Comparative peace having been restored, and the judicial bench purged of feudal partisans, private persons ventured to complain of outrageous acts of “novel disseisin”, or unlawful appropriation of men’s lands.  In the spring of 1224 the king’s justices went throughout the country, hearing and deciding pleas of this sort.  Sixteen acts of novel disseisin were proved against Falkes de Breaute.  Despite all the efforts of Langton and Hubert, that able adventurer, though stripped of some of his castles, fully maintained the position which he first acquired in the service of John.  He was not the man to put up tamely with the piecemeal destruction of his power by legal process, and, backed up secretly by the feudal leaders, resolved to take the law into his own hands.  One of the most active of the judges in hearing complaints against him was Henry of Braybrook.  Falkes bade his brother, William de Breaute fall upon the justice, who had been hearing suits at Dunstable, and take him prisoner.  William faithfully fulfilled his brother’s orders, and on June 17 the unlucky judge was safely shut up in a dungeon of Bedford Castle, of which William had the custody, as his brother’s agent.  So daring an outrage on the royal authority was worse than the action of William of Albemarle four years before.  Hubert and the archbishop immediately took strong measures to enforce the sanctity of the law.  While Langton excommunicated Falkes and his abettors, Hubert hastily turned against the traitor the forces which were assembling at Northampton with the object of reconquering Poitou.  Braybrook was captured on Monday.  On Thursday the royal troops besieged Bedford.

The siege lasted from June 20 to August 14.  The “noble castle of Bedford” was new, large, and fortified with an inner and outer baily, and two strong towers.  Falkes trusted that it would hold out for a year, and had amply provided it with provisions and munitions of war.  In effect, though William de Breaute and his followers showed a gallant spirit, it resisted the justiciar for barely two months.  When called upon to surrender the garrison answered that they would only yield at their lord’s orders, and that the more as they were not bound to the king by homage or fealty.  Nothing was left but a fight to the death.  The royalists made strenuous efforts.  A new scutage, the “scutage of Bedford,” was imposed on the realm.  Meanwhile Falkes fled to his accomplice, the Earl of Chester, and afterwards took refuge with Llewelyn.  But the adventurer found such cold comfort from the great men who had lured him to his ruin that he perforce made his way back to England, along with a motley band of followers, English and French, Scottish and Welsh.[1] A hue and cry was raised after him, and, like William of Albemarle, he was forced to throw himself into sanctuary, while Randolph of Chester openly joined the besiegers of Bedford.  In his refuge in a church at Coventry, Falkes was persuaded to surrender to the bishop of the diocese, who handed him over to Langton.