Fortress Britain: All the Invasions and Incursions since 1066

By Ian Hernon

The British have not been backward in coming forward when it comes to aggressive visits abroad. But it hasn't all been one way. In 1193 for example, the Danes teamed up with the most persistent offenders, the French, for a full-scale invasion. The French Prince Louis the Lion came close to success exactly 150 years after the Battle of Hastings. The 100 Years War saw multiple raids on British towns and ports by the Spanish and French. Following the Armada, there was the bloodless invasion of 1688, Bonnie Prince Charlie's march south, the remarkable American John Paul Jones' attack on Whitehaven during the American War of Independence, the German occupation of the Channel Islands and—the great what if of British, perhaps world history—the threat of Operation Sealion. Ian Hernon brings his journalistic flair to bear in this dramatic narrative of the survival of an island race over 900 years—sometimes, surprisingly, against the odds. Whilst such a history (one leaving out the boring bits) is bound to entertain, it also cannot fail to inform: where were shots last exchanged with an enemy on the mainland? At Graveney Marsh in Kent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Aug 1, 2013
• ISBN: 9780752497174

Book preview

Captain Summers flying prototype K5054 on the very day that the new fighter aircraft was named ‘Spitfire’. R.J. Mitchell had designed a machine that would soon come to symbolise British defiance of would-be invaders.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Introduction

1 After Hastings

2 King Louis of England?

3 The Hundred Years’ War

4 The Pretenders

5 Henry’s Castles and the Invasion of the Isle of Wight

6 The Spanish Armada

7 Mousehole

8 The Barbary Pirates

9 The Battle of the Medway

10 The ‘Glorious’ Invasion

11 The French Armada of 1692

12 The Jacobite Invasion of England

13 The Choiseul Plan

14 John Paul Jones

15 The Battle of Fishguard

16 The Napoleon Threat and Britain’s ‘Great Terror’

17 Threats from America and Germany

18 Operation Sea Lion

19 The Battle of Graveney Marsh

20 The Occupation of the Channel Islands

Conclusions

Appendix 1: Chroniclers’ Accounts of the 1377 Raids

Appendix 2: Later History of Castles and Fortifications Featured

Appendix 3: Samuel Pepys’s Diary Extracts

Appendix 4: Martello Towers

Appendix 5: Pillboxes

Bibliography and Sources

Plate Section

About the Author

Copyright

INTRODUCTION

Every schoolchild knows that the last military invasion of Britain occurred in 1066. The arrow that Harold, the last English king, took in the eye (possibly) was certainly a pivotal moment in the history of these isles. But other invasions, two of which achieved their aims, have been erased from popular history and the nation’s collective memory. So too have countless raids, attacks, and attempted invasions which in scale were bigger than the Armada and posed an even greater threat than, it can be argued, Adolf Hitler. It is as if the Battle of Hastings was a foretaste of the Battle of Britain in 1940, with not much in between to worry those who stayed safe within these shores.

That is, however, belied by the numerous fortifications around our shores and ports, from round Martello towers to military canals and massive gun emplacements, some preserved in pristine condition, others mouldering brickwork buried in brambles.

This is my attempt to fill the gap in that collective memory. This is not an academic work – for those, see the bibliography – but it does aim to pull together in a straightforward narrative the astonishing events of almost a millennium, which have created the nation of Britain.

My thanks, as always, to my family.

1 AFTER HASTINGS

‘… crushed, imprisoned, disinherited, banished’

– the chronicler Odericus Vitalis

Normans preparing to invade England, Bayeux Tapestry.

Before the bloody battle on Senlac Hill and William’s conquest, invasions had been an integral part of the patchwork fabric which made Britain: Romans, Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Vikings, Danes and other Scandinavians all planted their standards and all, through assimilation, stayed to varying degrees. As the Roman Empire declined, its hold on Britain loosened. By AD 410, Roman forces had been withdrawn and small, isolated bands of migrating Germans began to invade Britain. There was no single invasion, but the Germanic tribes quickly established control over a mainland not yet a nation. Viking raiders landed near the monastery on Lindisfarne, slew its monks and looted it. Thus began more than two centuries of Viking incursions into England, which was divided into several kingdoms.

