Part 30

Canterbury remained vacant for several years, the revenues being absorbed by the King, and the refractory chapter tailing upon them to quarrel with Grosteste, and going so for as to excommunicate him; whereupon the sturdy Bishop trod the letter under foot, saying, “Such curses are the only prayers I ask of such as you.”

After three years the King appointed to Canterbury the Queen’s uncle, Boniface of Savoy, a man of no clerical habits; but the Queen wrote a persuasive letter, by which she obtained the consent of Innocent.

So many monstrous demands had been made by the Pope, that, in 1245, the nobles sent orders to the wardens of the seaports to seize every despatch coming from Rome, and they soon made prize of a great number of orders to intrude Italians into Church patronage. Martin, the legate, complained to the King, who ordered the letters to be produced, but the barons took the opportunity of laying before the King a statement of the grievances of the Church of England, 60,000 marks a year being in the hands of foreigners, while the whole of the royal revenue was but 20,000. Henry could only make helpless lamentations, and, under pretext of a tournament, the Barons met at Dunstable, and sent a knight to expostulate with the legate. This envoy threatened him, that if he remained three days longer in England, his life would not be safe--an intimation which drove him speedily from the country.

The barons, hearing that the Pope was holding a council at Lyons, sent deputies thither, with a letter drawn up by the Bishop of Lincoln, so powerfully enforced by William de Powerie, their spokesman, that the exposure of the enormities permitted in England called up a deep blush on the face of Innocent, and he allowed that he had been wrong in thrusting in these incompetent Italians. There was one good effected at this council, namely, the appointment of Richard Wych to the see of Chichester.

Richard was the son of a Worcestershire yeoman, and was early, with his elder brother, left an orphan. He was a studious, holy, clerkly boy, looked on as fit for the cloister: but when his brother came of age, it was found that the guardians had so wasted their goods, that their inheritance lay desolate. The brother was in despair, but young Richard comforted him, bade him trust in God, and himself laying aside the studies he delighted in, look up the spade and axe, and worked unceasingly till the affairs of the homestead were in a flourishing state. Then, when prosperity dawned on the elder brother, the younger obtained his wish, and went to study at Oxford, where he was so poor that he and two other scholars had but one gown between them, lived hard, and allowed themselves few pleasures; but this he was wont to call the happiest time in his life.

Afterward he went to Bologna, and, after seven years there, returned, and was made Chancellor, first of Oxford, and afterward of Canterbury. There was a most earnest attachment between him and St. Edmund, whom he followed into his exile. The Bishop whom the King had appointed to Chichester was examined by Grosteste, and found deficient in theology, and the chapter and Pope agreed in choosing Richard Wych, who was consecrated by Innocent himself. Henry, in displeasure, took all the temporalities of the see into his hands, and for a year Richard lived at the expense of a poor parish priest named Simon, whom he strove to requite by working in his garden, budding, grafting, and digging, as he had once done for his brother.

He went about his diocese visiting each parish, and doing his work like the early bishops of poorer days, and all the time making his suit to the King to do him justice; but whenever he went to Westminster, meeting only with jests and gibes from the courtiers.

The Pope was too busy to attend to him. That council at Lyons had ended in sentence of deposition upon Frederick, and the combat raged in Italy till his death, when Innocent, claiming Sicily as a fief of the Church, offered it, if he could get it, to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who had too much sense to accept such a crown.

It then was offered to Henry for his son Edmund, whom he arrayed in the robes of a Sicilian prince, and presented to the barons of England, asking for men and money to win the kingdom. Not a man of them, however, would march, or give a penny in aid of the cause, and therefore Innocent raised money from the Lombard merchants in the name of the King of England.

No wonder Henry could not pay. His own household had neither wages, clothes, nor food, except what they obtained by purveying--in their case only a license to rob, since no payment was ever given for the goods they carried off. His pages were gay banditti, and the merchants, farmers, and fishers fled as from an enemy when the court approached; yet, at each little transient gleam of prosperity, the King squandered all that came into his hands in feasting and splendor, then grasped at Church revenues, tormented the Jews, laid unjust fines on the Londoners, or took bribes for administering justice, and all that he did was imitated with exaggeration by his half-brothers, uncles, and favorites.

His chancellor, Mansel, held seven hundred benefices at once, and so corrupted the laws, that one of the judges pronounced the source poisoned from the fountain. Another chancellor was expelled from the court for refusing to set the great seal to a grant to one of the Queen’s uncles of four-pence on every sack of wool, and at one time Eleanor herself actually had the keeping of the seal, and when the Londoners resisted one of her unjust demands, she summarily sent the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs to the Tower.

