In the turbulent annals of England, few years were as fraught with peril as 1217. The kingdom stood upon a precipice. King John, the tyrant of Magna Carta fame, was dead, but the civil war he had ignited raged on. His heir, Henry III, was a boy of nine. Much of the country, including London, was controlled by a hostile baronial faction supported by a foreign army, led by Prince Louis of France, who now laid claim to the English throne. The Plantagenet dynasty, forged in blood and ambition by Henry II, faced utter annihilation. At this desperate hour, the fate of the realm came to rest upon the shoulders of two extraordinary individuals: one, an aged warrior famed as the greatest knight in Christendom; the other, a formidable noblewoman of Lincolnshire, holding fast to the last bastion of royal authority in a rebellious heartland. This is the story of William Marshal, Nicola de la Haye, and the savage clash in the streets of Lincoln that would determine the future of England.
The Making of a Legend: William Marshal
To understand the weight William Marshal carried in 1217, one must appreciate the monumental life he had already lived. Born around 1147, a younger son of a minor baron, his prospects were slim. His life was nearly forfeit in childhood when, as a hostage during the Anarchy, King Stephen threatened to hang him. The young William, with a chilling nonchalance, reputedly declared he cared not, as he could play conkers with the hangman’s rope. This combination of courage and charisma would define his career.
Without land to inherit, William sought his fortune through the sword. Knighted in 1166, he entered the gruelling, lucrative world of the tournament circuit. Here, his prowess became legendary. In partnership with the Flemish knight Roger de Gaugi, he is said to have captured 103 knights in a single tournament season. He was not merely a brute; he was a master tactician, a superb horseman, and a shrewd manager of his winnings. His fame reached the ears of the Plantagenets, and he entered the service of Henry the Young King, the ill-fated, rebellious son of Henry II. Marshal’s loyalty to the junior king was absolute, even in rebellion against the father. Upon the Young King’s death in 1183, it was Marshal who fulfilled his master’s crusading vow, carrying his cloak to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem.
Returning from the Holy Land, Marshal’s career entered a new phase of royal service. He served Henry II with the same fidelity he had shown his son, famously unhorsing the future King Richard I in a skirmish to allow the old king to escape. Rather than earning Richard’s enmity, this act of loyalty won his respect. Upon ascending the throne, Richard the Lionheart rewarded Marshal with the hand of one of England’s greatest heiresses, Isabel de Clare. The marriage brought him vast estates in England, Wales, and Ireland, including the earldom of Pembroke. The landless knight was now one of the most powerful magnates in the Anglo-Norman world.
His final test of loyalty came with the accession of King John in 1199. While many barons chafed under John’s avaricious and paranoid rule, Marshal remained a pillar of the establishment. Though their relationship was often strained—John once held Marshal’s sons hostage to ensure his good behaviour—William never broke his oath. When the baronial rebellion erupted in 1215, Marshal was a key negotiator at Runnymede, his name appearing as a royal counsellor on Magna Carta itself. Upon John’s death from dysentery at Newark in October 1216, it was the near-70-year-old Marshal who, at a council in Gloucester, was acclaimed by a desperate rump of loyalist barons and churchmen as Regent of the kingdom—rector regis et regni (governor of the king and the kingdom). He was the only man with the stature, experience, and unimpeachable honour to hold the fractured realm together for the boy king, Henry III.
The Lady of Lincoln: Nicola de la Haye
While Marshal represented the martial ideal of Plantagenet chivalry on the grand stage, his crucial ally in the north embodied the resilience and power wielded by a particular class of medieval noblewomen. Nicola de la Haye was a figure of immense local importance in Lincolnshire. She was born into the de la Haye family, who had held the heritable office of castellan, or constable, of Lincoln Castle since the reign of Henry I. This was not a temporary appointment; it was a right, passed down through her lineage.
