474 – Malvoisin, the Evil Neighbor

Welcome to the British History Podcast.

My name is Jamie and this is episode 474, Malvoisan, The Evil Neighbor.

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Rufus was marching north to directly challenge DeMowbray and anyone else who was foolish enough to follow him.

And of course he was.

There was only one response that this king was ever going to have to de Mowbray's instigation: war.

The only surprise here was his speed.

When Mowbray failed to show up at the Pentecost court, the king mustered and began his march fast.

Likely, because this was the plan all along.

There was a listener on Reddit who posted that they were surprised that Rufus arranged his Pentecost celebration around the roasting of Mowbray.

But it actually wasn't a roast.

It was a setup.

Rufus wasn't just making one of his earls look bad.

He was using cultural soft power to undercut the growing threat of rebellion.

And at the same time, he was also manufacturing the justification for using the hard power of his military strength against that same threat.

Rufus was able to move quickly because not only did he see this coming, I suspect he planned for it.

Though, while the rebels were reportedly surprised by the king's speed, the nature of 11th century transportation meant that the route that the king and his army were taking wasn't a surprise at all.

And so the rebels still had cards they could play.

Rufus was dangerous, but he wasn't the first dangerous king that they'd dealt with.

And since they knew the route that he was likely to take, that meant that they could use the same playbook that they had used when they killed King Malcolm Canmore of Scotland.

The rebels scouted a wooded section along the king's likely path north, a spot that was close to de Mowbray's lands.

And there they prepared an ambush.

Now, killing a king in this manner wasn't as heroic or honorable as a stand-up fight.

I mean, if you think about it, and they really didn't want to think about it, it was exactly this tactic which had caused Mowbray to fall out of favoring court in the first place.

But, you know, whatever.

The whole point here was to kill this king.

And once that was done and Stephen was on the throne, then they can make up a whole new court and just sweep this under the rug.

So, you know, who cares?

Meanwhile, as the rebels were setting up their ambush, the king's army continued to march north.

And after gathering forces at Nottingham, they proceeded towards their next stop, Durham.

Now, the Bishop of Durham had been a thorn in the king's side in the past, but recently the two men had reconciled.

And probably more importantly, Mowbray and the Bishop of Durham were political rivals.

And that is putting it mildly.

And frankly, this latest act of rebellion by de Mowbray wasn't just a challenge to the king, it also threatened the bishop's authority in the north.

As a consequence, Rufus could be relatively certain that the bishop would support him, at least for now.

And that's important, because Durham was a strong defensible location deep in northern lands.

And as such, there would be no better staging ground for his campaign.

Now, of course, they'd have to get there first.

And there was a lot of territory to pass through between Nottingham and Durham.

There were a lot of woods, a lot of narrow, isolated crossings where an army might be forced to stretch out.

And as they continued moving north, one of the men in the king's company, a wealthy and influential knight named Gilbert of Tombridge, started to get a bit antsy.

And then, when the army passed through the Midlands without any issues and instead were likely picking up additional forces from the nearby communities, Gilbert began to sweat

because he was one of the conspirators.

And maybe it was the king's orchestration of divine authority that he performed on Pentecost.

Or maybe it was the size of this army.

Or maybe it was the sudden realization that this was really happening and they were about to murder a king.

Whatever it was, Gilbert's nerve broke.

And he approached the king and asked to speak with him in private.

Now I imagine this was a bit of an unusual request for Rufus.

But then again, this king was kind of a knight's knight, and he was known for being quite gregarious with those he was close to.

So one of the fellas asking to have a private word probably wasn't entirely out of the question.

And so Rufus agreed.

And once they were alone, Gilbert completely fell apart.

He threw himself at the king's feet and begged for forgiveness.

And Rufus, understandably, was confused.

Gilbert went on to warn Rufus that he was in great danger, and he promised to confess everything he knew so long as he was given a pardon first.

Rufus didn't respond right away.

Instead, he assessed the situation and he thought it through, which, again, tells me that this guy wasn't a complete oaf.

After all, issuing blanket pardons to insurrectionists on nothing more than a whim is the kind of thing that's so catastrophically stupid, it could very easily bring down an empire.