Isabel Warenne, the King’s cousin, and widow of the Earl of Arundel, an excellent and charitable lady, still young, came to the King’s court to seek justice respecting a wardship of which she had been deprived. She spoke boldly to Henry: “My Lord, why do you turn your face from justice? Nobody can obtain right. You are placed between God and us, but you govern neither yourself nor us. Are you not ashamed thus to trample on the Church, and disquiet your nobles?”

“What do you mean, lady?” said the King. “Have the great men of England chosen you for their advocate?”

“No, sir,” said the spirited lady; “they have given me no such charter, though you have broken that which you and your father have granted and sworn to observe. Where are the liberties of England, so often granted? We appeal from you to the Judge in heaven!”

All Henry could say, was, “Did you not ask me a favor because you were my cousin?”

“You deny my right; I expect no favor,” and, so saying, Isabel left him.

After two years, Richard of Chichester was permitted to assume the temporalities of his see, and most admirably he used them, doing every kindness to the poor in his diocese, and always maintaining the right, though more gently than his friend at Lincoln. Those were evil days, and men’s sense of obedience and sense of right were often sorely divided. Richard died in the year 1253, after a short illness, in which he was attended by his friend Simon, leaving the memory of his peaceful, charitable life, much beloved in his diocese, and was shortly after canonized. “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,” were among his last words.

The champion Robert Grosteste had one more battle to fight ere following his two saintly brethren.

He was wont always to compare each bull which he received with the Gospels and the canon law, and if he found anything in it that would not stand this test, he tore it in pieces. In 1254, one of these letters commanded him to institute to a benefice a nephew of the Pope, a mere child, besides containing what was called the clause “_non obstante_” (namely, in spite of), by which the Pope claimed, as having power to bind and loose, to set aside and dispense with existing statutes and oaths, at his pleasure.

Grosteste wrote an admirable letter in reply. He said most truly, “Once allowed, this clause would let in a flood of promise-breaking, bold injustice, wanton insult, deceit, and mutual distrust, to the defilement of true religion, shaking the very foundations of trust and security;” and he also declared that nothing could be more opposed to the precepts of our Lord and His apostles, than to destroy men’s souls by depriving them of the benefits of the pastoral office by giving unfit persons the care of souls. He therefore absolutely refused to publish the bull, or to admit the young Italian to the benefice.

Innocent flew into a passion on reading the letter. “What meaneth this old dotard, surd and absurd, thus to control our actions? Did not our innate generosity restrain us, I would confound him, and make him a prodigy to all the world!”

One of the Spanish cardinals, however, spoke thus: “We cannot deal harshly with such a man as this. We must confess that he speaketh truth. He is a holy man, of more religious life than any of us; yea, Christendom hath not his equal. He is a great philosopher, skilled in Greek and Latin, a constant reader in the schools, preacher in the pulpit, lover of chastity, and hater of simony.”

Authorities are divided as to whether the Pope was persuaded to lay aside his anger, or not. Some say that he sent off sentence of suspension and excommunication; others, that he owned the justice of Grosteste’s letter. It made little difference to the good Bishop, who lay on his deathbed long before the answer arrived. He spoke much of the troubles and bondage of the Church, which he feared would never be ended but by the edge of a blood-stained sword, and grieved over the falsehood, perfidy, and extortion, that were soiling his beloved Church; and thus he expired, uplifting his honest testimony both in word and deed, untouched by the crimes of his age.

Innocent IV. did not long survive him, and there is a remarkable story of the commencement of his last illness. He dreamt that the spirit of Robert Grosteste had appeared, and given him a severe beating. The delusion hung about him, and he finally died in the belief that he was killed by the blows of the English Bishop.

Sewel, Archbishop of York, had the same contest with Rome. Three Italians walked into York cathedral, asked which was the Dean’s seat, and installed one of their number there; and when the Archbishop refused to permit his appointment, an interdict was laid on his see, and he died under excommunication, bearing it meekly and patiently, and his flock following his funeral in weeping multitudes, though it was apparently unblest by the Church.

These good men had fallen on days of evil shepherds, and lamentable was the state of Europe, when men’s religious feelings were perverted to be engines for exalting the temporal power of the popedom, and their ministers, mistaking their true calling, were struggling for an absolute and open dominion, for which purity, truth, meekness, and every attribute of charity were sacrificed.