Her life was a masterclass in political survival. In 1191, during Richard I’s absence on crusade, a rival claimant to the constableship, Gerard de Canville, besieged Lincoln Castle. Nicola, already a mature woman, successfully directed its defence until relief arrived. Her husband, the aforementioned Gerard, was a complex figure whose loyalties sometimes wavered, but Nicola’s control over her ancestral inheritance was the bedrock of their power.
Upon Gerard’s death in 1214, Nicola, now a widow in her sixties, faced the rapacious policies of King John. To secure her inheritance and her sons’ rights, she had to navigate John’s court and his insatiable demands for money. The Pipe Rolls—the crown’s financial records—show her paying the king considerable sums to retain her offices. In early 1216, as the Barons’ War began, King John himself visited Lincoln and formally entrusted the castle to her, recognizing her as its rightful sheriff and castellan. It was a remarkable expression of trust in a woman at a time when military commands were almost exclusively the preserve of men.
As the rebellion intensified, Lincoln became a lone island of royalism in a sea of dissent. For the lord of a nearby estate, such as the Barony of Brattleby, the situation was perilous. Like many Lincolnshire landholders, he would have been under immense pressure from the great rebel magnates of the north, like Robert de Ros and Gilbert de Gant (who styled himself Earl of Lincoln), to join their cause. Openly supporting the king meant risking the seizure of one’s lands and the burning of one’s manors by the numerically superior rebels. To have the formidable Nicola de la Haye holding the royal castle just a few miles away was both a threat and a potential lifeline. Her tenacity ensured that the king’s standard still flew in Lincolnshire, offering a rallying point for any who hesitated to abandon their allegiance to the Plantagenets.
A Kingdom in Crisis: The First Barons' War
The crisis of 1217 was the culmination of Magna Carta’s failure. The charter of 1215, far from being a final settlement, was merely a ceasefire. Pope Innocent III, at King John's behest, annulled it within weeks, plunging England back into civil war. The rebel barons, led by figures like Robert Fitzwalter, who styled himself "Marshal of the Army of God," saw no future under John. In a move of staggering desperation, they offered the English crown to Prince Louis, the son and heir of King Philip II of France. Louis had a plausible, if tenuous, claim through his wife, Blanche of Castile, who was the granddaughter of Henry II.
In May 1216, Louis landed in Kent with a French army and was welcomed by the rebels. He quickly captured Winchester and was proclaimed king (though not crowned) in London. For a time, it seemed the Plantagenet cause was lost. John was driven back into the west and north, his campaign of harrying the rebel lands earning him further infamy. His unexpected death in October 1216 was, paradoxically, the royalists' best hope. The focus of the rebellion, the hated King John, was gone. The alternative was now a boy-king, an innocent English child, managed by the universally respected William Marshal.
Marshal’s first act as regent was one of profound political wisdom. He immediately had the young Henry III crowned and, crucially, reissued Magna Carta under his own seal and that of the papal legate, Guala Bicchieri. This masterstroke cut the ground from under the moderate rebels. Their struggle for the liberties enshrined in the Charter was now officially endorsed by the king’s own government. The war was reframed: it was no longer a fight for English liberty against a domestic tyrant, but a choice between a native Plantagenet king and a French invader. Slowly, wavering barons began to drift back to the royalist cause, most notably William Marshal’s own son, William Marshal the Younger, and the powerful Earl of Salisbury.
The Strategic Fulcrum: The Siege of Lincoln, 1217
By the spring of 1217, Prince Louis controlled the south-east, but his northern allies were struggling to eliminate the last major royalist stronghold in the east: Lincoln Castle, held by Nicola de la Haye. The city of Lincoln was one of medieval England’s most important urban centres. Its commanding position atop the Lincoln Edge controlled vital trade and military routes, including the Roman roads of Ermine Street and Fosse Way. To the rebels, taking the castle was essential to securing the north and crushing royalist resistance in the region.
In late 1216, Gilbert de Gant had captured the city of Lincoln but failed to take the castle. Now, in the spring of 1217, a major Franco-baronial army converged on the city to finish the job. Numbering perhaps 600 knights and thousands of foot soldiers, it was a formidable force under the command of the Comte du Perche, a seasoned French nobleman, alongside English barons like Robert Fitzwalter and Saer de Quincy, Earl of Winchester.