And even Rufus was smarter than that.

So he saw the risks that were involved here, and he knew that pardoning someone who had plotted to overthrow the government required serious thought.

And so Orderic tells us the king hesitated for quite some time and weighed the situation.

But in the end, what Gilbert was offering was crucial.

There was a danger somewhere out there, and they very well might be walking into a trap.

And the only defense that they could muster was to get some more information about it.

And as we've talked about previously, Rufus was pragmatic when he needed to be.

So he granted the pardon in exchange for everything that this plotter knew.

And it turned out, he knew quite a lot.

Gilbert told Rufus that in the woods ahead of them was a fully armed band laying in ambush, quote, hoping to cut your throat.

We have plotted against you and have sworn a solemn oath to bring about your death, end quote.

Orderic writes that the king immediately ordered his army to halt, which, yeah, I bet he did.

And then Rufus had Gilbert tell him everything he knew about the identities of his co-conspirators.

The implication being that Gilbert knew of more conspirators than just DeMowbray and Morel.

Now, unfortunately, Orderk doesn't say specifically who these other men were.

And I genuinely wonder how truthful Gilbert was being and how effective a fact-finder Rufus was.

Because in a situation like this, it's easy to imagine a knight seizing the opportunity to get rid of a rival or two.

regardless of whether or not they were actually part of the plot.

And at the same time, it's also perfectly plausible that Gilbert offered a shortened list rather than sharing all that he knew, choosing to spare certain key people from detection.

And it's possible there were some undisclosed conspirators who were just unknown, because Orderk tells us that, quote, those who were in the secret conspiracy and their partisans, fearing detection, observed silence, and in great alarm mingled with the royal troops and gladly entered the service of the men whose destruction they had planned.

End quote.

Now, as far as how Orderic actually knew this, he doesn't tell us.

And the vague booking tone and the fact that we're talking about secret undetected conspirators should tell us that we need to read this source with a critical eye.

But, then again, it's not out of the realm of possibility that there were secret conspirators who were waiting for the ambush to be sprung.

And honestly, having people close to the king and ready to strike once the trap is sprung would have been an excellent strategy.

Though, once Gilbert started blabbing, their only remaining strategy now was basically just to keep their heads down and hope that Gil either forgot they were involved or left them off the list.

Either way though, Rufus decided that going through those woods was suicide.

And armed with Gilbert's fresh intel, he charted a new route north, because that ambush wasn't the only obstacle that lay in his path.

Directly ahead of them was a fortress on the Tyne.

And it was a doozy.

Now, Florence tells us that this castle was on the mouth of the Tyne, which has led some folks to believe that he was referring to Tynemouth.

But modern historians have noted that this location wouldn't have done anything to slow down Rufus' advance.

Furthermore, there's no evidence of a fortress in that location.

It was just a monastery.

And while that monastery was in a surprisingly defensible position, the fact was the monks were also on good terms with Rufus, and he even confirmed charters for them at around this point, which is probably something he never would have done if there were some sort of rebellious stronghold for Mowbray.

So I suspect that Florence must have gotten this one wrong.

However, there was another castle a bit farther down the way that was also on the Tyne.

And this one did control a strategic crossing.

Newcastle on Tyne, which was almost certainly the castle that Florence was thinking of, because Newcastle would have presented a serious hindrance to the king's advance.

So holding that position would have been of paramount importance to Earl de Mowbray, which means that having avoided the ambush as he made his way north, Rufus now had to deal with Newcastle.

The trouble, though, was that it was heavily fortified and garrisoned by a rebel force led by de Mowbray's brother.

And given its proximity to the Tyne, any attempts to cross the river would certainly have been met by an armed response, and the result would have almost certainly been a massacre.

And I wonder if that was De Mowbray's plan.

Because if Rufus and his forces made it past the ambush, Newcastle would be a very effective backup plan.

They could just wait until Rufus and his army were trying to cross the Tyne and then ambush him at that moment.

It would have been strategically effective, and Mowbray was quite a fan of ambushes, so I'm guessing that was the plan.

