HENRY III.
SETTLEMENT OF THE GOVERNMENT.--GENERAL PACIFICATION.--DEATH OF THE
PROTECTOR.--SOME COMMOTIONS.--HUBERT DE BURGH DISPLACED.--THE BISHOP
OF WINCHESTER MINISTER.--KINGS PARTIALITY TO FOREIGNERS.--
GRIEVANCES.--ECCLESIASTICAL GRIEVANCES.--EARL OF CORNWALL ELECTED KING
OF THE ROMANS.--DISCONTENT OF THE BARONS.--SIMON DE MOUNTFORT, EARL OF
LEICESTER.--PROVISIONS OF OXFORD.USURPATION OF THE BARONS.--PRINCE
EDWARD.--CIVIL WARS OF THE BARONS.--REFERENCE TO THE KING OF FRANCE.--
RENEWAL OF THE CIVIL WARS.--BATTLE OF LEWES.--HOUSE OF COMMONS.--
BATTLE OF EVESHAM AND DEATH OF LEICESTER.--SETTLEMENT OF THE
GOVERNMENT.--DEATH--AND CHARACTER OF THE KING.--MISCELLANEOUS
TRANSACTIONS OF THIS REIGN.
[MN 1216.] Most sciences, in proportion as they increase and improve,
invent methods by which they facilitate their reasonings; and,
employing general theorems, are enabled to comprehend, in a few
propositions, a great number of inferences and conclusions. History
also, being a collection of facts which are multiplying without end,
is obliged to adopt such arts of abridgment, to retain the more
material events, and to drop all the minute circumstances, which are
only interesting during the time, or to the persons engaged in the
transactions. This truth is no where more evident than with regard to
the reign upon which we are going to enter. What mortal could have
the patience to write or read a long detail of such frivolous events
as those with which it is filled, or attend to a tedious narrative
which would follow, through a series of fifty-six years, the caprices
and weaknesses of so mean a prince as Henry? The chief reason why
Protestant writers have been so anxious to spread out the incidents of
this reign is, in order to expose the rapacity, ambition, and
artifices of the court of Rome; and to prove that the great
dignitaries of the Catholic church, while they pretended to have
nothing in view but the salvation of souls, had bent all their
attention to the acquisition of riches, and were restrained by no
sense of justice or of honour in the pursuit of that great object [a].
But this conclusion would readily be allowed them, though it were not
illustrated by such a detail of uninteresting incidents; and follows,
indeed, by an evident necessity, from the very situation in which that
church was placed with regard to the rest of Europe. For, besides
that ecclesiastical power, as it can always cover its operations under
a cloak of sanctity, and attacks men on the side where they dare not
employ their reason, lies less under control than civil government;
besides this general cause, I say, the pope and his courtiers were
foreigners to most of the churches which they governed; they could not
possibly have any other object than to pillage the provinces for
present gain; and as they lived at a distance, they would be little
awed by shame or remorse, in employing every lucrative expedient which
was suggested to them. England being one of the most remote provinces
attached to the Romish hierarchy, as well as the most prone to
superstition, felt severely during this reign, while its patience was
not yet fully exhausted, the influence of these causes; and we shall
often have occasion to touch cursorily upon such incidents. But we
shall not attempt to comprehend every transaction transmitted to us;
and, till the end of the reign, when the events become more memorable,
we shall not always observe an exact chronological order in our
narration.
[FN [a] M. Paris, p. 623.]
[MN Settlement of the government.]
The Earl of Pembroke, who, at the time of John's death, was Mareschal
of England, was, by his office, at the head of the armies, and
consequently, during a state of civil wars and convulsions, at the
head of the government; and it happened fortunately for the young
monarch and for the nation, that the power could not have been
intrusted into more able and more faithful hands. This nobleman, who
had maintained his loyalty unshaken to John, during the lowest fortune
of that monarch, determined to support the authority of the infant
prince; nor was he dismayed at the number and violence of his enemies.
Sensible that Henry, agreeably to the prejudices of the times, would
not be deemed a sovereign till crowned and anointed by a churchman, he
immediately carried the young prince to Gloucester, [MN 1216. 28th
Oct.] where the ceremony of coronation was performed, in the presence
of Gualo, the legate, and of a few noblemen, by the Bishops of
Winchester and Bath [b]. As the concurrence of the papal authority
was requisite to support the tottering throne, Henry was obliged to
swear fealty to the pope, and renew that homage to which his father
had already subjected the kingdom [c]; and in order to enlarge the
authority of Pembroke, and to give him a more regular and legal title
to it, a general council of the barons was soon after summoned at
Bristol, [MN 11th Nov.] where that nobleman was chosen protector of
the realm.
[FN [b] M. Paris, p. 200. Hist. Croyl. cont. p. 474. W. Heming. p.
562 Trivet, p. 168. [c] M. Paris, p. 200.]
Pembroke, that he might reconcile all men to the government of his
pupil, made him grant a new charter of liberties, which, though mostly
copied from the former concessions extorted from John, contains some
alterations which may be deemed remarkable [d]. The full privilege of
elections in the clergy, granted by the late king, was not confirmed,
nor the liberty of going out of the kingdom, without the royal
consent: whence we may conclude, that Pembroke and the barons, jealous
of the ecclesiastical power, both were desirous of renewing the king's
claim to issue a congé d'élire to the monks and chapters, and thought
it requisite to put some check to the frequent appeals to Rome. But
what may chiefly surprise us, is, that the obligation to which John
had subjected himself, of obtaining the consent of the great council
before he levied any aids or scutages upon the nation, was omitted;
and this article was even declared hard and severe, and was expressly
left to future deliberation. But we must consider, that, though this
limitation may perhaps appear to us the most momentous in the whole
charter of John, it was not regarded in that light by the ancient
barons, who were more jealous in guarding against particular acts of
violence in the crown, than against such general impositions, which,
unless they were evidently reasonable and necessary, could scarcely,
without general consent, be levied upon men who had arms in their
hands, and who could repel any act of oppression by which they were
all immediately affected. We accordingly find, that Henry, in the
course of his reign, while he gave frequent occasions for complaint,
with regard to his violations of the great charter, never attempted,
by his mere will, to levy any aids or scutages; though he was often
reduced to great necessities, and was refused supply by his people.
So much easier was it for him to transgress the law, when individuals
alone were affected, than even to exert his acknowledged prerogatives,
where the interest of the whole body was concerned.
[FN [d] Rymer, vol. i. p. 215.]
This charter was again confirmed by the king in the ensuing year, with
the addition of some articles, to prevent the oppressions by sheriffs;
and also with an additional charter of forests, a circumstance of
great moment in those ages, when hunting was so much the occupation of
the nobility, and when the king comprehended so considerable a part of
the kingdom within his forests, which he governed by peculiar and
arbitrary laws. All the forests which had been enclosed since the
reign of Henry II. were disafforested; and new perambulations were
appointed for that purpose: offences in the forests were declared to
be no longer capital; but punishable by fine, imprisonment, and more
gentle penalties: and all the proprietors of land recovered the power
of cutting and using their own wood at their pleasure.
Thus these famous charters were brought nearly to the shape in which
they have ever since stood; and they were, during many generations,
the peculiar favourites of the English nation, and esteemed the most
sacred rampart to national liberty and independence. As they secured
the rights of all orders of men, they were anxiously defended by all,
and became the basis, in a manner, of the English monarchy, and a kind
of original contract, which both limited the authority of the king,
and ensured the conditional allegiance of his subjects. Though often
violated, they were still claimed by the nobility and people; and as
no precedents were supposed valid that infringed them, they rather
acquired than lost authority, from the frequent attempts made against
them, in several ages, by regal and arbitrary power.
While Pembroke, by renewing and confirming the great charter, gave so
much satisfaction and security to the nation in general, he also
applied himself successfully to individuals. He wrote letters, in the
king's name, to all the malecontent barons; in which he represented to
them, that, whatever jealousy and animosity they might have
entertained against the late king, a young prince, the lineal heir of
their ancient monarchs, had now succeeded to the throne, without
succeeding either to the resentments or principles of his predecessor:
that the desperate expedient, which they had employed of calling in a
foreign potentate, had, happily for them, as well as for the nation,
failed of entire success; and it was still in their power, by a speedy
return to their duty, to restore the independence of the kingdom, and
to secure that liberty for which they so zealously contended: that as
all past offences of the barons were now buried in oblivion, they
ought, on their part, to forget their complaints against their late
sovereign, who, if he had been anywise blameable in his conduct, had
left to his son the salutary warning, to avoid the paths which had led
to such fatal extremities; and that, having now obtained a charter for
their liberties, it was their interest to show, by their conduct, that
this acquisition was not incompatible with their allegiance, and that
the rights of king and people, so far from being hostile and opposite,
might mutually support and sustain each other [e].
[FN [e] Rymer, vol i. p. 25. Brady's App. No. 143.]
These considerations, enforced by the character of honour and
constancy which Pembroke had ever maintained, had a mighty influence
on the barons; and most of them began secretly to negotiate with him,
and many of them openly returned to their duty. The diffidence which
Lewis discovered of their fidelity forwarded this general propension
towards the king; and when the French prince refused the government of
the castle of Hertford to Robert Fitz-Walter, who had been so active
against the late king, and who claimed that fortress as his property,
they plainly saw that the English were excluded from every trust, and
that foreigners had engrossed all the confidence and affection of
their new sovereign [f]. The excommunication, too, denounced by the
legate against all the adherents of Lewis, failed not, in the turn
which men's dispositions had taken, to produce a mighty effect upon
them; and they were easily persuaded to consider a cause as impious,
for which they had already entertained an unsurmountable aversion [g].
Though Lewis made a journey to France, and brought over succours from
that kingdom [h], he found, on his return, that his party was still
more weakened by the desertion of his English confederates, and that
the death of John had, contrary to his expectations, given an
incurable wound to his cause. The Earls of Salisbury, Arundel, and
Warrenne, together with William Mareschal, eldest son of the
protector, had embraced Henry's party, and every English nobleman was
plainly watching for an opportunity of returning to his allegiance.
