William of Cassingham: the Commoner Who Saved England

in the reign of king john one man stands alone against the tyranny of an unjust king fleeing the authorities for the protection of the deep woods he raises a band of expert bowman and brings justice to the land once more launching cunning ambushes on the corrupt knights and lords who dare to travel the trackways through the trees thanks to this brave english hero and his band of bowmen england will be saved and the true king will take up his throne in a new era of peace and prosperity i'm dan davis i'm a novelist and on this channel we talk about the real history behind my historical fantasy stories and this is the story of william of cassingham our story opens in the year 1216 while king john is desperately battling both the uprising of his disloyal barons and the invasion of an enormous french army led by the dashing prince louis beloved son of the powerful king philip of france i have a separate video all about this invasion so if you want to know the details please watch that video but suffice it to say king john was on the back foot at this point he had an army of mercenaries and was doing okay for a while until he lost most of the south and east of his kingdom and the mercenaries decided they would go home to the low countries before things got any worse king john however was far from beaten he still had the loyal support of the greatest knight who ever lived william marshall the earl of pembroke he was really old at this point but was famous throughout christendom and was still quite brilliant together they developed a cunning strategy they avoided a battle with prince louis that they could not win and instead began a campaign that took them around england marching from one rebel castle or manor to the next and forcing every rebel lord to either submit join forces and pay a huge fine or be killed and have his lands burned and his homes destroyed as you might imagine this worked brilliantly and in this campaign john swiftly rebuilt his forces and his treasury while simultaneously denying his enemy these same resources by the way prince louis of france had by this point been declared king louis of england he hadn't been crowned yet but everyone knew that that was only a matter of time the lords and merchants of london had been the most enthusiastic supporters of louis from the start since well before the invasion actually enthusiastic supporters and traitors to the true king so the whole south and east was in french hands apart from the enormous and thoroughly modern and well-supplied and well-defended key castle of dover and a few others all the lords of these lands had gone over to louis swearing fealty to him as their new king the few lords who remained loyal to jon had fled their homelands and left the peasants to the privations of the savage french knights and soldiers who robbed the country three ways from sunday spreading through the land like a plague no man was brave enough to resist there was none with the courage to stand against the tyranny and oppression of the invaders none with the spirit enough to do what was right no matter the cost none but william of cassingham now this man shows up these days in social media and blog posts and articles suggesting that he was an inspiration for the robin hood legend you see him either as part of a list of historical figures or more rarely in an article all of his own i've had questions in my comment sections in previous videos asking about it and personally i came across him when researching a book set in this period that happened to include robin hood motifs so as we talk about his life and his actions in the war see if you can see any echoes of the famous outlaw in cassingham's life story [Music] but before we talk about him we need to talk about the place associated with him the place he retreated to for his guerrilla war against the invaders and it's not sherwood forest it's the wield so what on earth is that well this bit of england between london and the english channel is about as civilized the land as you can find anywhere the county of kent is called the garden of england because of its tamed and productive beauty a land of gentle rolling hills fertile fields and dense orchards and so it was in the middle ages except there was a huge area across the middle of kent and sussex and surrey all the way to hampshire and this was a wild land of either sandstone ridges with thin sandy soils or wet valleys with heavy sodden clays unsuitable for plowing and so it remained heavily wooded for centuries after the land all around it was tamed but the wield was by no means unproductive there were sheep and cattle grazed on the cleared slopes in the summer and pigs rooted for acorns beneath the dense canopy in the fall dio were hunted and wild boar too and the trees themselves were the greatest resource the timber and charcoal produced here poured north by the cartload to heat the homes ovens and furnaces of london even then a voracious consumer of goods produced from the lands all around as you might imagine though the world was sparsely populated and it had been a refuge for the local people before this time too when the saxons came in the 5th century the native britons fled from the slaughter and retreated into the wild seeking protection amongst the trees of their homeland so the wield was a land of rolling hills studied with sandstone outcrops and cut by streams to form steep-sided ravines here and there were small irregular-shaped