I also suspect that Gilbert included details about this garrison when he spilled the beans to the king, because Rufus avoided that strategic location and instead decided to take the long way round, taking his army far upstream, possibly all the way to Corbridge, before finally crossing the Tyne.

Once everybody was safely across the river, the king could now choose his targets more freely, and probably thanks to Gilbert, Rufus knew that Newcastle wasn't the only rebel fort in the area.

The chronicle tells us that de Mowbray had sent his best men, almost all of them in fact, to another unnamed fortress.

And there they seized the castle and imprisoned the royal garrison that had been stationed there.

And while the chronicle doesn't tell us which fortress this was, by looking at other records of the time, historians have managed to work out the most likely candidate.

You see, it turns out that just up the way from Newcastle was the fortress of Morpeth.

And this was commanded by William of Merlay.

And Guimar actually mentions that Morpeth had been captured, which does make sense since that castle, while small, would have been crucial for Mowbray's forces because it was on high ground, it was well fortified, and it commanded a crossing at the Wansbeck.

It was also only about 15 miles from Newcastle.

So if Rufus decided to besiege Newcastle, chances are a relieving force from Morpeth would soon be dispatched.

And considering that we're told that it was garrisoned with most of Mowbray's best men, that sort of surprise assault could have been devastating to the Royal Army.

But for a surprise attack, you have to be unknown.

And Rufus knew all about them.

And he used that knowledge to his advantage.

You see, the rebels probably expected Rufus to attack Newcastle, either from the south, where they'd be able to ambush him during the crossing, or from the north, where they'd be able to ambush him from the rear by their forces out of Moorpeth.

But instead, Rufus circumvented Newcastle, and he struck directly at Moorpeth before anyone realized what was going on.

And this plan worked out spectacularly.

The royal forces attacked without warning, quickly bringing the castle down, and in the process, they cut Newcastle off from their allies farther to the north.

And while we're not given a blow-by-blow of how Rufus defeated the garrison, the records make it sound like it happened really quickly.

And the impact of this loss would have been devastating to the rebels.

With that defeat, Mowbray's best knights were either dead or imprisoned, and his territory was now fractured, and Newcastle was left isolated and vulnerable.

Even worse, the Red King had somehow managed to avoid every single one of the traps that Mowbray had laid for him.

And you can imagine the Earl fuming as his plan, which seemed so good when they started this thing, just kept falling apart for no discernible reason.

And now with Morpeth back in the king's hands, and the royal garrison, I assume, being released from their imprisonment, Rufus turned his army and focused the full power of his forces upon Newcastle-on-Tyne.

And he attacked it, not from the south, as Mowbray and others probably would have liked, but instead from the north, where the reinforcements were supposed to have come from.

But instead, the king's northern flank was being protected by his own forces at Morpeth now.

And this whole thing had gone so well by this point that I'd forgive Rufus if he expected a quick victory over Newcastle.

But that is not how it went down.

Despite being isolated and outnumbered, the rebel forces holding Newcastle fought bitterly against the besieging army.

Every attempt to assault the walls was pushed back.

Every clever tactic was repelled.

And inevitably, the momentum of the Royal Army was broken.

And Rufus found himself locked into a stalemate.

He was stuck.

He was unable to advance further north because he couldn't leave a threat like this unanswered, but he also was unable to effectively defeat that threat either.

But that being said, this stalemate was also a huge problem for the rebels as well.

You see, Mowbray and his co-conspirators had been seeking a quick victory through an ambush.

And failing that, they were anticipating broad support.

Or, you know, at least broader support than what they were seeing, which was basically no support.

Because it turns out, the barons weren't thrilled about crowning King Stephen of Umal.

I'm sure it seemed like a good idea at the time, but that is the risk when your figurehead is basically a stranger.

Even worse, the conspirators who were closest to the king, the ones who were best positioned to strike, were apparently on break or something.

Nothing was going as it should.

Rufus was supposed to be looking weak and unpopular.

Or, I mean, let's be honest here, he was supposed to be dead, but barring that, he at least shouldn't be looking cool.

But here he was in his element.

And every day that passed, it was becoming more obvious that DeMowbray, not Rufus, was the fringe unpopular figure here.

And as the siege dragged on, days turned to weeks, and weeks turned into months.

