The last years of the 12th century and the first years of the 13th century were very complex in England. Since 1189 Richard I, known as the Lionheart, ruled the country. But the famous monarch only spent six months of the ten years of his reign on English soil, most of them to raise funds to finance his war campaigns first in the Holy Land and then in France ("I would sell London if I could find a buyer" he even said according to a chronicler).
Between 1190 and 1194 Richard was absent, first in the Holy Land and then captive in Germany after the Crusades, which his brother John the Landless tried to take advantage of to seize the throne. Although he did not succeed, this period constituted a severe test for all the nobles of the country; They owed obedience to Ricardo, but they could not openly antagonize Juan either, since it was likely (and in fact it ended up happening) that he would inherit the crown. It was, therefore, a difficult task of survival.
When Richard died in 1199 and John ascended the throne, he slowly earned the disaffection of the nobles of the kingdom:he lost almost all the possessions inherited from his father and brother on the continent, he clashed with the pope who put England under interdict and excommunicated the king, murdered or ordered the murder of his nephew Arthur of Brittany and with his cruel, capricious and arbitrary acts he caused more and more notables in the country to become openly put against him.
All of these tensions erupted when John returned to England in 1215 after an unsuccessful invasion of France, which ended in the defeat by the Gallic king Philip Augustus of a formidable coalition of international allies at the Battle of Bouvines. This was one of those confrontations that decide the future of a country for centuries (as Hastings was in 1066 for England)... but that's another story.
As I said, after the defeat at Bouvines and his shameful flight from France after it, Landless John returned to an England indignant with the situation in which he had left the country . But not content with this, the king dared to demand a high and arbitrary tribute (one more) from the nobles who had not accompanied him on the French adventure. The magnates of the country openly rebelled against Juan and, although in June 1215 they forced him to put his seal on the historic document called the Magna Carta, they had to take up arms later because in September Juan got the pope to annul the document.
In the first months of the year 1216 the rebels had taken Rochester and London and had called the heir to the French throne, Louis, to offer him the crown of England (his wife Blanca de Castilla she was the granddaughter of Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine, so she could claim a right to the throne at least as good as Juan sin Tierra's). Only three great fortresses remained faithful to the king:Windsor, Dover and Lincoln, whose castellana was a formidable woman:the protagonist of this entry, Nicholaa de La Haye.
She was the daughter of the Norman knight Richard de la Haye and also had ancestry from the Saxon nobility prior to the conquest of 1066. She was born between 1150 and 1156 and inherited the position of Castilian of the lincoln fort. Although usually the tasks of the post were carried out by her second husband Gerard de Camville, when he was absent Nicholaa acted as castellana before an attack against the fortress.
One such occasion occurred in 1191, when her husband was defending the interests of John Landless at Tickhill and Nottingham castles. Nicholaa, in the words of contemporary chronicler Richard de Devizes "not thinking at all as a woman, defended Lincoln Castle like a man"
Later, now a widow, our protagonist once again distinguished herself during the process that concluded with the signing of the Magna Carta. A force of nobles rebelling against King John besieged Lincoln Castle and Nicholaa managed to hold out without surrendering the fortress until she managed to sign a truce with the besieging leader Gilbert of Ghent. When Landless John later visited Lincoln in 1216, Nicholaa tried to hand over the castle keys to him, claiming that she was nothing more than an old woman unable to withstand the physical demands of the position; but the king insisted that she keep them. In addition, shortly before her death on October 19, 1216, he appointed Nicholaa, along with a loyal servant of the king named Philip Mark, to serve as sheriff of Lincolnshire.
The son of Juan sin Tierra inherited the crown, Enrique III, who was only nine years old when he acceded to the throne. The situation could not be more desperate, with the country in civil war and a French suitor installed in London. But the young king arrived under the protective shadow of a man of enormous ascendancy for all the nobility of the country:William Marshal (he had served Henry II and his sons Henry the Younger, Richard the Lionheart and John the Landless). His biography, written in a certain hagiographical tone, quotes Marshal in such a solemn moment:«If everyone leaves the boy except me, do you know what I will do? I will carry him on my shoulders and go with him from island to island and from county to county, even if I have to scavenge for my daily ration of bread." Thus, Marshal prepared to seat the crown on the head of the child king and for this the first thing he did was go to one of the main castles in the country, which was under siege by the combined forces of the rebels and the army of the French pretender. This castle was none other than Lincoln's and the one in charge of its defense was once again Nicholaa de la Haye who had not only refused to hand over the fortress to the attackers, but had made it known that she would receive all the English in the castle. loyal to Henry III. That proclamation had raised the morale of those who opposed the French pretender, so he had sent a good part of his forces with clear instructions to take the castle. If he didn't receive reinforcements, it was only a matter of time before Lincoln fell despite the Castilian's heroic defense of him.
Yet in his late seventies, William Marshal wielded tremendous energy to rid England of the Gallic prince and the barons who had called him. On May 20, 1217, he personally led an English cavalry charge against the besieging French army along with their rebel allies. This action was supported by a resounding volley of arrows from the battlements of the castle ordered by Nicholaa de la Haye. Marshal and Nicholaa's victory was complete and the enemy fled in disarray, while the disaffected barons were captured.
Then in August, the army loyal to Henry III won another resounding victory against the French, this time at sea at Sandwich against a fleet of 80 ships sailing from Calais and had been gathered by the prince's wife, Blanca de Castilla. Prince Louis realized that his options to gird the English crown could be considered lost and he returned humiliated to France, later recognizing Henry as King of England in the Treaty of Kingston.
As for Nicholaa de la Haye, after what happened at Lincoln (which earned her praise from supporters of Henry III and not-so-positive epithets from the defeated French) she was replaced as sheriff of Lincolnshire by the King's uncle, the Earl of Salisbury, just four days after the battle was over. The rest of the years of his life, Nicholaa spent fighting for his lands and for his Lincoln castle against the aforementioned earl, until in 1226 he decided to surrender the fortress and retire to his lordship in Swaton where he died in 1230.
Fonts| Pernoud Regime:The White Queen of Castile.
Magna Carta 800th Anniversary