CAMEO XXIX. THE LONGESPÉES IN THE EGYPTIAN CRUSADES. (1219-1254.)

_King of England_. 1216. Henry III.

_Kings of Scotland_. 1214. Alexander II. 1249. Alexander III.

_Kings of France_. 1180. Philip III. 1223. Louis VIII. 1226. Louis IX.

_Emperors of Germany._ 1209. Friedrich II. 1259. Conrad IV.

_Popes._ 1216. Innocent III. 1227. Honorius III. 1241. Gregory IX. 1241. Celestin IV. 1242. Innocent IV.

The crusading spirit had not yet died away, but it was often diverted by the Popes, who sent the champions of the Cross to make war on European heretics instead of the Moslems of Palestine.

William Longespée, the son of Fair Rosamond, was, however, a zealous crusador in the East itself. He had been with Coeur de Lion in the Holy Land, and in 1219 again took the Cross, and shared an expedition led by the titular King of Jerusalem, a French knight, named Jean de Brienne, who had married Marie, the daughter of that Isabelle whom Richard I. had placed on the throne of Jerusalem. Under him, an attempt was made to carry the war into the enemy’s quarters, by attacking the Saracens in Egypt, and with a large force of crusaders he laid siege to Damietta. The reigning Sultan, Malek el Kamel, marched to its relief, and encamping at Mansourah, in the delta of the Nile, fought two severe battles with doubtful success, but could not assist the garrison, who, after holding out for fifteen months, at length surrendered. The unhappy city was in such a state from the effects of hunger and disease, that the Christians themselves, suffering from severe sickness, did not dare to enter it, till the prisoners, as the price of their liberty, had encountered the risk of cleansing it and burying the dead.

Even then they remained, encamped outside, and Kamel continued to watch them from Mansourah, where he built permanent houses, and formed his camp into a town, while awaiting the aid of the natural defender of Egypt, the Nile, which, in due time arising, inundated the whole Christian camp, and washed away the stores. The troops, already reduced by sickness, were living in a swamp, the water and mud ankle-deep, and with currents of deeper water rushing in all directions, drowning the incautious; while want and disease preyed upon the rest, till Jean de Brienne was obliged to go and treat with the Sultan. When received courteously in the commodious, royal tent at Mansourah, the contrast to the miseries which his friends were enduring so affected him, that he burst into a fit of weeping, that moved the generous Kamel at once, without conditions, to send as a free gift a supply of provisions to his distressed enemies. A treaty was then concluded, by which the crusaders restored Damiotta, after having held it for eight months, and were allowed every facility for their departure.

Though hardy, patient and enterprising as a crusader, Longespée was lawless and unscrupulous, and paid no respect to the ordinances of religion, neither confessing himself nor being a communicant; while his wife, the lady Ella, Countess of Salisbury in her own right, continued a devout observer of her duties.

Soon after his return from Egypt, Longespée, in sailing from Gascony to England, was in great danger, from a storm in the Bay of Biscay of many days’ continuance, and so violent, that all the jewels, treasure, and other freight, were thrown overboard to lighten the vessel. In the height of the peril, the mast was illuminated, no doubt by that strange electric brightness called by sailors “St. Elmo’s Light,” but which, to the conscience-stricken earl, was a heavenly messenger, sent to convert and save him. It was even reported that it was a wax-light, sheltered from the wind by a female form of marvellous radiance and beauty, at whose appearance the tempest lulled, and the ship came safely to land.

The Countess Ella availed herself of the impression thus made upon her husband to persuade him to seek the ghostly counsel of St. Edmund Rich, then a canon of Salisbury; and the first sight of the countenance of the holy man at once subdued him, so that he forsook his evil ways, devoutly received the rites so long neglected, and spent his few remaining years in trying to atone for his past sins.

In 1226, he was taken suddenly ill at a banquet given by Hubert de Burgh, and being carried home, sent for the Bishop of Salisbury, Richard Poer, who found him in a high fever; but he at once threw himself from his bed upon the floor, weeping, and crying out that he was a traitor to the Most High: nor would he allow himself to be raised till he had made his confession, and received the Holy Eucharist.

He died a few days subsequently, and was buried at Old Sarum, whence his tomb was afterward removed to the cathedral at Salisbury, where his effigy lies in the nave, in chain armor, with his legs crossed as a crusader. The Countess Ella founded a monastery at Laycock, where she took the veil. Her eldest son, William Longespée, succeeded to the Castle of Sarum, but afterward offended the King by quitting the realm without the royal license, for which breach of rule Henry III. seized his possessions, and he remained a knight adventurer. In this capacity he followed his cousin, Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall, who took the Cross in 1240.