And for two long months, both forces spent much of their time.

Well, let's be honest, this is a siege, so they spent most of their time waiting, with the occasional spark of violence, which never amounted to victory, followed by even more waiting.

And within Newcastle, I'm guessing there was also more than a little buyer's remorse going on as well.

But then, then, at some point among all this waiting and grousing and waiting and griping and waiting,

something

finally happened.

We're told that Mowbray and his companions retreated to the ancient fortress of Bamborough.

Now, this entry implies that either they were at Newcastle or possibly somewhere nearby.

But it also informs us that if the forces of Newcastle were hoping for a relieving force, the sort that very well may have come from Morpeth before that plan went all pear-shaped, well, it was quite clear now that no relief force was coming.

And when even your vaunted leader is retreating to a more defensible location, it's probably time to call it a day and just pray that the king is in a forgiving mood.

And so, probably sometime in late July or early August, Newcastle surrendered.

And DeMowbray's brother, as well as many of the Earl's cavalry and other assorted troops, were now the king's prisoners.

This rebellion was on its last legs now.

And honestly, this really had been an overreach from the start.

Looking at the elements of just the plans that were uncovered, this rebellion seems to have relied way too much upon a successful assassination and the continued unpopularity of the king.

Consequently, as soon as Rufus culturally outmaneuvered Mowbray in court and reframed the narrative of resistance against a tyrant into a divinely ordained government being attacked by a heretical traitor, well, this goose was pretty well cooked.

And de Mowbray really should have adjusted to that reality, rather than just pressing on and pretending that everyone still thought Rufus was a tyrant and would just just rally to the cause.

It was an incredibly foolish mistake.

And I'm guessing that DeMowbray's new wife, Matilda, told him just as much when the crestfallen Earl arrived at Bamborough.

Or at least, I hope she did.

Because if anyone deserved to give that man an earful for all of this nonsense, it was Matilda, who was supposed to get a spouse, but instead got a failing rebellion.

In fact, Orderic even takes the time to tell us that they hadn't even done any of the normal stuff that married couples tend to do, which our monkish scribe euphemistically calls marital happiness.

But even with that, you can practically see him blushing.

But the point is, they should be dehydrated and exhausted from the honeymoon phase, not counting sacks of grain in preparation for an oncoming siege.

So if I was Matilda, I would be pissed at my husband on a whole bunch of levels.

Meanwhile, further to the south, once Rufus captured that garrison at Newcastle, it didn't take him long to learn where DeMowbray had gone.

And the campaigning season doesn't last forever.

And given how badly the last winter campaign had gone, I'm guessing the king was in a bit of a hurry to wrap this up before the weather turned.

So, once Rufus installed a royal garrison within Newcastle, he gathered his army and moved north as quickly as he could, perhaps waving at their comrades on the walls of the recently liberated Morpeth Castle as they passed triumphantly on their way to Bamborough.

Unfortunately, their arrival at Bamborough was somewhat less triumphant.

There's a reason why this site has housed fortresses since at least the days of Ida.

In fact, its current name is a derivation of the name that King Ida had given it back when he named it for his wife.

Bambora means Queen Beba's walled settlement.

And those walls had only gotten better.

Because if Newcastle was a problem, Bambora was an absolute disaster.

Sitting atop a huge rocky outcropping, this castle didn't just rely on its walls to provide defense.

The very landscape surrounding the fortress, with marshes and unfriendly waters, conspired to make this thing damn near impregnable.

And Rufus, as an experienced military commander, would have seen immediately that any attempts to take that castle by storm would result in an absolute bloodbath with no guarantee of victory in the end.

But here's the thing: DeMowbray wasn't Hereward,

and Bamborough wasn't Ely.

The Earl might not know it yet, but his rebellion was over the moment that public opinion amongst the barons swung in Rufus' direction.

That cultural performance at Pentecost had been a decisive victory for the crown.

So much so that it even inspired collaborators like Gilbert to preemptively capitulate and betray their comrades.

And now, with the fall of Morpeth and Newcastle, Rufus really wasn't waging a military campaign anymore.

He was unveiling a new PR campaign.

