own accord, swear to join the five-and-twenty barons in
distraining and distressing us, we will issue orders to make
them take the same oath as aforesaid. And if anyone of the
five-and-twenty barons dies, or goes out of the kingdom, or is
hindered any other way from carrying the things aforesaid into
execution, the rest of the said five-and-twenty barons may
choose another in his room, at their discretion, who shall be
sworn in like manner as the rest. In all things that are
committed to the execution of these five-and-twenty barons,
if, when they are all assembled together, they should happen
to disagree about any matter, and some of them, when summoned,
will not or cannot come, whatever is agreed upon, or enjoined,
by the major part of those that are present shall be reputed
as firm and valid as if all the five-and-twenty had given
their consent; and the aforesaid five-and-twenty shall swear
that all the premises they shall faithfully observe, and cause
with all their power to be observed. And we will procure
nothing from anyone, by ourselves nor by another, whereby any
of these concessions and liberties may be revoked or lessened;
and if any such thing shall have been obtained, let it be null
and void; neither will we ever make use of it either by
ourselves or any other. And all the ill-will, indignations,
and rancours that have arisen between us and our subjects, of
the clergy and laity, from the first breaking out of the
dissensions between us, we do fully remit and forgive:
moreover, all trespasses occasioned by the said dissensions,
from Easter in the sixteenth year of our reign till the
restoration of peace and tranquillity, we hereby entirely
remit to all, both clergy and laity, and as far as in us lies
do fully forgive. We have, moreover, caused to be made for
them the letters patent testimonial of Stephen, Lord
Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry, Lord Archbishop of Dublin,
and the bishops aforesaid, as also of Master Pandulph, for the
security and concessions aforesaid.
{807}
63. Wherefore we will and firmly enjoin, that the Church of
England be free, and that all men in our kingdom have and hold
all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and concessions, truly
and peaceably, freely and quietly, fully and wholly to
themselves and their heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things
and places, for ever, as is aforesaid. It is also sworn, as
well on our part as on the part of the barons, that all the
things aforesaid shall be observed in good faith, and without
evil subtilty. Given under our hand, in the presence of the
witnesses above named, and many others, in the meadow called
Runingmede, between Windsor and Staines, the 15th day of June,
in the 17th year of our reign."
_W. Stubbs,
Select Charters,
part 5._
_Old South Leaflets,
General Series,
number 5._
Also IN:
_E. F. Henderson,
Select Historical Documents of the Middle Ages,
book 1, number 7._
_C. H. Pearson,
History of England during the Early and Middle Ages,
volume 2, chapter 3._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1216-1274.
Character and reign of Henry III.
The Barons' War.
Simon de Montfort and the evolution of the English Parliament.
King John died October 17,1216. "His legitimate successor was
a child of nine years of age. For the first time since the
Conquest the personal government was in the hands of a minor.
In that stormy time the great Earl of Pembroke undertook the
government, as Protector. ... At the Council of Bristol, with
general approbation and even with that of the papal legate,
Magna Charta was confirmed, though with the omission of
certain articles. ... After some degree of tranquillity had
been restored, a second confirmation of the Great Charter took
place in the autumn of 1217, with the omission of the clauses
referring to the estates, but with the grant of a new charta
de foresta, introducing a vigorous administration of the
forest laws. In 9 Henry III. Magna Charta was again confirmed,
and this is the form in which it afterwards took its place
among the statutes of the realm. Two years later, Henry III.
personally assumes the reins of government at the Parliament
of Oxford (1227), and begins his rule without confirming the
two charters. At first the tutorial government still
continues, which had meanwhile, even after the death of the
great Earl of Pembroke (1219), remained in a fairly orderly
condition. The first epoch of sixteen years of this reign must
therefore be regarded purely as a government by the nobility
under the name of Henry III. The regency had succeeded in
removing the dominant influence of the Roman Curia by the
recall of the papal legate, Pandulf, to Rome (1221), and in
getting rid of the dangerous foreign mercenary soldiery
(1224). ... With the disgraceful dismissal of the chief
justiciary, Hubert de Burgh, there begins a second epoch of a
personal rule of Henry III. (1232-1252), which for twenty
continuous years, presents the picture of a confused and
undecided struggle between the king and his foreign favourites
and personal adherents on the one side, and the great barons,
and with them soon the prelates, on the other. ... In 21 Henry
III. the King finds himself, in consequence of pressing money
embarrassments, again compelled to make a solemn confirmation
of the charter, in which once more the clauses relating to the
estates are omitted. Shortly afterwards, as had happened just
one hundred years previously in France, the name
'parliamentum' occurs for the first time (Chron. Dunst., 1244;
Matth. Paris, 1246), and curiously enough, Henry III. himself,
in a writ addressed to the Sheriff of Northampton, designates
with this term the assembly which originated the Magna Charta.