They laid siege to the castle, setting up mangonels and other stone-throwing engines to batter its walls. Inside, Nicola de la Haye, now approaching seventy, commanded her small garrison with unyielding resolve. She faced not only the enemy outside but also dissent within the city walls, where many citizens were sympathetic to the rebel cause. Every day the siege continued, her position grew more desperate. She managed to get a messenger out, a knight whose name is lost to history, who slipped through the enemy lines and rode south with an urgent plea for help.
"The Fair of Lincoln": The Battle of 20 May 1217
The news reached William Marshal at the royalist camp at Newark-on-Trent, just 20 miles away. He had assembled a relief army that, while formidable, was likely outnumbered in terms of knights. It included loyalist stalwarts like the formidable Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester, and the opportunistic but effective mercenary captain, Falkes de Bréauté. Also present was the influential Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, who argued passionately for a decisive battle.
Marshal, ever the tactician, held a council of war. According to his contemporary biography, L'Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal (The History of William Marshal), he delivered a stirring speech. He reminded his men they were fighting for their lands, their families, and their "little lord." He framed the battle as a righteous cause, to expel invaders and restore peace to the realm. Declaring that he would fight in the vanguard, the old warrior donned his helmet and prepared for what might be his final battle. The papal legate, Guala, gave the army a crusading dimension, excommunicating Prince Louis and his followers and granting absolution to those who would fight for King Henry. The soldiers, marking themselves with white crosses, advanced on Lincoln as an army of Christ.
The Franco-baronial commanders in Lincoln were overconfident. Advised that Marshal’s army was smaller than it was, and believing the castle was on the verge of falling, the Comte du Perche made a fatal error: he decided to continue the siege with the bulk of his army while sending only a detachment to hold the city gates. He failed to appreciate the tactical genius of his opponent.
Marshal’s plan was audacious. On the morning of Saturday, 20 May 1217, the royalist army approached the city from the north-west, climbing the steep hill towards the upper city where the castle stood. The plan had two parts. First, a force under the daring Falkes de Bréauté was to make a diversion. With Nicola de la Haye’s cooperation, he and his men slipped into the castle through a postern gate, long-blocked but now cleared by the garrison. Once inside, they launched a ferocious sally from the castle’s main gate, crashing into the besiegers and causing chaos and confusion.
At the same time, Marshal led the main body of the army to the lightly-defended North Gate of the city. Finding it blocked, his crossbowmen unleashed a furious volley of bolts, driving the defenders back, while his sappers broke it open. The royalist knights, with Marshal and the young Henry III’s banner at their head, poured into the narrow streets of the upper city.
What followed was not an open-field battle, but a brutal, swirling melee in confined spaces. The French and rebel knights, caught completely by surprise, scrambled to mount their horses and form a line of battle. The fighting was savage. The Comte du Perche rallied his men near the cathedral, but in the chaos, a royalist knight, Reginald Croc, thrust his lance through the eye-slit of the Count's helmet, piercing his brain. With the death of their commander, the French and rebel morale shattered.
The battle turned into a rout. Many rebel barons, including Robert Fitzwalter and Saer de Quincy, were captured. Others tried to flee down the steep hill to the south, only to find the city gate jammed with panicked townspeople and livestock. The royalist victory was total and overwhelming. What followed, however, stained their triumph. The victorious army, many of them hardened mercenaries, was let loose upon the city of Lincoln, which had largely supported the rebels. The soldiers looted houses, shops, and churches indiscriminately, stripping the citizens of their wealth. The chronicles record that so much plunder was taken that the battle was cynically nicknamed "The Fair of Lincoln." For the wider region, including dependent estates like Brattleby, the economic shock would have been profound, disrupting trade and creating a climate of fear and retribution.
