Hohenstaufen from their Italian dominions. As early as 1252,
seeking some prince whom he might set in their place, and being
assured of the fidelity of the English King, he offered the throne
of Sicily to Richard of Cornwall. That Prince, remembering that
Henry, Frederick’s son, was his own nephew, and too prudent to
trust himself blindly to the Pope, declined the offer. But when
young Henry died in 1253, and Sicily fell into the hands of Conrad
and of his half brother Manfred, the Pope repeated his offer to
King Henry’s son Edmund. By him it was foolishly accepted; Conrad
also died, and a great opportunity was opened for the Pope’s
intrigues. There were three parties in Sicily: the German party,
who upheld a son of Conrad, the Italian Gibellines, who obeyed
Manfred, and the Sicilians, who followed Peter Rufus, the Emperor’s
lieutenant. The Pope succeeded in bribing the leader of the German
party, and his views seemed on the point of realization, when he
died. He was succeeded by Alexander IV., who was reputed a moderate
man, but who accepted all the arrangements of his predecessor.
Henry had returned from Gascony, after a costly visit to Paris,
deeply in debt. The Charter of London was again set aside, and
a heavy tallage inflicted; the Jews were again compelled to pay
large sums of money; and the Barons in Parliament were loudly
complaining of grievances, and demanding the appointment of a
Parliamentary Justiciary and Chancellor. In the midst of all these
difficulties, the King was foolish enough to accept the Sicilies on
ruinous terms. Two hundred ounces of gold yearly, and the support
of 300 knights, were to be promised, the expenses of the war to be
paid, and an army at once sent to claim the kingdom. The Pope kept
the management of this war in his own hands, but the Bishop of
Hereford, Henry’s envoy, was allowed to make the King responsible
for the outlay. The Pope began immediately to send his creditors
direct to Henry, and twice before the end of the year 1256, a Papal
Legate of the name of Rustand had appeared in England, raised money
of unknown value from the English Church, and freed the King from
his Crusader’s oath, that he might employ his forces against Sicily.
[Sidenote: Consequent exactions.]
[Sidenote: Terrible famine. 1257.]
[Sidenote: Parliament at length roused to resistance.]
The English Church was indeed at his mercy. Boniface of Canterbury
lived abroad, and was completely in the Papal interest, the
Archbishopric of York was vacant, the Bishops of Winchester and
Hereford were creatures of the King. Henry himself was acting in
complete harmony with the Pope, who had several times granted him
a tenth from the clergy, and had given him the incomes of all
vacant benefices, and of intestates. The Church was driven into
close union with the rapidly rising baronial opposition, and was
obliged to regard its temporalities as ordinary baronies. Scotland
and Wales were again becoming troublesome, and the lukewarmness
of the English Barons prevented successful resistance to their
inroads. To add to the difficulties of England, 1257 was a year of
fearful want. The weather was so bad that the harvest stood rotting
in the fields even in November. Wheat rose from two shillings to
fifteen or twenty the quarter. The harvest of 1258 promised to be
as bad. Thousands were dying of hunger.[36] And when, in the midst
of this misery, the Pope’s Legate (who in 1257 had stated the
amount of debt to the Pope to be 136,000 marks, and had succeeded
in wringing 52,000 marks from the clergy) repeated his demand the
following year, and threatened an interdict unless the debt was at
once paid, Englishmen of all classes felt that the time for action
had arrived, and, taking advantage of the absence of the Earl of
Cornwall, who was abroad attempting to make good his election to
the German Empire, the Barons assembled at a Parliament held at
Westminster determined upon reform.
[Sidenote: Parliament at Westminster.]
It was a stormy scene. William de Valence and Simon de Montfort
almost came to blows. William spoke of Montfort as “an old traitor,
and the son of a traitor.” “No, no,” said Simon, “I am no traitor,
nor traitor’s son; my father was very different from yours,”
referring to the constant treasons of the old Count de la Marche.
He then poured out his grievances, the squandering of the royal
property on favourites, the folly, in the face of such financial
difficulties, of accepting the Sicilian throne, and the admission
of Papal legates to rob the clergy. At length a sort of compromise
was arrived at, and aid was promised if the Pope would lower his
demands, and the King on his side promised reform, a promise to
which several of his chief favourites had to put their signatures.
The King also pledged himself to give full consideration to the
Barons’ demands at a Parliament to be assembled at Oxford at
Whitsuntide, and to leave the question at issue to be decided by
a commission of twelve from either side, whose verdict should be
final.