In 866, the Viking chief Ragnar Lodbrok was captured by King Aella of Northumbria and thrown into a snake pit. Ragnar’s enraged sons, taking advantage of England’s political instability, recruited the Great Heathen Army, which landed in Northumbria that year. York fell to the Vikings. Aella was in turn captured by the Vikings and executed. By 1000 the Vikings had overrun most of England and parts of Ireland. In Wessex, King Alfred the Great held off the Vikings during his lifetime, but the Norsemen managed to unite much of England with Norway and Denmark in the eleventh century during the reign of the Danish King Cnut.

When Cnut died he was succeeded by the Anglo-Saxon king Edward the Confessor, who reigned until his death in 1066, when he was succeeded by the powerful Earl of Wessex, Harold Godwinson. The Norwegian king Harald Hardrada invaded the North, only to be defeated with massive losses at Stamford Bridge. But William of Normandy, who also had legitimate claim to the throne, was waiting for good weather to carry his invasion fleet across the Channel.

Harold Godwinson retraced his steps south to take on the threat of the Normans, who landed at Pevensey Bay. He believed that England was now invincible, and that confidence lured him to disaster. The slaughter near Hastings dwarfed even the 901 massacre by Vikings at Maldon, or the defeat of Edmund Ironside by Cnut at Assendon in 1016. So much is common knowledge, along with the debate as to whether Harold died from an arrow in the eye or was hacked apart by Norman knights. Both, probably. But the invasion was not completed in a single battle, famous though it remains.

After the Battle of Hastings, William and his forces marched to Westminster Abbey for his coronation, taking a roundabout route via Romney, Dover, Canterbury, Surrey and Berkshire. From the foundation of the Cinque Ports in 1050, Dover had dominated and it became William’s prime target. William of Poitiers wrote:

Then he marched to Dover, which had been reported impregnable and held by a large force. The English, stricken with fear at his approach, had confidence neither in their ramparts nor in the numbers of their troops … While the inhabitants were preparing to surrender unconditionally, [the Normans], greedy for money, set the castle on fire and the great part of it was soon enveloped in flames … [William then paid for the repair and] having taken possession of the castle, the Duke spent eight days adding new fortifications to it.

The Castle was first built entirely out of clay. It collapsed to the ground and the clay was then used as the flooring for many of the ground-floor rooms. William, variously described by chroniclers as cruel, greedy and devoutly pious, replaced the Saxon hierarchy or ‘establishment’ with his own, amalgamated the Church, imposed new taxation and his own stringent version of the feudal system, and above all wiped out resistance. The chronicler Odericus Vitalis wrote: ‘The native inhabitants were crushed, imprisoned, disinherited, banished and scattered beyond the limits of their own country, while his own vassals were exalted to wealth and honours and raised to all its offices.’

After 1066 foreign incursions, real or threatened, continued until William re-forged his realm, bending it to his own will. But it was a drawn-out business. His iron heel quickly assured his rule in London and the South, but rebellions popped up across his new realm, often aided by overseas forces. He brutally subdued the populations of Yorkshire, Nottingham and Warwick, and repeated the exercise in Somerset, Dorset and the West Midlands.

On the Welsh border, Norman earls whose families had settled in the area during the reign of the Confessor snatched lands held by Edric ‘the Wild’. There was open warfare. Edric, in alliance with the Welsh princes Bleððyn and Rhiwallon, devastated Herefordshire and eventually sacked Hereford itself. They withdrew back into the hills, knowing full well that William would seek vengeance.

King Harold’s mother, Gytha, encouraged the people of Devon to rise up and William only subdued the county after Exeter fell. The other main claimant to the English throne, Edgar Æþeling, grandson of Edmund Ironside, issued a call to arms from his bolthole in Scotland. Later in the year, the men of Dover invited Eustace of Boulogne to help them in their insurrection. This uprising was soon put down with extreme prejudice. But it was in the North that William suffered the greatest defiance. William took his army to crush revolt in Northumberland. The rebels quickly either submitted or fled into Scotland to join the other refugees there in the face of Norman military might.