fields patches of heathland and abundant woodlands amongst it all were scattered farmsteads and crossing it were sunken lanes and twisting paths the perfect landscape for an outlaw then and in fact it was infamously that very thing for centuries eventually being a favored bolt hole for highwaymen preying on the traffic to and from london and it was from this land that our hero hailed cassingham was a little hamlet near the village of rovendon these days it's still a little hamlet called kenshin so who was this heroic figure they called willowkin of the wheeled this william of cassingham well it's a bit of a tricky question to answer because there's not that much evidence to go on actually but there's enough listen to this from the chronicle of roger of wendover it's about when prince louis the would-be king of england was conquering the southern part of the country quote louis about this time left the city of london with a large body of knights and invaded the county of kent and as no one opposed him he soon subdued it with the exception of dover castle marching onward he by force gained possession of sussex with all the towns and fortresses but here a young man named william refusing to make his fealty to louis collected a company of a thousand bowmen and taking to the woods and forests with which that part of the country abounded he continued to harass the french during the whole war and slew many thousands of them end quote that seems quite amazing doesn't it a thousand bowmen was an enormous force at this time a small army really i mean without knights it didn't count but the sheer numbers are incredible and what about slaying thousands of frenchmen during the war can that be right well maybe there's been a bit of exaggeration and that's one translation of the latin there's other ways of saying it in english but still at first glance we might be skeptical but in fact it's corroborated by the biography the life of william the marshall written soon after his death by an anonymous bloke called john probably a frenchman commissioned to write it by the marshall's sons and friends it's a remarkable work though the author was french he wrote it based on extensive notes and correspondences and other documentation given to him by the sons of the martial as well as probably narrative accounts provided by people who were there there's not really anything else like this from this time all the chronicles and annals are by monks and written in latin and they're all about bishops and kings and i've only read it in english translation not in medieval french but it's got this quite gossipy tone in places it's really good although it does go on a bit this is its introduction of casting him and it's talking about the same time that roger of wendover was talking about quote and then the londoners succeeded in bringing louis from france he was in control of the land for quite some time taking farnham winchester porchester and southampton those wretched french braggarts were drinking by the ton and barrelful and claiming england was theirs and that the english had no right to the land and should clear out the french were going to have it as their own from now on but their bragging did them little good later i saw a hundred of them eaten by dogs killed by the english between winchester and romsey in that sense they ended up occupying english ground and the same thing and worse happened in many parts witnessed the deeds of willowkin of the wield i'm talking about william of cassingham because he's a character in my novel vampire outlaw it's book two in the immortal knight chronicles it takes place during the french invasion and a lot of these events are described in the story this is my most popular and beloved series it's about an immortal knight who lives through 800 years of english and european history and it's full of battles and brotherhood and beautiful dangerous women so if you like any of those things there's a link to the books in the video description so what heroic deeds did our willian of the world do in the shadows beneath the trees i should say first that we don't know exactly how old cassingen was but we know how long he lived and he was called a youth in 1216 so he might have been only about 21 years old when he took to the woods and terrorized the future king of france which makes his story all the more remarkable alright so let's imagine being in his position you're a young man perhaps a relatively wealthy commoner or an impoverished member of the gentry from a tiny hamlet in kent maybe you have some military experience fighting for king john in his many failed campaigns across the channel and while you're a loyal supporter of the king many of the lords of the land have risen in rebellion and worse you know that the french are coming all will be well though because the king and the greatest knight who has ever lived william marshall have brought their army to the south to your lands to throw the enemy back into the sea only when the french land their army king john and the marshal decide not to contest the landing they don't trust their mercenaries to stand and so they abandon kent and the whole south and flee for the west and later the midlands all the lords from the counties of the south flock immediately to louis to pay homage and swear to support him as their new king the new king of england louis immediately starts besieging and taking the castles all around as he marches towards london all those who resist him all those who