... The name 'parliament,' now occurs more frequently, but
does not supplant the more definite terms concilium,
colloquium, etc. In the meanwhile the relations with the
Continent became complicated, in consequence of the family
connections of the mother and wife of the King, and the greed
of the papal envoys. ... From the year 1244 onwards, neither a
chief justice nor a chancellor, nor even a treasurer, is
appointed, but the administration of the country is conducted
at the Court by the clerks of the offices."
_R. Gneist,
History of the English Constitution,
volume 1, pages 313-321._
"Nothing is so hard to realise as chaos; and nothing nearer to
chaos can be conceived than the government of Henry III. Henry
was, like all the Plantagenets, clever; like very few of them,
he was devout; and if the power of conceiving a great policy
would constitute a great King, he would certainly have been
one. ... He aimed at making the Crown virtually independent of
the barons. ... His connexion with Louis IX., whose
brother-in-law he became, was certainly a misfortune to him.
In France the royal power had during the last fifty years been
steadily on the advance; in England it had as steadily
receded; and Henry was ever hearing from the other side of the
Channel maxims of government and ideas of royal authority
which were utterly inapplicable to the actual state of his own
kingdom. This, like a premature Stuart, Henry was incapable of
perceiving; a King he was, and a King he would be, in his own
sense of the word. It is evident that with such a task before
him, he needed for the most shadowy chance of success, an iron
strength of will, singular self-control, great forethought and
care in collecting and husbanding his resources, a rare talent
for administration, the sagacity to choose and the
self-reliance to trust his counsellors. And not one of these
various qualities did Henry possess. ... Henry had imbibed
from the events and the tutors of his early childhood two
maxims of state, and two alone: to trust Rome, and to distrust
the barons of England. ... He filled the places of trust and
power about himself with aliens, to whom the maintenance of
Papal influence was like an instinct of self-preservation.
Thus were definitely formed the two great parties out of whose
antagonism the War of the Barons arose, under whose influence
the relations between the crown and people of England were
remodelled, and out of whose enduring conflict rose,
indirectly, the political principles which contributed so
largely to bring about the Reformation of the English Church.
The few years which followed the fall of Hubert de Burgh were
the heyday of Papal triumph. And no triumph could have been
worse used. ... Thus was the whole country lying a prey to the
ecclesiastical aliens maintained by the Pope, and to the lay
aliens maintained by the King, ... when Simon de Montfort
became ... inseparably intermixed with the course of our
history. ... In the year 1258 opened the first act of the
great drama which has made the name of Simon de Montfort
immortal. ... The Barons of England, at Leicester's
suggestion, had leagued for the defence of their rights. They
appeared armed at the Great Council. ...
{808}
They required as the condition of their assistance that the
general reformation of the realm should be entrusted to a
Commission of twenty-four members, half to be chosen by the
crown, and half by themselves. For the election of this body,
primarily, and for a more explicit statement of grievances,
the Great Council was to meet again at Oxford on the 11th of
June, 1258. When the Barons came, they appeared at the head of
their retainers. The invasion of the Welsh was the plea; but
the real danger was nearer home. They seized on the Cinque
Ports; the unrenewed truce with France was the excuse; they
remembered too vividly King John and his foreign mercenaries.