Pembroke was so much strengthened by these accessions that he ventured
to invest Mountsorel; though, upon the approach of the Count de Perche
with the French army, he desisted from his enterprise, and raised the
siege [i]. The count, elated with this success, marched to Lincoln;
and being admitted into the town, he began to attack the castle, which
he soon reduced to extremity. The protector summoned all his forces
from every quarter, in order to relieve a place of such importance;
and he appeared so much superior to the French, that they shut
themselves up within the city, and resolved to act upon the defensive
[k]. But the garrison of the castle having received a strong
reinforcement, made a vigorous sally upon the besiegers; while the
English army, by concert, assaulted them in the same instant from
without, mounted the walls by scalade, and bearing down all
resistance, entered the city sword in hand. Lincoln was delivered
over to be pillaged; the French army was totally routed; the Count de
Perche, with only two persons more, was killed; but many of the chief
commanders, and about four hundred knights, were made prisoners by the
English [l]. So little blood was shed in this important action, which
decided the fate of one of the most powerful kingdoms in Europe; and
such wretched soldiers were those ancient barons, who yet were
unacquainted with every thing but arms!
[FN [f] M. Paris, p. 200, 202. [g] Ibid. p. 200. M. West. p. 277.
[h] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 79. M. West. p. 277. [i] M. Paris, p.
203. [k] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 81. [l] M. Paris, p.204, 205.
Chron. de Mailr. p. 195.]
Prince Lewis was informed of this fatal event while employed in the
siege of Dover, which was still valiantly defended against him by
Hubert de Burgh. He immediately retreated to London, the centre and
life of his party; and he there received intelligence of a new
disaster, which put an end to all his hopes. A French fleet, bringing
over a strong reinforcement, had appeared on the coast of Kent, where
they were attacked by the English, under the command of Philip
d'Albiney, and were routed with considerable loss. D'Albiney employed
a stratagem against them, which is said to have contributed to the
victory. Having gained the wind of the French, he came down upon them
with violence; and throwing in their faces a great quantity of
quicklime, which he purposely carried on board, he so blinded them,
that they were disabled from defending themselves [m].
[FN [m] M. Paris, p. 206. Ann. Waverl. p. 183. W. Heming. p. 563.
Trivet, p. 169. M. West. p. 277. Knyghton, p. 2428.]
After this second misfortune of the French, the English barons
hastened every where to make peace with the protector, and, by an easy
submission, to prevent those attainders to which they were exposed on
account of their rebellion. Lewis, whose cause was now totally
desperate, began to be anxious for the safety of his person, and was
glad, on any honourable conditions, to make his escape from a country
where he found every thing was now become hostile to him. He
concluded a peace with Pembroke, promised to evacuate the kingdom, and
only stipulated, in return, an indemnity to his adherents, and a
restitution of their honours and fortunes, together with the free and
equal enjoyment of those liberties which had been granted to the rest
of the nation [n]. Thus was happily ended a civil war, which seemed
to be founded on the most incurable hatred and jealousy, and had
threatened the kingdom with the most fatal consequences.
[FN [n] Rymer, vol. i. p. 221. M. Paris, p. 207. Chron. Dunst. vol.
i. p. 83. M. West. p. 278. Knyghton, p. 2429.]
[MN 1216. General pacification.]
The precautions which the King of France used in the conduct of this
whole affair are remarkable. He pretended that his son had accepted
of the offer from the English barons without his advice, and contrary
to his inclination: the armies sent to England were levied in Lewis's
name. When that prince came over to France for aid, his father
publicly refused to grant him any assistance, and would not so much as
admit him to his presence. Even after Henry's party acquired the
ascendant, and Lewis was in danger of falling into the hands of his
enemies, it was Blanche of Castile, his wife, not the king, his
father, who raised armies, and equipped fleets for his succour [o].
All these artifices were employed, not to satisfy the pope, for he had
too much penetration to be so easily imposed on; nor yet to deceive
the people, for they were too gross even for that purpose. They only
served for a colouring to Philip's cause; and, in public affairs, men
are often better pleased that the truth, though known to every body,
should be wrapped up under a decent cover, than if it were exposed in
open daylight to the eyes of all the world.
[FN [o] M. Paris, p. 256. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 82.]
After the expulsion of the French, the prudence and equity of the
protector's subsequent conduct contributed to cure entirely those
wounds which had been made by intestine discord. He received the
rebellious barons into favour; observed strictly the terms of peace
which he had granted them; restored them to their possessions; and
endeavoured, by an equal behaviour, to bury all past animosities in
perpetual oblivion. The clergy alone, who had adhered to Lewis, were
sufferers in this revolution. As they had rebelled against their
spiritual sovereign, by disregarding the interdict and
excommunication, it was not in Pembroke's power to make any
stipulations in their favour; and Gualo, the legate, prepared to take
vengeance on them for their disobedience [p]. Many of them were
deposed; many suspended; some banished; and all who escaped punishment
made atonement for their offence by paying large sums to the legate,
who amassed an immense treasure by this expedient.
[FN [p] Brady's App. No. 144 Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 83.]
[MN Death of the protector.]
The Earl of Pembroke did not long survive the pacification, which had
been chiefly owing to his wisdom and valour [q]; and he was succeeded
in the government by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, and
Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary. The councils of the latter were
chiefly followed; and had he possessed equal authority in the kingdom
with Pembroke, he seemed to be every way worthy of filling the place
of that virtuous nobleman. [MN Some commotions.] But the licentious
and powerful barons, who had once broken the reins of subjection to
their prince, and had obtained, by violence, an enlargement of their
liberties and independence, could ill be restrained by laws under a
minority; and the people, no less than the king, 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 Breauté, 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 Breauté, 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 Bedford castle.
He then levied open war against the king; but being subdued and taken
prisoner, his life was granted him; but his estate was confiscated,
and he was banished the kingdom [u].
[FN [u] Rymer, vol. i. p. 198. M. Paris, p. 221, 224. Ann. Waverl.
p. 188. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 141, 146. M. West. p. 283.]
[MN 1222.] Justice was executed with greater severity against
disorders less premeditated, which broke out in London. A frivolous
emulation in a match of wrestling, between the Londoners on the one
hand, and the inhabitants of Westminster and those of the neighbouring
villages on the other, occasioned this commotion. The former rose in
a body, and pulled down some houses belonging to the Abbot of
Westminster: but this riot, which, considering the tumultuous
disposition familiar to that capital, would have been little regarded,
seemed to become more serious by the symptoms which then appeared of
the former attachment of the citizens to the French interest. The
populace, in the tumult, made use of the cry of war commonly employed
by the French troops: MOUNTJOY, MOUNTJOY, GOD HELP US AND OUR LORD
LEWIS! The justiciary made inquiry into the disorder; and finding one
Constantine Fitz-Arnulf to have been the ringleader, an insolent man,
who justified his crime in Hubert's presence, he proceeded against him
by martial law, and ordered him immediately to be hanged, without
trial or form of process. He also cut off the feet of some of
Constantine's accomplices [w].
[FN [w] M. Paris, p. 217, 218, 259. Ann. Waverl. p. 187. Chron.
Dunst. vol. i. p. 129.]
This act of power was complained of as an infringement of the great
charter: yet the justiciary, in a Parliament summoned at Oxford, (for
the great councils about this time began to receive that appellation,)
made no scruple to grant, in the king's name, a renewal and
confirmation of that charter. When the assembly made application to
the crown for this favour, as a law in those times seemed to lose its
validity if not frequently renewed, William de Briewere, one of the
council of regency, was so bold as to say openly, that those liberties
were extorted by force, and ought not to be observed: but he was
reprimanded by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and was not countenanced
by the king or his chief ministers [x]. A new confirmation was
demanded and granted two years after; and an aid, amounting to a
fifteenth of all moveables, was given by the Parliament, in return for
this indulgence. The king issued writs anew to the sheriffs,
enjoining the observance of the charter; but he inserted a remarkable
clause in the writs, that those who paid not the fifteenth should not
for the future be entitled to the benefit of those liberties [y].
[FN [x] M. West. p. 282. [y] Clause 9. H. 3. m. 9. and m. 6. d.]
The low state into which the crown was fallen made it requisite for a
good minister to be attentive to the preservation of the royal
prerogatives, as well as to the security of public liberty. Hubert
applied to the pope, who had always great authority in the kingdom,
and was now considered as its superior lord, and desired him to issue
a bull declaring the king to be of full age, and entitled to exercise
in person all the acts of royalty [z]. In consequence of this
declaration, the justiciary resigned into Henry's hands the two
important fortresses of the Tower and Dover Castle, which had been
intrusted to his custody; and he required the other barons to imitate
his example. They refused compliance: the Earls of Chester and
Albemarle, John Constable of Chester, John de Lacy, Brian de l'Isle,
and William de Cantel, with some others, even formed a conspiracy to
surprise London, and met in arms at Waltham with that intention: but
finding the king prepared for defence, they desisted from their
enterprise. When summoned to court in order to answer for their
conduct, they scrupled not to appear, and to confess the design: but
they told the king, that they had no bad intentions against his
person, but only against Hubert de Burgh, whom they were determined to
remove from his office [a]. They appeared too formidable to be
chastised; and they were so little discouraged by the failure of their
first enterprise, that they again met in arms at Leicester, in order
to seize the king, who then resided at Northampton: but Henry,
informed of their purpose, took care to be so well armed and attended
that the barons found it dangerous to make the attempt; and they sat
down and kept Christmas in his neighbourhood [b]. The archbishop and
the prelates, finding every thing tending towards a civil war,
interposed with their authority, and threatened the barons with the
sentence of excommunication, if they persisted in detaining the king's
castles. This menace at last prevailed: most of the fortresses were
surrendered; though the barons complained that Hubert's castles were
soon after restored to him, while the king still kept theirs in his
own custody. There are said to have been eleven hundred and fifteen
castles at that time in England [c].