refuse to surrender their castle or manor at once all john loyalists are hanged your house your farm is just 30 miles from dover where thousands upon thousands of french soldiers have come ashore hundreds of knights and their horses and each night with his retinue pages squires men at arms and servants and thousands of soldiers and crossbowmen who have come to plunder this alien land that is your home and your birthright so what are your choices do you do what so many others have done and run for it flee for the north or the west and hope that someone you know will take you in or some church will give you hospitality or do you do what the rest have done and accept your fate giving your oath to the invaders that you will now serve your new king after all your older neighbor argues one king is as good as another and our plantagenet king john is hardly more english than prince louis so or does it matter and prince lou will surely bring peace once jon is defeated after all france has become powerful under the prince's father and these new rulers will bring prosperity to england god will understand for he wishes all christians to live in peace and all we need to do is change our allegiance so what do you do the way you see it you have two choices submit or flee there is nothing else you can do after all you're nobody technically you're a gentleman perhaps but you don't even have the income to be a proper armored man at arms riding to war on a destroyer with a lance and a retinue of followers you have nothing but a few servants and not even the marshal himself with 5 000 professional soldiers was brave enough to face the french so there's nothing the likes of you can do in the face of such overwhelming power william of cassingham was faced with this exact choice to flee or submit and as we know he chose neither this is extraordinary he chose instead to raise a force of bowman and take the fight to the french so how did he do that well we don't know this reminds me of something i spoke about in the frantis drake series that this young man simply must have had immense personal charisma to inspire so many men to follow him we don't actually know what his skills were or what military feats he had already achieved in his young life if any but somehow he convinced hundreds of men to follow him if we believed the sources it was a thousand and maybe it was which makes it all the more incredible many great lords of the realm at this time weren't able to raise a thousand men or anything like it armies were quite small at this time by the way of course cassingham didn't raise these bowmen like a lord would they didn't owe him service and he didn't have to pay them they were volunteers so who were these bowmen who joined him well they were local men local farmers and herders young and old they were armed with bows because that's what they had they too might have included veterans of previous campaigns which would help to explain their extraordinary effectiveness in the battles to come but it's important to say i think that this war predates the era of the famous english archer the mast ranks of the english battlefield longbowmen the battle of cressi isn't for another 130 years after this that's not to say there was no military archery at this time of course there was but they weren't the famous terror they would become in fact their ascendancy towards that wouldn't even start really until the campaigns of edward the first john's grandson but these being local men they would have had the advantage of knowing the land and the enemy would have been at a disadvantage there there were many trackways through the world leading between the towns and villages and there were opportunities for these local men organized under william of cassingham to ambush small french detachments and foraging parties now we all know how guerrilla warfare is waged these days and so we can well imagine how this went and if you can't imagine it you can just read vampire outlaw while william and his men fought on alone louis kept conquering but cassingham never gave up and never wavered when king john died in october 1216 cassingham kept fighting under his new king the nine-year-old henry iii in fact it was now that william of the world really made his name you see early in 1217 louis realized he was running out of money and men and so he called a truce so he could go home to france to raise more of both before carrying on the war but the upstart cassingham now patrolled the roads between london and the south coast and louis with his escort of knights had to fight his way to the channel ports and it was near louis that cassingham fell on him in a great ambush as the prince and his knights fled from the massive force of bowman cassingham even captured the two nephews of the count of navair a fine prize but the action had only just begun louis was forced to redirect to winchell city a very small town today but a crucial port at the time and cassingham made sure to trap the prince in the town not only did he use his forces to keep louis from escaping by destroying the local bridges he stopped reinforcements from reaching him by ambushing anyone he tried louis was in a trap and it turned out that this had all been planned ahead of time the local men of winchelsea had stripped the town of food they had even burned their mills and fled in boats along the coast of it to rye where there was now a strong royalist garrison what's more royalist boats were ready to block the prince's escape and