After

John remained for two more months, but excitement and suspicion preyed upon him. For some mysterious reason he left Rouen on 7th October almost alone. crossing the river by boat to Notre-Dame-du-Pré, he appears to have ridden in the day to Bonneville-sur-Touque, an enormous distance even for him.1 Two days later he celebrated the feast of Saint Denis at Caen, with much drinking of wine. The king next spent some days in the Côtentin at Valognes, then dashing back to the Touque, he set off on a last inspection of Verneuil, the solitary outpost on the frontier. Not daring to make his way across to Rouen by Neubourg, he came all the way back to Lisieux and Hebertot, and so to Rouen. "It was not the straight way, but the other seemed dangerous to him, for he would have come upon his enemies." John had now decided to leave Normandy. It is possible that he merely desired to rally his English vassals, whose money he had been spending at a ruinous rate; certainly he tried to make people in Normandy believe that he would soon be among them again;5 but the ordinary view was that he really intended flight, and we are bound to admit that

6

1. Guillaume le Maréchal, iii, 174.

2. "Computate dilecto nostro R. de Veteri Ponte iiii tunellos vini quos ipse nobis promisit apud . . . potavimus apud festum Sancti Dionisii apud Cadomum.” To the seneschal and barons of the Norman exchequer, October 28th (Rot. Norm., 169). On the Saturday following the feast (October 11th) the king received the regalia from the Bishop of Norwich (Rot. Pat., 35). The itinerary must contain an error for October 9th. 3. Guillaume le Maréchal, iii, 175.

4. On the export of English treasure, especially in 1203, see below p. 347.

5. At Caen, November 15th, he forbad the impleading of Ralph of Cailly "de aliquo libero tenemento suo quod teneat nisi coram nobis quousque nos Deus reduxerit de Anglia in Normanniam" (Rot. Pat., 36). Also December 5th, at Barfleur (Rot. Norm., 119).

6. Cf. Hist. des ducs de Normandie et des rois d'Angleterre, p. 97; the chronicle of Andres: "tanquam ad asylum confugiens" (Histor. de France, xviii, 573); Chronicle of Mortemer (ibid, 354).

his movements go far to justify this view. He had much cause for alarm, most of all in the defections in the Norman baronage. Since the days when he had confiscated the estates of the Poitevins and denied them ordinary justice in his court, he had fallen back more and more into the mood of nature. He had treated the prisoners captured at Mirebeau with indignity and cruelty; in many cases he had probably put them to death; the chief prisoner, the heir to John's throne, had disappeared, and since Easter the idle talk of the Bretons must have been repeated in Normandy with a sharper sense of conviction. It is significant that, with the exception of Count Robert, the more important deserters, the count of Evreux, Hugh of Gournai, Peter of Meulan, Guy of Thouars and many more had changed sides soon after the date upon which Arthur was most probably murdered.1 For a short time the great earl of Chester himself had been suspected, and had been forced to find sureties and to surrender the castle of Similli in the week after Easter.2 We may be reasonably sure that sympathy with Arthur was not the ruling motive for the conduct of these great barons. Deep questions of law and equity were being mooted as the result of John's appeal to force: the state of nature was soon to end with the social contract of 1215. In the meanwhile Philip had absolved John's vassals from all duty of obedience.3 John might well fear violence as well as treachery.4

This was not all. John's last military venture had failed: the exercitus de Alencon had been disbanded, and 1. See note C at the end of this chapter for the chief deserters in 1203. 2. Rot. Norm., 96.

3. This is stated in the papal letters to John (Pat. Latina, ccxv, 183). 4. Guillaume le Maréchal, iii, 175; chronicle of Mortemer (Histor de France, xviii, 354). The remarks of Wendover (i, 318) imply the same view of John's fears.

5. A special talliage had been raised for the expedition against Alençon. See the references to the talliata exercitus de Alencon in Rot. Norm., 115.

outside a few castles Normandy was defended by mercenaries. The irresponsible depredations of these social outcasts had alienated both clergy and people to such an extent that in Aquitaine, even more than in Normandy, popular indignation was a serious menace to John's authority. Finally, the distractions of war had not preserved the king from several quarrels with the clergy, especially in the diocese of Séez, and in the autumn of 1203 the misery of Normandy was increased by the horrors of an interdict.2 England must indeed have seemed an asylum to John and Isabella.