And so the king didn't need to storm the walls of Bamborough to win.

In fact,

that might even be counterproductive.

Because what Rufus needed to do was humiliate Mowbray so severely and establish rebellion as such a shameful and demoralizing act that no one would dare do something like this again.

And Rufus knew how to do that just as well as he knew how to fight.

The Royal Army encircled the fortress, trapping de Mowbray and his vastly outnumbered defensive garrison inside.

Then, soldiers and other workers began cutting down trees and dragging the logs to a staging point.

Then, barricades were erected near the front gate of Bambora Castle.

Not to launch a siege, but to protect the workers who were dragging the materials in place and building

something.

Within Bambora, the defenders could do little more than watch what was happening outside of their walls.

I mean, it's not like they had Netflix to keep them occupied.

And as a consequence, it didn't take long before they realized that this king wasn't building a siege tower or some sort of siege engine.

He was building another fing castle.

And he was putting it right in front of the gates of Bambora.

And the reason why I'm relatively certain that barricades were being erected prior to construction is because this wasn't a situation where Rufus was building his own castle within sight of Bambora or something like that.

The records are quite clear here.

He was building this thing right on top of the rebels as a show of force.

These castles were so close that DeMowbray could stand on the battlements and shout at Rufus, which is exactly what he started doing.

Probably telling him to get the hell off his lands, but, you know, in French, with a whole bunch of expletives thrown in.

And watching the would-be usurper losing his mind on the battlements, Rufus and his companions just laughed.

And it was probably at this point where the king really twisted the knife and shouted back something along the lines of, oh yeah, do you like my new castle?

I had you in mind when we designed it.

That's why I'm calling it the Malvois song, the evil neighbor, followed by even more laughter.

But construction takes some time.

And the king had more than just de Mowbray to deal with.

For example, there was the issue of Scotland, which, thanks to de Mowbray, was in the middle of a succession crisis.

So, in late August, King Malcolm Canmore's son, Edgar, along with a bunch of English and Scottish figures, including Alexander, another son of Canmore's, David, who was possibly another son, Edgar the Atheling, and a whole bunch of northern barons, a bishop, and various other officials like Reeves and the like, arrived at Norham, which was about 20 or so miles north of Bambera.

And once there, they either met with the king or were greeted by the king's representatives who brought them down to the Malvoisson.

The documentation that we have of this event makes it difficult to know for sure, but historian Frank Barlow suggests that the resulting charters from this meeting may have been issued from Rufus' new construction project.

Either way, though, the purpose of this meeting was to confirm Rufus' support for Edgar's claim on Scotland.

And we're talking about Edgar, son of Malcolm Canmore, not Edgar the Athling.

And interestingly, Edgar portrays himself in the resulting charter as the holder of Lothian and the Kingdom of Scotland.

Now, His uncle, the current King Donald III of Scotland, would certainly have a few things to say about that claim.

But the point here is that Edgar acknowledges in this charter that his claim on Scotland doesn't just come from inheritance from his father, but also through a grant from Rufus, who he refers to as his lord.

Now, this would-be king of Scotland still did need to actually seize the kingdom, but the fact that Rufus was holding these meetings and setting up rival claimants on neighboring kingdoms was yet another demonstration that Rufus wasn't a weakened monarch ready to be pruned.

These were the acts of a formidable ruler who probably shouldn't be challenged.

Consequently, I think Barlow's assertion may well be correct in that this was handled at the Malvois Song because the optics here would have served Rufus brilliantly.

Meanwhile, within Bambora, DeMowbray was realizing exactly how bad his situation had become.

And at this point, all he could do is stare at the insult that that was being directed right outside of his walls.

And then, eventually, he noticed something quite distressing.

He knew a lot of those men who were building that castle.

Not because they'd gone to the same feasts or fought together on the battlefield.

No, he knew these men because they had been part of his rebellion, or at least they were supposed to be.

Meaning, some of the men building this accursed evil neighbor were the same folks who had sworn oaths to him to kill the king.

What

the f!

And at this point, Mowbray lost whatever shred of sanity he had left, and the famously quiet and brooding Earl snapped and began screaming over the battlements at his former allies.

