Eustace the Monk and the 1217 Battle of Dover as depicted by Matthew Paris in the Chronica Majora
YOU CAN LISTEN TO THIS EPISODE HERE OR ON YOUR FAVOURITE PODCATCHER.
When people think of the middle ages, the medieval period, there are various images that might spring to mind. Maybe they think of Game of Thrones, or something like it, or Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail, all mud-bound anarchic peasants and knights who say nee. Some probably think of renaissance fairs or jousting or, quite a bit right now with everything that’s going on, the plague, the Black Death.
Some, I suspect, think of Robin Hood. Maybe they picture him as Kevin Costner, or Russell Crowe, or Errol Flynn, or an animated fox, but it all boils down that one ethical position contained in a 1622 poem:
...Robin Hood with little John agreed,
to rob the rich men, and the poor to feed.
And really there’s a lot to be said for that position, but it’s not quite what I want to talk about today. This episode isn’t about Robin Hood. What I have in mind here is not so much that specific brand of sheriff evasion and good times in the greenwoods. It’s more like Robin Hood figures.
Take for example The Tale of Gamelyn. It’s a mid-14th century romance found in some Canterbury Tales manuscripts and a literary grandparent to Shakespeare’s As You Like It. It’s the story of a third son, cheated out of his inheritance by his cruel older brother. It’s kind of a Robin Hood story.
In it, Gamelyn waits patiently for that cruel elder sibling to hand over the land their father had left him, and when it becomes clear that the brother won’t, he tries somewhat less patient means. At one point, he even breaks his brother’s porter’s neck and tosses the body in a well, all because the man had followed orders and barred his way. So that’s not exactly hero material, but then things start to take a familiar turn.
Gamelyn, despite the neck-breaking, is well liked by the servants, a friend to the poor one might say. He flees to the woods where he proves himself to a band of forest-dwelling criminals, winning their trust and friendship, and in time, a place as their king. This outlaw king of the woods steals from churchmen, avoids a hanging, and scuffles with the sheriff, a role played by that same unpleasant older brother.
At the end of the tale, our protagonist has things work out pretty well for him, considering. He and his merry men seize the instruments of judicial power themselves and turn them on his adversaries, executing the justice, the sheriff/brother, and the members of a hostile jury. Gamelyn and his allies are pardoned by the king and Gamelyn himself named as justice. So that’s not exactly radical wealth distribution, but you can still see that a lot of the Robin Hood elements are there all the same.
What we’re talking about today is another such figure.
Hello, and welcome. My name is Devon, and this is Human Circus: Journeys in the Medieval World, the podcast that follows medieval history through the stories of its travellers. Before we get going today, I want to send out my thanks to my new Patreon supporters. Specifically, I want to thank Neill, and I want to thank Wayne. Thank you both very much. I also want to thank everyone on the Patreon for continuing to support me through what has, I know, been a really hard time for a lot of people.
Now, to the story.
It is, as already indicated, not quite my usual topic. I’ll be back to that shortly. I’ve already started work on something else that I think you’ll really enjoy, but today it’s a little side-story on the outlaw hero, which I hope you’ll also really enjoy. It’s the story of Eustace, sometimes known as the Black Monk.
Unlike Gamelyn, this wasn’t a Chaucerian character. This was very much a real, historical person. But while he was a flesh and blood individual, not just pen and parchment, there is certainly an element of literary creation to his character as it’s come down to us.
The basic sketch of his life is this. He’s probably born around Boulogne, southwest along the coast from Dunkirk and Calais if you’re looking at a map. He’s possibly born about 12 miles from Boulogne in Courset or perhaps to the southwest in Course. He’s born around 1170. He likely lived at the Chateau de Course, having inherited it from his father, a senior baron with some expertise in legal matters whose name appears on charters as a witness.
Eustace was probably trained as a knight; he’s mentioned in the Histoire de Ducs de Normandie as a “chevaliers de Boulenois,” one of whom, quote, “no one would believe the marvels he accomplished or which happened to him on many occasions.” At some point he gained experience at sea, and at least according to his biographer, he gained a variety of other experiences too.
