giving him money by producing a papal mandate, authorising the payment
of a full tithe of all Church revenues to the king for the space of
three years. To make matters worse, “payment was not to be made on the
old assessment, but on a new assessment conducted with strict inquiry,
at the will and judgment of the royal agents and extortioners, who
would seek their own profit before the king’s.” The excuse was that the
king was about to start on a pilgrimage. Grosseteste was then an old
man, but he blazed out at this monstrous demand, especially when the
king’s messengers went on to explain that the tithe for two years might
be paid at once, and that the third year’s tithe could also be raised
before the king actually started. “By our Lady,” said the sturdy bishop
of Lincoln, “what does all this mean? You assume that we shall agree to
this damnable levy, and go on arguing from premises that have not been
admitted. God forbid that we should thus bend our knee to Baal.”
The king’s half-brother, Ethelmar, bishop-elect of Winchester,
deprecated resistance to the will of pope and king, and urged that the
French had consented to pay a similar demand. “Yes,” said the Bishop
of Ely, “and it brought their king no good.” “For the very reason the
French have yielded must we resist,” replied Grosseteste. “To do a
thing twice makes it a custom, and if we pay too, we shall have no
peace. For my own part, I say plainly that I will not pay this evil
demand, lest the king himself as well as us should incur the heavy
wrath of God.” The other bishops followed Grosseteste’s lead, and the
old man went on to advise them to pray the king to think of his eternal
salvation, and to restrain his rash impulses. Henry naturally declined
to send an independent remonstrance to the pope against the mandate,
and the bishops decided they could do nothing in the way of granting
this special tithe. But they were hard put to it, “between the pulling
of the king and the pushing of the pope.”
All Grosseteste’s dealings with the king show the same firm resolution
to stop the royal extortion, and to insist on the fulfilment of the
charters of liberties obtained from the crown. He carries on the work
of Stephen Langton, always backing up the unsuccessful efforts of the
good St. Edmund Rich (Archbishop of Canterbury, 1234–1240) to keep
Henry faithful to his word, and prepares the way for the great campaign
of his friend Simon of Montfort.[37] The very worst period of Henry’s
long reign is covered by Grosseteste’s episcopal life. Hubert de
Burgh’s wise rule was over by 1232, and Peter des Roches and the horde
of aliens were fleecing the country for the next twenty years. It is
not till after Grosseteste’s death that the barons dealt with Henry’s
misrule to any purpose.
At the great council held in London in 1248, at which Grosseteste was
present, a full list of the national grievances is given: the lavish
waste of the wealth of the country on foreigners, the ruin of trade by
the arbitrary seizure of goods by the king and his agents, the robbery
of poor fishermen by royal authority, “so that they think it safer to
trust themselves to the stormy waves and seek a further shore,” and the
keeping bishoprics and abbacies vacant so that the crown may enjoy the
revenues therefrom, are the chief causes of complaint. They were not
new grievances, for the most part, and they were not to die with Henry
III., all charters and royal promises notwithstanding.
Added to the common wrongs of Henry’s wretched misrule were the papal
extortions, directly encouraged by the king. In return for papal
mandates directing churchmen to supply the king with money, what could
Henry--himself the most devoted servant of the papacy--do but help
the pope to get what he could out of England? The wealth of England
was held to be of fabulous amount at Rome, and popes beset by fierce
ungodly emperors naturally turned to it in their need as to a treasury.
But the thing was intolerable to Grosseteste. He had studied in Paris,
he welcomed Dominican and Franciscan friars from the continent as no
other prelate did, and had no objection to foreigners _per se_. But
the pope claimed the revenues of church livings for boys and presented
illiterates to benefices--to the obvious degradation of the Church in
England. Grosseteste was always willing enough to raise what money he
could for the holy see, but appoint unworthy and incompetent clerks to
livings in his diocese, that he would not do--not for any pope.
The country groaned under the biting avarice of the Roman see, as it
bled under the vampire politics of Peter des Roches and his needy,
greedy crew of Bretons and Poitevins.