[FN [z] M. Paris, p. 220. [a] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 137. [b] M.
Paris, p. 221. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 138. [c] Coke's Comment. on
Magna Charta, chap. 17.]
It must be acknowledged that the influence of the prelates and the
clergy was often of great service to the public. Though the religion
of that age can merit no better name than that of superstition, it
served to unite together a body of men who had great sway over the
people, and who kept the community from falling to pieces, by the
factions and independent power of the nobles; and what was of great
importance, it threw a mighty authority into the hands of men, who, by
their profession, were averse to arms and violence; who tempered by
their mediation the general disposition towards military enterprises;
and who still maintained, even amidst the shock of arms, those secret
links, without which it is impossible for human society to subsist.
Notwithstanding these intestine commotions in England, and the
precarious authority of the crown, Henry was obliged to carry on war
in France; and he employed to that purpose the fifteenth which had
been granted him by Parliament. Lewis VIII., who had succeeded his
father Philip, instead of complying with Henry's claim, who demanded
the restitution of Normandy, and the other provinces wrested from
England, made an irruption into Poictou, took Rochelle [d], after a
long siege, and seemed determined to expel the English from the few
provinces which still remained to them. Henry sent over his uncle,
the Earl of Salisbury, together with his brother, Prince Richard, to
whom he had granted the earldom of Cornwall, which had escheated to
the crown. Salisbury stopped the progress of Lewis's arms, and
retained the Poictevin and Gascon vassals in their allegiance: but no
military action of any moment was performed on either side. The Earl
of Cornwall, after two years' stay in Guienne, returned to England.
[FN [d] Rymer, vol. i. p. 269. Trivet, p. 179.]
[MN 1227.] This prince was nowise turbulent or factious in his
disposition: his ruling passion was to amass money, in which he
succeeded so well as to become the richest subject in Christendom: yet
his attention to gain threw him sometimes into acts of violence; and
gave disturbance to the government. There was a manor which had
formerly belonged to the earldom of Cornwall, but had been granted to
Waleran de Ties, before Richard had been invested with that dignity,
and while the earldom remained in the crown. Richard claimed this
manor, and expelled the proprietor by force: Waleran complained: the
king ordered his brother to do justice to the man, and restore him to
his rights: the earl said, that he would not submit to these orders,
till the cause should be decided against him by the judgment of his
peers: Henry replied, that it was first necessary to reinstate Waleran
in possession, before the cause could be tried; and he reiterated his
orders to the earl [e]. We may judge of the state of the government,
when this affair had nearly produced a civil war. The Earl of
Cornwall, finding Henry peremptory in his commands, associated himself
with the young Earl of Pembroke, who had married his sister, and who
was displeased on account of the king's requiring him to deliver up
some royal castles which were in his custody. These two malecontents
took into the confederacy the Earls of Chester, Warrenne, Gloucester,
Hereford, Warwick, and Ferrers, who were all disgusted on a like
account [f]. They assembled an army; which the king had not the power
or courage to resist; and he was obliged to give his brother
satisfaction, by grants of much greater importance than the manor
which had been the first ground of the quarrel [g].
[FN [e] M. Paris, p. 233. [f] M. Paris, p. 233. [g] Ibid.]
The character of the king, as he grew to man's estate, became every
day better known; and he was found in every respect unqualified for
maintaining a proper sway among those turbulent barons, whom the
feudal constitution subjected to his authority. Gentle, humane, and
merciful even to a fault, he seems to have been steady in no other
circumstance of his character; but to have received every impression
from those who surrounded him, and whom he loved, for the time, with
the most imprudent and most unreserved affection. Without activity or
vigour, he was unfit to conduct war: without policy or art, he was ill
fitted to maintain peace: his resentments, though hasty and violent,
were not dreaded, while he was found to drop them with such facility;
his friendships were little valued, because they were neither derived
from choice, nor maintained with constancy. A proper pageant of state
in a regular monarchy, where his ministers could have conducted all
affairs in his name and by his authority; but too feeble in those
disorderly times to sway a sceptre, whose weight depended entirely on
the firmness and dexterity of the hand which held it.
[MN Hugh de Burgh displaced.]
The ablest and most virtuous minister that Henry ever possessed was
Hubert de Burgh [h]; a man who had been steady to the crown in the
most difficult and dangerous times, and who yet showed no disposition,
in the height of his power, to enslave or oppress the people. The
only exceptionable part of his conduct is that which is mentioned by
Matthew Paris [i], if the fact be really true; and proceeded from
Hubert's advice, namely, the recalling publicly and the annulling of
the charter of forests, a concession so reasonable in itself, and so
passionately claimed both by the nobility and people: but it must be
confessed that this measure is so unlikely, both from the
circumstances of the times and character of the minister, that there
is reason to doubt of its reality, especially as it is mentioned by no
other historian. Hubert, while he enjoyed his authority, had an
entire ascendant over Henry, and was loaded with honours and favours
beyond any other subject. Besides acquiring the property of many
castles and manors, he married the eldest sister of the King of Scots,
was created Earl of Kent, and, by an unusual concession, was made
chief justiciary of England for life: [MN 1231.] yet Henry, in a
sudden caprice, threw off this faithful minister, and exposed him to
the violent persecutions of his enemies. Among other frivolous crimes
objected to him, he was accused of gaining the king's affections by
enchantment, and of purloining from the royal treasury a gem, which
had the virtue to render the wearer invulnerable, and of sending this
valuable curiosity to the Prince of Wales [k]. The nobility, who
hated Hubert on account of his zeal in resuming the rights and
possessions of the crown, no sooner saw the opportunity favourable,
than they inflamed the king's animosity against him, and pushed him to
seek the total ruin of his minister. Hubert took sanctuary in a
church: the king ordered him to be dragged from thence: he recalled
those orders: he afterwards renewed them: he was obliged by the clergy
to restore him to the sanctuary: he constrained him soon after to
surrender himself prisoner, and he confined him in the castle of
Devizes. Hubert made his escape, was expelled the kingdom, was again
received into favour, recovered a great share of the king's
confidence, but never showed any inclination to reinstate himself in
power and authority [l].
[FN [h] Ypod. Neustriae, p. 464. [i] P. 232. M. West. p. 216,
ascribes this counsel to Peter, Bishop of Winchester. [k] M. Paris,
p. 259. [l] Ibid. p. 259, 260, 261, 266. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 41, 42.
Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 220, 221. M. West. p. 291, 301.]
[MN Bishop of Winchester minister.]
The man who succeeded him in the government of the king and kingdom
was Peter, Bishop of Winchester, a Poictevin by birth, who had been
raised by the late king, and who was no less distinguished by his
arbitrary principles and violent conduct, than by his courage and
abilities. This prelate had been left by King John justiciary and
regent of the kingdom during an expedition which that prince made into
France; and his illegal administration was one chief cause of that
great combination among the barons which finally extorted from the
crown the charter of liberties, and laid the foundations of the
English constitution. Henry, though incapable, from his character, of
pursuing the same violent maxims which had governed his father, had
imbibed the same arbitrary principles; and, in prosecution of Peter's
advice, he invited over a great number of Poictevins, and other
foreigners, who, he believed, could more safely be trusted than the
English, and who seemed useful to counterbalance the great and
independent power of the nobility [m]. Every office and command was
bestowed on these strangers: they exhausted the revenues of the crown,
already too much impoverished [n]; they invaded the rights of the
people; and their insolence, still more provoking than their power,
drew on them the hatred and envy of all orders of men in the kingdom
[o].
[FN [m] M. Paris, p. 263. [n] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 151. [o] M.
Paris, p. 268.]
[MN 1233.] The barons formed a combination against this odious
ministry, and withdrew from Parliament, on pretence of the danger to
which they were exposed from the machinations of the Poictevins. When
again summoned to attend, they gave for answer, that the king should
dismiss his foreigners, otherwise they would drive both him and them
out of the kingdom, and put the crown on another head more worthy to
wear it [p]: such was the style they used to their sovereign! They at
last came to Parliament, but so well attended, that they seemed in a
condition to prescribe laws to the king and ministry. Peter des
Roches, however, had in the interval found means of sowing dissension
among them, and of bringing over to his party the Earl of Cornwall, as
well as the Earls of Lincoln and Chester. The confederates were
disconcerted in their measures: Richard, Earl Mareschal, who had
succeeded to that dignity on the death of his brother William, was
chased into Wales; he thence withdrew into Ireland, where he was
treacherously murdered by the contrivance of the Bishop of Winchester
[q]. The estates of the more obnoxious barons were confiscated,
without legal sentence or trial by their peers [r], and were bestowed
with a profuse liberality on the Poictevins. Peter even carried his
insolence so far as to declare publicly, that the barons of England
must not pretend to put themselves on the same footing with those of
France; or assume the same liberties and privileges: the monarch in
the former country had a more absolute power than in the latter. It
had been more justifiable for him to have said, that men, so unwilling
to submit to the authority of laws, could with the worst grace claim
any shelter or protection from them.
[FN [p] Ibid. p. 265. [q] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 219. [r] M.
Paris, p. 265.]
When the king at any time was checked in his illegal practices, and
when the authority of the great charter was objected to him, he was
wont to reply, "Why should I observe this charter, which is neglected
by all my grandees, both prelates and nobility?" It was very
reasonably said to him, "You ought, sir, to set them the example [s]."
[FN [s] Ibid. p. 609.]
So violent a ministry as that of the Bishop of Winchester could not be
of long duration; but its fall proceeded at last from the influence of
the church, not from the efforts of the nobles. Edmond, the primate,
came to court, attended by many of the other prelates, and represented
to the king the pernicious measures embraced by Peter des Roches, the
discontents of his people, the ruin of his affairs; and, after
requiring the dismission of the minister and his associates,
threatened him with excommunication in case of his refusal. Henry,
who knew that an excommunication so agreeable to the sense of the
people could not fail of producing the most dangerous effects, was
obliged to submit: foreigners were banished: the natives were restored
to their place in council [t]: the primate, who was a man of prudence,
and who took care to execute the laws, and observe the charter of
liberties, bore the chief sway in the government.