In the autumn, cousins of Edgar sailed to the Norse-held east coast of Ireland, picked up recruits and raided the West Country, where the Celtic Cornishmen joined them in arms. They plundered and ravaged the countryside so excessively, however, that eventually even the Saxon English joined with local Norman garrisons to expel them.

In 1068, King William appointed Robert de Comines as Earl of Northumberland, instead of the English Earl Morcar. The men of the county promptly killed him and massacred 900 of his men in Durham. Edgar Æþeling travelled to York when he was met by the Northumbrians. William moved up fast from the south and surprised the ‘rebels’. Hundreds were slain and the city torched. The conqueror made York his base of operations in the North. He expropriated property and divided half amongst his Norman followers and kept half for himself. William strengthened the defences of the city and built two motte and bailey castles, one on each side of the River Ouse.

The following year Edgar’s kinsmen and supporters again rampaged through the West Country, but were defeated by Earl Brian of Penthievre, and fled back to Ireland. Meanwhile Edric the Wild and his Welsh allies broke out from the Marcher hills and took Shrewsbury before moving on to Chester. William, no doubt feeling that he was sailing in a colander, with leaks springing up in all directions, was forced to ignore them while dealing with the Northumbrians led by Morcar and his brother Edwin, supported by the Danish king, Sweyn Estridsson.

Sweyn, the grandson of Harald Bluetooth, was born in England around 1019 and had a solid claim to the English throne as his mother Estrid was the daughter of King Cnut. He grew up as a military leader, courageous in battle but fairly hopeless as a tactician. A long and bitter civil war in Denmark eventually saw him rule supreme, only to be embroiled in another war with Harald Hardrada. Sweyn almost captured Hardrada in a sea battle off the coast of Jutland; if he had succeeded, the events of 1066 may have taken a different course. He was almost killed himself at the naval battle of Nisa in 1062. Harald relinquished his claims to Denmark in 1064, in return for Sweyn’s recognition of Harald as king of Norway. After that he sailed off to England to try to enforce his claim on the English crown, with bitter results.

Sweyn was Christian, literate and ruthless, but like many hotheaded rulers of that age, he could be penitent. After one massacre in a church he walked barefoot, dressed in sackcloth, to do penance. While William was away in Normandy, English nobles appealed to Sweyn to claim their throne and revenge his cousin, King Harold. Ever cautious, Sweyn waited almost two years before sending a fleet to the Humber to break William’s still-fragile grip on the North. Even then he sent his brother, Asbjorn, to lead the fleet. It was an act that, rather than uniting the English behind one war leader, as they might have behind Sweyn, just complicated what was already confused leadership. and loyalties. The Danes joined the Earls Waltheof and Gospatrick, together with Edgar Æþeling. The Normans in York were slaughtered; Earl Waltheof’s exploit of allegedly killing 100 Normans with his long-axe as they tried to escape through a gate provided material for heroic verse.

William was occupied elsewhere. He crossed the Pennine hills to face the threat posed by Edric and the Welsh princes, who now had a formidable army bolstered by the men of Cheshire and Staffordshire. William rode with his men and joined Earl Brian, who had marched up from the West Country after beating Harold’s sons. A prudent Edric withdrew to the hills with his Herefordshire and Shropshire men. The Welsh princes marched on and were defeated at the battle of Stafford. William, no surprise here, laid waste to the land. A further revolt in the West Country fizzled out in the face of forces drawn from London and the south east and through internal dissent amongst the insurgents.

William turned back to the North and after a hard march marked by determined resistance, vandalised bridges and swollen rivers, he took and re-entered York without a fight. The Danes had fled and the men of Northumberland took to the hills, pursued by William’s force. The Danes withdrew from northern England while William ‘harryed’ (or harrowed) the North, burning homes and crops, slaughtering livestock and smashing tools and implements in a great scorched earth swathe between the Humber and Durham. The resultant famine wiped out whole villages and the region took generations to recover.