He has been referred to by one writer as a “renegade monk,” “an outlawed knight,” and a “distinguished magician,” by another as one of the most famous men of his time, and by a third as “the most spectacular pirate of the early middle ages.” Though the use of the term “early” middle ages, throws me off a little - it’s a strange way to refer to the 12th and 13th centuries - it’s clear enough that this was a pretty interesting guy all round, a man of varied interests and with many intriguing shoots and branches to his life. Here, I’m going to draw on his biography, The Romance of Eustace the Monk to explore one particular cluster of those branches.
The Romance was written maybe not so long after his death, or maybe later in the 13th century. In one manuscript, Eustace’s story is recorded along with another that is written by the same hand and is dated in its conclusion, “in the year of the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ 1284, in the month of February.” So that gives us a later bookend, and the reference to King Louis, son of Philip Augustus gives us an earlier one - Louis wasn’t king until 1223, so somewhere in those 60-odd years in between, our author wrote this story.
“I shall tell you briefly the tales I know about the Monk,” that scribe began. He went to Saint Samer, eight leagues from the sea, where he became a Black Monk of the Order of Saint Benedict. He went to Toledo, where he studied necromancy, so that no one in France could rival his skill and craft with sorcery. He spent a winter and a summer there, beneath the ground, speaking with the devil himself and learning a thousand spells, a thousand tricks, and a thousand incantations.
The Devil taught him to read the scratches on a sword, to turn the psalter backwards, to find lost objects by divining the lumps and lines in the shoulder of a sacrificed sheep or by peering into a basin of water. He learned how to bewitch both men and women, to cause monks to fart in the cloister, and to take on the form of the chimera, and when he’d learned all he needed, he parted ways with the Devil who told him this one last thing: “He would go on living until he had done a great deal of harm. He would wage war against kings and counts, and [he would] be killed at sea.”
But not for a little while yet, not that last piece at least. First, Eustace was going to, quote, “come back to France where he later performed many a vile deed.” As that “vile deed” part indicates, this outlaw hero would be at least as much outlaw as hero, and we see that first in a story of the return journey from his Spanish semester in Satanism.
With his companions, he stopped first in the town of Montferrand, and they ordered up a most abundant meal from a wealthy innkeeper, a real feast enjoyed in the company of some thirty barrels of grape must, for it was the harvest season. When it came to pay however, the companions found that their host would not accept their coin and when they did it was only for double the price. The insult was intolerable, and the company left a few spells behind in additional payment, one on their host and one on a seed of grain that Eustace threw down at the threshold, intoning one of those thousand incantations as he did so.
Behind them, their host tore off the bulk of her clothes and tore open the spigot of the first wine barrel she laid hands on, calling out to the market for customers to come. And they did, men and women both, rushing in and immediately compelled to also strip down and to open every last barrel in the building so that the wine flowed out and down the street. Now, more people flooded to the house to see what was happening, but they stopped short of the doorway. They could see well enough that some witchcraft was afoot, and it didn’t take long for them to identify the recently departed travellers as the guilty parties.
The townsfolk gave chase, catching up with our “hero” and his friends some three leagues out and shouting vengefully after them. One of Eustace’s friends, an old, bearded man who’d spent 20 years in Toledo with all the sorcerous implications that place entailed, summoned up a mighty river between them and their pursuers, a river which promptly hurled itself after the terrified townsfolk, the outlaws following, the chase now reversed.
Together, they rushed back into the town, its bells ringing in alarm, its people surging out to assemble, Eustace signalling his bearded friend to cast another spell, and those people gripped by incantation, seizing one another by the hair and striking at the head and neck of whichever neighbour they happened upon. Some pushed, some pulled. One man fell stiff like a cow, and there was not one among the town’s 2,000 who did not give and take a blow.
Then, as quickly as he’d started it, Eustace cast down a piece of grain, and the people split apart, pulled up their pants, and went home, none of them thinking it wise to follow the monk and his friends a second time.