[Sidenote: Mad Parliament. 1258.]
[Sidenote: Provisions of Oxford.]
On June 11th, this Parliament met. It is known by the name of
“The Mad Parliament.” The Barons, of whom there were about a
hundred,[37] appeared in arms, under the pretext of the war with
Wales, in reality to overawe the King’s violent step-brothers.
At that Parliament the promised commission of twenty-four was
chosen. The King’s Commissioners, with the single exception of
John of Plesseys, Earl of Warwick, were men pledged to the old
evil courses, either by their relationship with the King or by
the favours they had obtained from him. At the head of the Barons
appeared Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, the natural head of
the English party, and De Montfort, himself indeed a foreigner,
but of such high ability and character that he was indispensable
to his party. To these twenty-four was intrusted the duty of
securing reform. They were not like the twenty-five guardians of
the Charter, pledges for the carrying out of the treaty, but a
committee representing for the time the executive authority of the
Crown. These Barons chose a council of four, John Mansell, the
King’s secretary, the Earl of Warwick, and two Bigods (the Earl of
Norfolk and his brother). These in their turn were to nominate a
council of state or executive ministry of fifteen. The predominance
of the baronial party is shown by the fact that of those fifteen
two-thirds were on the Barons’ side.[38] This Council of fifteen
produced the Provisions of Oxford, and appointed new officers. Hugh
Bigod was chief justice, John of Peterborough, treasurer, Nicholas
of Ely, chancellor. The royal castles were ordered to be placed
in the hands of Englishmen; and three times a year a Parliament
was to be held, consisting of the fifteen, and twelve members of
the old twenty-four representative Barons. These are said to be
representatives of the commonalty of England, but it does not as
yet appear that the commonalty meant anything but the baronage.
These Provisions were accepted and sworn to by the King, Prince
Edward, and the Barons, and subsequently, on his return to England,
by Richard, King of the Romans.
[Sidenote: Opposition to the surrender of castles.]
[Sidenote: Exile of aliens.]
[Sidenote: Proclamation of the Provisions.]
The article which demanded the surrender of castles by foreigners
met with much opposition.[39] The King’s step-brothers refused to
surrender theirs. Simon de Montfort, as a foreigner, on the other
hand, showed a good example by surrendering two of those he had in
charge.[40] When William de Valence refused this order, “I will
have the castles,” said De Montfort, “or your head.” The threat
was too serious to be disregarded; the foreigners crept off in
the night, and went to Winchester, where they hoped that Aymer de
Valence would afford them protection. The Barons at once pursued
them. They were obliged to yield, and were exiled. The Barons then
proceeded to check the bad government of the sheriffs. Four knights
from each shire (a step towards the coming admission of the lower
gentry to Parliament) were appointed to inquire into the question;
and it was arranged that the sheriffs should be elected yearly. The
Londoners readily accepted the new order of things; and finally,
in October, the Provisions were solemnly proclaimed, together
with the Magna Charta, in Latin, French and English. In this the
King declared his full adhesion to the Oxford Ordinances. It was
countersigned by thirteen of the fifteen counsellors. This is the
first public document issued in the English language, and may be
regarded as a sign of the real question at issue during the reign:
Was England to be, in fact, England, and the English to be a nation?
[Sidenote: Government of the Barons.]
[Sidenote: Final treaty with France. 1259.]
The fifteen counsellors were intrusted with the duty of producing
other reforms before the following Christmas. This they neglected
to do, and it was only in October 1259 that they produced another
series of Provisions. These by no means answered the expectations
of the Barons, and were so moderate that, after the cessation of
the war, they were incorporated in the Statute of Marlborough,
1267. They were chiefly directed to prevent encroachments on feudal
rights. Prince Edward had earnestly pressed for the production
of these Provisions. He was at this time a strong reformer, and
it was perhaps on account of the inefficient character of the
reforms now produced, that a quarrel arose between Leicester and
Gloucester, in which, we are told, that Leicester was supported
by Edward, Gloucester by the King. The government was meanwhile
practically in the hands of the fifteen. They felt that their chief
work was in England, and therefore freed themselves as much as
possible from foreign complications. They made peace with Wales,
entirely renounced all claims upon Sicily, and made a definitive
treaty with France. By this treaty Bordeaux, Bayonne and Gascony,
with the addition of the Bishoprics of Limoges, Cahors and
Périgord, which the honesty of the French King restored, were to be
held by England as fiefs of France; all claim on Normandy, Anjou,
Touraine and Poitou was to be given up; and the King of France
promised to give a sum of money for the maintenance of five hundred
knights for two years, to be used only for the good of England or
the Church. This last article proved afterwards a source of danger
to the baronial cause.
