The Faith Militant's Disbandment and Outlawry

The Faith Militant's Disbandment and Outlawry removed the Warrior’s Sons and the Poor Fellows from lawful armed life without erasing the religious resistance that sustained them. Under Maegor I, the campaign against the orders had turned royal authority into a source of grievance; under Jaehaerys Targaryen, the ban remained, but clemency and protection helped draw former opponents back toward the Iron Throne.

Suppression and Its Aftermath

Maegor I’s efforts to exterminate the Poor Fellows and the Warrior’s Sons left the conflict far from settled. Hundreds of members of the orders had been killed, yet hundreds more remained at large. Pious lords, landed knights, and smallfolk sheltered and aided them, allowing Poor Fellows to move through the countryside and disappear into the greenwood when threatened. The campaign therefore had consequences beyond the outlawed orders themselves: it turned many religious people against both Maegor and House Targaryen.

The surviving movement retained leaders and ambitions. Joffrey Doggett, known as the Red Dog of the Hills, claimed the title of Grand Captain of the Warrior’s Sons and sought to recruit knights to its banners. Further south, Septon Moon gathered followers beneath the walls of Oldtown and was proclaimed the true High Septon by his Poor Fellows. The authorities faced not a single organized army, but dispersed bands and a broader network of local support, alongside a rival claim to religious leadership.

Jaehaerys’s Settlement

Jaehaerys Targaryen did not answer this resistance by restoring the orders. At his coronation in the Starry Sept, Joffrey Doggett came under a safe conduct bearing the king’s seal, accompanied by Lord and Lady Tully. Doggett and Lady Lucinda asked Jaehaerys to reverse Maegor’s decrees and reinstate the Warrior’s Sons and the Poor Fellows. The king refused: the Faith, he held, needed the Iron Throne’s protection, not armed orders of its own. He also made clear that refusing to wage war against his subjects did not mean tolerating treason or rebellion.

The settlement paired that refusal with a concrete act of mercy. Jaehaerys rescinded the bounties Maegor had offered for the heads of members of the orders. He then offered Joffrey Doggett service in the Kingsguard, recognizing the knight’s service against Maegor while declaring his former vows ended. Doggett accepted. The episode made the distinction at the heart of the policy unusually plain: individuals could be forgiven and incorporated into royal service, while the outlawed institution itself would not be revived.

Clemency, Terms, and Limits

The king extended clemency beyond the Red Dog. During his return from Oldtown to King’s Landing, Poor Fellows appeared along the route seeking the same terms. Jaehaerys granted them pardon on the condition that they travel north and join the Night’s Watch at the Wall. Hundreds agreed, including Rob the Starvling. This offered former members a path out of outlawry, but it also dispersed them from the communities and networks that had supported their resistance.

The compromise did not make the ban inconsequential. By the time Jaehaerys and Alysanne Targaryen prepared to travel through the realm, the Warrior’s Sons and the Swords and Stars were still broken and outlawed. Two thousand former Poor Fellows wore the black cloaks of the Night’s Watch; the Wall was the only place where they were concentrated in numbers that might make them troublesome. Their presence there shows both the reach of the settlement and its limits: the movement had been deprived of lawful organization, but its former members had not simply vanished.

Religious Authority and Royal Legitimacy

The disbandment of armed religious orders did not mean that the Faith ceased to matter in royal politics. The High Septon had anointed Aegon I Targaryen at the Starry Sept, while Jaehaerys himself returned to that sept for a coronation attended by lords and representatives of the Citadel. Later, when Aegon II was crowned at the Dragonpit and the High Septon could not travel from Oldtown, Septon Eustace performed the anointing. These ceremonies show the continued place of religious authority in kingship, distinct from the armed power claimed by the Swords and Stars.

Jaehaerys’s policy sought to reconcile the Iron Throne with the Faith without surrendering royal control over armed force. Grand Maester Benifer later described the king’s meeting with Joffrey Doggett as setting the pattern for his reign. Within a moon’s turn of his coronation, Benifer wrote, Jaehaerys had reconciled the Iron Throne with the Faith and brought the bloodshed of the reigns of Maegor I and Aenys I to an end. The outlawry thus endured, but its enforcement was recast: not solely as suppression, but as a boundary accompanied by protection, pardon, and a route back into service.