suffered from their
outrages and disorders. They retained by force the royal castles,
which they had seized during the past convulsions, or which had been
committed to their custody by the protector [r]: they usurped the
king's demesnes [s]: they oppressed their vassals: they infested their
weaker neighbours: they invited all disorderly people to enter in
their retinue, and to live upon their lands: and they gave them
protection in all their robberies and extortions.
[FN [q] M. Paris, p. 210. [r] Trivet p. 174. [s] Rymer, vol. i. p.
276.]

No one was more infamous for these violent and illegal practices than
the Earl of Albemarle; who, though he had early returned to his duty,
and had been serviceable in expelling the French, augmented to the
utmost the general disorder, and committed outrages in all the
counties of the north. In order to reduce him to obedience, Hubert
seized an opportunity of getting possession of Rockingham Castle,
which Albemarle had garrisoned with his licentious retinue: but this
nobleman, instead of submitting, entered into a secret confederacy
with Fawkes de Breaute, Peter de Mauleon, and other barons, and both
fortified the castle of Biham for his defence, and made himself
master, by surprise, of that of Fotheringay. Pandolf, who was
restored to his legateship, was active in suppressing this rebellion;
and, with the concurrence of eleven bishops, he pronounced the
sentence of excommunication against Albemarle and his adherents [t]:
an army was levied: a scutage of ten shillings a knight's fee was
imposed on all the military tenants: Albemarle's associates gradually
deserted him: and he himself was obliged at last to sue for mercy. He
received a pardon, and was restored to his whole estate.
[FN [t] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 102.]

This impolitic lenity, too frequent in those times, was probably the
result of a secret combination among the barons, who never could
endure to see the total ruin of one of their own order: but it
encouraged Fawkes de Breaute, a man whom King John had raised from a
low origin, to persevere in the course of violence to which he had
owed his fortune, and to set at nought all law and justice. When
thirty-five verdicts were at one time found against him, on account of
his violent expulsion of so many freeholders from their possessions,
he came to the court of justice with an armed force, seized the judge
who had pronounced the verdicts, and imprisoned him in Bedfo