During the extended bloodbath William celebrated Christmas at York, eating off silver plate especially brought up from Winchester. William then inconclusively pursued Teeside insurgents around the Cleveland hills. The devastation, however, forced the rebellion’s leaders to pay him fealty, rather than outright submission, to avoid further destruction. William made his way back to York in atrocious conditions, seeking bands of Englishmen as he went, and suffering heavy losses amongst his own men. He re-erected the castles the Anglo-Norse had burned down and re-garrisoned them. He turned to Chester at the northern extremity of the Welsh Marches.

In January 1070, a Norman army including many mercenaries from France’s northern provinces set off across the Pennines in bad weather through land that offered them no sustenance as they themselves had previously laid it waste. William’s army suffered badly from bad weather and English attacks. Many of the mercenaries mutinied and William simply abandoned them to the enemy and the elements. With only Normans at his back, he reached Chester, which surrendered without a fight. He built castles to hold the North down. He also bought off the Danish leader Jarl Osbjorn.

Meanwhile, the Danes sailed south seeking both loot and assistance from relations in East Anglia who had benefited from Danelaw since before Alfred the Great’s reign. They took to the Isle of Ely as a base in the marshy wetlands of the Fens, held by local landowner Hereward the Wake. In June 1070 William made peace with Sweyn and most Danes left. Sweyn looked away from England and concentrated on consolidating his own kingdom and siring half the royal dynasties of northern Europe through his string of concubines.

The revolt in the Fens had been strengthened by refugees from wasted Northumberland, including Earl Morcar. Hereward paid his remaining Danish allies by allowing them to sack Peterborough and its Cathedral, now controlled by a Norman abbot. William made at least two unsuccessful attempts to take the Isle of Ely. He eventually succeeded after local monks betrayed secret causeways across the marsh. Although Ely fell in 1071, Hereward escaped and, with a band of followers, continued a form of guerrilla warfare for several years.

In 1072 the main threat was from Scotland, where martial numbers were swelled by many English, including Edgar Æþeling. William took an army across the border and confronted King Malcolm at Abernethy. Malcolm made peace.

By 1073 William could feel that his conquest was complete and returned to Normandy to suppress a revolt in Maine. Many in his army were English who worked with a will to devastate the rebel region, just as their home counties had been devastated.

Back in England the ‘Revolt of the Earls’ erupted in 1075. The two Earls were both half English and half French, and both had supported William in his claim for the throne in 1066. Ralf, Earl of East Anglia, was English on his father’s side and had been born in Norfolk, but grew up in Brittany. Roger, Earl of Hereford, English on his mother’s side and born in Hereford, was Ralf’s brother-in-law. They had both supported William’s claim to the throne. Now they plotted to bring him down with Danish support. William crushed both their forces in turn. He then besieged Norwich, held by Ralf’s new bride Emma, for three months. Her husband had gone to collect a Danish fleet, but the 200 ships arrived too late to lift the siege. Ralf and Emma made it to France, where they continued their fight against the Normans. Roger was captured and spent the rest of his life in prison. Earl Waltheof, having refused to take part in the revolt, had nonetheless also refused to betray the rebel earls. When that emerged William had him beheaded. The execution appalled the English and many Norman nobles. Waltheof’s tomb became a place of pilgrimage.

In 1080 the men of Gateshead killed the Norman Bishop of Durham and 100 soldiers, and six years later Edgar Æþeling was again in revolt. These were suppressed in turn, but another invasion by the Danes remained a real threat throughout William’s reign. That was mainly prevented by the lack of co-ordinated resistance by the English and their Danish cousins now settled in England. After Hastings there was no king to give leadership and the English nobles who survived Senlac were driven solely by their own personal interests, co-operating with each other on occasions, only to head off when it suited them. Without decisive leadership, no English army could take the field. And the ordinary folk were cowed by mighty castles, strong garrisons and the enforcement of feudal diktat. Slowly, the English and Normans came together through necessity and marriage.