[FN [t] Ibid. p. 271, 272.]
[MN 1236. Jan.] But the English in vain flattered themselves that
they should be long free from the dominion of foreigners. [MN King's
partiality to foreigners.] The king having married Eleanor, daughter
of the Count of Provence [u], was surrounded by a great number of
strangers from that country, whom he caressed with the fondest
affection, and enriched by an imprudent generosity [w]. The Bishop of
Valence, a prelate of the house of Savoy, and maternal uncle to the
queen, was his chief minister, and employed every art to amass wealth
for himself and his relations. Peter of Savoy, a brother of the same
family, was invested in the honour of Richmond, and received the rich
wardship of Earl Warrenne: Boniface of Savoy was promoted to the see
of Canterbury. Many young ladies were invited over from Provence, and
married to the chief noblemen in England, who were the king's wards
[x]. And as the source of Henry's bounty began to fail, his Savoyard
ministry applied to Rome, and obtained a bull, permitting him to
resume all past grants; absolving him from the oath which he had taken
to maintain them; even enjoining him to make such a resumption, and
representing those grants as invalid, on account of the prejudice
which ensued from them to the Roman pontiff, in whom the superiority
of the kingdom was vested [y]. The opposition made to the intended
resumption prevented it from taking place; but the nation saw the
indignities to which the king was willing to submit, in order to
gratify the avidity of his foreign favourites. About the same time he
published in England the sentence of excommunication pronounced
against the Emperor Frederic, his brother-in-law [z]; and said, in
excuse, that, being the pope's vassal, he was obliged by his
allegiance to obey all the commands of his holiness. In this weak
reign, when any neighbouring potentate insulted the king's dominions,
instead of taking revenge for the injury, he complained to the pope as
his superior lord, and begged him to give protection to his vassal
[a].
[FN [u] Rymer, vol. i. p. 448. M. Paris, p. 286. [w] M. Paris, p.
236, 301, 305, 316, 541. M. West. p. 302, 304. [x] M. Paris, p. 484.
M. West. p. 338. [y] M. Paris, p. 295, 301. [z] Rymer, vol. i. p.
383. [a] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 150.]
[MN 1236. Grievances.]
The resentment of the English barons rose high at the preference given
to foreigners; but no remonstrance or complaint could ever prevail on
the king to abandon them, or even to moderate his attachment towards
them. After the Provencals and Savoyards might have been supposed
pretty well satiated with the dignities and riches which they had
acquired, a new set of hungry foreigners were invited over, and shared
among them those favours, which the king ought in policy to have
conferred on the English nobility, by whom his government could have
been supported and defended. His mother, Isabella, who had been
unjustly taken by the late king from the Count de la Marche, to whom
she was betrothed, was no sooner mistress of herself, by the death of
her husband, than she married that nobleman [b]; [MN 1247.] and she
had borne him four sons, Guy, William, Geoffrey, and Aymer, whom she
sent over to England, in order to pay a visit to their brother. The
good-natured and affectionate disposition of Henry was moved at the
sight of such near relations; and he considered neither his own
circumstances, nor the inclinations of his people, in the honours and
riches which he conferred upon them [c]. Complaints rose as high
against the credit of the Gascon, as ever they had done against that
of the Poictevin and of the Savoyard favourites; and to a nation
prejudiced against them, all their measures appeared exceptionable and
criminal. Violations of the great charter were frequently mentioned;
and it is indeed more than probable that foreigners, ignorant of the
laws, and relying on the boundless affections of a weak prince, would,
in an age when a regular administration was not any where known, pay
more attention to their present interest than to the liberties of the
people. It is reported that the Poictevins and other strangers, when
the laws were at any time appealed to, in opposition to their
oppressions, scrupled not to reply, WHAT DID THE ENGLISH LAWS SIGNIFY
TO THEM? THEY MINDED THEM NOT. And as words are often more offensive
than actions, this open contempt of the English tended much to
aggravate the general discontent, and made every act of violence
committed by the foreigners appear not only an injury but an affront
to them [d].
[FN [b] Trivet, p. 174. [c] M. Paris, p. 491. M. West. p. 338.
Knyghton, p. 2436. [d] M. Paris, p. 566, 666. Ann. Waverl. p. 214.
Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 335.]
I reckon not among the violations of the great charter some arbitrary
exertions of prerogative, to which Henry's necessities pushed him, and
which, without producing any discontent, were uniformly continued by
all his successors till the last century. As the Parliament often
refused him supplies, and that in a manner somewhat rude and indecent
[e], he obliged his opulent subjects, particularly the citizens of
London, to grant him loans of money; and it is natural to imagine,
that the same want of economy which reduced him to the necessity of
borrowing, would prevent him from being very punctual in the repayment
[f]. He demanded benevolences, or pretended voluntary contributions,
from his nobility and prelates [g]. He was the first king of England
since the Conquest that could fairly be said to lie under the
restraint of law; and he was also the first that practised the
dispensing power, and employed the clause of NON OBSTANTE in his
grants and patents. When objections were made to this novelty, he
replied, that the pope exercised that authority; and why might not he
imitate the example? But the abuse which the pope made of his
dispensing power, in violating the canons of general councils, in
invading the privileges and customs of all particular churches, and in
usurping on the rights of patrons, was more likely to excite the
jealousy of the people, than to reconcile them to a similar practice
in their civil government. Roger de Thurkesby, one of the king's
justices, was so displeased with the precedent, that he exclaimed,
ALAS! WHAT TIMES ARE WE FALLEN INTO! BEHOLD, THE CIVIL COURT IS
CORRUPTED IN IMITATION OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL, AND THE RIVER IS
POISONED FROM THE FOUNTAIN.
[FN [e] M. Paris, p. 301. [f] Ibid. p. 406. [g] Ibid. p. 507.]
The king's partiality and profuse bounty to his foreign relations, and
to their friends and favourites, would have appeared more tolerable to
the English, had any thing been done meanwhile for the honour of the
nation; or had Henry's enterprises in foreign countries been attended
with any success or glory to himself or to the public: at least, such
military talents in the king would have served to keep his barons in
awe, and have given weight and authority to his government. But
though he declared war against Lewis IX. in 1242, and made an
expedition into Guienne, upon the invitation of his father-in-law, the
Count de la Marche, who promised to join him with all his forces, he
was unsuccessful in his attempts against that great monarch, was
worsted at Taillebourg, was deserted by his allies, lost what remained
to him of Poictou, and was obliged to return, with loss of honour,
into England [h]. The Gascon nobility were attached to the English
government, because the distance of their sovereign allowed them to
remain in a state of almost total independence; [MN 1253.] and they
claimed, some time after, Henry's protection against an invasion,
which the King of Castile made upon that territory. Henry returned
into Guienne, and was more successful in this expedition; but he
thereby involved himself and his nobility in an enormous debt, which
both increased their discontents, and exposed him to greater danger
from their enterprises [i].
[FN [h] M. Paris, p. 393, 394, 398, 399, 405. W. Heming. p. 574.
Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 153. [i] M. Paris, p. 614.]
Want of economy, and an ill-judged liberality, were Henry's great
defects; and his debts, even before this expedition, had become so
troublesome, that he sold all his plate and jewels, in order to
discharge them. When this expedient was first proposed to him, he
asked where he should find purchasers? It was replied, the citizens
of London. ON MY WORD, said he, IF THE TREASURY OF AUGUSTUS WERE
BROUGHT FOR SALE, THE CITIZENS ARE ABLE TO BE THE PURCHASERS: THESE
CLOWNS, WHO ASSUME TO THEMSELVES THE NAME OF BARONS, ABOUND IN EVERY
THING, WHILE WE ARE REDUCED TO NECESSITIES [k]. And he was
thenceforth observed to be more forward and greedy in his exactions
upon the citizens [l].
[FN [k] Ibid. p. 501. [l] Ibid. p. 501, 507, 518, 578, 606, 625,
648.]
[MN Ecclesiastical grievances.]
But the grievances, which the English during this reign had reason to
complain of in the civil government, seem to have been still less
burdensome than those which they suffered from the usurpations and
exactions of the court of Rome. [MN 1253.] On the death of Langton
in 1228, the monks of Christ-church elected Walter de Hemesham, one of
their own body, for his successor: but as Henry refused to confirm the
election, the pope, at his desire, annulled it [m]; and immediately
appointed Richard, Chancellor of Lincoln, for archbishop, without
waiting for a new election. On the death of Richard in 1231, the
monks elected Ralph de Neville, Bishop of Chichester; and though Henry
was much pleased with the election, the pope, who thought that prelate
too much attached to the crown, assumed the power of annulling his
election [n]. He rejected two clergymen more, whom the monks had
successively chosen; and he at last told them, that, if they would
elect Edmond, treasurer of the church of Salisbury, he would confirm
their choice; and his nomination was complied with. The pope had the
prudence to appoint both times very worthy primates; but men could not
forbear observing his intention of thus drawing gradually to himself
the right of bestowing that important dignity.
[FN [m] M. Paris, p. 224. [n] Ibid. p. 254.]