They then presented their petition. This was directed to the
redress of various abuses. ... To each and every clause the
King gave his inevitable assent. One more remarkable
encroachment was made upon the royal prerogative; the election
in Parliament of a chief justiciar. ... The chief justiciar
was the first officer of the Crown. He was not a mere chief
justice, after the fashion of the present day, but the
representative of the Crown in its high character of the
fountain of justice. ... But the point upon which the barons
laid the greatest stress, from the beginning to the end of
their struggle, was the question of the employment of aliens.
That the strongest castles and the fairest lands of England
should be in the hands of foreigners, was an insult to the
national spirit which no free people could fail to resent. ...
England for the English, the great war cry of the barons, went
home to the heart of the humblest. ... The great question of
the constitution of Parliament was not heard at Oxford; it
emerged into importance when the struggle grew fiercer, and
the barons found it necessary to gather allies round them. ...
One other measure completed the programme of the barons;
namely, the appointment, already referred to, of a committee
of twenty-four. ... It amounted to placing the crown under the
control of a temporary Council of Regency [see OXFORD,
PROVISIONS OF]. ... Part of the barons' work was simple
enough. The justiciar was named, and the committee of
twenty-four. To expel the foreigners was less easy. Simon de
Montfort, himself an alien by birth, resigned the two castles
which he held, and called upon the rest to follow. They simply
refused. ... But the barons were in arms, and prepared to use
them. The aliens, with their few English supporters, fled to
Winchester, where the castle was in the hands of the foreign
bishop Aymer. They were besieged, brought to terms, and
exiled. The barons were now masters of the situation. ...
Among the prerogatives of the crown which passed to the Oxford
Commission not the least valuable, for the hold which it gave
on the general government of the country, was the right to
nominate the sheriffs. In 1261 the King, who had procured a
Papal bull to abrogate the Provisions of Oxford, and an army
of mercenaries to give the bull effect, proceeded to expel the
sheriffs who had been placed in office by the barons. The
reply of the barons was most memorable; it was a direct appeal
to the order below their own. They summoned three knights
elected from each county in England to meet them at St. Albans
to discuss the state of the realm. It was clear that the day
of the House of Commons could not be far distant, when at such
a crisis an appeal to the knights of the shire could be made,
and evidently made with success. For a moment, in this great
move, the whole strength of the barons was united; but
differences soon returned, and against divided counsels the
crown steadily prevailed. In June, 1262, we find peace
restored. The more moderate of the barons had acquiesced in
the terms offered by Henry; Montfort, who refused them, was
abroad in voluntary exile. ... Suddenly, in July, the Earl of
Gloucester died, and the sole leadership of the barons passed
into the hands of Montfort. With this critical event opens the
last act in the career of the great Earl. In October he returns
privately to England. The whole winter is passed in the
patient reorganising of the party, and the preparation for a
decisive struggle. Montfort, fervent, eloquent, and devoted,
swayed with despotic influence the hearts of the younger
nobles (and few in those days lived to be grey), and taught
them to feel that the Provisions of Oxford were to them what
the Great Charter had been to their fathers. They were drawn
together with an unanimity unknown before. ... They demanded
the restoration of the Great Provisions. The King refused, and
in May, 1263, the barons appealed to arms. ... Henry, with a
reluctant hand, subscribed once more to the Provisions of
Oxford, with a saving clause, however, that they should be
revised in the coming Parliament. On the 9th of September,
accordingly, Parliament was assembled. ... The King and the
barons agreed to submit their differences to the arbitration
of Louis of France. ... Louis IX. had done more than any one
king of France to enlarge the royal prerogative; and Louis was
the brother-in-law of Henry. His award, given at Amiens on the
23d of January, 1264. was, as we should have expected,
absolutely in favour of the King. The whole Provisions of
Oxford were, in his view, an invasion of the royal power. ...
The barons were astounded. ... They at once said that the
question of the employment of aliens was never meant to be
included. ... The appeal was made once again to the sword.
