III THE I\,fURDER OF HENRY CLEMENT AND THE PIRATES OF LUNDY ISLAND. t. The Murder of Henry Clement All that rveknow of Henry Clementis that he was a clerk and messengerof the justiciar of Ireland, Maurice fitzGerald, and that he was murdered in the spring of re35 in lVestminster. The crime causeda sensation.Better men of his time have left no memorial; Henry Clement has a certain fame becauseof the manner of his death. A royal letter of r6 May rz35 tells the story. King Henry had arrived in Westminsteron the previousSundav, r3 \{ay. On the samenight Henry Clement wasfoully murdered in his lodging "before our gates, to our no small dishonour and the scandalof the realm". Severalpersons were suspectedof the murder. Geoffrey de h{arisco, a former justiciar of Ireland, fled to sanctuary in Clerkenwell. One important person, Nfaurice Comyn, was at once caught and imprisoned in the Tower of London. He lay in the Tower from Pentecost(27 May) till the feastof All Saints(r November),when he was releasedafter finding pledges for his appearance.He was delivered to Geoffrey de 1V{arisco,in whosecompany he had apparently come to Westminster.The other personsaccused of the murder scatteredand fled. Somemade their way to the west.The king had heard that their intention was to crossto Lundy Island. They were William de Marisco (or N[arsh), lBaseC upon a paper which first appeared in History, xxv (r94r), eB5-3ro. A revised edition, to which reference should be made for information about authorities, rvill be found in my work, HmrT III and Thc lard Edward,ii.74o-759. 38 PIRATES OF LUNDY ISLAND Geoffrey'sson, with hishousehold, William of Pont de I'Arche, Philip of Dinant, Thomas de Erdinton and John Cabus. Three others,Walter Sandcinell,Eustace Comyn and Henry of Colombieres,were believedto have gone east,for the earl Warenne and the sheriffof Norfolk and Suffolk were warned and told to intercept them. Every other sherifflvaswarned to be on the watch for the malefactors;but, with the exceptionof William Nfarsh, they disappearfrom history. They did not come to stand their trial, and, accordingly, they were outlawed. The official record of the judicial inquiry which followed the murder has fortunately surv'ived. It rvas noticed by Maitland nearly half a century ago and edited by him in the English Historical Reuiew', It gives the evidence of many rvitnessesand enablesus to reconstructthe detailsof the crime. Henry Clement wasstaying in a houseopposite the main gate of the royal palace-that is to say,in a streetor open place to the eastof the abbey church and precincts.The cemeterylay to the left, the way to the town to the right, of the palacegates. The house in which Henry Clement lodged belonged to \faster David the surgeon.Since a woman in the house,one of the rvitnesses,is describedas the hospitaof Master David, I imagine that David leasedit from her, leaving her the useof part of it-there are examplesof such leases--or that she leasedit from him, giving him the right to occupy the main rooms in residence.It L when he was was of the usual type-a I hall, from which an inside stair led to an upper room = solarium),an adjacent lodging in which Alice the hospita ) iir-cd,and a courtyard (curia),at the back in which there was a smaller house with a stable, probably a stable with a iirvelling-roomover it. Somemen weresleeping in this stable. Oppositethe house,on the other sideof the paved streetsome tEng. Hist. i?ea.x (r895) zg4; F. W. Maitland, CollcctedPapcrs,m. tr-16. 39 PIRATES OF LUNDY ISLAND of the king's servantswere in tentsset up beforethe gate of the palace.On the night of Sunday, r3 h{ay re35, Master David and his guestwere sleepingin the solar. Barly on the Monday morning-the evidence suggeststhat it was not long after midnight-a number ofmenrode up to the house.The men in tents heard the neighing of the horsesand the clatter of their hoovesin the roadway. One of thesemen said that he thought there were about sixteen horsemen,some of them armed. Half a dozenwent to the house,leaving the rest to watch out_ side.They broke dorvn the door of the hall, climbed the stair and broke down the door of the solar. One of them carried a blazing torch, w-hichwas extinguishedwhen they saw that they had found their quarry. I{aster David was wounded. Henry' Clement tried to escapeby jumping out of a rvindow, but, seeingthe men outside,he drew back. He waskilled. A king's messengerwho was sleeping in the hall saw what happened,but wastoo frightenedto do anything. His servant who was also in the hall, said that the houseseemed full of men. He was so frightened that he coveredup his head. He ventured out afterwardsand followed the murdererstowards the cemetery, where, so another