[Sidenote: Henry thinks of breaking the Provisions.]
[Sidenote: Pope’s absolution arrives.]
[Sidenote: Quarrel between De Clare and De Montfort.]
Their whole government seems to have given satisfaction; but it was
not likely that Henry should calmly submit to their domination.
With the peculiar faculty of making his religion compatible with
bad government and dishonesty, which was the characteristic of
this King, he applied, almost immediately after the Parliament of
Oxford, to the Pope for an absolution from his promises. A visit
twice repeated to the King of France gave rise to the suspicion
that he was concerting measures with that monarch; and, in 1261, he
was certainly fortifying the Tower. In April of that year an answer
of Alexander IV., entirely absolving him from his vows, reached
him. He ordered it to be publicly read, proceeded to give some
castles into the hands of foreigners, and proclaimed that he would
no longer consent to the restraint imposed upon him. The Barons met
at Kingston; and, unwilling to proceed to extremities, agreed to
refer their differences to the King of France, whose character for
honour stood high, though in this instance rumours were afloat that
he was already pledged to the King’s interest.[41] The King would
probably not have ventured on this course had not a quarrel arisen
in the baronial party, which deprived them of their ablest leader.
It is not certain what the cause of quarrel was, but as early as
1259, De Clare and Montfort had exchanged hot words, and from that
time De Montfort had been very much abroad, and the leadership of
the baronial party entirely in the hands of De Clare. In 1262, a
second absolution reached the King, and was by his orders publicly
promulgated by Mansell, by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and by the
Bishop of Norwich.
[Sidenote: Return of De Montfort.]
[Sidenote: Outbreak of hostilities.]
But meanwhile a stronger leader than Richard Earl of Gloucester
had appeared in England, and the King’s attempts at recovering
his authority were peremptorily checked. The Earl of Leicester,
hearing of the death of Gloucester, had returned from abroad, and
found himself the unquestioned chief of the party. With himself he
associated the late Earl’s son, young Gilbert de Clare, and matters
soon seemed to be coming to extremities. Llewellyn of Wales,
apparently in the baronial interest, attacked the lands of Roger
de Mortimer and of that foreign Bishop of Hereford who had been
the King’s agent at Rome. A general persecution of all those who
could not speak English followed in the border counties. The Bishop
of Hereford’s treasures were seized, and he himself had to fly
abroad. At the same time the Bishop of Norwich, who was disliked
for having published the absolution, was attacked. John Mansell
was driven into France; while, on the other hand, Prince Edward,
who had hitherto remained true to the Statutes of Oxford, was
reconciled to his father, and appeared in arms against the barons.
The people of London joined in the general disturbance. The Queen
had to leave London and retire to Windsor. On her way thither, as
she was passing up the river, she was assaulted and maltreated by
the Londoners, an event which Prince Edward is said not to have
forgotten.
[Sidenote: Award of Amiens. 1264.]
[Sidenote: It fails.]
While the parties were thus already beginning to appeal to arms, in
January 1264, the King of France published his verdict at Amiens.
It was entirely in favour of the Crown, and annulled the Provisions
of Oxford, especially declaring that the King had right to employ
aliens as the governors of his castles. The verdict was clear
enough, and Henry believed that it put him entirely in the right.
On the other hand a clause was added of which the Barons took hold
to support their cause. By this it was asserted that the verdict
was not intended to derogate in anything from the royal privileges,
charters, liberties and laudable customs of the kingdom. With this
loophole for variety of opinion, the award left the main question
unsettled, although it enabled a certain number of those who were
pledged to the Provisions, but disliked the Barons’ rule, to join
the King. Among others, his brother Richard, the King of the
Romans, took advantage of this opportunity. Still unwilling to
press their claims to the uttermost, the Barons offered to accept
the award, excepting only the one clause, which was in fact the
point for which they were fighting, that, namely, which permitted
the employment of aliens. The Londoners would not even go so far as
this.
[Sidenote: War, and battle of Lewes. May 14.]
[Sidenote: The Mise of Lewes.]