stop supplies coming in this was a stunning turn of events cassingham might have been in communication with william marshall in the north in order to pull this off or perhaps he had coordinated with the local lords like hubert de beau still holding out at dover if not well i don't know which case would be the more remarkable complex coordination and planning like this was difficult back then but cassingham had baited this trap perfectly and now louis was right in it williams bowman weren't strong enough to launch her an assault on the prince's knights and men at arms in winchelsea something like that was just not possible but they were strong enough to block reinforcements from london and they hoped to starve the prince out a powerful force did come in the end but he had to go all the way around the outside through the civilized coastal parts of kent through canterbury to romney but even so louis only escaped because a rescue fleet came from france and scattered the local english ships this was a close run thing and nobody from kent thanks only to his own cunning and heroism had very nearly captured the future king of france and he sent him starving fleeing for his life from the kingdom he has thought all but one it was a stunning turn of events and marked a turning of the tide getting bottled up like that and running away led many english lords to question their support of this french prince well still for louis he was now out of the country for something like two months and during that time the royalists under william marshall retook or began sieges of multiple rebel castles swinging the balance of power back towards the boy king henry the war wasn't over though remember louis was coming back with his reinforcements and this time he meant to finish the job he was bringing enough forces to finally crack the nut that was dover castle and then he was going to win back all he had lost and take the throne once and for all and there was no one who was going to stop him but william of cassingham did just as the french fleet came sailing up towards dover casting him and his men burst from the trees and led an all-out assault on the siege works around the castle they killed the french soldiers and burned the siege engines and destroyed the siege works just off the coast prince louis saw the flames leaping up and he watched the column of smoke ascending into the clear spring sky along with his dreams of a kingdom to call his own this raiders in my book by the way is pretty it's pretty awesome afraid of landing in the face of such a force louis took his fleet up the coast to sandwich enraged and frustrated louis burned the town of sandwich to the ground hardly the actions of the benevolent new king he was trying to be he was behaving like a conqueror like a tyrant and this caused more englishmen to turn away from him the next day he marched to dover by now cassingham's gorilla bands had melted back into the forest and all louis could do was survey the charred stumps of his once glorious engines i believe that this was the moment that louie's spirit was broken this was the moment that the war was won because instead of finishing his conquest louis meekly concluded a truce with hubert the burr master of dover castle and trudged off to london and when william the marshall heard of this great victory he at once decided to capitalize on it and he gathered all his forces and attacked the rebels at lincoln winning a great victory soon after they sailed down to kent and won the final victory at the battle of sandwich louis crushed without a hope sued for peace and the marshall kicked him out along with all the french forces who left in disgrace the locals probably throwing rotten cabbages at them and stuff like that what an amazing turn of events louis had come this close to winning a kingdom but he had been denied it by the stubbornness of one man so what happens to william after this great victory was united given a castle a statue did he marry into a powerful family well everyone knew that william of cassingham had helped win the war even early on king john wrote to william and gave him money and in fact henry iii continued to support him financially all his life the young king gave him the right to rent from certain lands and other lucrative rights like the warrant to provide firewood to certain lords perhaps most significantly he was made the warden of the seven hundreds of the wheeled a hundred is an ancient english land division and in the world there were seven of them because of all this cassingham would have had quite a tidy income enough to be considered a gentleman anyway a man of some means it's an anachronistic term but imagine a man of the english gentry a country squire one of the accounts calls him a squire but that has had multiple meanings over the centuries anyway he was an important man locally for the rest of his life and even after he died the king provided protections including money for his widow for seven years i like to think that he was perfectly content with this he might not have been raised up much higher by the powers that be and he never influenced great events again but he would have been famous everywhere he went in the south celebrated by the local people that he had protected through those dark days and known everywhere as a man in favor with the king but despite all the evidence and his glorious heroic actions he's not quite the striding figure of english history that he deserves to be perhaps no one in power back