The earl died a peaceful death at Framlingham in 1306 and, under the terms of his agreement with Edward, his dynasty drew to an close. It seems only fitting, on the seven-hundredth anniversary of the family’s eclipse, that we remember their main castle as it really was. Mount the walls at Framlingham and exercise your imagination, but bear in mind that the sight of an advancing army would have been almost as surprising for the Bigods as it would be for us today. Picture instead a ‘landscape of lordship’: men fishing in the mere and felling trees, knights hunting in the park; carpenters and masons, glaziers and gardeners, all seeking to beautify the castle and its surroundings; carts creaking across the drawbridge, laden with building materials, fine foods and bags of money. A peaceful panorama, but a busy one, animated by the news that the earl was riding towards Framlingham, eagerly anticipating the comforts and pleasures to be had within.

Taken from Kings and Castles