The King refused their offer, and war became inevitable. It began
by the capture of Northampton by Prince Edward, and gradually
drifted southward, till the two armies met at Lewes. The King
occupied the town, with the castle and priory; the Barons, the
down to the west. The battle ended in a decisive victory for the
Barons. Prince Edward, carried away by his anger against the
Londoners, whom he despised and hated, was induced to pursue an
advantage he had won over them too far. Richard, the King of the
Romans, was misled into an attack upon a cage-shaped litter, which
he believed to contain De Montfort, who had been wounded by a fall
from his horse. De Montfort had purposely left it in his rear,
together with his standards and baggage; it really contained only
four refractory Londoners of the King’s party. These two errors on
the part of the enemy secured the victory to De Montfort; and when
Prince Edward returned from his pursuit, he found the battle lost,
and the struggle only prolonged by the fighting round the castle at
Lewes. De Montfort, evidently the victor, offered to put an end to
the bloodshed by an immediate truce; and an agreement known as the
Mise of Lewes was made, by which the questions at issue were to be
settled by a court of arbitration consisting of two Frenchmen and
one Englishman. The two Princes, Edward and Henry d’Almeyne, were
to remain in captivity meanwhile, in exchange for their fathers,
the King and his brother Richard, who had been taken prisoners; and
the prisoners on both sides were to be released.
[Sidenote: Appointment of revolutionary government.]
De Montfort was for the time completely master of the country. He
at once proceeded to act with vigour to bring the country into
order. The King’s peace was proclaimed everywhere. The prisoners
were exchanged, and till the open question with regard to the
election of sheriffs should be settled, guardians of the peace were
appointed for each county. In the offices thus created, as well as
in those of the King’s Council, the friends and followers of Simon
were put. A Parliament was then called, which assembled in June,
at which it is probable that knights of the shire were present. At
this Parliament a committee of three was appointed, who nominated
nine others, in whose hands the government was to be placed. If the
nine could not come to agreement, the final decision remained with
the three, who were the Bishop of Chichester, Simon de Montfort,
and Gilbert de Clare. At the same time the affairs of the Church
were put in order, its grievances being left to the settlement of
three bishops appointed by statute.
[Sidenote: Exiles assemble at Damme.]
[Sidenote: Montfort desires final settlement.]
De Montfort thus seemed in a fair way to make his position
durable; but unfortunately three important men had made their
escape from Lewes:--these were the Earl of Warrenne, Hugh Bigod
and William de Valence. These three fugitives betook themselves to
Damme, in Flanders, where the Queen, in company with the exiled
foreigners, Archbishop Boniface, Bishop of Hereford, Peter of
Savoy, and John Mansell, had assembled an army of hired troops.
Great preparations were made to meet the expected invasion, but
the winds were so contrary that the ill-provided army, weary of
waiting, separated. The closeness of the danger, however, induced
Simon to send ambassadors to France, to urge on the completion of
the settlement according to the Mise of Lewes. The embassy was at
the same time to try and make terms with the Papal Legate, who had
been quickly despatched to uphold the cause of so good a vassal of
Rome as Henry. They were unsuccessful in both their objects. The
Queen had been beforehand with Louis, and the Legate, who shortly
afterwards ascended the Papal throne as Clement IV., replied only
by excommunication. The Bull, however, was taken by the mariners of
the Cinque Ports before reaching England, and thrown into the sea;
and the excommunication did not take effect.
[Sidenote: Royalist movements on the Welsh Marches.]
Meanwhile, the royalist barons on the Marches of Wales, especially
Mortimer, Clifford and Leybourne, began to bestir themselves. Some
of them even pushed as far as Wallingford, where Prince Edward
was a prisoner, and attempted, though in vain, to liberate him.
The liberation of this Prince was now the chief object of the
royalists, and the pressure put upon Leicester was so great, that
he had, though unwillingly, to consent to measures which should
bring it about. There was indeed every reason to desire that he
should be freed. The part he had played in the late disputes had
been highly honourable; he had remained true to the Provisions
of Oxford, till the breaking out of the war seemed to render it
his imperative duty to assist his father; and from his subsequent
conduct it is plain that, although he must have disliked the
present restrictions upon the royal power, there was much in the
national policy of the Barons with which he sympathized. All those
who resented the assumption of power by Montfort, while desiring
a reform in government, would have found in him a welcome leader.
[Sidenote: Parliament of 1265.]