The avarice, however, more than the ambition, of the see of Rome,
seems to have been in this age the ground of general complaint. The
papal ministers, finding a vast stock of power amassed by their
predecessors, were desirous of turning it to immediate profit which
they enjoyed at home, rather than of enlarging their authority in
distant countries, where they never intended to reside. Every thing
was become venal in the Romish tribunals; simony was openly practised;
no favours, and even no justice, could be obtained without a bribe;
the highest bidder was sure to have the preference, without regard
either to the merits of the person or of the cause; and besides the
usual perversions of right in the decision of controversies, the pope
openly assumed an absolute and uncontrolled authority of setting
aside, by the plenitude of his apostolic power, all particular rules,
and all privileges of patrons, churches, and convents. On pretence of
remedying these abuses, Pope Honorius, in 1226, complaining of the
poverty of his see as the source of all grievances, demanded from
every cathedral two of the best prebends, and from every convent two
monks' portions, to be set apart as a perpetual and settled revenue of
the papal crown: but all men being sensible that the revenue would
continue for ever, the abuses immediately return, his demand was
unanimously rejected. About three years after, the pope demanded and
obtained the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues, which he levied in
a very oppressive manner; requiring payment before the clergy had
drawn their rents or tithes, and sending about usurers, who advanced
them the money at exorbitant interest. In the year 1240, Otho, the
legate, having in vain attempted the clergy in a body, obtained
separately, by intrigues and menaces, large sums from the prelates and
convents, and on his departure is said to have carried more money out
of the kingdom than he left in it. This experiment was renewed four
years after with success by Martin the nuncio, who brought from Rome
powers of suspending and excommunicating all clergymen that refused to
comply with his demands. The king, who relied on the pope for the
support of his tottering authority, never failed to countenance those
exactions.
Meanwhile, all the chief benefices of the kingdom were conferred on
Italians; great numbers of that nation were sent over at one time to
be provided for; non-residence and pluralities were carried to an
enormous height; Mansel, the king's chaplain, is computed to have held
at once seven hundred ecclesiastical livings; and the abuses became so
evident as to be palpable to the blindness of superstition itself.
The people, entering into associations, rose against the Italian
clergy; pillaged their barns; wasted their lands; insulted the persons
of such of them as they found in the kingdom [o]; and when the
justices made inquiry into the authors of this disorder, the guilt was
found to involve so many, and those of such high rank, that it passed
unpunished. At last, when Innocent IV., in 1245, called a general
council at Lyons, in order to excommunicate the Emperor Frederic, the
king and nobility sent over agents to complain before the council of
the rapacity of the Romish church. They represented, among many other
grievances, that the benefices of the Italian clergy in England had
been estimated, and were found to amount to sixty thousand marks [p] a
year, a sum which exceeded the annual revenue of the crown [q]. They
obtained only an evasive answer from the pope; but as mention had been
made before the council of the feudal subjection of England to the see
of Rome, the English agents, at whose head was Roger Bigod, Earl of
Norfolk, exclaimed against the pretension, and insisted that King John
had no right, without the consent of his barons, to subject the
kingdom to so ignominious a servitude [r]. The popes, indeed, afraid
of carrying matters too far against England, seem thenceforth to have
little insisted on that pretension.
[FN [o] Rymer, vol. i. p. 323. M. Paris, p. 255, 257. [p] Innocent's
bull in Rymer, vol. i. p. 471, says only fifty thousand marks a year.
[q] M. Paris, p. 451. The customs were part of Henry's revenue, and
amounted to six thousand pounds a year: they were at first small sums
paid by the merchants for the use of the king's warehouses, measures,
weights, &c. See Gilbert's History of the Exch. p. 214. [r] M.
Paris, p. 460.]
This check, received at the council of Lyons, was not able to stop the
court of Rome in its rapacity; Innocent exacted the revenues of all
vacant benefices, the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues without
exception; the third of such as exceeded a hundred marks a year, and
the half of such as were possessed by non-residents [s]. He claimed
the goods of all intestate clergymen [t]; he pretended a title to
inherit all money gotten by usury; he levied benevolences upon the
people; and when the king, contrary to his usual practice, prohibited
these exactions, he threatened to pronounce against him the same
censures which he had emitted against the Emperor Frederic [u].
[FN [s] Ibid. p. 480. Ann. Burt. p. 305, 373. [t] M. Paris, p. 474.
[u] Ibid. p. 476.]
[MN 1255.] But the most oppressive expedient employed by the pope was
the embarking of Henry in a project for the conquest of Naples or
Sicily on this side the Fare, as it was called; an enterprise, which
threw much dishonour on the king, and involved him, during some years,
in great trouble and expense. The Romish church, taking advantage of
favourable incidents, had reduced the kingdom of Sicily to the same
state of feudal vassalage which she pretended to extend over England,
and which, by reason of the distance, as well as high spirit of this
latter kingdom, she was not able to maintain. After the death of the
Emperor Frederic II., the succession of Sicily devolved to Conradine,
grandson of that monarch; and Mainfroy, his natural son, under
pretence of governing the kingdom during the minority of the prince,
had formed a scheme of establishing his own authority. Pope Innocent,
who had carried on violent war against the Emperor Frederic, and had
endeavoured to dispossess him of his Italian dominions, still
continued hostilities against his grandson; but being disappointed in
all his schemes by the activity and artifices of Mainfroy, he found
that his own force alone was not sufficient to bring to a happy issue
so great an enterprise. He pretended to dispose of the Sicilian
crown, both as superior lord of that particular kingdom, and as vicar
of Christ, to whom all kingdoms of the earth were subjected; and he
made a tender of it to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, whose immense
riches, he flattered himself, would be able to support the military
operations against Mainfroy. As Richard had the prudence to refuse
the present [w], he applied to the king, whose levity and thoughtless
disposition gave Innocent more hopes of success; and he offered him
the crown of Sicily for his second son, Edmond [x]. Henry, allured by
so magnificent a present, without reflecting on the consequences,
without consulting either with his brother or the Parliament, accepted
of the insidious proposal; and gave the pope unlimited credit to
expend whatever sums he thought necessary for completing the conquest
of Sicily. Innocent, who was engaged by his own interests to wage war
with Mainfroy, was glad to carry on his enterprises at the expense of
his ally: Alexander IV., who succeeded him in the papal throne,
continued the same policy; and Henry was surprised to find himself on
a sudden involved in an immense debt, which he had never been
consulted in contracting. The sum already amounted to one hundred and
thirty-five thousand five hundred and forty-one marks, besides
interest [y]; and he had the prospect, if he answered this demand, of
being soon loaded with more exorbitant expenses; if he refused it, of
both incurring the pope's displeasure, and losing the crown of Sicily,
which he hoped soon to have the glory of fixing on the head of his
son.
[FN [w] M. Paris, p. 650. [x] Rymer, vol. i. p. 502, 512, 530. M.
Paris, p. 599, 613. [y] Rymer, vol. i. p. 587. Chron. Dunst. vol. i.
p. 319.]
He applied to the Parliament for supplies; and that he might be sure
not to meet with opposition, he sent no writs to the more refractory
barons; but even those who were summoned, sensible of the ridiculous
cheat imposed by the pope, determined not to lavish their money on
such chimerical projects; and making a pretext of the absence of their
brethren, they refused to take the king's demands into consideration
[z]. In this extremity the clergy were his only resource; and as both
their temporal and spiritual sovereign concurred in loading them, they
were ill able to defend themselves against this united authority.
[FN [z] M. Paris, p. 614.]
The pope published a crusade for the conquest of Sicily; and required
every one, who had taken the cross against the infidels, or had vowed
to advance money for that service, to support the war against
Mainfroy, a more terrible enemy, as he pretended, to the Christian
faith than any Saracen [a]. He levied a tenth on all ecclesiastical
benefices in England for three years; and gave orders to excommunicate
all bishops who made not punctual payment. He granted to the king the
goods of intestate clergymen; the revenues of vacant benefices; the
revenues of all non-residents [b]. But these taxations, being levied
by some rule, were deemed less grievous than another imposition, which
arose from the suggestion of the Bishop of Hereford, and which might
have opened the door to endless and intolerable abuses.
[FN [a] Rymer, vol. i. p. 547, 548, &c. [b] Ibid. vol. i. p. 597,
598.]
This prelate, who resided at the court of Rome, by a deputation from
the English church, drew bills of different values, but amounting on
the whole to one hundred and fifty thousand five hundred and forty
marks, on all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom; and granted these
bills to Italian merchants, who, it was pretended, had advanced money
for the service of the war against Mainfroy [c]. As there was no
likelihood of the English prelates submitting, without compulsion, to
such an extraordinary demand, Rustand, the legate, was charged with
the commission of employing authority to that purpose; and he summoned
an assembly of the bishops and abbots, whom he acquainted with the
pleasure of the pope and of the king. Great were the surprise and
indignation of the assembly. The Bishop of Worcester exclaimed, that
he would lose his life rather than comply: the Bishop of London said,
that the pope and king were more powerful than he; but if his mitre
were taken off his head, he would clap on a helmet in its place [d].
The legate was no less violent on the other hand; and he told the
assembly, in plain terms, that all ecclesiastical benefices were the
property of the pope, and he might dispose of them, either in whole or
in part, as he saw proper [e]. In the end, the bishops and abbots,
being threatened with excommunication, which made all the revenues
fall into the king's hands, were obliged to submit to the exaction;
and the only mitigation which the legate allowed them was, that the
tenths, already granted, should be accepted as a partial payment of
the bills. But the money was still insufficient for the pope's
purpose: the conquest of Sicily was as remote as ever: the demands
which came from Rome were endless: Pope Alexander became so urgent a
creditor, that he sent over a legate to England, threatening the
kingdom with an interdict, and the king with excommunication, if the
arrears, which he pretended to be due to him, were not instantly
remitted [f]. And at last Henry, sensible of the cheat, began to
think of breaking off the agreement, and of resigning into the pope's
hands that crown, which it was not intended by Alexander, that he or
his family should ever enjoy [g].
[FN [c] M. Paris, p. 612, 628. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 54. [d] M. Paris,
p. 614. [e] Ibid. p. 619. [f] Rymer, vol. i. p. 624. M. Paris, p.
648. [g] Rymer, vol. i. p. 630.]
[MN Earl of Cornwall elected King of the Romans.]