The biographer of the Marshal, who is a safe guide to feudal opinion, has described John's last journey in Normandy; and the passage will be a fit conclusion to this chapter:

"The king stayed but a short time at Rouen, and announced his intention of going to England in order to ask aid and counsel from his barons; then, he said, he would return without delay. But he took the queen with him, which made many fear that he would stay in England until it was too late. Preparations were soon made, for the king had sent his baggage train on

1. See below p. 340.

2. The ecclesiastical disputes which occurred during the early years of John's reign lie beyond the scope of this volume. So far as they concerned Norman churches, they must have embarrassed his political position. For a summary, see Gütschow, Innocenz III und England (1904), pp. 105-126; Luchaire, Innocent iii: Les Royautés vassales, pp. 182–90. The interdict, conditionally ordered by Innocent on May 25th, 1203, if John should not receive the new bishop of Séez (Patrologia Latina ccxv, 69; Potthast, no. 1919) was at least partially enforced, in spite of John's letters of October 9th (Rot. de Lib., 72) ordering a courteous reception of the bishop. The interdict is referred to on October 26th in a letter addressed to the seneschal and bailiffs of Normandy; "mandamus vobis quod non permittatis impedimentum fieri Abbati de Blanchelanda quo minus ipse possit redditus suos juste perquirere quamdiu interdictum duraverit" (Rot. Pat., 35).

privately in advance. On the first night he slept at Bonneville, not in the town, but in the castle, for he suspected treason: in fact he had been warned that the greater number of his barons had sworn to hand him over to the king of France, and although he pretended to be ignorant of their intention, he kept at a safe distance from them. He commanded the Marshal and those in whom he felt most confidence to be ready in the morning before daybreak; and so the king left without taking leave while he was supposed to be still asleep; and when his departure was discovered he was seven leagues away. He made for Bayeux, by way of Caen, riding more than twenty leagues on that day1-leagues of the Bessin, too, which are longer than French leagues. From these he went on towards Barfleur where many of his companions took their leave of him: it was quite clear that they could not look for a speedy return. "

1. Unless the itinerary is faulty, the poet is slightly in error here; but it is more probable that his memory of such a fateful journey is correct, and that John halted, but did not stay at Caen. On the other hand, the poet omits to state that, from Bayeux, John turned southward and visited Dom front (November 20-21) and Vire (November 21-23) before making for Barfleur (December 5th).

2. The following list of John's companions during this journey may be compiled from the rolls and from a charter tested at Gonneville, November 29th (in Round, Calendar, p. 304, no. 545). Those whose names are in italics accompanied the king to England: William the Marshal, earl of Pembroke; the earl of Arundel; the seneschal, William Crassus; the constable, William du Hommet; Robert of Vieuxpont, William of Briouze; Ralph Tesson, Richard of Fontenay, Peter Stokes, Thomas Basset, Warin Fitzgerald (?). The earls of Chester and Salisbury joined the king at Morfarville but stayed to defend the western frontier. According to the Histoire des ducs, p. 97, Baldwin of Béthune, count of Aumale, also accompanied John to England, and there were probably others, e.g., the bishop of Norwich. Peter of Verneuil, who was important in the Gascon administration, took letters from Barfleur to Gascony, and had probably accompanied John during November (cf. Rot. Pat., 36b).

3. Guillaume le Maréchal, iii, 175.

NOTES TO CHAPTER VI.

NOTE A. THE DIVISION OF THE EVRECIN ACCORDING TO THE TREATY OF MAY, 1200.

A twelfth century treaty was a very literal affair, even though it were not observed, and we are able, thanks to a fortunate enrolment on a charter roll, to observe how boundaries were mapped out in accordance with the treaty of 1200, as easily as we can follow the work of boundary commissioners in the nineteenth century. According to the treaty a boundary was to be fixed midway between Evreux and Neubourg, and the distance between it and Conches was to be regarded as a fixed unit of measurement boundaries at the same distance from Evreux were to be set up between Conches and Evreux on the one hand, and Acquigny and Evreux on the other. In these instances, however, the surveyors were to follow the winding valley of the Itun,1 in which Evreux lies. The report of the jury under whose direction the measurements were made states that by means of a rope, twenty toises 2 in length, boundaries were found (a) between Bacquepuits and Bernienville on the road to Neubourg; (b) between Glisolles and Angerville-la-Rivière (now united with Glisolles) in the direction of Conches; (c) near a place

1. After visiting the ground I interpret the words of the treaty in this way. The long winding slopes on either side of the Itun valley would make measurement across country very difficult. Another possible version of the words “ex ea parte ubi abbatia de Noa sita est sicut aqua Ytonie currit" would be that from the site of the abbey the Itun should form the boundary (i.e., southwards). The phrase sicut fluvius currit is used in this sense of the same river in John's earlier treaty with Philip, January 1194, before Richard's return from captivity (Cartulaire Normand, p. 275).

2. The tesia (between two and three feet) is mentioned occasionally in contemporary documents, e.g., Cart. Norm., p. 33, no. 213; Rot. Norm., 85; Rot. Scacc., ii, 303.