With Chester he captured the town of Worcester for the King, but his treatment of the prisoners did little to help the King’s cause for Falkes took a special delight in torture and he considered it a great sport to capture the rich and torture them with all kinds of methods which it was one of his delights to devise until they had given up all they possessed to save themselves from further torment.
He had a special hatred for religious orders – or it might have been that he greatly coveted their treasures; but it seemed that if he came upon an abbey or a convent he must desecrate it. Sharing similar urges the King made no effort to deter him and in fact enjoyed being given accounts of Falkes’s adventures among the priests.
But even he could be alarmed by what he had done and the story was often told of his fears after he had sacked St Alban’s Abbey. He had pillaged the town, mutilated and tortured the inhabitants but the Abbey was his real objective. Marching into the sacred building, overturning treasures as he went, he demanded that the Abbot be brought to him.
The Abbot came, loudly demanding to know whether Falkes de Breauté knew that he was in a house of God. Falkes’s reply had been to laugh aloud and tell the Abbot that he wanted one hundred pounds of silver and if it was not given to him without delay he would help himself to the treasures of the Abbey and burn it down.
Knowing well the man with whom he had to deal and that he was capable of such an act of sacrilege the Abbot gave him the silver.
Falkes had then left, taking sly looks about the place, noting the treasures for his future attention. That night he awoke from a terrible nightmare. He sat up in bed shouting that he was dying.
Margaret, who must have been relieved at the thought of having the monster removed from her life, said: ‘You have had a dream … a nightmare. But nightmares can have meaning. What was the dream?’
It was not often that de Breauté allowed himself civil conversation but shivering in his bed, with the terrible fear upon him, he was not the same man as the braggart who swaggered through towns terrifying all those who came near him.
‘I dreamed,’ he said, ‘that I was standing beneath the top tower of the Abbey at St Alban’s church when it fell upon me and where I had been there was nothing but powder … nothing of me remained.’
‘A dream full of portent,’ replied Margaret. ‘You desecrated the holy Abbey. It means God is displeased with you.’
De Breauté would have laughed her to scorn at any other time, but he was truly shaken at this time.
‘You must go back to the Abbey,’ she advised him, ‘and ask pardon of the Abbot and the monks.’
‘You mean a penance …’
‘The King’s father did penance for the murder of Thomas à Becket.’
‘And you would ask me to do likewise?’
‘I ask nothing of you,’ she replied. ‘Experience has taught me that would be useless. I merely advise. You have desecrated a holy place … many holy places … but St Albans will have special favour in Heaven. You have been warned by Heaven. The meaning of your dream is clear. Unless you make restitution some fearful fate will overtake you.’
She was obviously amused to see her husband so frightened that he shivered with fear at the prospect of a fate which he had administered with such delight to others. However, so did she terrify him, while pretending to be fearful for him, telling him stories she had heard of the terrible ends which befell those who ignored warnings from Heaven, that he decided he would go to St Albans with all speed, insisting that the knights who had taken part in the raid on the Abbey should accompany him. There he called for the Abbot who, wondering what fresh outrage was about to occur, came in fear, but when he saw the dreaded Falkes de Breauté baring his back and declaring that he had come to do penance – as King Henry II had done for Becket – he summoned his monks, and it is not difficult to imagine with what relish they belaboured the backs of those men who such a short while ago had threatened them.
When the chastisement was over, Falkes de Breauté put on his doublet and shouted that he had only done this because his wife had begged him to, and if the monks thought that what he had taken from them would be restored they were greatly mistaken.
However he left the Abbey and did not practise further sacrilege. He turned his attention to the French who at this time held firm positions in England. The death of John, the accession of young Henry and the defeat of the French had not entirely pleased de Breauté for it had meant the rise to power of Hubert de Burgh, who had demanded the return to the crown of many of the castles which John had bestowed on men such as de Breauté. He was disturbed as were the Earl of Chester and the Bishop of Winchester by the growing power of Hubert. A king who was a minor was a heaven-sent opportunity for ambitious men, and all these men were ambitious, so to see Hubert taking the most powerful position in the kingdom irked them and they decided that something must be done to curb it.
The three men met in Winchester: Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester, Randulph de Blundervill, Earl of Chester, and Falkes de Breauté; and the subject of their discourse was Hubert de Burgh and how to curb his growing power.
‘He thinks there will be nothing to stop him now,’ observed Peter de Roches. ‘Each day he grows more in the King’s favour.’
‘The King is a child,’ growled Chester. ‘It is a matter of whose hands he falls into. It is you, my lord Bishop, who should be his governor and controller.’
‘De Burgh has ever worked against me,’ murmured the Bishop.
‘This cannot be allowed to go on,’ replied Chester.
‘Perhaps we could make the King our prisoner,’ suggested Falkes. ‘We could catch him when he was riding … surround him by our men … and then … he would be ours to command.’
The Bishop shook his head. ‘If that could be, I doubt not it would be an excellent way of dealing with the situation, but to take the King by force would be called treason … rebellion … or some such name. The people would not endure it. They would want our heads on spikes over the bridge. We must work more secretly.’
Falkes de Breauté looked disappointed. He was fascinated by violence and he saw himself running his sword through the bodies of the guard while he told the young King that all would go well with him if he came quietly.
‘It would seem,’ went on the Bishop, ‘that de Burgh is the richest man in the kingdom. He has done well through his marriages.’
‘One thing I’ll say for him,’ added de Breauté with a smirk, ‘the women like him.’
‘He has an ingratiating manner,’ murmured the Bishop, ‘and this has won him the heart of the King.’
‘And those of his wives!’ added Chester. ‘The Scottish Princess is the fourth … his only virgin. The rest were widows.’
‘He has a fancy for widows,’ said de Breauté.
‘A wise fancy,’ put in Chester, ‘for a widow will often have her husband’s fortune as well as that which may come to her through her own family.’
‘So it was,’ said the Bishop. ‘The daughter of the Earl of Devon, and widow of William Brewer, brought him wealth; then there was Beatrice, Lord Bardulf’s widow, and then he had the temerity to marry John’s cast-off wife Hadwisa of Gloucester, who by that time was the widow of the Earl of Essex.’