Success for a moment inclined to the royal side, but it was
only for a moment; and on the memorable field of Lewes the
genius of Leicester prevailed. ... With the two kings of
England and of the Romans prisoners in his hands, Montfort
dictated the terms of the so-called Mise of Lewes. ... Subject
to the approval of Parliament, all differences were to be
submitted once more to French arbitration. ... On the 23d of
June the Parliament met. It was no longer a Great Council,
after the fashion of previous assemblies; it included four
knights, elected by each English county. This Parliament gave
such sanction as it was able to the exceptional authority of
Montfort, and ordered that until the proposed arbitration
could be carried out, the King's council should consist of
nine persons, to be named by the Bishop of Chichester, and the
Earls of Gloucester and Leicester. The effect was to give
Simon for the time despotic power. ... It was at length agreed
that all questions whatever, the employment of aliens alone
excepted, should be referred to the Bishop of London, the
justiciar Hugh le Despenser, Charles of Anjou, and the Abbot
of Bec. If on any point they could not agree, the Archbishop
of Rouen was to act as referee. ... It was ... not simply the
expedient of a revolutionary chief in difficulties, but the
expression of a settled and matured policy, when, in December
1264, [Montfort] issued in the King's name the ever-memorable
writs which summoned the first complete Parliament which ever
met in England.
{809}
The earls, barons, and bishops received their summons as of
course; and with them the deans of cathedral churches, an
unprecedented number of abbots and priors, two knights from
every shire, and two citizens or burgesses from every city or
borough in England. Of their proceedings we know but little;
but they appear to have appointed Simon de Montfort to the
office of Justiciar of England, and to have thus made him in
rank, what he had before been in power, the first subject in
the realm. ... Montfort ... had now gone so far, he had
exercised such extraordinary powers, he had done so many
things which could never really be pardoned, that perhaps his
only chance of safety lay in the possession of some such
office as this. It is certain, moreover, that something which
passed in this Parliament, or almost exactly at the time of
its meeting, did cause deep offence to a considerable section
of the barons. ... Difficulties were visibly gathering thicker
around him, and he was evidently conscious that disaffection
was spreading fast. ... Negotiations went forward, not very
smoothly, for the release of Prince Edward. They were
terminated in May by his escape. It was the signal for a
royalist rising. Edward took the command of the Welsh border;
before the middle of June he had made the border his own. On
the 29th Gloucester opened its gates to him. He had many
secret friends. He pushed fearlessly eastward, and surprised
the garrison of Kenilworth, commanded by Simon, the Earl's
second son. The Earl himself lay at Evesham, awaiting the
troops which his son was to bring up from Kenilworth. ... On
the fatal field of Evesham, fighting side by side to the last,
fell the Earl himself, his eldest son Henry, Despenser the
late Justiciar, Lord Basset of Drayton, one of his firmest
friends, and a host of minor name. With them, to all
appearance, fell the cause for which they had fought."
_Simon de Montfort
(Quarterly Review, January, 1866)._
See PARLIAMENT, THE ENGLISH:
EARLY STAGES OF ITS EVOLUTION.
"Important as this assembly [the Parliament of 1264] is in the
history of the constitution, it was not primarily and
essentially a constitutional assembly. It was not a general
convention of the tenants in chief or of the three estates,
but a parliamentary assembly of the supporters of the existing
government."
_W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 14, section 177 (volume 2)._
ALSO IN:
_W. Stubbs,
The Early Plantagenets._
_G. W. Prothero,
Life of Simon de Montfort,
chapter 11-12._
_H. Blaauw,
The Barons' War._
_C. H. Pearson,
England, Early and Middle Ages,
volume 2._
ENGLAND: A. D. 1271.
Crusade of Prince Edward:
See CRUSADES: A. D. 1270-1271.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1272.
Accession of King Edward I.
ENGLAND: A. D. 1275-1295.
Development of Parliamentary representation under Edward 1.
"Happily, Earl Simon [de Montfort] found a successor, and more
than a successor, in the king's [Henry III.'s] son. ... Edward
I. stood on the vantage ground of the throne. ... He could do
that easily and without effort which Simon could only do
laboriously, and with the certainty of rousing opposition.
Especially was this the case with the encouragement given by
the two men to the growing aspirations after parliamentary
representation. Earl Simon's assemblies were instruments of
warfare. Edward's assemblies were invitations to peace. ...