And that was the kind of thing he got up to. He’d catch rides with peasant carters and displeased with the rough going, cast spells to trouble and trick the driver and to have his passage for free. He’d become a monk at Saint Samer where he’d “[make] the [other] monks fast when they should have eaten and [make] them go barefoot when they should have worn shoes,” make them curse and misbehave when they should have been reciting their prayers. He clashed with the abbot and cast a spell over a half-pig that he found in the kitchens, giving it the appearance of an old woman and causing the abbot and his people to flee from the demon and his magics. And then he ended the spell and carried off the half-pig and much, much more to a nearby inn where he ate, and drank, and gambled everything away over backgammon. And when I say “everything,” I mean even the abbey’s bell, its crucifixes, and its decorations. Even a pair of some poor monk’s boots was wagered away. “Eustace the monk stole everything.”
But it wasn’t always just belligerent mischief at the expense of hapless peasants, monks, and small town citizens. There was a central storyline to Eustace’s biography and that meant there was a villain, a kind of Sheriff of Nottingham against whom the hero could exert his will and display his cleverness. In this story, that part of the antagonist would be played by Renaud de Dammartin, the count of Boulogne, and the backstory is this.
It was not Renaud that killed Eustace’s father. That was apparently a man named Hainfrois de Heresinghen. It has Hainfrois who had him killed over his obstructionist role in a legal matter, and the murder would not be satisfactorily addressed. Accusations were brought forward, hostages exchanged, and a process for justice established, all to be overseen by Renaud. It was to be trial by combat.
As the dead man’s nephew, “a tall youth, handsome and strong,” took up his cause, a representative had to be found for Hainfrois who was himself too old for such combat. There was no friend or relative that would do it, but eventually someone was chosen, also described as “tall, bold, strong, and handsome.” And this was not, to reiterate, a friend or family member; this was not family fighting family. This was a solidly built young man who was recommended to Hainfrois, a ringer one might say. Somehow, somewhere in this struggle between him and Eustace’s cousin, the killing of one man was to be made right by the killing of another man. As for which man, that was still to be seen.
The combat began, and Eustace, whether because he disagreed with his opponent’s choice of champion or from a deeper dissatisfaction with the very basis of the whole proceedings, made it known to the count that no matter who was victorious, he would not be considering the issue resolved. He left the battlefield promising vengeance, and behind him, his father’s nephew was slain.
The table was set for future conflict, and after this break we’ll get to that.
...
When Eustace the Black Monk went away from the trial by combat, one might reasonably have expected the story to turn to one of revenge against his father’s killer, against Hainfrois, but it didn’t quite do that.
Picking our story back up, we find Eustace entering the service of the count, and it’s Hainfrois who is going on the offensive, denouncing Eustace to Renaud and drawing trouble down upon him. When Renaud summoned him to Hardelot to answer to these charges, Eustace refused. He was not going to surrender his body into imprisonment or worse on the words of his enemy. The count had his lands seized and his fields burned, and the biography of Eustace the Black Monk had its central antagonist.
This is the “Robin Hood” part of the story, that of tricks and raids and hit and run.
This is where we get Eustace striking at two of Renaud’s mills when he knows the count is at a wedding celebration nearby, where he releases a terrified miller to go to that celebration and make it known that, quote, “Eustace the Monk has come to provide them with light.” When the enraged count hears what is happening, he sends men but they don't find Eustace, only the two burning mills.
It was a pattern that would come to be repeated.
Eustace features as the hero of some old-fashioned TV series, showing up week after week to outsmart the villainous count in one episode after another. He’s slyly donning a disguise: a white cloak, a tonsure, and his own pair of monks in whose company he sits next to his adversary and converses with him, raising the topic of the count’s conflict with Eustace and raising some suspicion - actually being pointed out by one of Renaud’s men-at-arms who is absolutely incredulous that his master isn’t having the enemy struck down right there - but not definitively being identified.