What it all meant to England Matthew Paris has told us in his
description of things in 1237:
“Now was simony practised without shame and usurers on various pleas
openly extorted money from the common people and lesser folk; charity
expired, the liberty of the Church withered away, religion was trampled
to the dust. Daily did illiterate persons of the lowest class, armed
with bulls from Rome, burst forth into threats; and, in spite of the
privileges handed down to us from good men of old, they feared not
to plunder the revenues consecrated by our holy forefathers for the
service of religion, the support of the poor, and the nourishment of
strangers, but thundering out their excommunications they quickly and
violently carried off what they demanded. And if those who were wronged
and robbed sought refuge by appealing or pleading their privileges,
they were at once suspended and excommunicated by a papal writ. Thus
mourning and lamentation were heard on all sides, and many exclaimed
with heart-rending sobs, ‘It were better to die than to behold the
sufferings of our country and its saints. Woe to England, once the
chief of provinces, the mistress of nations, the mirror of the Church,
the exemplar of religion, and now brought under tribute,--trampled on
by worthless men, and the prey of men of low degree.’”
The arrival of Otho, in 1237, a papal legate (on the request of Henry),
far from remedying, increased the contemporary distress. For though
Otho was a discreet man, he was more eager to get money for Rome than
to deal with the oppression that plagued England, and when he did give
advice it was spurned by those who saw his grasping hands. Archbishop
Edmund was particularly vexed at having a papal legate set over him,
and what with one disappointment and another finally gave up in despair
the task of guiding the English Church, and in 1240 went to die at
Pontigny, where his predecessors Anselm and Thomas had lived in exile.
Grosseteste stuck to his post, and the Franciscans and Dominicans,
whom he aided, poured in oil and wine on the wounds of the Church folk,
and revived religion in the country.
Grosseteste fought the extortionate papal demands for Church revenues
all the time. In 1239, with his fellow bishops, he tells Otho plainly
that the Church is drained dry by the grasping importunity of Rome.
Otho left in 1241, and that same year saw Boniface of Savoy, a
handsome, soldierly man appointed to Canterbury as St. Edmund’s
successor. The following year came a new extortioner from Rome, named
Martin, an altogether inferior person to Otho, but with all the
legate’s powers of suspension and excommunication. His confiscations
and rapacity provoked a remonstrance to the pope even from Henry.
Martin at last, in 1245, had to fly for his life from England, and
when Grosseteste subsequently had a calculation made of the English
Church revenues enjoyed by foreigners, it was found that the incomes
of foreign clerks appointed by Pope Innocent IV. amounted to more than
70,000 marks--more than treble the king’s income. And all this was done
in spite of refusals by Grosseteste to appoint illiterates or allow
boys to hold benefices.
The barons sided with the Church against Martin, and drew up a long
protest which they sent to the pope at the council of Lyons in 1245. In
this they complained:--That the pope, not content with Peter’s Pence,
which had been paid cheerfully from old times, wrung money from the
Church against the law of the realm, without the king’s permission; and
that the pope wrongfully put ignorant, covetous, or absentee Italians
into English livings notwithstanding his own promises, the rights of
patrons, and the privileges of the English clergy. A year later the
protest was repeated with another item objecting to the pope’s claim to
recall former charters.
Innocent IV.’s answer to this was to threaten to dethrone Henry as
he had dethroned his brother-in-law, the Emperor Frederick. The king
weakly said no more, the barons, without a leader, were equally silent,
and the Church continued “to sate the greed of Rome.”
But in Grosseteste there was no spirit of surrender. In 1253, the
very last year of his life, he was called upon by the pope to
provide a nephew of his with a canonry at Lincoln, and the bishop’s
letter of refusal is, perhaps, the only well remembered thing of all
Grosseteste’s writings. This letter was not, as commonly stated, sent
to the pope but to his representative who was also named Innocent.[38]
“The pope has power to build up,” wrote Grosseteste, “but not to pull
down. These appointments tend to destruction, not edification, being of
man’s device and not according to the words of the Apostles or the will
of Christ. By my very love and obedience to the Holy See I must refuse
obedience in things altogether opposed to the sanctity of the Apostolic
See and contrary to Catholic unity. As a son and a servant I decline to
obey, and this refusal must not be taken as rebellion, for it is done
in reverence to divine commands.”
(This letter is quoted by Matthew Paris and in the _Burton Annals_. It
can be read in full in the _Epistles_, No. 128.)