It was the threat of Danish invasion which prompted the great survey now known as the Domesday Book. William needed to know the precise wealth of his realm in order to levy taxes to pay for an army of defence. Once the massive undertaking was completed with great speed, William summoned all his tenants-in-chief and major land-holders to a court at Salisbury and made them swear an oath of allegiance. His crown was secure. Ironically, that was largely due to fear of invasion.

Between 1066 and William’s death in 1087 foreign incursions had been part of a civil war, inter-related dynastic struggles which crossed seas and borders, the inevitable consequence of the Conquest of a still-unformed nation. From then on William’s Norman successors concentrated on consolidation of their lands either side of the Channel and extending their empire southwards to Aquitaine and Bordeaux

The immediate consequence of William’s death was a war between his sons Robert and William over control of England and Normandy. After the younger William’s death in 1100 and the succession of his youngest brother Henry as king, Normandy and England remained contested until Robert’s capture by Henry at the Battle of Tinchebray in 1106. Norman rule in England fragmented when two of his grandchildren, Stephen and Matilda, engaged in civil war and created an era of turmoil known as ‘The Anarchy.’

Nevertheless, the impact on England of William’s conquest was profound and changes in the Church, aristocracy, culture, and language of the country have persisted into modern times. The Conquest brought the kingdom into closer contact with France and forged ties between France and England that lasted throughout the Middle Ages. Another consequence of William’s invasion was the sundering of the formerly close ties between England and Scandinavia. William’s government blended elements of the English and Norman systems into a new one that laid the foundations of the later medieval English kingdom. Historian Eleanor Searle described William’s invasion as ‘a plan that no ruler but a Scandinavian would have considered’.

Sir Roy Strong wrote that the Conquest and its aftermath was, for William and the Normans, a remarkable achievement:

It was to be an enduring one, for unlike the preceding centuries, no other invading force would be successful until 1688 … The new aristocracy saw its first loyalty not to the land they had conquered but to Normandy. England was taxed and exploited in the interests of what was a smaller, poorer and far less cultured country. Henceforth too, for better or worse, English kings were also to be continental rulers and for four centuries the wealth of England was expended in wars aimed at acquiring, defending and sustaining a mainland empire whose final foothold would not be lost until 1558.

King Sweyn died at his farm, Søderup, near the town of Abenra, in either 1074 or 1076. His body was carried to Roskilde Cathedral where he was interred in a pillar of the choir next to the remains of Bishop Vilhelm. He was later named the ‘father of kings’ because five of his fifteen sons, mostly illegitimate, became kings of Denmark. Sweyn is now regarded as Denmark’s last Viking king, and the first medieval one.

In England, Norman rule was cnstantly riven with strife and dominated by events across the Channel.

2 KING LOUIS OF ENGLAND?

‘English necks are free from the yoke.’

– Gerald of Wales, 1216

William the Marshal unhorsing Baldwin de Guisnes in jousting, thirteenth century, from Matthew Paris’s Chronica Majora.

Succession in the Middle Ages was no simple matter. Dynasties fought amongst each other for the crown of England, and inter-marriage, bastardy and Papal decree complicated matters even further. That turmoil, which continued for centuries, produced kings with only tenuous claims, and others with more solid ones. It also produced one king, proclaimed by the most powerful nobles, who has been excised from our collective history.

After the chaos of ‘The Anarchy’ in which England descended into long and bloody civil war, the Anglo-Norman dynasty was ended by an alliance between Geoffrey of Anjou and Robert of Gloucester, with the former’s son Henry becoming the first of the Angevin kings of England in 1153. He directly ruled more territory on the Continent than did the French king. His son Richard was vilified, then and since, for spending most of his reign fighting across the sea, either on the Continent or on Crusade, spending only a few months in England itself. Sean McGlynn in Blood Cries Afar argues persuasively that Richard’s victories abroad meant greater security for England. Unsuccessful campaigns ‘were invariably followed by threats of invasion’. After the death of the Lionheart, fears of a French invasion grew. His brother John inherited a great estate on both sides of the Channel, an Angevin empire which stretched to the Pyrennes splitting modern France in half along the vertical. It provided a great trading zone, combining the wealth of England with the grain and wine of Bordeaux, Aquitaine, Anjou and Pontier, plus all the taxes, tolls and licences involved. Such wealth provided Henry and Richard with influence and political power, buttressed by their willingness to use cold steel. But martial genes appear to have passed John by – his overseas campaigns were ruinous and his realm was wracked by dissent at his despotic rule. His titles included King of England, Duke of Aquitaine, Count of Anjou and Lord of Ireland, but his grip on all those lands was shaky. Philip II of France aimed to exploit John’s legal and military weaknesses and by 1204 had succeeded in wresting back control of most of France’s ancient territorial possessions.