The Earl of Cornwall had now reason to value himself on his foresight,
in refusing the fraudulent bargain with Rome, and in preferring the
solid honours of an opulent and powerful prince of the blood of
England, to the empty and precarious glory of a foreign dignity. But
he had not always firmness sufficient to adhere to this resolution:
his vanity and ambition prevailed at last over his prudence and his
avarice; and he was engaged in an enterprise no less extensive and
vexatious than that of his brother, and not attended with much greater
probability of success. The immense opulence of Richard having made
the German princes cast their eye on him as a candidate for the
empire, he was tempted to expend vast sums of money on his election;
and he succeeded so far as to be chosen King of the Romans, which
seemed to render his succession infallible to the imperial throne. He
went over to Germany, and carried out of the kingdom no less a sum
than seven hundred thousand marks, if we may credit the account given
by some ancient authors [h], which is probably much exaggerated [i].
His money, while it lasted, procured him friends and partisans; but it
was soon drained from him by the avidity of the German princes; and
having no personal or family connexions in that country, and no solid
foundation of power, he found at last that he had lavished away the
frugality of a whole life in order to procure a splendid title; and
that his absence from England, joined to the weakness of his brother's
government, gave reins to the factious and turbulent dispositions of
the English barons, and involved his own country and family in great
calamities.
[FN [h] M. Paris, p. 638. The same author, a few pages before, makes
Richard's treasures amount to little more than half the sum, p. 634.
The king's dissipations and expenses, throughout his whole reign,
according to the same author, had amounted only to about nine hundred
and forty thousand marks, p. 638. [i] The sums mentioned by ancient
authors, who were almost all monks, are often improbable, and never
consistent. But we know, from an infallible authority, the public
remonstrance to the council of Lyons, that the king's revenues were
below sixty thousand marks a year: his brother, therefore, could never
have been master of seven hundred thousand marks; especially as he did
not sell his estates in England, as we learn from the same author: and
we hear afterwards of his ordering all his woods to be cut, in order
to satisfy the rapacity of the German princes. His son succeeded to
the earldom of Cornwall, and his other revenues.]
[MN Discontents of the barons.]
The successful revolt of the nobility from King John, and their
imposing on him and his successors limitations of their royal power,
had made them feel their own weight and importance, had set a
dangerous precedent of resistance, and being followed by a long
minority, had impoverished as well as weakened that crown, which they
were at last induced, from the fear of worse consequences, to replace
on the head of young Henry. In the king's situation, either great
abilities and vigour were requisite to overawe the barons, or great
caution and reserve to give them no pretence for complaints; and it
must be confessed that this prince was possessed of neither of these
talents. He had not prudence to choose right measures; he wanted even
that constancy, which sometimes gives weight to wrong ones; he was
entirely devoted to his favourites, who were always foreigners; he
lavished on them, without discretion, his diminished revenue; and
finding that his barons indulged their disposition towards tyranny,
and observed not to their own vassals the same rules which they had
imposed on the crown, he was apt, in his administration, to neglect
all the salutary articles of the great charter, which he remarked to
be so little regarded by his nobility. This conduct had extremely
lessened his authority in the kingdom; had multiplied complaints
against him; and had frequently exposed him to affronts, and even to
dangerous attempts upon his prerogative. In the year 1244, when he
desired a supply from Parliament, the barons, complaining of the
frequent breaches of the great charter, and of the many fruitless
applications which they had formerly made for the redress of this and
other grievances, demanded, in return, that he should give them the
nomination of the great justiciary and of the chancellor, to whose
hands chiefly the administration of justice was committed; and if we
may credit the historian [k], they had formed the plan of other
limitations, as well as of associations to maintain them, which would
have reduced the king to be an absolute cipher; and have held the
crown in perpetual pupilage and dependence. The king, to satisfy
them, would agree to nothing but a renewal of the charter, and a
general permission to excommunicate all the violaters of it; and he
received no supply, except a scutage of twenty shillings on each
knight's fee, for the marriage of his eldest daughter to the King of
Scotland; a burden which was expressly annexed to their feudal
tenures.
[FN [k] M. Paris, p. 432.]
Four years after, in a full Parliament, when Henry demanded a new
supply, he was openly reproached with a breach of his word, and the
frequent violations of the charter. He was asked, whether he did not
blush to desire any aid from his people, whom he professedly hated and
despised, to whom, on all occasions, he preferred aliens and
foreigners, and who groaned under the oppressions which he either
permitted or exercised over them. He was told that, besides
disparaging his nobility, by forcing them to contract unequal and mean
marriages with strangers, no rank of men was so low as to escape
vexatious from him or his ministers; that even the victuals consumed
in his household, the clothes which himself and his servants wore,
still more the wine which they used, were all taken by violence from
the lawful owners, and no compensation was ever made them for the
injury; that foreign merchants, to the great prejudice and infamy of
the kingdom, shunned the English harbours, as if they were possessed
by pirates, and the commerce with all nations was thus cut off by
these acts of violence; that loss was added to loss, and injury to
injury, while the merchants, who had been despoiled of their goods,
were also obliged to carry them at their own charge to whatever place
the king was pleased to appoint them; that even the poor fishermen on
the coast could not escape his oppressions and those of his courtiers;
and finding that they had not full liberty to dispose of their
commodities in the English market, were frequently constrained to
carry them to foreign ports, and to hazard all the perils of the
ocean, rather than those which awaited them from his oppressive
emissaries; and that his very religion was a ground of complaint to
his subjects, while they observed, that the waxen tapers and splendid
silks, employed in so many useless processions, were the spoils which
he had forcibly ravished from the true owners [l]. Throughout this
remonstrance, in which the complaints, derived from an abuse of the
ancient right of purveyance, may be supposed to be somewhat
exaggerated, there appears a strange mixture of regal tyranny in the
practices which gave rise to it, and of aristocratical liberty, or
rather licentiousness, in the expressions employed by the Parliament.
But a mixture of this kind is observable in all the ancient feudal
governments; and both of them proved equally hurtful to the people.
[FN [l] M. Paris, p. 498. See farther, p. 578. M. West. p. 348.]
As the king, in answer to their remonstrance, gave the Parliament only
good words and fair promises, attended with the most humble
submissions, which they had often found deceitful, he obtained at that
time no supply; and therefore, in the year 1253, when he found himself
again under the necessity of applying to Parliament, he had provided a
new pretence, which he deemed infallible, and taking the vow of a
crusade, he demanded their assistance in that pious enterprise [m].
The Parliament, however, for some time hesitated to comply; and the
ecclesiastical order sent a deputation, consisting of four prelates,
the primate, and the Bishops of Winchester, Salisbury, and Carlisle,
in order to remonstrate with him on his frequent violations of their
privileges, the oppressions with which he had loaded them and all his
subjects [n], and the uncanonical and forced elections which were made
to vacant dignities. "It is true," replied the king, "I have been
somewhat faulty in this particular: I obtruded you, my Lord of
Canterbury, upon your see: I was obliged to employ both entreaties and
menaces, my Lord of Winchester, to have you elected: my proceedings, I
confess, were very irregular, my Lords of Salisbury and Carlisle, when
I raised you from the lowest stations to your present dignities: I am
determined henceforth to correct these abuses; and it will also become
you, in order to make a thorough reformation, to resign your present
benefices, and try to enter again in a more regular and canonical
manner [o]." The bishops, surprised at these unexpected sarcasms,
replied, that the question was not at present how to correct past
errors, but to avoid them for the future. The king promised redress
both of ecclesiastical and civil grievances; and the Parliament in
return agreed to grant him a supply, a tenth of the ecclesiastical
benefices, and a scutage of three marks on each knight's fee: but as
they had experienced his frequent breach of promise, they required
that he should ratify the great charter in a manner still more
authentic and more solemn than any which he had hitherto employed.
All the prelates and abbots were assembled: they held burning tapers
in their hands: the great charter was read before them: they denounced
the sentence of excommunication against every one who should
thenceforth violate that fundamental law: they threw their tapers on
the ground, and exclaimed, MAY THE SOUL OF EVERY ONE WHO INCURS THIS
SENTENCE SO STINK AND CORRUPT IN HELL! The king bore a part in this
ceremony, and subjoined, "So help me God, I will keep all these
articles inviolate, as I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a
knight, and as I am a king crowned and anointed [p]." Yet was the
tremendous ceremony no sooner finished, than his favourites, abusing
his weakness, made him return to the same arbitrary and irregular
administration; and the reasonable expectations of his people were
thus perpetually eluded and disappointed [q].
[FN [m] M. Paris, p. 518, 558, 568. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 293.
[n] M. Paris, p. 568. [o] Ibid. p. 579. [p] M. Paris, p. 580. Ann.
Burt. p. 323. Ann. Waverl. p. 210. W. Heming. p. 571. M. West. p.
353. [q] M. Paris, p. 597, 608.]
[MN 1258. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.]
All these imprudent and illegal measures afforded a pretence to Simon
de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, to attempt an innovation in the
government, and to wrest the sceptre from the feeble and irresolute
hand which held it. This nobleman was a younger son of that Simon de
Montfort, who had conducted, with such valour and renown, the crusade
against the Albigenses, and who, though he tarnished his famous
exploits by cruelty and ambition, had left a name very precious to all
the bigots of that age, particularly to the ecclesiastics. A large
inheritance in England fell by succession to this family; but as the
elder brother enjoyed still more opulent possessions in France, and
could not perform fealty to two masters, he transferred his right to
Simon, his younger brother, who came over to England, did homage for
his lands, and was raised to the dignity of Earl of Leicester. In the
year 1238, he espoused Eleanor, dowager of William, Earl of Pembroke,
and sister to the king [r]; but the marriage of this princess with a
subject and a foreigner, though contracted with Henry's consent, was
loudly complained of by the Earl of Cornwall and all the barons of
England; and Leicester was supported against their violence by the
king's favour and authority alone [s]. But he had no sooner
established himself in his possessions and dignities, than he
acquired, by insinuation and address, a strong interest with the
nation, and gained equally the affections of all orders of men. He
lost, however, the friendship of Henry, from the usual levity and
fickleness of that prince; he was banished the court; he was recalled;
he was intrusted with the command of Guienne [t], where he did good
service and acquired honour; he was again disgraced by the king, and
his banishment from court seemed now final and irrevocable. Henry
called him traitor to his face: Leicester gave him the lie, and told
him, that if he were not his sovereign, he would soon make him repent
of that insult. Yet was this quarrel accommodated, either from the
good nature or timidity of the king; and Leicester was again admitted
into some degree of favour and authority. But as this nobleman was
become too great to preserve an entire complaisance to Henry's
humours, and to act in subserviency to his other minions, he found
more advantage in cultivating his interest with the public, and in
inflaming the general discontents which prevailed against the
administration. He filled every place with complaints against the
infringement of the great charter, the acts of violence committed on
the people, the combination between the pope and the king in their
tyranny and extortions, Henry's neglect of his native subjects and
barons; and though he himself a foreigner, he was more loud than any
in representing the indignity of submitting to the dominion of
foreigners. By his hypocritical pretensions to devotion, he gained
the favour of the zealots and clergy: by his seeming concern for
public good, he acquired the affections of the public: and besides the
private friendships which he had cultivated with the barons, his
animosity against the favourites created an union of interests between
him and that powerful order.