When the pope heard of this answer he talked angrily of “the old
madman” who dared to sit in judgment on him, and blustered about the
king of England being his vassal. The cardinals, however, said frankly
that Grosseteste had spoken the truth, and that he was far too good a
man to be condemned. “He is Catholic,” they declared, “and of deepest
holiness. More religious, and more saintly than we are, and of better
life. They say that among all the bishops there is no one his equal,
still less his superior. All the clergy of France and England know
this. Besides, he is considered a great philosopher, thoroughly learned
in Latin and Greek; and he is zealous for justice, and a man who deals
in theology, a preacher to the people, a lover of chastity, and a
persecutor of those who practise simony.” So they extolled him. And it
is to the everlasting credit of the cardinals of the Roman See in that
year 1253 that they could discern the sincerity and the great qualities
of the brave old bishop who defied the pope’s unrighteous commands.
There was no question at Rome of any disloyalty on Grosseteste’s part
to the Holy See, no suggestion of any failing as a good Catholic.[39]
And Pope Innocent IV. wisely let the matter drop, when the cardinals
assured him it would never do to interfere with Grosseteste.
Before he died Grosseteste made a last appeal “to the nobles of
England, the citizens of London and the community of the whole realm”
on behalf of the Rights of the English Church, making a careful list of
the ills to be redressed. He also solemnly charged his friend Simon of
Montfort, never, as he valued his immortal soul, to forsake the cause
of the English people, but to stand up even to the death, if needs be,
for a true and just government, and with prophetic foresight spoke of
the heavier troubles coming on the land.
On October 9th, 1253, the long life and the magnificent battling with
odds were over, and the great bishop passed away. He was buried in
Lincoln Cathedral, and in 1307, King Edward I. and the dean and chapter
of St. Paul’s made application for his canonization, but without
success. Fifty years later and Edward III.’s Statutes of Provisors,
1351, and Praemunire, 1353, by their prohibition of papal bulls and of
the appointment of papal nominees to English benefices, may be accepted
as the real acknowledgment of Grosseteste’s political work.
“I confidently assert (wrote Matthew Paris) that his virtues pleased
God more than his failings displeased Him.”
Simon of Montfort and the English Parliament
1258–1265
AUTHORITIES: Matthew Paris; William of Rishanger; Thomas of Wykes;
Adam of Marsh--_Monumenta Frascescana_, _Burton Annals_, _Annales
Monastici_; Robert of Gloucester--_Royal letters of Henry III._
(Rolls Series); _Political Songs_ (Camden Society, 1839); _Chronicle
of Melrose_; Stubbs--_Constitutional History_, vol. ii; and _Select
Charters_; W. H. Blaauw--_The Barons’ War_; Dr. Pauli--_Simon of
Montfort_ (translated by Una M. Goodwin); G. W. Prothero--_Simon of
Montfort_; Dr. Shirley in _Quarterly Review_, cxix. 57.
SIMON OF MONTFORT AND THE ENGLISH PARLIAMENT
1258–1265
“In the year of our Lord 1238, which was the twenty-second of his
reign, King Henry held his court in London at Westminster, and there
on the day after Epiphany, which was a Thursday, Simon de Montfort
solemnly espoused Eleanor, daughter of King John, sister of Henry III.,
and widow of William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke. The king himself gave
away the bride to the said Simon, Earl of Leicester, who received her
gratefully by reason of his disinterested love for her, her own beauty,
the rich honours that were attached to her, and the distinguished and
royal descent of the lady, for she was the legitimate daughter of a
king and queen, and furthermore was sister of a king, of an empress
(the wife of Frederic II.), and of a queen (Joan, wife of Alexander II.
of Scotland). Our lord the pope, too, gave him a dispensation to marry
this noble lady.”
Thus Matthew Paris, when Earl Simon, then a man about thirty-seven,
and “tall and handsome,” enjoyed the royal favour and stood godfather
to the infant Prince Edward. Simon had only done homage as Earl of
Leicester in 1232; his boyhood was passed in France, and his father was
the great soldier who led the French crusade against the Albigenses.