It was during this age that the concept of chivalry took hold. On the face of it, there is a great dilemma – how do courtly manners and the protection of the weak square with the utmost brutality and the slaughter of the defenceless, both so commonplace that they were barely commented upon? The medieval historian Maurice Keen came closest to an explanation: chivalry was an evolving set of secular values, beginning as a common code of conduct for soldiers and developing into an expression of their social standing. Chivalry limited some of the excesses of warfare – for the nobility if not the common soldiery and civilians – while providing legitimacy for the use of extreme violence.

King John well illustrated the contradictions. He was lustful and lacking in piety, and contemporary chroniclers complained that his mistresses were married noblewomen. He was variously described by his contemporaries as mad, bad and dangerous to friends and minions alike. He was cowardly and vindictive. He was a ‘pillage of his own people’. To contemporaries he was known as ‘Softsword’.Those chroniclers also catalogued his various anti-religious habits at length, including his failure to take communion, his blasphemous remarks, and his witty but scandalous jokes about church doctrine, including the implausibility of the Resurrection. His attitudes put him at loggerheads with Rome, and he was briefly excommunicated, in common with many other crowned heads. Later, however, he played a canny game with Rome. He agreed that England should be a papal fiefdom of Pope Innocent III owing an annual tribute of 1,000 marks. Nicholas Vincent wrote:

Regarded by monastic chroniclers at the time as a dangerous invitation to papal imperialism, and derided by later Protestant historians as perhaps the very worst of King John’s crimes, the homage was in reality a clever political device, like John’s subsequent taking of vows as a crusader, intended to place England under papal protection, and above all to ensure that the Pope was now John’s overlord at a time when the French king’s claim to overlordship had already led to the confiscation of Normandy and now threatened a French invasion of England.

John focused on trying to retake Normandy but faced several challenges: to secure England against possible French invasion, to keep open the sea-routes to Bordeaux needed following the loss of the land route to Aquitaine and to protect his remaining possessions in Aquitaine following the death of his mother, Eleanor, in April 1204. John planned to use Poitou as a base of operations, advance up the Loire Valley to threaten Paris, pin down the French forces and break Philip’s internal lines of communication before landing a maritime force in the Duchy itself. All of this would require a great deal of money and soldiers. At the same time he had to deal with troubles in Wales and Ireland and, most drastically, with Scotland.

Perhaps John’s greatest obstacle was the character and ability of Philip II. After becoming monarch aged 14 in 1180 he was overshadowed by the military genius of Richard. Against John, however, he was an experienced leader of men, able to use both military might and courtly skills in a way John could only dream of. Both men were unattractive characters, but Philip’s unscrupulous nature bore fruit, unlike John’s.

John spent much of 1205 securing England against a potential French invasion. John revived a version of Henry II’s Assize of Arms, with each shire organised to mobilise local levies. When the threat of invasion faded, John formed a significant military force in England intended for Poitou, and a large fleet with soldiers intended for Normandy. To achieve this, John reformed the English feudal contribution to his campaigns, creating a more flexible system under which only one knight in ten would actually be mobilised, financially supported by the other nine. John built up a strong team of engineers for siege warfare and a substantial force of professional crossbowmen.