Aftermath and Legacy: A Kingdom Secured
The Battle of Lincoln was the decisive land engagement of the First Barons' War. It utterly broke the strength of the rebellion in the north. Prince Louis, who had been besieging Dover, saw his cause crumble. The defeat was sealed three months later when a royalist fleet, commanded by Hubert de Burgh, defeated a French fleet bringing reinforcements at the Battle of Sandwich.
With his support gone and his allies captured or scattered, Louis was forced to negotiate. The subsequent Treaty of Lambeth in September 1217 was a testament to Marshal's statesmanship. Louis renounced his claim to the English throne in exchange for a generous payment and an amnesty for most of the English rebels. Marshal understood that to heal the kingdom, he needed reconciliation, not revenge. He again reissued Magna Carta, cementing it as the foundation of English law and governance. The barons who had fought for Louis were, for the most part, allowed to buy back their lands and re-enter the king’s peace. The lord of Brattleby, whichever side he had been on, would now have had to swear fealty to Henry III’s government, his fate determined by the new spirit of compromise.
William Marshal, his task complete, governed as regent until his health failed. He died peacefully in May 1219, having saved the Plantagenet dynasty and secured the kingdom. His legacy, as preserved in his biography, sealed his reputation as the "flower of chivalry."
And what of Nicola de la Haye, the lioness of Lincoln? In the immediate aftermath of the battle, she was temporarily superseded as sheriff by the Earl of Salisbury, a move that understandably angered her. However, her rights were soon restored, and she continued to serve as castellan. She finally retired from her public duties in 1226, dying a few years later as one of the most remarkable women of her age. Her unyielding defence of Lincoln Castle created the strategic opportunity that William Marshal so brilliantly exploited. Without her steadfastness, there would have been no royalist army marching to Lincoln, and the history of England could have been very different. The alliance of the old knight and the dowager castellan, forged in the crucible of civil war, stands as a powerful testament to loyalty, courage, and the extraordinary individuals who shaped the destiny of a nation.
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Sources & Further Reading
Primary Sources:
L'Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal. Edited and translated by A.J. Holden, S. Gregory, and D. Crouch. 3 vols. Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2002–2007. (The primary biography of Marshal, commissioned by his family shortly after his death.) Roger of Wendover. Flores Historiarum. In The Flowers of History, translated by J.A. Giles. 2 vols. Henry G. Bohn, 1849. (A contemporary monastic chronicle containing a key account of the battle.) Paris, Matthew. Chronica Majora. Edited by H.R. Luard. 7 vols. Rolls Series, 1872–83. (An expansion of Wendover's work with additional detail.) The Great Roll of the Pipe for the Sixteenth Year of the Reign of King John, Michaelmas 1214 (Pipe Roll 60). Edited by Patricia Barnes. Pipe Roll Society, 1990. (Contains entries detailing Nicola de la Haye's financial dealings with the Crown.) Patent Rolls of the Reign of Henry III, 1216-1225*. HMSO, 1901. (Official government records documenting appointments and grants, including those to Nicola de la Haye.)
Secondary Sources:
Asbridge, Thomas. The Greatest Knight: The Remarkable Life of William Marshal, the Power Behind Five English Thrones. Ecco, 2014. Carpenter, David. The Minority of Henry III. University of California Press, 1990. (The definitive academic study of this period.) Carpenter, David. The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066–1284. Penguin, 2004. Crouch, David. William Marshal: Knighthood, War and Chivalry, 1147–1219. 3rd Edition. Routledge, 2016. (The leading scholarly biography.) Johns, Susan M. Noblewomen, Aristocracy and Power in the Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman Realm. Manchester University Press, 2003. (Provides context for the power and agency of women like Nicola de la Haye.) McGlynn, Sean. Blood Cries Afar: The Magna Carta War and the Invasion of England, 1215-1217. The History Press, 2011. Painter, Sidney. William Marshal: Knight-Errant, Baron, and Regent of England. Johns Hopkins Press, 1933. (An older, but still valuable classic.) Victoria County History: A History of the County of Lincoln, Volume 2. Edited by William Page. Archibald Constable & Co., 1906. (Provides detailed local history for context.)