POLITICAL HISTORY 



occupying London with an armed force to compel a settlement with 

 the remains of de Montfort's party was no doubt a strong measure. But 

 the armed demonstration of those days merely answered to a speech and 

 vote against the government in these. He remained as a strong cham- 

 pion of the baronial privileges which our age would count rank abuses, 

 such as the right of waging private war, but which were perhaps essen- 

 tial then to the strength of the class which could most effectually check 

 royal power if pushed too far. 



One picturesque incident of the end of the civil war is related by 

 Trivet as occurring upon the borders of Surrey. Adam de Gurdon, a 

 baronial partisan, continued, he says, to hold Farnham Castle, and waged 

 guerilla warfare, or brigandage, in the neighbourhood. Edward, the 

 king's son, riding from Guildford, encountered him, in single combat 

 away from his stronghold, induced him to submit, and brought him to 

 Guildford, where he was received into his conqueror's service. 1 



Gloucester took the cross with Edward, and went to Tunis, but 

 like many of the crusaders returned thence when he found that St. 

 Louis, whom they intended to join, was dead. Edward proceeded to 

 Acre with only a few personal followers. De Warenne remained in 

 England as a source of possible turmoil. In 1268, before the crusade, 

 he attacked Alan de la Zouche and his son in the very precincts of 

 the royal palace of Westminster, merely because the other was getting 

 the better of him in a lawsuit, and wounded him so sorely that he 

 died some time afterwards. De Warenne then shut himself up in 

 Reigate Castle, and prepared to defy the king's justice. De Clare 

 and Henry son of the king of the Romans hardly persuaded him to 

 a grudging submission. In 1278 de Warenne further distinguished 

 himself, up to a certain point, by a defiance of the government. 

 The king, Edward I., issued the quo ivarranto writs, to the great 

 indignation of the baronage, by which he made inquiry into the titles 

 by which they held their lands and franchises. De Warenne's rusty 

 sword flung upon the council table, and his bold assertion that as 

 the Conqueror had won his land by the sword so the barons' ancestors 

 had won theirs, and that for his part by the sword he would keep 

 them, has passed into a commonplace of history. As de Warenne's 

 name came only in the female line from a companion of the Con- 

 queror, his father's father having been an illegitimate son of a count 

 of Anjou, who owed all that he possessed in England to the mar- 

 riage which Henry II. planned for him with the heiress of the 

 de Warennes, the boast was rather an idle flourish, and it ended in 

 nothing more so far as his Surrey estates were concerned. The Patent 

 Rolls of 25 Eliz., July 9,* quote the answer of the earl, delivered by 

 his attorney in much more decorous form before John de Reygate and 



1 Nicholas Trivet, p. 269. The traditional form of the story that de Gurdon was an outlaw in 

 the woods seems to be later. But the whole story is untrustworthy. See Genealogist, n.s. vol. iv. 



* Quo tvarranto writs, 7 Edw. I. Exemplificatio Patent Rolls, 25 Eliz., July 9, Philip Howard Earl 

 of Arundel. 



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