John also built up his Channel navy. Most of these ships were placed along the Cinque Ports, but Portsmouth was also enlarged. By the end of 1204 he had around 50 large galleys available; another 54 vessels were built between 1209 and 1212. William of Wrotham was appointed ‘keeper of the galleys’, effectively John’s chief admiral. Wrotham was responsible for creating a single operational fleet made up of John’s galleys, the ships of the Cinque Ports and pressed merchant vessels. John adopted recent improvements in ship design, including new large transport ships called buisses and removable forecastles for use in combat.

Baronial unrest in England prevented the departure of the planned 1205 expedition, and only a smaller force under William Longespée deployed to Poitou. In 1206 John set sail himself, but was forced to divert south to counter a threat to Gascony from Alfonso VII of Castille. After a successful campaign against Alfonso, John headed north again, taking the city of Angers. Philip moved south to meet John; the year’s campaigning ended in stalemate and a two-year truce. During that truce of 1206-1208, John built up his financial and military resources ready for another attempt to recapture Normandy. John used some of this money to pay for new alliances on Philip’s eastern frontiers. The invasion plans for 1212 were postponed because of fresh English baronial unrest about service in Poitou.

Philip seized the initiative in 1213, sending his son, Prince Louis, to invade Flanders, intending to use that as a springboard for an invasion of England. John was forced to postpone his own invasion plans to counter this threat. He launched his new fleet to attack the French at the harbour of Damme. The attack was a success, destroying Philip’s vessels and any chances of an invasion of England that year. John hoped to exploit this advantage by himself invading late in 1213, but baronial discontent again delayed his invasion plans until early 1214.

John began his final campaign to reclaim Normandy. He was optimistic, as he had successfully built up alliances with the Emperor Otto, Renaud of Boulogne and Count Ferdinand of Flanders. In addition, he was again enjoying papal favour, and he had substantial funds to pay for the deployment of his experienced army. Nonetheless, when John left for Poitou in February 1214, many barons refused to provide military service and mercenary knights had to fill the gaps. John’s plan was to split Philip’s forces by pushing north-east from Poitou towards Paris, whilst Otto, Renaud and Ferdinand marched south-west from Flanders.

Initially, John outmanoeuvred Prince Louis’s forces and retook Anjou by the end of June. John besieged the castle of Roche-au-Moine, a key stronghold, forcing Louis to give battle against John’s larger army. The local Angevin nobles refused to advance with the king, however, and John retreated back to La Rochelle. Shortly afterwards, Philip won the hard-fought battle of Bouvines in the east against Otto, bringing an end to John’s hopes of retaking Normandy. A peace agreement meant to last six years was signed in which John returned Anjou to Philip and paid the French king compensation. John returned to England in October.

Tensions between John and the barons had been growing for several years, as demonstrated by a 1212 plot against the king. Many of the disaffected barons came from the north of England, nobles who had no personal stake in the conflict in France. Many owed large sums to John, thanks to his imposition of amercements – a vindictive system of fines for imagined offences against the king’s peace – money they did not want to pay. The subsequent revolt has been dubbed ‘a rebellion of the king’s debtors’. Many of John’s military household joined the dissenters, their local links and loyalties outweighing their personal loyalty to John. Tension also grew across North Wales, where opposition to the 1211 treaty between John and Llywelyn (Llywelyn the Great, eventually de facto ruler of Wales) was turning into open conflict. The failure of John’s French military campaign added to the dissatisfaction as promised plunder failed to materialise. James Holt described the path to civil war as ‘direct, short and unavoidable’ following the defeat at Bouvines.

Within a few months of John’s return, rebel barons in the north and east of England were organising resistance to his rule. John held a council in London in January 1215 to discuss potential reforms and sponsored discussions in Oxford between his agents and the rebels during the spring. John appears to have been playing for time until Pope Innocent III could send letters giving him explicit papal support. This was particularly important as a way of pressuring the barons, but also as a means of controlling Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury. In the meantime, John began to recruit fresh mercenary forces from Poitou, although some were later sent back to avoid giving the impression that the king was escalating the conflict. Letters of support from the Pope arrived in April but by then the rebel barons had organised. They congregated at Northampton in May and renounced their feudal ties to John. The self-proclaimed ‘Army of God’ marched on London, taking the capital as well as Lincoln and Exeter. Once the rebels held London they attracted a fresh wave of defectors from John’s Royalist faction.

