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keeping for Ferrand the engineer: "If Ferrand be whole, let Peter be delivered whole also; but if Ferrand be lacking in any limb, Peter must first be deprived of the same limb (eodem modo demenbratus) and then delivered in exchange." 1

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In such a case as this the lex talionis was compatible with an appreciation of the market value of the prisoner. Much evidence might be adduced to show how by means of booty and the exchange or ransom of prisoners, war was certain extent made to pay for itself.2 But the desire for an exact revenge might easily become merely destructive. William the Breton, in a passage of his Philippid, relates that Richard, angered by the news that a body of Welsh mercenaries had been destroyed by the French,3 threw three prisoners from the rock of Andeli and blinded fifteen others whom he sent under the guidance of a oneeyed companion, to the French king; whereupon Philip, in reply to this rough jest, inflicted the same punishment upon exactly the same number of his prisoners: three were cast from a high cliff, and fifteen were deprived of their sight, and, accompanied by the wife of one of their number, were sent to Richard. The reader may justly

1. Rot. Pat., 25. On the other hand some small compensation was occasionally granted for the loss of a limb in the king's service; e.g., Rot. de Liberate, 32: "mandatum est G. filio Petri quod faciat habere Alano Walensi qui pugnum suum perdidit in servicio domini Regis jd. de redditu primum qui liberabitur, et interim eum perhendinare faciat in aliqua abbatia," and the following entry.

2. e.g., Rot. Scacc., ii, 309. The war horse was especially valuable, as the life of the Marshal shows. The chroniclers refer (e.g., Ann. Monastici, ii, 70) to the 200 destriers captured in the fight at the bridge of Gisors in 1198, “de quibus septies viginti cooperti erant ferro."

3. Philippid, lib. v, 11. 300-328 (ed. Delaborde, i, 136, 137). Α comparison of this passage with Diceto, ii, 163; Howden, iv, 53; Annales Cambriae, p. 61; and the Brut y Tywysogion, p. 352, shows that William is really thinking of the great Welsh disaster at Pain's castle in Radnor in the same year. (See, on this massacre, Lloyd, History of Wales, ii, 586). He was not, in 1198, with Philip, and probably confused one story with another.

feel that, with this story, we have reached a reductio ad absurdum of the parallel between the principles of law and warfare.

Further examination, however, of the relations between captor and prisoner, is of some interest and importance. A wealthy or powerful prisoner was much more than a soldier out of action, or a source of wealth to the captor. He represented political dignity and power; his capture interfered with a body of relations between his kinsmen and vassals and himself which were public in their nature. When King John captured Arthur's company at Mirebeau he wiped out the political influence of half a province. Hence much importance was attached to the safe custody of prisoners, and elaborate precautions were taken against their escape, and even against their communication with their friends outside. For example, Hugh of Lusignan, after being captured at Mirebeau, was confined at Caen under the strictest regulations. The keep (turris) was cleared of all other prisoners, and Hugh, heavily ironed, was placed under the guardianship of Hugh Nevill,1 who superseded the castellan for this purpose. Hugh's brother, Geoffrey of Lusignan, was treated in the same way at Falaise. Their communications with friends were regulated with the most minute care.2 The less important prisoners taken at Mirebeau were, on the contrary, massed together in England at Corfe, where they were sufficiently free and sufficiently numerous to conspire and for a short time to capture the keep.3 But if the Margam annalist is correct in saying that twenty-two of them were starved to death, they paid dearly for their adventure."

1. Hugh Nevill, a friend of Richard's, (Matthew Paris, Chron. Majora, iii, 71) had been responsible for the custody of the bishop of Beauvais at Rouen (Rot. Scacc., ii, 301; Howden, iv, 40, 41) and, along with Thomas, a clerk of the royal chamber, was entrusted with most of the business connected with the prisoners of Mirebeau.

2. Rot. Pat., 16 seqq.

3. Rot. Pat., 24, 33b.

4. Annales Monastici, i, 26.

The responsibility of the gaoler was a heavy one. In spite of all precautions, prisoners sometimes escaped, and their keepers had to meet the loss of their ransoms by the payment of large fines.1 Connivance at escape was punished with death. When Hugh of Chaumont, an intimate follower of Philip Augustus, escaped in 1196 from Bonneville-sur-Touques, his keeper was hanged, and Robert of Roos, the bailiff, who was immediately responsible to the king for Hugh's safe keeping, had to pay the enormous fine of 1200 marks.2

A fair amount of evidence goes to prove that on his release a prisoner was often compelled to undertake that he would retire from the fighting line. In addition to the payment of a ransom he made a promise similar to that made by a knight on parole.3 In important cases homage was exacted; William of Scotland did homage to Henry II and Richard I to the emperor. More generally, however, the prisoner was simply expected to retire from the scene of warfare. The bishop of Beauvais, for example, was compelled to forswear secular warfare against fellow Christians;5 Martin Algais, after his release, was transferred by John from Touraine to Gascony; less important people sometimes celebrated their release or sought to forget their sufferings by going on pilgrimage or taking the vows of a crusader. Thus Patrick of Chaworth

1. e.g., Rot. Scacc., i, 190. "Thomas Portarius reddit compotum de £394. 9s. 6d. pro prisonibus evasis."