Earl Richard of Cornwall, Henry’s brother--soon to become King of the
Romans--objected to the marriage, regarding it as one more victory for
the foreigners whom Henry nourished at the expense of England. But
Simon was no real alien. His grandmother had been sister and heiress of
the Earl of Leicester, and Simon’s French training no more made him a
stranger in England than did Stephen Langton’s years of study in Paris
and Rome unfit him for the primacy of the English Church.
Henry’s favour was short-lived. Earl Simon made friends with Earl
Richard and left for the crusades, disgusted with the king’s want of
honesty. So much wisdom did he show in Palestine, and so great was his
prowess, that Simon might have stayed in the east as regent for the
young King of Jerusalem. But he had work to do in England, and came
home with Richard in 1242.
Here against all the disorder of misrule and the royal and papal
extortions Simon laboured with his friend Bishop Grosseteste, and he is
conspicuous at the Parliament of Westminster in 1244, and in drawing up
the great protest to the pope a year later.
Then for five years (1248–53) Simon was in Gascony contending with
a body of nobles whom neither Henry II. nor Richard I. had been
able to make good subjects, and whose only object in making formal
acknowledgment of Henry III. was to escape the rule of Louis of France.
Henry gave Simon neither men nor money, and lent a willing ear to all
the complaints of Simon’s enemies in Gascony and in England.[40] At
his own expense the Earl of Leicester saved Gascony for the English
crown, and brought peace and law and trade to that province. Henry’s
return was to make Simon answer trumped-up charges of robbery, cruelty
and treason brought by Gascons in 1252. The charges were not proved,
although Henry sent his own commissioner to Gascony to make enquiry.
Earl Richard and other nobles who knew the country were convinced
of Simon’s justice, and Simon, who was in England trying to raise
supplies, turned sharply on the king, reminding him of unfulfilled
promises. “Keep thy agreement with me,” he went on, “or pay me the
money I have spent in thy service; for it is well known I have
impoverished my earldom beyond recovery for the honour of the king.”
“There is no shame in breaking my word to a traitor,” the king answered
angrily. At this Simon in open wrath declared the king a liar, only
saved by the shelter of royalty from the penalty of his speech. “Call
thyself a Christian?” said the earl. “Dost thou ever confess thy sins?”
“Yes,” said the king, “I do.” “Thy confession is useless without
repentance and atonement.” said the earl. The king, more angry than
ever, retorted, “I repent of one thing, and that is that I made thee an
earl in England, to wax fat and kick against me. Get thee to Gascony,
thou who lovest strife, and take thy fill there and meet thy father’s
fate.” “I go willingly, my lord,” came the answer. “And, ungrateful as
thou art, I will not return till I have made these rebels thy subjects
and thy enemies thy footstool.”
Simon returned to Gascony, and though Henry again undermined his
authority, he kept his word, only giving up his command when the work
was done.
Adam of Marsh, a Franciscan friar, the friend and correspondent of
Grosseteste, often writes to Simon in those days, encouraging and
advising him. “Better is patience in a man than force,” says Adam,
“and better he who rules his own passions than he who storms a city.”
He prays this strong upright soldier-statesman to find comfort in
the frequent reading of the Holy Scriptures, “breaking through as
far as you can the cares and distractions of storm and trouble,”
and recommends the 29th, 30th and 31st chapters of the book of Job,
“together with the delightful commentaries of St. Gregory.”
Once more back in England, the time soon came when Simon was the
recognised leader of the barons in their struggle with the king. And
this leadership gave England its first representative parliament.
Henry was in greater financial difficulties than ever in 1257. The
mad scheme of accepting the crown of Sicily for his second son Edmund
from the pope, on condition that the cost of driving out Manfred, the
Emperor Frederick’s son, undertaken by the pope, was to be paid for
by England, had been adopted by Henry in spite of the opposition of
bishops and nobles. Henry pledged his kingdom with the pope as security
for the expenditure in Sicily,[41] and at last in the parliament of
1257 had to confess his indebtedness. Fourteen thousand marks were
owing to Pope Alexander, and this wretched debt, in addition to the
general contempt for law and justice by the king’s judges, sheriffs and
foreign favourites, drove matters to a climax. The wet summer of 1257,
followed by a failure at harvest, brought famine in the winter.