He’d even steal one of the count’s favourite horses on parting with him. He’d hurriedly take on the appearance of a shepherd, complete with sheep, and give his enemy the “he went that way” when questioned. He’d cut out the tongue of one of the count’s men and then set him loose to try and tell Renaud what had happened. He could be really quite cruel.
And the cruelty went both ways. At one point, Renaud managed to capture two of Eustace’s men, and he put out both their eyes. In response, Eustace watched the paths and forests, waiting for an opportunity, and he took it when he found five of the count’s men-at-arms escorting prisoners through the woods. He set one of them free, telling him to inform his lord that Eustace the Monk was going to cut off the feet of the other four, the feet of one man for each eye his men had lost. And that’s what he did, there in the woods with his men who may or may not have been merry.
Like in other such texts, those woods are here are the site of freedom from the law’s encroachment, in this case from the reach of the count. So when Renaud sends in his twenty knights, the outlaws conceal themselves among the green, and in this section of the story, it is as an outlaw Eustace acts, not as a sorcerer. Mentions of Toledo, of speaking of incantations over kernels of grain, of his bearded friend so quick with spells, they’re all set aside for these woodland games of trickery, deception, and disguise.
Eustace is in a hairshirt, a pilgrim’s garb, a linen dress; he’s a poor man selling hay, a fishmonger, a pastry seller. He absolutely harasses Renaud, often to no apparent material gain for himself. He’s in his face, speaking to him, offering aid in capturing that devilish monk, and then he’s gone, generally making his true identity known only as he rides off into the trees, leaving the count cursing with frustration behind him and often taking out that frustration on innocents who he takes for Eustace.
Eustace the charcoal burner tells the count that Eustace the monk had driven him out of his home. So Renaud goes to the charcoal burner’s home and badly beats the monk he finds there. Only after the beating is he convinced by the unfortunate man’s story that he had been forced by Eustace to exchange clothes and give up his donkey. Then, when the count rushes off to assault the “charcoal burner” on the road, he manages to do so only after Eustace has swapped identities with a potter, leading to another assault on the wrong man, another collateral victim of Eustace’s deceit.
Not limiting himself to human disguises, Eustace even took to a tree as a nightingale, singing out ideas to the highly suggestible count who concluded before he rode off that, quote, “The man who takes a nightingale’s advice is no fool.” Throughout the story, Renaud is fooled by a parade of characters, only to have it rubbed in his face immediately after that he’d in fact been speaking to Eustace. The leper who he and his men had thrown coins to, that was Eustace. The man with the withered leg who they had, again, given coins, that was Eustace too.
As you might expect, even a slow learner such as Renaud starts to realize that he is being absolutely taken again and again through his enemy’s skills with disguise, and he lashes out. He arrested four monks, then four merchants and a dealer, three poultry men, two donkey drivers, four clerics and a priest, six fishermen and their fish. And still, he did not have the man he wanted. He lost horses. He lost men. He lost money. And he was not alone. No less than King Philip, who had business with the count, lost a knight at Eustace’s hands. The monk was not bothered by the king’s presence. Indeed, when Renaud formed the rear guard to escort Philip through his land, the monk’s men raided that rear guard, capturing five knights, six palfreys, and five war horses.
When the king confronted Renaud over this trouble on his land, the count could only answer: “So help me God. I cannot avenge myself on him. He is a devilishly warlike monk.” And really, that sort of exasperated venting is all the count ever seems to accomplish. “By my bowels, by my belly and legs!” he exclaims at one point. “By my throat and teeth! How this man deceives everyone!” Eustace, like some cartoon character dispatched from the future to haunt him, had escaped again.
On one occasion, the Black Monk had a smith reverse the horseshoes on his steed so as to throw Renaud off his trail. On another he baked tarts with pitch and wax in the middle, and one containing a mocking letter, and had them presented to the count and his men. “May he be commended to the Devil!” spat Renaud, “For he will never be caught or apprehended.”