Barons and prelates, knights and townsmen, came together only
to support a king who took the initiative so wisely, and who,
knowing what was best for all, sought the good of his kingdom
without thought of his own ease. Yet even so, Edward was too
prudent at once to gather together such a body as that which
Earl Simon had planned. He summoned, indeed, all the
constituent parts of Simon's parliament, but he seldom
summoned them to meet in one place or at one time. Sometimes
the barons and prelates met apart from the townsmen or the
knights, sometimes one or the other class met entirely alone.
... In this way, during the first twenty years of Edward's
reign, the nation rapidly grew in that consciousness of
national unity which would one day transfer the function of
regulation from the crown to the representatives of the
people."
_S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introduction to the Study of English History,
chapter 4, section 17._
"In 1264 Simon de Montfort had called up from both shires and
boroughs representatives to aid him in the new work of
government. That part of Earl Simon's work had not been
lasting. The task was left for Edward I. to be advanced by
gradual safe steps, but to be thoroughly completed, as a part
of a definite and orderly arrangement, according to which the
English parliament was to be the perfect representation of the
Three Estates of the Realm, assembled for purposes of
taxation, legislation and united political action. ...
Edward's first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass a
great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of
Westminster the First, and to exact the new custom on wool;
another assembly, the same year, granted him a fifteenth. ...
There is no evidence that the commons of either town or county
were represented. ... In 1282, when the expenses of the Welsh
war were becoming heavy, Edward again tried the plan of
obtaining money from the towns and counties by separate
negotiation; but as that did not provide him with funds
sufficient for his purpose, he called together, early in 1283,
two great assemblies, one at York and another at Northampton,
in which four knights from each shire and four members from
each city and borough were ordered to attend; the cathedral
and conventual clergy also of the two provinces were
represented at the same places by their elected proctors. At
these assemblies there was no attendance of the barons; they
were with the king in Wales; but the commons made a grant of
one-thirtieth on the understanding that the lords should do
the same. Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same
year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of Wales; to this
the bishops and clergy were not called, but twenty towns and
all the counties were ordered to send representatives. Another
step was taken in 1290: knights of the shire were again
summoned; but still much remained to be done before a perfect
parliament was constituted. Counsel was wanted for
legislation, consent was wanted for taxation. The lords were
summoned in May, and did their work in June and July, granting
a feudal aid and passing the statute 'Quia Emptores,' but the
knights only came to vote or to promise a tax, after a law had
been passed; and the towns were again taxed by special
commissions. In 1294, ... under the alarm of war with France,
an alarm which led Edward into several breaches of
constitutional law, he went still further, assembling the
clergy by their representatives in August, and the shires by
their representative knights in October.
{810}
The next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect
and model parliament; the clergy represented by their bishops,
deans, archdeacons, and elected proctors; the barons summoned
severally in person by the king's special writ, and the
commons summoned by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing
them to send up two elected knights from each shire, two
elected citizens from each city, and two elected burghers from
each borough. The writ by which the prelates were called to
this parliament contained a famous sentence taken from the
Roman law, 'That which touches all should be approved by all,'
a maxim which might serve as a motto for Edward's
constitutional scheme, however slowly it grew upon him, now
permanently and consistently completed."
_W. Stubbs,
The Early Plantagenets,
chapter 10._
"Comparing the history of the following ages with that of the
past, we can scarcely doubt that Edward had a definite idea of
government before his eyes, or that that idea was successful
because it approved itself to the genius and grew out of the
habits of the people. Edward saw, in fact, what the nation was
capable of, and adapted his constitutional reforms to that
capacity. But although we may not refuse him the credit of
design, it may still be questioned whether the design was
altogether voluntary, whether it was not forced upon him by
circumstances and developed by a series of careful
experiments. ... The design, as interpreted by the result, was
the creation of a national parliament, composed of the three
estates. ... This design was perfected in 1295. It was not the
result of compulsion, but the consummation of a growing policy.
... But the close union of 1295 was followed by the compulsion
of 1297: out of the organic completeness of the constitution
sprang the power of resistance, and out of the resistance the
victory of the principles, which Edward might guide, but which
he failed to coerce."
_W. Stubbs,
Constitutional History of England,
chapter 15, section 244
and chapter 14, section 180-182._
_W. Stubbs,
Select Charters,
part 7._