The barons insisted that the time had come for constitutional
amendment. “The king’s mistakes call for special treatment,” said
Richard, Earl of Gloucester, at a parliament early in 1258, and Simon,
closely related to the royal house as he was, agreed. The swarm of
royal parasites from Poitou raised objections to any interference
with Henry’s prerogative, but were swept aside. “If the king can’t do
without us in war he must listen to us in peace. And what sort of peace
is this when the king is led astray by bad counsellors and the land is
filled with foreign tyrants who grind down native-born Englishmen?” So
the barons argued.[42]
To Henry’s threat, “I will send reapers and reap your fields for you,”
Hugh Bigod of Norfolk had retorted briskly, “And I will send you back
the heads of your reapers.”
Parliament met again in June that year at Oxford--the “Mad Parliament”
it was called--and the barons came fully armed, for civil war seemed
imminent. But the barons led by Richard of Gloucester and Earl Simon
carried all before them and the war was postponed for five years.
The work of this parliament, well known as the Provisions of Oxford,
was one more attempt to get the Great Charter honestly observed. Under
this constitution:--
The king was to have a standing council of fifteen, by whose advice he
was to act, and to whom the justiciar, chancellor and treasurer were to
be accountable.
Parliament was to meet three times a year--February, June and
October. Four knights were to be chosen by the king’s lesser freehold
tenant-knights in each county.
To save expense twelve commissioners were to be chosen to represent
the baronage--“and the commonalty shall hold as established that which
these twelve shall do.”[43] The fifteen counsellors consisted of six
of the king’s party, and nine of the barons’--the most conspicuous of
the latter were Simon of Montfort, Richard of Gloucester, and Bishop
Cantilupe, of Worcester.
Then the oath was taken, “that neither for life nor death, for hatred
or love, or for any cause whatever, would they be bent or weakened in
their purpose to regain praiseworthy laws, and to cleanse the kingdom
from foreigners.”
Henry and Prince Edward, his eldest son, took the oath willingly
enough--though the latter soon began “to draw back from it so far as he
could.” The king’s half-brothers and the rest of the aliens not only
refused the oath, but swore that as long as they had breath they would
never surrender their castles, revenues, or wardships.[44] Simon, who
on the ground of his foreign birth had at once yielded his castles
of Kenilworth and Odiham, without recompense, turned to William de
Valence--who was blustering more than the rest--and said sharply, “To a
certainty you shall either surrender your castles or lose your head.”
The barons made it plain that they were in agreement with this, and
then were the Poitevins afraid, not knowing what to do; “for if they
hid themselves in their castles they would be starved out; for all
the people would besiege them and utterly destroy their castles.” The
aliens fled to the continent, and the new constitution was proclaimed
in every county--in Latin, French, and English.[45]
Twenty years had passed since Henry had blessed Simon’s marriage with
his sister Eleanor, and Simon had stood godfather to Prince Edward,
and now after the Parliament at Oxford, meeting the Earl of Leicester
in the Bishop of Durham’s palace on the Thames bank, the king cannot
conceal his fear of the one man who held up the good cause--“like
a pillar that cannot be moved.” The king had taken refuge from a
thunderstorm, and to Simon’s assurance that the storm was passing,
and was no longer to be feared, answered grimly, “I fear thunder and
lightning a good deal, Lord Simon, but by the Head of God, I fear you
more than all the thunder and lightning in the world.”
“Everyone suspected that these astounding words broke from the king
because the Earl of Leicester manfully and boldly persevered in
carrying out the provisions, compelling the king and all the enemies of
these provisions to assent to them, and utterly banishing his brothers,
who were corrupting the whole kingdom.” (Matthew Paris.)
Manfully as the great earl might strive, he could not accomplish the
carrying out of the Provisions of Oxford. Henry was quickly at his
old work, obtaining from Rome a dispensation from his old promises on
the ground they had been obtained by compulsion, and bringing back
his foreign supporters. The barons neither held together nor made any
serious effort to promote good government.
Richard of Gloucester, jealous of Simon, fell away from the national
cause before his death in 1262.[46]
Prince Edward stood by his oath, but did nothing to prevent the
break-up of the provisional government, and soon openly supported his
father.