It was principally for this object that the famous Parliament of
1265 was called. To it were summoned only twenty-three peers,
friends of De Montfort, though the great Northern and Scotch
barons, who had strongly supported the King at Lewes, also received
safe conducts. Of the higher clergy there were no less than one
hundred and eighteen, a number by no means unprecedented, but
which seems to show how completely the Church sympathized with
the Barons. There were also knights of the shires--two from each
county. Even from the time of the commission for forming the
Domesday Book, elected knights had been occasionally consulted upon
the affairs of their county; since Henry II.’s reign, although
they had never been properly summoned to Parliament, this practice
had been more frequent. But the addition of two burghers from the
chief cities was wholly new, and although the practice was not
continued without a break, this, says Hallam, is the epoch at which
the representation of the Commons becomes distinctly manifest. To
De Montfort it was of the greatest importance that the general
acquiescence of all important classes of the country in his
government should be shown.
[Sidenote: Conditions of the Prince’s liberation.]
The assembly thus formed had first of all to consider what was
to be done with the present insurgents and with the exiles, and,
secondly, on what conditions Prince Edward might be with safety
liberated. On the first point it was decreed that the barons of
the Welsh Marches should be exiled to Ireland for three years, and
the fugitives from Lewes were summoned to stand their trial before
their peers, a summons to which, of course, they paid no attention.
The other question was more important, but the conditions were
finally arrived at on which the Prince might be set at liberty.
There was to be complete amnesty for all that was past; the King
and Prince were never to receive their former favourites; the royal
castles were to be placed in trustworthy hands; the great charters
of liberty were to be again established; the Prince was not to
leave the country for three years, and must choose his council
by the advice of government; and the county of Chester, with its
castle, together with the castles of the Peak and Newcastle, were
to be given up to De Montfort. For this, however, an equivalent
was to be given from De Montfort’s county of Leicester. All
these arrangements were made under the most solemn sanctions.
On the last article much of the abuse of Leicester for avarice
and self-seeking has been rested. But, in fact, the position
of the lands commanding the Scotch and Welsh borders afforded a
sufficient political reason for requiring their cession. A copy of
this arrangement was sent to each sheriff, and the great charters
of liberty publicly read, with a solemn threat of excommunication
against all who should break them.
[Sidenote: Defection of De Clare. He joins the Marchers.]
[Sidenote: Escape of Edward.]
These arrangements tended to the establishment of a peaceful
government and to the healing of faction; but unfortunately there
was constant jealousy of De Montfort among his colleagues, arising
probably in part from his foreign birth and royal connections, in
part from the truly popular nature of his views, with which the
Barons had but little sympathy. Again, as on a previous occasion,
De Clare, the leader of the English Barons, deserted him, and
began to intrigue with his enemies. At the same time, William de
Valence landed in his lordship of Pembroke. By the instrumentality
of Mortimer, Edward made his escape from Ludlow Castle; and the
invaders, the Prince, the Lord Marchers, and Gloucester opened
communications one with the other. The trick by which Edward
effected his escape is well known. On pretence of racing, he
wearied the horses of his guardians, and then galloped from them on
a particularly swift horse that had just been sent him, which he
had kept fresh. The danger had become so pressing that Leicester
advanced against the invaders in the South of Wales: but while in
that distant corner of the country, the Prince, with the men of
Chester, who willingly joined their old governor, marched down the
Severn and took Gloucester, thus cutting Leicester off from the
rest of his supporters.
[Sidenote: Leicester opposes Edward in Wales.]
[Sidenote: Defeat at Kenilworth.]
De Montfort at once recognized that Edward was his chief enemy,
and turned back to meet him, at the same time summoning to his aid
his son the younger Simon, who was with an army at Dover. Had he
executed this duty intrusted to him satisfactorily, Edward would
either have been enclosed between the two armies, or De Montfort
largely reinforced. As it was, he wasted some time at Kenilworth,
his father’s chief stronghold, and foolishly suffered his troops to
encamp outside the walls of the castle. A female spy brought Edward
news of his enemy’s mistake, and a sudden onslaught scattered De
Montfort’s reinforcement in disgraceful flight. Edward tried to
check De Montfort’s return by breaking down all the bridges over
the Severn, but a way was at length found to cross the river about
four miles below Worcester, and the baronial army reached Evesham
in the full expectation of speedily meeting their friends.
[Sidenote: Battle of Evesham. Aug. 4.]