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November 2003

Parish History Episode 31

The Two Knights

Last month we recounted the dreadful story of how Sir John le Spring came to be murdered “in the arms of his mistress gay”, and the even more dreadful ballad that somebody composed to commemorate that sad occasion. Whoever Sir John really was, his memory survived in Houghton for centuries, as a sort of titular hero for the town, which was even said to have been named after him. Also, an effigy of a knight in armour lay (or, at one time, stood) in the South transept of the church, and this was always presumed to be a memorial to Sir John le Spring.

But then, in 1816, or shortly before, Robert Surtees, squire of the manor of Mainsforth, in the Parish of Bishop Middleham, came to Houghton, while researching the history of County Durham, in order to look at the monuments in the church and churchyard. He was in a sense renewing an old acquaintance, for he had, in the 1790’s, been a pupil, and a boarder, at the Royal Kepier Grammar School, which then existed in the building behind the church, a building now used, among other purposes, as a church hall.

He copied the memorial inscriptions marking the tombs of many worthies of former times, and his records are useful for us to-day, as many of the inscriptions, particularly on gravestones outside the church building, are now lost. But he also looked long at the stone effigy of the ancient knight that then stood, upright, in the South transept: apparently the presumed effigy of Sir John le Spring was then bolted to the wall, so as to seem like a warrior standing erect, about to draw his sword.

(If the knight was still standing upright in 1828, when a window in the transept was installed depicting Saint Barnabas, this might explain why the writer of the ballad quoted last month suggested that Sir John’s spirit moved in the transept “on the eve of Saint Barnaby bright”. It would also indicate that this supposedly ancient ballad was composed after 1828) .

Surtees however pronounced that the knight was not Sir John le Spring. It was, he claimed, an effigy of Sir Roland Bellasis, the son of that Roland Bellasis who had married Mary le Spring, and settled at Morton House, in the district now known as Fencehouses.

How did Surtees know who the knight was ? There is no inscription or heraldic symbol that I can discern upon the effigy. Surtees himself says that the identity of the knight was discovered by a “Mr Collins”, but he does not tell us who Mr Collins was, nor whether he was alive, and informed him of his discovery verbally, or whether Collins was an antiquary of the past, whose writings were known to Surtees.

Then, some forty years later, during the reconstruction of the church during Rector Grey’s time, workmen discovered another stone effigy of a knight, immured within the walls of the church. Could this, people asked, be the image of John le Spring, brought to light again, after being hidden from sight for six long centuries, hidden away because of the disgraceful way in which he had been murdered “in his garden bower” “with his paramour” ?

Both knights were arrayed in similar armour: the head resting on a cushion, and wearing a small round helmet without a nose-piece; a coat of mail, covered in a linen surcoat; a kite-shaped shield resting on the left arm; the right hand grasping the hilt of his sword, as if to draw it in combat - or, more probably, sheathing it for the last time as he prepared to meet his Maker. Surtees also remarks that the feet and legs were “mutilated”, but appeared to have been crossed. If they were indeed crossed, this would have indicated that the deceased knight had once been, or claimed to have been, a crusader.

One knight now lies within an apse, in the centre of the South wall of the transept. The other lies on the open floor of the transept, beneath a window portraying the brothers Peter and Andrew. One of them, presumably, represents Young Sir Roland, the son of old Roland Bellasis and of Mary le Spring.

But who was this Young Sir Roland ? Little is known about him except that he fought for his king - King Henry III - at the Battle of Lewes in 1264, and apparently fought well. It is said that, because of his courage, King Henry knighted him on the battlefield.

The enemy that the King was fighting was a league of barons led by Simon de Montfort, who was, or claimed to be, Earl of Leicester (He had had to eliminate one Robert Beaumont, whose family had held Leicester for at least four generations, before he could claim the honour of styling himself Earl of that city).

This Simon had been born in the castle of Montfort, near Paris. His father, of the same name - Simon de Montfort - had won great fame and wealth and power through taking a leading rôle in “the Albigensian Crusade”, which was a genocidal assault on the Cathars, a sect of puritans, whose main centre lay in the city of Albi, and who had some peculiar understanding of the Nature of Good and Evil. Their Faith had become the belief of the majority of the people - at least of the wealthy and educated people - in the Languedoc region of Southern France. This so-called Crusade had been encouraged both by Pope Innocent III, who wished to see the “heresy” of the Cathars extirpated, and by King Philippe II of France (against whom two of our kings - Richard I and John - had fought, without success), who wished to extend the powers of the French Crown to those lands in the Far South of his Kingdom, especially as Aquitaine and much of the South-West was also claimed by the Crown of England, his long-standing enemy; and King Philippe had granted the lands confiscated from the slain Cathar aristocracy to his own knights and barons, and Old Simon had won a very large share of the loot.