[FN [r] Ibid. p. 314. [s] M. Paris, p. 315. [t] Rymer, vol. i. p.
459, 513.]
A recent quarrel, which broke out between Leicester and William de
Valence, Henry's half-brother, and chief favourite, brought matters to
extremity [u], and determined the former to give full scope to his
bold and unbounded ambition, which the laws and the king's authority
had hitherto with difficulty restrained. He secretly called a meeting
of the most considerable barons, particularly Humphrey de Bohun, high
constable, Roger Bigod, earl mareschal, and the Earls of Warwick and
Gloucester; men who by their family and possessions stood in the first
rank of the English nobility. He represented to this company the
necessity of reforming the state, and of putting the execution of the
laws into other hands than those which had hitherto appeared, from
repeated experience, so unfit for the charge with which they were
intrusted. He exaggerated the oppressions exercised against the lower
orders of the state, the violations of the barons' privileges, the
continued depredations made on the clergy; and in order to aggravate
the enormity of his conduct, he appealed to the great charter, which
Henry had so often ratified, and which was calculated to prevent for
ever the return of those intolerable grievances. He magnified the
generosity of their ancestors, who, at a great expense of blood, had
extorted that famous concession from the crown; but lamented their own
degeneracy, who allowed so important an advantage, once obtained, to
be wrested from them by a weak prince and by insolent strangers. And
he insisted, that the king's word, after so many submissions and
fruitless promises on his part, could no longer be relied on; and that
nothing but his absolute inability to violate national privileges
could henceforth ensure the regular observance of them.
[FN [u] M. Paris, p. 649.]
These topics, which were founded in truth, and suited so well to the
sentiments of the company, had the desired effect; and the barons
embraced a resolution of redressing the public grievances, by taking
into their own hands the administration of government. Henry having
summoned a Parliament, in expectation of receiving supplies for his
Sicilian project, the barons appeared in the hall, clad in complete
armour, and with their swords by their side: the king on his entry,
struck with the unusual appearance, asked them what was their purpose,
and whether they intended to make him their prisoner [w]: Roger Bigod
replied, in the name of the rest, that he was not their prisoner, but
their sovereign; that they even intended to grant him large supplies,
in order to fix his son on the throne of Sicily; that they only
expected some return for this expense and service; and that, as he had
frequently made submissions to the Parliament, had acknowledged his
past errors, and had still allowed himself to be carried into the same
path, which gave them such just reason of complaint, he must now yield
to more strict regulations, and confer authority on those who were
able and willing to redress the national grievances. Henry, partly
allured by the hopes of supply, partly intimidated by the union and
martial appearance of the barons, agreed to their demand: and promised
to summon another Parliament at Oxford, in order to digest the new
plan of government, and to elect the persons who were to be intrusted
with the chief authority.
[FN [w] Annal. Theokesbury.]
[MN 11th June. Provisions of Oxford.]
This Parliament, which the royalists, and even the nation, from
experience of the confusions that attended its measures, afterwards
denominated the MAD PARLIAMENT, met on the day appointed; and as all
the barons brought along with them their military vassals, and
appeared with an armed force, the king, who had taken no precautions
against them, was in reality a prisoner in their hands, and was
obliged to submit to all the terms which they were pleased to impose
upon him. Twelve barons were selected from among the king's
ministers; twelve more were chosen by Parliament: to these twenty-
four, unlimited authority was granted to reform the state; and the
king himself took an oath, that he would maintain whatever ordinances
they should think proper to enact for that purpose [x]. Leicester was
at the head of the supreme council, to which the legislative power was
thus in reality transferred; and all their measures were taken by his
secret influence and direction. Their first step bore a specious
appearance, and seemed well calculated for the end which they
professed to be the object of all these innovations: they ordered that
four knights should be chosen by each county; that they should make
inquiry into the grievances of which their neighbourhood had reason to
complain, and should attend the ensuing Parliament, in order to give
information to that assembly of the state of their particular counties
[y]: a nearer approach to our present constitution than had been made
by the barons in the reign of King John, when the knights were only
appointed to meet in their several counties, and there to draw up a
detail of their grievances. Meanwhile the twenty-four barons
proceeded to enact some regulations as a redress of such grievances as
were supposed to be sufficiently notorious. They ordered that three
sessions of Parliament should be regularly held every year in the
months of February, June, and October; that a new sheriff should be
annually elected by the votes of the freeholders in each county [z];
that the sheriffs should have no power of fining the barons who did
not attend their courts, or the circuits of the justiciaries; that no
heirs should be committed to the wardship of foreigners, and no
castles intrusted to their custody; and that no new warrens or forests
should be created, nor the revenues of any counties or hundreds be let
to farm. Such were the regulations which the twenty-four barons
established at Oxford, for the redress of public grievances.
[FN [x] Rymer, vol. i. p. 655. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 334.
Knyghton, p. 2445. [y] M. Paris, p. 657. Addit. p. 140. Ann. Burt.
p. 412. [z] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 336.]
But the Earl of Leicester and his associates, having advanced so far
to satisfy the nation, instead of continuing in this popular course,
or granting the king that supply which they had promised him,
immediately provided for the extension and continuance of their own
authority. They roused anew the popular clamour which had long
prevailed against foreigners; and they fell with the utmost violence
on the king's half-brothers, who were supposed to be the authors of
all national grievances, and whom Henry had no longer any power to
protect. The four brothers, sensible of their danger, took to flight,
with an intention of making their escape out of the kingdom; they were
eagerly pursued by the barons; Aymer, one of the brothers, who had
been elected to the see of Winchester, took shelter in his episcopal
palace, and carried the others along with him; they were surrounded in
that place, and threatened to be dragged out by force, and to be
punished for their crimes and misdemeanors; and the king, pleading the
sacredness of an ecclesiastical sanctuary, was glad to extricate them
from this danger by banishing them the kingdom. In this act of
violence, as well as in the former usurpations of the barons, the
queen and her uncles were thought to have secretly concurred; being
jealous of the credit acquired by the brothers, which they found had
eclipsed and annihilated their own.
[MN Usurpations of the barons.]
But the subsequent proceedings of the twenty-four barons were
sufficient to open the eyes of the nation, and to prove their
intention of reducing for ever both the king and the people under the
arbitrary power of a very narrow aristocracy, which must at last have
terminated either in anarchy, or in a violent usurpation and tyranny.
They pretended that they had not yet digested all the regulations
necessary for the reformation of the state and for the redress of
grievances; and they must still retain their power, till that great
purpose were thoroughly effected: in other words, that they must be
perpetual governors, and must continue to reform, till they were
pleased to abdicate their authority. They formed an association among
themselves, and swore that they would stand by each other with their
lives and fortunes; they displaced all the chief officers of the
crown, the justiciary, the chancellor, the treasurer; and advanced
either themselves or their own creatures in their place: even the
officers of the king's household were disposed of at their pleasure:
the government of all the castles was put into hands in whom they
found reason to confide: and the whole power of the state being thus
transferred to them, they ventured to impose an oath, by which all the
subjects were obliged to swear, under the penalty of being declared
public enemies, that they would obey and execute all the regulations,
both known and unknown, of the twenty-four barons; and all this for
the greater glory of God, the honour of the church, the service of the
king, and the advantage of the kingdom [a]. No one dared to withstand
this tyrannical authority. Prince Edward himself, the king's eldest
son, a youth of eighteen, who began to give indications of that great
and manly spirit which appeared throughout the whole course of his
life, was, after making some opposition, constrained to take that oath
which really deposed his father and his family from sovereign
authority [b]. Earl Warrenne was the last person in the kingdom that
could be brought to give the confederated barons this mark of
submission.
[FN [a] Chron T. Wykes, p. 52. [b] Ann. Burt. p. 411.]
But the twenty-four barons, not content with the usurpation of the
royal power, introduced an innovation in the constitution of
Parliament, which was of the utmost importance. They ordained that
this assembly should choose a committee of twelve persons, who should,
in the intervals of the sessions, possess the authority of the whole
Parliament, and should attend, on a summons, the person of the king in
all his motions. But so powerful were these barons, that this
regulation was also submitted to; the whole government was overthrown,
or fixed on new foundations; and the monarchy was totally subverted,
without its being possible for the king to strike a single stroke in
defence of the constitution against the newly-elected oligarchy.
[MN 1259.] The report that the King of the Romans intended to pay a
visit to England gave alarm to the ruling barons, who dreaded lest the
extensive influence and established authority of that prince would be
employed to restore the prerogatives of his family, and overturn their
plan of government [c]. They sent over the Bishop of Worcester, who
met him at St. Omars; asked him, in the name of the barons, the reason
of his journey, and how long he intended to stay in England; and
insisted that, before he entered the kingdom, he should swear to
observe the regulations established at Oxford. On Richard's refusal
to take this oath, they prepared to resist him as a public enemy; they
fitted out a fleet, assembled an army, and exciting the inveterate
prejudices of the people against foreigners, from whom they had
suffered so many oppressions, spread the report that Richard, attended
by a number of strangers, meant to restore by force the authority of
his exiled brothers, and to violate all the securities provided for
public liberty. The King of the Romans was at last obliged to submit
to the terms required of him [d].