By this time, Yolande, the daughter of Jean de Brienne, had carried her rights to her husband, Frederick II., Emperor of Germany, the object of the bitter hatred of the Popes, who had thwarted him in every way, when he himself led an expedition to Palestine, and now, since the conquests of the crusaders would go to augment his power, would willingly have checked them. Gregory IX. strove to induce the English party to commute their vow for treasure, but they indignantly repelled the proposal, and set forth, under the solemn blessing of their own bishops. In France, they were received with great affection by Louis IX., and with much enthusiasm by the people; so that their progress was a triumph, till they came to Marseilles, where they embarked, disregarding a prohibition from the Pope which here met them.

At Acre, they were received by the clergy and people in solemn procession, chanting, “Blessed is he that cometh in the Name of the Lord;” and high were the hopes entertained that their deeds would rival those of the last Richard Plantagenet and William Longespée. But Richard, though brave and kindly-tempered, was no general; Palestine was in too miserable a condition for his succor to avail it, and all he could do was to make a treaty, and use his wealth to purchase free ingress to the holy places for the pilgrims; and, without himself entering Jerusalem, he returned home. He took with him as curiosities two Saracen damsels, trained to perform a dance with each foot, on a globe of crystal rolling on a smooth pavement, while they made various graceful gestures with their bodies, and struck together a couple of cymbals with their hands.

This was the whole result of the Crusade, for the treaty was set at naught by the Templars and Hospitallers, who called him a boy, and refused to be bound by his compact. In 1245, William Longespée again took the Cross under a very different leader.

In the previous year, Louis IX., King of France, had been attacked by an illness of such severity that his life was despaired of; and at one time a lady, who was watching by his bed, thought him actually dead, and was about to cover his face. He soon opened his eyes, and, stretching out his arms, said, “The light of the East hath shined on me, and called me back from the dead,” and he demanded the Cross, and at once took the vow for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre. To part with so just and excellent a monarch on an expedition of such peril was grief and misery to his subjects, and, above all, to his mother, Queen Blanche, and every means was taken to dissuade him; but he would neither eat nor drink till the sign was given to him; and as soon as he had strength to explain himself, declared that he had, while in his trance, heard a voice from the East, calling on him, as the appointed messenger of Heaven, to avenge the insults offered to the Holy City. His mother mourned as for his death, his counsellors remonstrated, his people entreated; but nothing could outweigh such a summons, and his resolution was fixed. The Bishop of Paris saying that the vow was made while he was not fully master of his senses, he laid the Cross aside, but only to resume it, so as to be beyond all such suspicion.

The Crusade was preached, but it had now become a frequent practice, of which Henry III. was a lamentable example, lightly and hastily to assume the Cross in a moment of excitement, or even as a means of being disembarrassed from troublesome claims by the privileges of a Crusader, and then to purchase from the Pope absolution from the vow. It had become such an actual matter of traffic, that Richard of Cornwall positively obtained from Gregory IX. a grant of the money thus raised from recreant Crusaders. The landless William of Salisbury, going to the Pope, who was then at Lyons, thus addressed him: “Your Holiness sees that I am signed with the Cross. My name is great and well known: it is William Longespée. But my fortune does not match it. The King of England has bereft me of my earldom, but as this was done judicially, not out of personal ill-will, I blame him not. Yet, poor as I am, I have undertaken the pilgrimage. Now, since Prince Richard, the King’s brother, who has not taken the Cross, has obtained from you a grant to take money from such as lay it aside, surely I may beg for the like--I, who am signed, and yet without resource.”

He obtained the grant, and thus raised 1,000 marks, while Richard of Cornwall actually gained from one archdeacon £600, and in proportion from others.

Louis, for three years, was detained by the necessity of arranging matters for the tranquillity of his own kingdom, and not till the Friday in Whitsun-week, 1248, was he solemnly invested at St. Denis with the pilgrim’s staff and wallet, and presented with the oriflamme, the standard of the convent, which he bore as Count of Paris. His two brothers, Robert Comté d’Artois, and Charles Comte d’Anjou, and his wife Marguerite of Provence, accompanied him, together with a great number of the nobility, among whom the most interesting was the faithful and attached Sieur de Joinville, Seneschal of Champagne, who has left us a minute record of his master’s adventures.