ea, flowing between the French and English
tents, and across this flood an English knight, hungry for a fight,
called out to the soldiers of the Fleur de Lis to come over and try a
joust or two with him. At once Robert Fitz-Walter, with his visor down,
ferried over alone with his barbed horse, and mounted ready for the
fray. At the first course he struck John's knight so fiercely with his
great spear, that both man and steed came rolling in a clashing heap to
the ground. Never was spear better broken; and when the squires had
gathered up their discomfited master, and the supposed French knight had
recrossed the ferry, King John, who delighted in a well-ridden course,
cried out, with his usual oath, "By God's sooth, he were a king indeed
who had such a knight!" Then the friends of the banished man seized
their opportunity, and came running to the usurper, and knelt down and
said, "O king, he is your knight; it was Robert Fitz-Walter who ran that
joust." Whereupon John, who could be generous when he could gain
anything by it, sent the next day for the good knight, and restored him
to his favour, allowed him to rebuild Baynard's Castle, which had been
demolished by royal order, and made him, moreover, governor of the
Castle of Hertford.

But Fitz-Walter could not forget the grave of his daughter, still green
at Dunmow (for Matilda, indomitable in her chastity, had been poisoned
by a messenger of John's, who sprinkled a deadly powder over a poached
egg--at least, so the legend runs), and soon placed himself at the head
of those brave barons who the next year forced the tyrant to sign Magna
Charta at Runnymede. He was afterwards chosen general of the barons'
army, to keep John to his word, and styled "Marshal of the Army of God
and of the Church." He then (not having had knocks enough in England)
joined the Crusaders, and was present at the great siege of Damietta. In
1216 (the first year of Henry III.) Fitz-Walter again appears to the
front, watchful of English liberty, for his Castle of Hertford having
been delivered to Louis of France, the dangerous ally of the barons, he
required of the French to leave the same, "because the keeping thereof
did by ancient right and title pertain to him." On which Louis, says
Stow, prematurely showing his claws, replied scornfully "that Englishmen
were not worthy to have such holds in keeping, because they did betray
their own lord;" but Louis not long after left England rather suddenly,