then was willing to admit that cassium had outdone them all really and that jealousy and snobbishness continued in some way ever since now we have to say that so little is known about his early life that some people have dared to suggest that he wasn't from the wheeled originally maybe they say he was only called cassingham because he used that as his base during his guerrilla war maybe he wasn't even english at all there's one later account that calls him a flemish adventurer it might be true i suppose there were plenty of mercenaries in jon's service but i don't believe that for a moment his actions speak louder than any documentation or speculation he stayed to defend his homeland when everyone else fled or gave in to wage the kind of war he did he must have known the land like the back of his hand striking and melting away into the trees and valleys where the bewildered frightened outsiders could not follow and when the war was over we know he stayed right here in the world to raise a family he had a son called ralph and ralph had two daughters called petronilla and benedicta william of cassingham died in june 1257 having held the 700s of the wheeled for 40 years so what about him being the real robin hood then as he sometimes claimed is that true was cassingham the inspiration for these stories [Music] well the folklore of robin hood has been very well studied and we know a lot about where these stories came from and it's important to remember that they are stories robin hood is a figure from folklore he's a literary figure now there are many historical figures who did things that call to mind the stories of robin hood and maybe there really were historical figures that informed the folklore but folklore doesn't need to be based on real figures there are story forms that we all know and on some level inherently understand and the exact narratives characters and meanings of these forms change over time fulfilling different functions and the interplay between history and reality and the folklore and the literary is complex the history informs the folklore and the folklore often structures or frames the retelling of our history for example there are elements in the narrative of the life of william wallace that echo the stories of robin hood of course wallace was a historical figure but the popular narrative of his life elements not recorded in official documentation but through folklore have seemed robin hoodlike to some folklorists there are other less famous historical figures whose stories bring to mind robin hood too and perhaps their actions did inform the tales but there was no one man who was the real robin hood the famous stories of robin and his friends grew over time as their popularity grew and bards developed them further for example maid marion and friar tuck started out as the heroes of their own ballads and only later did various bards bring these popular characters together like a comic book superhero team up into the tales of robin hood that doesn't lessen the importance or the value or the meaning of robin hood at all it's just it is what it is but of all the potential historical figures that could have informed robin hood casting him is surely one of the least likely for one thing he wasn't hiding out in sherwood forest and he had no relationship to barnsdale or that area at all and he wasn't called robin or anything like it and he wasn't called hood either and he wasn't an outlaw exactly he just defied an invader who called himself king and he didn't rob the rich to give to the poor however he did defend the common people from enemy soldiers with a band of bowman and they did so by ambushing them from the forest but this wasn't the playful hijinks from the ballads they beheaded the frenchman they captured and as for this being the robin hood time period actually the link between robin and the reign of king john doesn't appear until the 16th century and it only became fixed and sort of standardized in recent years earlier versions of the ballads call the king edward one of three but these kinds of stories aren't even necessarily set in any specific time and it's not especially relevant to the stories so if you ever see this come up in blogs or social media posts the answer is no william of cassingham was not the real robin hood but he was a real man a real hero of english history he was a young man who when his people were threatened by enemies instead of fleeing or bending the knee took up arms he inspired hundreds of others to follow him and together with william as their leader this little band of merry men well brutal killers actually defeated the might of france and so saved all england from invasion and that is a story worth telling and a legend worth remembering thank you to my patrons who helped to make these videos look so nice if you want to 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Channel: Dan Davis History

Views: 484,307

Keywords: the real robin hood, william of cassingham, willikin of the weald, robin hood history, real robin hood, king john, english folklore, robin hood legend, robin hood, who was robin hood, the real robin hood story, the real robin hood history, the real robin hood documentary, real robin hood history, medieval england, middle ages england, the legend of robin hood, history documentary, English medieval history, history of britain, who was robin hood in real life

Id: 0cVDjEGl4Us

Length: 29min 12sec (1752 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 27 2021