He began calling them out by name, demanding that they hold true to their oaths and help him kill this tyrannical king.

But if DeMowbray had a plan here and thought that this revelation would sow division, he probably should have remembered who his opponent was.

Because as DeMowbray betrayed and outed his old co-conspirators, the king and his companions

just laughed.

They treated the Earl's speeches as a source of great amusement, which had two immediate effects.

First, it demonstrated exactly how powerful Rufus was.

I mean, the king was in such a strong position that apparently he wasn't even a little bit concerned at the notion that some in his company might be secret traitors.

Second, the Earl's accusations terrified and shamed those who were being accused.

They were now inspired to demonstrate to the king just how loyal and not traitorous they were.

If the king thought this was a joke, they would not disabuse him of that belief.

This is a move of social evil genius.

With every guffaw, Rufus was making the Earl and his conspirators look small and shameful.

And the very concept of rebellion was now being associated with shame and failure.

And I should point out that the king probably already knew who the traitors were, at least some of them.

After all, Gilbert had told him all that he knew about the conspiracy, which very well could have included the identities of those co-conspirators.

And Orderic tells us that Mowbray's conspiracy had quite a lot of supporters, or at least it did before Pentecost.

And then, once that ambush failed and the Royal Army began rolling up rebel outposts, Orderic tells us that those same conspirators all started keeping their heads down and allied themselves with the king for fear of being discovered.

So there probably were quite a lot of barons, knights, and other men in the king's camp who, at one point or another, had been part of this conspiracy, or at least friendly to it.

And by appearing emotionally above all of this and expressing a bit of theatrical magnanimity, Rufus was suppressing rebellion, not through an autocratic crackdown or brutal repression, but through social pressure.

And the genius of that tactic is that when done correctly, those social pressures will continue even in his absence.

So Rufus was manipulating the Barons into a situation where they would feel compelled, just by social cues, to preemptively obey him.

When wielded properly, Laughter and appearing above the fray can be far more effective at projecting power than flexing and posturing.

And Rufus clearly knew that because this move was tactical.

Make no mistake about it, Rufus was a vengeful man.

He was a ruthless man.

He was a cruel man.

But he was keeping all of those instincts in check.

At least for now.

And the only explanation for that switch in behavior that makes any sense to me is that he was doing this for social and strategic reasons.

He was wielding soft power right now because for this moment, soft power was the most effective power.

But to the southwest, the Welsh rebellion, which had been raging for the last few years, were taking a different tactic.

The issue for them was that the Earl of Shrewsbury had been using Montgomery Castle, which sat near the border, to project Norman influence into the surrounding Welsh lands of Powys.

And he, his castle, and more importantly, his knights have become a serious problem for the nearby Welsh.

And you can't use social pressure against a group who views themselves as superior to you.

You can't just laugh your way out of brutal occupation or colonization.

And so the Welsh opted to take a more direct approach.

Something similar to what they had done with Robert of Rithlin.

only on a much larger scale.

On Michaelmoss of 1095, the Welsh uprising stormed the castle at Montgomery and slaughtered its garrison.

This was an unambiguous Welsh victory, and it was also a clear signal that the rebellion that had begun in Gwynedd was now spreading into other regions of Wales.

And by early October, news of the loss of Montgomery Castle had reached Rufus in his newly built Malvoisong.

And this wasn't a problem that he would be able to solve with public mockery and a construction project.

Norman power was faltering in the West, and the Welsh uprising was picking up steam.

He couldn't ignore that.

And so the king left a garrison in the Malvoison, and he tasked them with keeping the Earl of Cringe in his little piddley castle, while the remainder of the army was to march southwest with the king to retake Montgomery Castle and crush the Welsh rebellion.

But in doing so and splitting his forces in this manner, the containment around Bamborough weakened.

And according to John of Worcester, somehow a rebel snuck past the royal lines and made it into the ancient castle carrying a message.

If the Earl could find a way to escape, and if he could make his way to Newcastle, he would find support there, and the rebellion would continue.

So DeMowbray began to pack his bags, as did 30 of his knights.

And as for his new bride, Matilda, well, she wasn't invited.

Ah, Lamour.

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