witnesssaid, they had left their horses.Not one of the numerouswitnesses could identify any of the strangers,and Alice the hospitawho cried out from a windorv could not awaken the men in the stable.The case againstWilliam de Nfariscoand his companionsseems to have dependedon what is called circumstantialevidence. The surgeonsaid, for example,that a boy in buttons1, a messenger of William de N{arisco,had called dailv to ask where Henrv Clement rvasand where he would lodge. Master David also reported a threatening demonstrationagainst Henry, on the LQtidam pamus nuntius Willelmi de Marisco (nrs. reads in error Withtmi Ltar- ,,Can escalli) cum minutis butonibus. lvfairland asks, this bc an early appearance ofthe boy in buttons?" 40 PIRATES OF LUNDY ISLAND bridge at Rochester,by Henry Pont de l'Arche and others. Two knights from Ireland said that, when the king was at Windsor [Io-16 April], William de lMariscohad accused Henry Clement of putting obstaclesin the way of his affairsat court and using his influenceto avert the royal favour. Brian, another messengerfrorn the justiciar of Ireland, who had been sleepingin the housein the courtyard, said that someof William's men had threatened Henry for the same reason. Alice testified that on that very Sunday in Westminster, Henry Clementhad said,in her hearing, that he fearedfor his life and wishedhe werein Ireland rather than in England. Who were thesepeople, and rvhy did they kill Henry Clement? z. Geffie2 de trfariscoand Ricltardthe l[arshal Mattherv Paris, the St. Albans chronicler, gives us one reason: A certa.inclerk, Henry Clement,a messengerof the ruling men in lreland, foolishlvboasting that he had beenthe cause of the death of Earl Richard the N{arshal,and calling him a traitor and a cruel enemy of the king and kingdom, was killed in Lorrdon, rvhile the king was there. Gilbert l\farshal, taxed by the king himself and by others rvith the crime, cleared himself after a long process(plurinis argumentis). I am not sure whether the vague words mean that Earl Gilbert-the brother and successorof Earl Richard the Marshal-was formally indicted before his peers, but that his name and reputation were involved is shown by a solemn promise which he made to the king three weeks after Easter in the following year (1236). He made oath on the gospelsto observe his promise, in the presence of the king, the arch- bishop of Canterbury and the chief men of the kingdom, and he attached his seal to the writing rvhich recorded it. His undertaking comprised many points, and the first was that hc 41 PIRATES OF LUNDY ISLAND would not receivenor allow to be receivedin any of his lands William de Marisco and the other men, whose names we alreadyknow, outlawed for the death of Henry Clement.The assassinshad obviously been connected with him in some way, and he had beensuspected of harbouring them. Henry Clement, then, was murdered by men in the Marshal'scircle. According to Matthew Paris,he had gloried in Earl Richard's death,and boastedthat he had had a hand in getting rid of a man who wasa traitor. The deedwas an aftermath ofa great political crisisand of a tragic event which had stirred passionand bred a crop of rumours. Its origin, like that of so many crimesof the kind, is to be found in Ireland; not, however,among the native Irish, but in the circle of a great Anglo-Norman lord, Richard Marshal, earl of Pembroke,and lord of Leinster.Earl Richard was the secondson of the famousWilliam the Marshal who at one time had governedEngland as rectorregni (tzfi-rg). He had bcen forced into a war againsthis lord,KingHenry. He had carried the war from the l\{archesof Walesinto lreland, where he had gonein February r 234.He had doubtlessheard that, in his absence,his interestsin Leinster were threatened by the justiciar and barons and servantsof the crown. King Henry, of course,was perfectlyjustified in striking a blow at the Marshal in Ireland, while the Marshal, with the aid of Llywelyn of Wales, was successfullydefying him in the Marches; but, in fact, the circumstancesof the Marshal's return to Ireland were not quite so simple asthis. At the very time when Earl Richard was trying to recoversome of his lost castlesin Leinster, the king in England was negotiating for peacewith him and Llywelyn. Henry had found that he could not win, and he had been persuadedby the English bishops to accept terms which w'ould give the Marshal just what he had been fighting for-the dismissalof his present advisers, 42 PIRATES OF LUNDY ISLAND and the renelval of co-operationwith his baronson the basis of the Great Charter. The object of the negotiations was peace,not to separatethe earl from his allies in Wales, and then to continue the war against him.