In consolidating their gains, the de Montforts had to treat with both the French and the English authorities, and Old Simon encouraged his son to move to England, and to try and make friends at the English Court. Young Simon arrived in England in 1229, and began to take an active role in English politics, now siding with the King against his barons, and at other times siding with the barons, who were often disaffected because King Henry seemed reluctant to be bound by the concessions that these same barons had forced upon Henry’s father, King John, in the capitulation known as Magna Carta. It was in the course of these quarrels that Simon de Montfort managed to make himself Earl of Leicester.

But then, in 1258, Simon put himself at the head of the barons in their wish to bring the King under control, to put a stop to high taxation (seen as being at least partly due to increasing amounts of money going to Rome, perhaps in bribes to secure ecclesiastical offices or blessings; and to the expense of subsidising the King’s brother in his attempt to make himself Kaiser of Germany, and the King’s younger son in his wish to become King of Sicily), and to compel the King to observe Magna Carta. Led by Simon, the barons, or many of them, formed a league, which they called Le Commun d’Engleterre (that indicates that the language of the English aristocracy was, at this time, anything but English), and rebelled against their King.

Not all the barons rebelled. The Bellasis family remained loyal, and Young Roland rode South to fight for his King. At the town of Lewes, in Sussex, the armies of King and Commune met, and Simon’s barons won the day. King Henry was taken prisoner, and the barons entered London in triumph, and proclaimed themselves a Parliament (another French word!), and tried to put their ideas into effect.

But though King Henry had been defeated at Lewes, his eldest son, Prince Edward, was still in the field, and he still had the support of many gentlemen like Young Roland Bellasis, and there was a great danger that they might rally, regain the capital, and rescue the King. Simon however managed to persuade the other barons that their cause would be safer if they formed an alliance with the ordinary knights and with the burghers of the towns. Therefore it was decided that the Parliament should consist not only of the Barons (whose descendants would form the House of Lords, until dissolved by Tony Blair), but also of two “Knights of the Shire”, from each county of England, and two Burghers from each borough.

These arrangements meant nothing to the people of the Prince-Bishopric of Durham, which was not regarded as an integral part of the Kingdom, and so was not represented in Simon’s Parliament. This perhaps explains why Northern lords like Young Roland were so willing to risk their lives in the service of their King. One such North-countryman wrote in disgust that Simon “had summoned, from every town in the South of England, bran-dealers, soap-boilers and clowns to his Parliament”. (This last category of person is of course missing from modern parliaments).

A placard now stands against the knight who lies within the apse in the South transept. It reads :-
POPULARLY THOUGHT OF AS THE TOMB OF SIR JOHN LE SPRING,
THIS TOMB IS MORE PROBABLY THE TOMB OF
SIR ROWLAND BELASSIS OF MORETON, KNIGHTED BY HENRY III,
AFTER THE BATTLE OF LEWES IN 1264.

This information seems to the writer to be probably incorrect. The Battle of Lewes was a major defeat for Henry III - in fact, he was taken prisoner by the rebels. He can hardly have been in a position to have knighted Young Roland, or anyone else, on the battlefield. The knighthood must have been granted later, after Simon had been defeated and killed, and King Henry was back in power again. He presumably sought out the men who had fought with him that day, and who had survived, and he awarded them appropriate honours, including a knighthood for Young Roland.

Simon’s victory at Lewes had indeed proved anything but conclusive. The King’s eldest son, Prince Edward (later King Edward I) was still at large, he collected fresh forces, and a year later, in 1265, he defeated Simon de Montfort in the Battle of Evesham. King Henry was freed, and restored to his Throne once more.

Simon himself was killed in the Battle of Evesham. But his experiment survived. King Henry, and King Edward after him, continued to summon parliaments to London. All the Bishops (including the Bishop of Durham), all the Barons and the greater Lords, together with two knights from every shire (South of the Tees), and two burghers from every borough, sat in these parliaments. They would have little real power until after the Reformation when newer Puritans, more successful than the Cathars, would assert themselves in Parliament.

But the French-speaking Simon had still laid the basis of a new form of government - representative democracy - which was eventually to make of England a different sort of kingdom to that in most of the rest of Europe.

* * *

The wording on the placard is, I suggested, wrong about the occasion on which Young Roland was knighted. But I suspect there is a yet more fundamental error. It is perhaps propped up against the wrong knight. Remember, when Surtees looked over our church in 1816, he saw only one knight: the other was still immured within the walls of the church. The feet and legs of the knight were “mutilated” - that surely applies to the knight who lies below Peter and Andrew, not the knight in the apse, against whose body the placard is placed. And the feet of that knight are visible, and are definitely not crossed. He was no crusader.

But it matters not at all to us now which is which. Sir John and Sir Roland, they are both part of our past, but a dim and distant past. They stood at the dawn of our political history. And Sir Roland, I fear, fought on (what most of us would consider to be) the wrong side.