After three months spent besieging the castle, and with a large part of his forces diverted by the siege, Louis called a truce on 14 October and soon after returned to London.
Apart from Dover, the only castle to hold out against Louis was that at Windsor , where 60 loyalist knights survived a two-month siege, despite severe damage to the structure of its lower ward immediately repaired in by Henry III, who further strengthened the defences with the construction of the western curtain wall, much of which survives today.
This is possibly due to its having been already besieged by the barons in , less than 30 years earlier. The rebel barons had then sent troops under William d'Aubigny to the castle, to whom its constable Reginald de Cornhill opened the castle's gates.
Thus, during October on his marching from Dover to London, John found Rochester in his way and on 11 October began besieging it in person. The rebels were expecting reinforcements from London but John sent fire ships out to burn their route in, the city's bridge over the Medway.
Robert Fitzwalter rode out to stop the king, fighting his way onto the bridge but eventually being beaten back into the castle. He also sacked the cathedral, took anything of value and stabled his horses in it, all as a slight to Langton. Orders were then sent to the men of Canterbury saying "We order you, just as you love us, and as soon as you see this letter, to make by day and night, all the pickaxes that you can. Every blacksmith in your city should stop all other work in order to make them and you should send them to us at Rochester with all speed".
By one of these means the king's forces entered and held the bailey in early November, and began attempting the same tactics against the keep, including undermining the south-east tower. The mine-roof was supported by wooden props, which were then set alight using pig-fat on 25 November John had sent a writ to the justiciars saying "Send to us with all speed by day and night, forty of the fattest pigs of the sort least good for eating so that we may bring fire beneath the castle", [1] causing the whole corner of the keep to collapse.
The rebels withdrew behind the keep's cross-wall but still managed to hold out. A few were allowed to leave the castle but on John's orders had their hands and feet lopped off as an example.
Winter was now setting in, and the castle was only taken on 30 November by starvation and not by force. The remainder of the rebel barons were taken away and imprisoned at various royal-held castles, such as Corfe Castle. Of the siege — against only rebels, and costing over a thousand pounds a day — the Barnwell chronicler wrote "No one alive can remember a siege so fiercely pressed and so manfully resisted" and that, after it, "There were few who would put their trust in castles".
The round tower centre and two square towers left and right of Rochester Castle. John died the next year, so it fell to Henry III to repair the castle. A new chapel was built next to the Royal apartments in the bailey. The most notable surviving feature is the new south-east tower, which was built according to the latest defensive design and is three-quarters round to better deflect missile attack and work against attempts at undermining.
On 18 October , John died at Newark Castle , Nottinghamshire, and with him the main reason for the fighting. He failed to honour his promise and thereby provoked the barons to offer the crown to Louis, Dauphin of France, who landed in Kent in May With his defeat at Lincoln and the capture of his supply ships off Sandwich, Louis accepted the Treaty of Kingston-upon-Thames in September The second arose from baronial opposition to the incompetent Henry III and led to his accepting a programme of reform, the Provisions of Oxford Henry's renunciation of those reforms led to civil war in , the baronial forces being led by Simon de Montfort.
The king's capture at the Battle of Lewes May began a brief period of baronial control when de Montfort sought to broaden his support by extending parliamentary franchise to the shires and towns After his defeat and death at Evesham August , the struggle was continued unsuccessfully until by his supporters. View all related items in Oxford Reference ». Search for: 'Barons' war' in Oxford Reference ». That conflict is chiefly remembered for its culmination in a meeting at Runnymede where John was forced to sign the Magna Carta, a document which guaranteed certain traditional rights and privileges to his subjects.
See the Magna Carta text here. The second conflict we call the Barons' War broke out in and ended in It is that conflict we deal with here.
Henry needed more money for his wars against Wales and France, and to support a papal crusade. Then his brother Edmund, Earl of Lancaster, made a bid for the throne of Sicily, and Henry demanded still more money from his subjects to support Edmund's cause. This stirred his barons to action. De Montfort was a man ahead of his time, a man with a vision that might today be labelled socialist.
He believed that the king should be answerable to the country, and that men of property should be allowed a voice in the government of the realm rather than bow to the authority of a monarch. As laudable as those beliefs may seem to us today, in the 13th century they placed de Montfort well outside the comfort zone of even his fellow barons. And de Montfort had the unfortunate habit of polarizing people, so that those who might have been expected to follow him in his conflict with the king were instead induced to support the royal cause simply to stop de Montfort from gaining the upper hand.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit. Oh, dear, what can we say about this monarch that will not sound too censorious? Well, not much. Henry was one of the least effective of England's medieval monarchs. He was constantly in need of money, which in itself was not unique among English kings.
The trouble was that Henry wanted money for causes that the English nobility did not see as benefiting their interests. The campaign to put Prince Edmund on the throne of Sicily was one such cause. It was a move that held no benefit to the realm of England, only to Edmund and Henry, and the nobles did not see why they should grant money to support a campaign that would offer themselves no benefit.
Left Navigation Home. Herefordshire's Past. The Medieval period. The Barons' War.
0コメント