John met the rebel leaders at Runnymede near Windsor Castle on 15 June 1215. The agreement John signed was later named Magna Carta, or ‘Great Charter’. The charter went beyond simply addressing specific baronial complaints and formed a wider proposal for political reform, albeit one focusing on the rights of free men, not serfs and unfree labour. It promised the protection of church rights, protection from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, new taxation only with baronial consent and limitations on feudal payments. A council of 25 supposedly neutral barons would be created to monitor and ensure John’s future adherence to the charter, whilst the rebel army would stand down and London would be surrendered to the king.

Neither John nor the rebel barons seriously tried to implement Magna Carta. Despite its lofty reputation, Magna Carta was, as Colin Brown pointed out, ‘a shabby deal reached between a gang of landowners who did not wish to see their privileged life destroyed, and a weak king with his back against the wall’. The rebel barons suspected that the proposed baronial council would be unacceptable to John and that he would challenge the legality of the charter; they packed the baronial council with their own hardliners and refused to demobilise their forces or surrender London as agreed. John appealed to Pope Innocent for help, observing that the charter compromised the Pope’s rights under the 1203 agreement that had appointed him John’s feudal lord. Pope Innocent obligingly declared the charter ‘not only shameful and demeaning, but illegal and unjust’ and excommunicated the rebel barons. That provided the flashpoint for war. The rebels were led by Robert Fitzwalter and after a few months of half-hearted attempts to negotiate in the summer of 1215, open warfare broke out.

John had already spent £115 on repairs to Rochester Castle, and held it during the year of the negotiations leading up to Magna Carta, but the Charter’s terms had forced him to hand it back into the custody of the Archbishop of Canterbury. The rebel barons sent troops under William d’Aubigny to the castle where its constable, Reginald de Cornhill, opened the gates to them. In October while marching from Dover to London, John found Rochester in his way and on 11 October began to lay siege.

The rebels were expecting reinforcements from London but John sent fire ships to burn the city’s bridge over the Medway. Robert Fitzwalter rode out to stop the king, fighting his way onto the bridge but was eventually beaten back into the castle. John also sacked the cathedral, took anything of value and stabled his horses in it, all as a slight to Archbishop 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’. Ominously, on 25 November John sent a writ to the justicians: ‘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.’ Five siege engines were then erected and work carried out to undermine the curtain wall. 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 the requisitioned pig-fat. The corner of the keep collapsed. 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 rest of the castle was only taken on 30 November by starvation. John set up a memorial to the pigs and a gallows with the intention of hanging the whole garrison, but one of his captains, Savari de Mauleon, persuaded him that to do so would set a precedent if John ever surrendered. Only one man was actually hanged, a young bowman who had previously been in John’s service. The remainder of the rebel barons were taken away and imprisoned. Of the siege – against only 100 rebels, and costing over £1,000 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’. Some historians, particularly those who appreciate the strength of medieval castles, argue that the siege showed that John could be a competent and determined general. But Rochester was an exception to the rule of ‘Softsword’, as was seen as the war progressed.

The war quickly turned into a dynastic struggle for the throne of England through the ambitions of the French Prince Louis. The rebel barons turned to him as both son and heir apparent of Philip, and also a maternal grandson-in-law of the late English King Henry II. The Norman invasion had occurred only 150 years (exactly 150, in fact) before, and the relationship between England and France was an issue of family dispute rather than of patriotic antagonism. The contemporary annals of Waverley recorded, with no sense of irony, that Louis was invited to invade in order to ‘prevent the realm being pillaged by aliens’.

Prince Louis, later to be called ‘the Lion’, was born in 1187. At 12 he had been married to Blanche of Castile, following prolonged negotiations between his father and Blanche’s uncle, King John. By 1215 he was judged a suitable claimant and the barons offered him the English throne. At first, in November, Louis simply sent a contingent of knights to protect London. However, even at that stage he also agreed to an open invasion, despite discouragement