A Knight Dies in Bed
This week, in AD 1219, Sir William the Marshal died in his bed.
The Marshal was old by the standards of the time — 72! — and made a good end: heard his daughters sing, gave alms to the poor, made sure his knights would get their Christmas cloaks, bade his much-younger wife farewell, then joined the Order of the Temple to die in seclusion a few hours later.
So, 795 years ago a knight succumbs to old age. What of it?
The Marshal died in his bed, not because he avoided hazarding himself in battle, but because when he did take the field, no man might withstand him.
Two years previously, at the grand age of 70, the Marshal led the charge into the City of Lincoln.
It was a key battle in one of those messy civil wars the Middle Ages did so well. Lords who had rebelled against King John now fought on against the young King Henry III. Worse, they had French backing and Prince Louis of France was rampaging around England with a large army.
When the council named the Marshal as the King Protector, the old knight had wept. He’d literally fought his way up from landless tournament knight to powerful magnate (think Conan meets William Thatcher from Knight’s Tale), had won a reputation as the Greatest Knight, but now History would remember him as — I translate liberally from the Norman French — “That stupid old codger who lost England to the French.”
However, he took up the challenge and, along with a gang of aging action heroes, set out to put to bed the results of a generation of misrule.
The turning point was the Siege of Lincoln, a strategic city in the Midlands. (If you play Medieval II Total War, think “Nottingham, but to the north east.”) The French had carried the town, but the castle still held.