2. Howden, iv, 14, 15. For Robert of Roos, see Rot. Scacc., i, 233, and Stapleton, II, lxxvi, lxxvii.

3. For the parole, see Jordan Fantosme (ed. Howlett, Chronicles of Stephen, etc., iii, 358, 1. 1870) and Meyer, Guillaume le Maréchal, iii, p. xxxix, who points out that the parole was sometimes supplemented by the finding of sureties.

4. A legal parallel to this is the "homagium de pace servanda" or "hominium pro emenda."

5. Howden, iv, 94.

6. Richard, Comtes de Poitou, ii, 414, 415.

(Chaources) a few months after his release in February, 1203, started for Compostella.2

The career of Gerard of Furnival illustrates the practices to which I have referred in the preceding pages. Gerard had been with Richard in the Holy Land, and was afterwards a trusted companion of John. He was one of John's tenants in the English honour of Tickhill,3 and received from him valuable grants in Normandy. In the fight at Mirebeau he had the good fortune to take as his prisoner Conan, the son of Guiomarc'h, viscount of Leon, one of the most important and intractable barons of Brittany.5 In accordance with the usual practice, the prisoner was handed over to the king. Soon afterwards Gerard felt a desire to revisit the scene of his adventures in the east, and decided to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He had more to

remember than most men, for he had spoken face to face with Saladin himself. But the pilgrimage would cost money, and Gerard was already in debt to the king; he had recently brought the marriage of the heiress to a manor in Caux, in order to settle his son, Gerard the younger. This had cost 400 marks which had not been paid. The king came to the rescue. He gave back the

1. A branch of the family of Chaources, now Sourches, in Maine, had long been Anglicised; see Round, The King's Serjeants and Officers of State (1911), pp. 291, 292.

2. Rot. Pat., 23, 24, 25

3. For Gerard's English lands as held by his son in 1212 see Red Book, ii, 491, 504, 592.

4. Of these, Conteville was the most important (Stapleton, II, clxii). 5. This was Guiomarc'h V. His father, Guiomarc'h IV, had been very energetic in his resistance to Henry II and Geoffrey. See Robert of Torigni, ed. Delisle, ii, 81, 83; Howden, ii, 192, and especially Borderie, Histoire de Bretagne, iii, 276, 279, 280.

6. Estoire de la Guerre Sainte (ed. G. Paris), l. 11425, 11899. Paris speaks of Gerard as a French knight, taking his name from Fournival (Oise); and, according to Round, he had only settled in England in Richard's reign (English Historical Review, xviii, 476).

7. Rot. Pat., 15b. This manor, of Louvetot, was afterwards given by Philip Augustus to Odo Troussel (Cart. Norm., no. 106, p. 18).

prisoner whom Gerard had captured at Mirebeau and then bought him again for the amount of the debt.1 After all John allowed Gerard but a small share in the value of his prisoner, for when the ransom was arranged a year later the king demanded no less than £4,000 Angevin from Conan's Breton relatives.2

I have said that this episode illustrates the traffic in prisoners during these wars. It illustrates also the attraction of the crusade which was especially characteristic of this period, and cut across political obligations in the west. John had lost in this way his Flemish allies and his relatives, Geoffrey and Stephen of Perche.3 In other words the alliance built up by Richard had been interrupted at its most important points. Moreover, the rumour of great intentions, and the magnetic energy of Innocent III decided men of all stations and from all parts of the Angevin empire to leave for the Holy Land or at least to satisfy their restlessness by a journey to Rome or Compostella. No feeling of solidarity bound the Englishman to the Norman, or the Norman to the Poitevin. John inspired his followers with no certainty of victory; so that the interest and imagination of men were easily diverted by wider issues than the struggle between him and Philip. The thousands who did not go waited eagerly for news of those who went, and their minds were still fed by memories of the exhortations of the preachers. Hence,

1. Rot. Pat., 15b, Chinon, August 4th, 1202

2. Ibid, 33b.

3. Geoffrey count of Perche had married Matilda sister of Otto of Brunswick, and niece of John. He pledged his lands in March, 1202, and borrowed money from the Marshal, but died before he could set out (Rot. Pat., 7, 9b). He and his brother Stephen were at the head of a little group of crusaders from Perche. See Stapleton, II, lxxxv. 4. On the strength of feeling caused by the crusade between 1197 and 1204, see Bréhier, L'église et l'Orient au moyen âge (3rd ed., 1911), pp. 148-152; and the songs collected by Béclier and Aubry, in Les Chansons de Croisade (1909). Cf. also Bateson, Mediaval England, pp. 276, 277.

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