Jean Plaidy - The Prince of Darkness

It was so easy. A hint which was immediately taken.

During the day young Matilda was taken ill. Before the night was out she was dead.

It was later said by those who attended on her that she had become affected after eating an egg.

He sent her body back to Dunmow and the young girl was laid to rest in Little Dunmow Church. Her mother wept bitter tears of anguish and could not stop herself going over and over that moment on the road when her daughter had been snatched from her.

What could I have done? she asked herself. I should have gone with her. I should have died rather than let her go.

But it was no use weeping. Matilda lay in her tomb, poor child, and no tears could bring her back.

‘I shall never forget this,’ cried Robert FitzWalter. ‘I shall be revenged on John. He shall suffer for this. He will wish he had never dared harm my family.’

‘What can we do?’ cried his wife. ‘Nothing will bring Matilda back.’

FitzWalter could do a great deal. His hatred burned so fiercely in him that it became an inspiration.

John could not help but be aware that the position of the King of England had deteriorated alarmingly during his reign. The great bogey was Philip Augustus of France, who having taken possession of Normandy and much of John’s possessions overseas was in fact now casting his eyes on England itself, and much as William the Conqueror had gazed longingly across the Channel before the invasion, so now looked Philip Augustus of France.

He reasoned that John was no great adversary. How different it would have been to face Richard or his father, Henry II. He felt no such qualms about John. A king who had sported in bed when his kingdom was in jeopardy, who had lost the heritage of his great ancestors, whose country was under interdict and who himself was excommunicated seemed to have placed himself in a position of which it would be folly for his enemies not to take advantage.

So Philip began to amass an army with the idea that when the time was ripe he would cross the Channel and take the English crown from John.

Even John must be alarmed at this prospect. The loss of Continental possessions meant a respite from perpetual fighting, but the loss of England would be intolerable. He would be no longer a king.

He could not now be idle and spend half the day in bed. He did not wish to. He was travelling about the country most of the time, taking women where he fancied them and enjoying variety.

He made an arrangement with five of the chief trading ports in the country to supply him with ships. These were Dover, Romney, Hythe, Hastings and Sandwich which were known as the Cinque Ports. Later Rye and Winchelsea were added to the original five. He demanded from Dover twenty-one ships, from Romney five, Hythe and Sandwich five each and from Hastings twenty. As with the ships came the men to man them, this was of considerable importance to him. In support for the fleet of ships John was willing to grant certain privileges.

This was a fair enough arrangement and special privileges were granted to the towns, and their merchants were known as barons.

But John was in urgent need of funds and he set about getting these through what he called ‘fines’. If a man was accused of some misdemeanour it became possible to buy his way out of his just punishment. ‘Bribes’ would have been a better way of describing these inequities.

The Jews had always been persecuted and because they had a talent for amassing money, they became one of John’s special targets. He gave an order that all Jews were to be imprisoned that they might on the payment of certain sums of money be allowed to go free. Understandably reluctant to part with their worldly goods, many of them refused, which so aroused the King’s wrath that he ordered them to be tortured. He made it clear that they could preserve themselves from these horrors by the payment of certain sums. From one rich Jew of Bristol the King asked for a payment of ten thousand marks – a great fortune which was all he possessed. When the Jew refused to pay John the money, the King ordered that each day one of his teeth should be pulled out until he had paid the sum. For seven days the Jew held out but by the end of that time he decided that he would part with his fortune rather than endure the brutal extractions.

John was constantly thinking of new ways of getting money. If two people disputed over a piece of land which they did often enough, the one who gave the bigger present to the King would get the land. It was not only money which was passed to the King in this manner; cattle, jewellery, anything of value came his way.

It was often necessary to get the King’s consent to marriage if the bride was an heiress, and this proved a valuable source of income to the King. Geoffrey de Mandeville wanted to marry Hadwisa, John’s first wife whom he had discarded; she, still a rich woman, was a very good catch and the prospective bridegroom gave the King twenty thousand marks for his permission. Often a little profitable bartering took place and in the case of the widow of one Stephen Falconbridge, Richard de Lee gave the King eighty marks for his permission to marry the lady which John accepted with alacrity. The widow, however, had other plans and offered John one hundred pounds sterling if he would withdraw his permission, which John on the receipt of the money obligingly did. If he heard that a certain widow had no wish to marry he would set about finding a husband for her that she might offer a sum of money to be excused from matrimony. The Countess of Warwick gave him a thousand pounds and ten palfreys that she might be left in peace.

There was no excuse too wild which was not used to extract money. Cities were expected to give bribes that they might conduct their business in a manner suited to them. London itself gave forty marks that it might sell cloth at a certain length; and the Bishop of Norwich who, as a bribe, presented the King with an emerald ring, was fined for delivering it at an inconvenient time when others were present.

Anyone who possessed anything which could benefit the King found himself robbed of it and John took a cynical pleasure in thinking up methods of extraction.

It was not to be expected that the people would meekly endure this state of affairs. The barons were growing restive and more and more people were asking themselves and each other whether they had been unwise in welcoming John as King when they might have had young Arthur; and that raised the question: Where is Arthur? And there was a growing conviction that John knew the answer to that riddle and had in fact taken and played a brutal part in the young Duke’s disappearance.

John, while not unaware of the resentment growing up around him, yet maintained an indifference to it. He was the King. They must remember it. Moreover, there was a threat to England from overseas and he needed money to prepare himself to meet it. He refused to allow himself to be perturbed by the resentments which were growing up around him.

His arrogance was becoming intolerable to many and the barons talked together in secret of the state to which he was reducing the country. His bursts of energy were disconcerting, followed as they were by long periods of slothfulness. He was unpredictable; he could be quite amusing and witty at one time but the violent temper could suddenly overtake him so that no one really felt safe for long in his company.

His licentiousness had not decreased with his years, and in his new mood he did not hesitate to demand acquiescence wherever his fancy rested. It might be a serving girl or it could as easily be the wife of one of the high-ranking barons – it made no difference to John; if he desired a woman he expected all to remember that he was the King who must not be crossed.

Thus it was when his eyes fell on the wife of the Baron de Vesci.

Eustace de Vesci had served Richard well and had followed him on his crusade; after Richard’s death he had given his allegiance to John and was becoming more and more horrified to discover how different he was from his brother and father.

Vesci was one of those barons who had been censorious of John’s rule in secret; but he was a bold man and did not intend to go on accepting such conduct on the part of the King.

He had a great deal of influence in Scotland because his wife Margaret was the illegitimate daughter of William the Lion and he had often acted as John’s ambassador there, where in view of the marriage connection he was well received.

Now this same Margaret had caught John’s fancy and Eustace was filled with rage – though he did not show this – that John dared presume that he could make free with other men’s wives while their husbands stood meekly by.

But he was well aware of the King’s violent temper and at this time all his subjects were at his mercy, a state of affairs that Eustace, in company with other barons, was determined should not continue.

He pretended to treat the matter as a joke, implying that the King could not be serious of such intentions regarding his wife and the daughter of the King of Scotland.

‘My lord is gracious in admiring my wife,’ said Eustace cautiously.

‘She’s comely,’ replied John. ‘She is a woman such as I greatly admire. I have had pleasure from many such. I know a woman’s potentialities when I see them. I have had a great deal of practice, Baron.’

‘I know it well,’ was the reply. ‘My wife will be leaving this day for a visit to her father.’ Eustace was implying that Margaret was not only his wife but the daughter of the King of Scotland.