Wherein King Louis does little to endear himself to the good folk of Norwich and Roger Bigod bravely runs away.
So we've just had two rival kings swinging handbags at one another: John, the king by right of birth and Louis by invitation of the barons, declared king but not yet crowned. At this point, in keeping with family tradition, most of John fell out of his bottom in a lingering and fatal attack of arse gravy and the crown passed to nine-year-old Henry the Third, whose army now faced off against King Louis and we're back with two kings again.
Step back a year, to 1215 and King Louis and the barons were on the rampage. They approached Norwich and Roger Bigod the Second, Earl of Norfolk and Constable of Norwich Castle, took one look at them and wisely ran for his life, hiding out in Bungay Castle.
Louis attacked and besieged Norwich Castle and it is at this point that it is thought the Bigod Tower was mined. Oil-soaked timber was packed into the lower arch and set alight in an attempt to demolish it and breach the walls.
In the small store above the castle quiet room (photo above) is a vaulted ceiling of Caen stone which was turned pink due to the intensity of the heat. You can still see it if nobody's about and you step over the rope barring the way to the little stone spiral stair in the corner (I didn't tell you that). [update: the castle design team has since decided - after much lobbying by me and Tim the archæologist - that this room is too important to be a store and so we now intend to open it to the public with interactive displays telling its story].
The mine was unsuccessful but King Louis took the castle by storm and then set about systematically plundering and burning the city itself. It was only with a monster bribe of £7,000, together with safe passage out of Norwich Castle guaranteed for his men and their plundered loot, that Louis quit the smoking remains of Norwich and rejoined the barons for an attack on Winchester.
By-the-bye, according to the Bank of England's gloriously addictive online inflation calculator, that £7,000 bribe in 1215 would have the equivalent value today of £13,140,662. 06p. Don't forget the sixpence.
King Louis and the baronial armies had captured the greater part of the kingdom when news spread of King John's pungent demise. One can imagine Louis' spuffling apoplexy when he learned that most of the barons now decided to switch sides and declare for the boy Henry.
Things now began to turn bad for Louis. He headed for Lincoln and besieged the castle in 1217. Head of the royalist forces, William Marshall, now aged seventy but still a renowned warrior, relieved the castle in the Second Battle of Lincoln, a splendid scrap that saw Louis' commander, the Comte de Perche, utterly routed.
Louis regrouped at Dover but was tricked into sending his fleet chasing after some English ships, which joined the main English fleet off Sandwich, turned and destroyed the French fleet. Louis gave up his claim to the English throne and retreated to France, becoming King Louis the Eighth in 1223 on the death of his father, having been a king of England for fourteen months. It is rumoured that King Louis went on to rule the Bandar Log as King of the Swingers and the Jungle VIP (sorry).
Next time, the utterly predictable Second Barons' War sacks and burns Norwich … again.
Sources:
Norfolk Museums Service and the Norfolk Archæological Society
East Anglian Archæology Vol. 132: Norwich Castle: Excavations and Historical Survey: 1978-1988: Part 1: Anglo-Saxon to c.1345: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2009
Gesta Stephani: In translation by K. R. Potter and R. H. C. Davis: Oxford Mediæval Texts: 1976
The Anarchy of King Stephen's Reign: Edmund King (ed): 1994
Norwich Castle Keep: Romanesque Architecture and Social Context: T. A. Heslop: 1994
Stephen and Matilda : The Civil War of 1139 - 1153: Jim Bradbury: 2005
The Norman Connections - Castle: Part 1: Norwich Castle: Elizabeth Shepherd-Popescu: 2010
Mediæval Norwich: ed: Carole Rawcliffe & Richard Wilson: 2004
Francis
Blomefield: An Essay Towards a Topographical History of the County of
Norfolk: Volume 3: The History of the City and County of Norwich: 1753
to 1775
The Oxford History of England: 1087-1216: From Domesday to Magna Carta: Austin L. Poole (ed): 1951
4 comments:
As a little American girl going to school in the 1960's I learned about the glamor of English royalty, and nobody said a word about diarrhea.
The kings and queens of England are the least glamorous of people. in the 1960s we were just drilled in dates and battles; there was no such thing as social history in the syllabus.
The first movie I saw that showed the poverty and grim despair of mediæval life was Bergman's Virgin Spring. After that, Gilliam's Jabberwocky and the Python's Holy Grail started to set the record straight.
If you go here: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/catalogue and search the Primary Sources you get a much truer picture, especially in the letters and diaries, though most royal and aristocratic stuff is just ghastly people bickering.
They've also got the full Blomefield free to search.
As for bum-gravy, the records and the archæology confirm that it was a messy period of history. The historians are only now catching up.
I know it's true. All the fairy tales lied, or at least left out some...reality.
I love that parents dress their little girls up in sparkles and call them princess … like they're going to marry them off at age eleven to an elderly relative and rename them Matilda.
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