And he wouldn’t be. Or at least not for very long. There was that one occasion where a saddle malfunction briefly dropped him into his enemies’ hands, but his men soon came to the rescue. The count just couldn’t hold him.
“But what about Hainfrois?” you may well be asking. What about the man who had, after all, killed Eustace’s father and brought him all this trouble with the count? What of him? He would make another appearance in the story, though not a lengthy one. He’d happen upon Eustace quite accidentally. Having wandered away from the safety of his company to urinate in the woods, he’d stumble upon Eustace and his men where they feasted in celebration after a clash with the count’s men. He’d stand there a moment, frozen.
The Black Monk invited him to sit and eat with them, which Hainfrois did. Once the meal was finished, Hainfrois began to beg for his life, but Eustace cut him off. “Be on your way,” he said. “You have killed my father and my cousin and caused trouble for me with the count… Even if I were given the whole of France, I would not make peace with you. But because you have eaten with me, you will have no reason to concern yourself with me today. Now go quite freely and tell the count from me that just now I was erecting the fence when he asked me which way Eustace the Monk had gone or whether he was still there.”
Eustace rarely if ever allowed a chance to slip by without gloating over his success at fooling the count with a disguise. He seems to have enjoyed it quite thoroughly.
So, there we have it, a woodland trickster, a leader of men in those woods, a hit and run protagonist, resisting more powerful forces and time and again showing them to be slow, foolish, and clumsy. And yes, a man who was not above a little robbery here and there, from the count certainly - he’d rarely miss an opportunity to take one or two of his nicer horses - but also from the odd passing merchant or abbot.
Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Unfortunately, this particular Robin Hood didn’t overcome his own personal Sheriff of Nottingham, didn’t retire to live peacefully ever after. Our Eustace didn’t live peacefully at all.
His story didn’t stop with local royalty bothering in the forests of northwest France. He’d throw himself into the struggle between French and English kings, would live in England, and on the Channel Islands. He’d serve both sides, quite ferociously in fact, winning renown and sowing terror. But there in the midst of that particular struggle, he’d die at sea in a furious ship to ship battle. This is how it’s described in the romance:
“Eustace and his men defended themselves by hurling and throwing missiles and firing arrows. They slaughtered a great many Englishmen and defended themselves courageously. Eustace knocked down a good number of them with an oar which he was holding. Some had their arms broken, others their heads smashed. This one was killed and that one laid out; one was knocked down and another wounded, whilst a third had his collar-bone shattered. But the enemy had attacked him from all sides and tormented him very severely, striking the side of the ship with great axes. But Eustace’s men defended themselves so strenuously that their opponents could not get on board. Then they began to hurl well-ground lime in large pots, and it was this which caused them the most damage. After that, they could no longer defend themselves, for their eyes were full of powder. Those who were tormenting them were up wind. They jumped on to Eustace’s ship and treated his men very cruelly. All the barons were captured and Eustace the Monk was killed. He had his head cut off and at once the battle ended.
No one who is always intent on evil can live for a long time.“
And that’s where we’ll leave the story of Eustace the Black Monk, executed at sea during the 1217 Battle of Dover, sometimes known as the Battle of Sandwich.
If you are listening on the Patreon friars’ feed, do keep listening for a little more on Eustace. If not, thank you for listening. I will be back soon with a story that’s more in keeping with the usual medieval travellers theme, and one that you may well already be familiar with too, if pretty distorted by modern retelling and under quite a different name. There’s even a movie about it, though not one that bears much resemblance to the original source material, not one that sounds much like the story I’ll be telling.
Sources:
Burgess, Glyn S. Two Medieval Outlaws: Eustace the Monk and Fouke Fitz Waryn. D.S. Brewer, 1997.
Davis, Alex. Imagining Inheritance from Chaucer to Shakespeare. Oxford University Press, 2020.
Ohlgren, Thomas H. Medieval Outlaws: Twelve Tales in Modern English Translation. Parlor Press, 2005.
Seal, Graham. Outlaw Heroes in Myth and History. Anthem Press, 2011.