[FN [c] M. Paris, p. 661. [d] Ibid. p. 661, 662. Chron. T. Wykes, p.
53.]
But the barons, in proportion to their continuance in power, began
gradually to lose that popularity which had assisted them in obtaining
it; and men repined that regulations, which were occasionally
established for the reformation of the state, were likely to become
perpetual, and to subvert entirely the ancient constitution. They
were apprehensive lest the power of the nobles, always oppressive,
should now exert itself without control, by removing the counterpoise
of the crown; and their fears were increased by some new edicts of the
barons, which were plainly calculated to procure to themselves an
impunity in all their violences. They appointed that the circuits of
the itinerant justices, the sole check on their arbitrary conduct,
should be held only once in seven years; and men easily saw that a
remedy, which returned after such long intervals against an oppressive
power, which was perpetual, would prove totally insignificant and
useless [e]. The cry became loud in the nation, that the barons
should finish their intended regulations. The knights of the shires,
who seem now to have been pretty regularly assembled, and sometimes in
a separate house, made remonstrances against the slowness of their
proceedings. They represented that, though the king had performed all
the conditions required of him, the barons had hitherto done nothing
for the public good, and had only been careful to promote their own
private advantage, and to make inroads on the royal authority; and
they even appealed to Prince Edward, and claimed his interposition for
the interests of the nation and the reformation of the government [f].
The prince replied, that though it was from constraint, and contrary
to his private sentiments, he had sworn to maintain the provisions of
Oxford, he was determined to observe his oath: but he sent a message
to the barons, requiring them to bring their undertaking to a speedy
conclusion, and fulfil their engagements to the public: otherwise he
menaced them, that, at the expense of his life, he would oblige them
to do their duty, and would shed the last drop of his blood in
promoting the interests, and satisfying the just wishes of the nation
[g].
[FN [e] M. Paris, p. 667. Trivet, p. 209. [f] Annal. Burt. p. 427.
[g] Id. ibid.]
The barons, urged by so pressing a necessity, published at last a new
code of ordinances for the reformation of the state [h]; but the
expectations of the people were extremely disappointed, when they
found that these consisted only of some trivial alterations in the
municipal law, and still more, when the barons pretended that the task
was not yet finished, and that they must farther prolong their
authority, in order to bring the work of reformation to the desired
period. The current of popularity was now much turned to the side of
the crown; and the barons had little to rely on for their support,
besides the private influence and power of their families, which,
though exorbitant, was likely to prove inferior to the combination of
king and people. Even this basis of power was daily weakened by their
intestine jealousies and animosities; their ancient and inveterate
quarrels broke out when they came to share the spoils of the crown;
and the rivalship between the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester, the
chief leaders among them, began to disjoint the whole confederacy.
The latter, more moderate in his pretensions, was desirous of stopping
or retarding the career of the barons' usurpations; but the former,
enraged at the opposition which he met with in his own party,
pretended to throw up all concern in English affairs, and he retired
into France [i].
[FN [h] Ann. Burt. p. 428, 439. [i] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 348.]
The kingdom of France, the only state with which England had any
considerable intercourse, was at this time governed by Lewis IX., a
prince of the most singular character that is to be met with in all
the records of history. This monarch united, to the mean and abject
superstition of a monk, all the courage and magnanimity of the
greatest hero; and, what may be deemed more extraordinary, the justice
and integrity of a disinterested patriot, the mildness and humanity of
an accomplished philosopher. So far from taking advantage of the
divisions among the English, or attempting to expel those dangerous
rivals from the provinces which they still possessed in France, he had
entertained many scruples with regard to the sentence of attainder
pronounced against the king's father, had even expressed some
intention of restoring the other provinces, and was only prevented
from taking that imprudent resolution by the united remonstrances of
his own barons, who represented the extreme danger of such a measure
[k], and, what had a greater influence on Lewis, the justice of
punishing, by a legal sentence, the barbarity and felony of John.
Whenever this prince interposed in English affairs, it was always with
an intention of composing the differences between the king and his
nobility; he recommended to both parties every peaceable and
reconciling measure; and he used all his authority with the Earl of
Leicester, his native subject, to bend him to compliance with Henry.
[MN 20th May.] He made a treaty with England, at a time when the
distractions of that kingdom were at the greatest height, and when the
king's authority was totally annihilated; and the terms which he
granted might, even in a more prosperous state of their affairs, be
deemed reasonable and advantageous to the English. He yielded up some
territories which had been conquered from Poictou and Guienne; he
ensured the peaceable possession of the latter province to Henry; he
agreed to pay that prince a large sum of money; and he only required
that the king should, in return, make a final cession of Normandy and
the other provinces, which he could never entertain any hopes of
recovering by force of arms [l]. This cession was ratified by Henry,
by his two sons, and two daughters, and by the King of the Romans and
his three sons: Leicester alone, either moved by a vain arrogance, or
desirous to ingratiate himself with the English populace, protested
against the deed, and insisted on the right, however distant, which
might accrue to his consort [m]. Lewis saw, in his obstinacy, the
unbounded ambition of the man; and as the barons insisted that the
money due by treaty should be at their disposal, not at Henry's, he
also saw, and probably with regret, the low condition to which this
monarch, who had more erred from weakness than from any bad intention,
was reduced by the turbulence of his own subjects.
[FN [k] M. Paris, p. 604. [l] Rymer, vol. i. p. 675. M. Paris, p.
566. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 53. Trivet, p. 208. M. West. p. 371. [m]
Chron. T. Wykes, p. 53.]
[MN 1261.] But the situation of Henry soon after wore a more
favourable aspect. The twenty-four barons had now enjoyed the
sovereign power near three years; and had visibly employed it, not for
the reformation of the state, which was their first pretence, but for
the aggrandizement of themselves and of their families. The breach of
trust was apparent to all the world: every order of men felt it, and
murmured against it: the dissensions among the barons themselves,
which increased the evil, made also the remedy more obvious and easy;
and the secret desertion, in particular, of the Earl of Gloucester to
the crown, seemed to promise Henry certain success in any attempt to
resume his authority. Yet durst he not take that step, so
reconcilable both to justice and policy, without making a previous
application to Rome, and desiring an absolution from his oaths and
engagements [n].
[FN [n] Ann. Burt. p. 389.]
The pope was at this time much dissatisfied with the conduct of the
barons, who, in order to gain the favour of the people and clergy of
England, had expelled all the Italian ecclesiastics, had confiscated
their benefices, and seemed determined to maintain the liberties and
privileges of the English church, in which the rights of patronage,
belonging to their own families, were included. The extreme animosity
of the English clergy against the Italians was also a source of his
disgust to this order; and an attempt, which had been made by them for
farther liberty and greater independence on the civil power, was
therefore less acceptable to the court of Rome [o]. About the same
time that the barons at Oxford had annihilated the prerogatives of the
monarchy, the clergy met in a synod at Merton, and passed several
ordinances, which were no less calculated to promote their own
grandeur at the expense of the crown. They decreed, that it was
unlawful to try ecclesiastics by secular judges; that the clergy were
not to regard any prohibitions from civil courts; that lay patrons had
no right to confer spiritual benefices; that the magistrate was
obliged, without farther inquiry, to imprison all excommunicated
persons; and that ancient usage, without any particular grant or
charter, was a sufficient authority for any clerical possessions or
privileges [p]. About a century before, these claims would have been
supported by the court of Rome beyond the most fundamental articles of
faith: they were the chief points maintained by the great martyr,
Becket; and his resolution in defending them had exalted him to the
high station which he held in the catalogue of Romish saints. But
principles were changed with the times: the pope was become somewhat
jealous of the great independence of the English clergy, which made
them stand less in need of his protection, and even imboldened them to
resist his authority, and to complain of the preference given to the
Italian courtiers, whose interests, it is natural to imagine, were the
chief object of his concern. He was ready, therefore, on the king's
application, to annul these new constitutions of the church of England
[q]. And, at the same time, he absolved the king, and all his
subjects, from the oath which they had taken to observe the provisions
of Oxford [r].
[FN [o] Rymer, vol. i. p. 755. [p] Ann. Burt. p. 389. [q] Rymer,
vol. i. p. 755. [r] Ibid. p. 722. M. Paris, p. 666. W. Heming. p.
580. Ypod. Neust. p. 463. Knyghton, p. 2446.]
[MN Prince Edward.]
Prince Edward, whose liberal mind, though in such early youth, had
taught him the great prejudice which his father had incurred, by his
levity, inconstancy, and frequent breach of promise, refused for a
long time to take advantage of this absolution; and declared, that the
provisions of Oxford, how unreasonable soever in themselves, and how
much soever abused by the barons, ought still to be adhered to by
those who had sworn to observe them [s]: he himself had been
constrained by violence to take that oath; yet he was determined to
keep it. By this scrupulous fidelity, the prince acquired the
confidence of all parties, and was afterwards enabled to recover fully
the royal authority, and to perform such great actions, both during
his own reign and that of his father.
[FN [s] M. Paris, p. 667.]
The situation of England, during this period, as well as that of most
European kingdoms, was somewhat peculiar. There was no regular
military force maintained in the nation: the sword, however, was not,
properly speaking, in the hands of the people: the barons were alone
intrusted with the defence of the community; and after any effort
which they made, either against their own prince or against
foreigners, as the military retainers departed home, the armies were
disbanded, and could not speedily be re-assembled at pleasure. It was
easy, therefore, for a few barons, by a combination, to get the start
of the other party, to collect suddenly their troops, and to appear
unexpectedly in the field with an army, which their antagonists,
though equal, or even superior in power and interest, would not dare
to encounter. Hence the sudden revolutions which often took place in
those governments: hence the frequent victories obtained, without a
blow, by one faction over the other: and hence it happened, that the
seeming prevalence of a party was seldom a prognostic of its long
continuance in power and authority.