HENRY III. =1216-1272=.
LEADING DATES
Accession of Henry III. 1216
The Fall of Hubert de Burgh 1232
The Provisions of Oxford 1258
Battle of Lewes 1264
Battle of Evesham 1265
Death of Henry III. 1272
1. =Henry III. and Louis. 1216--1217.=--Henry III., the eldest son of
John, was but nine years old at his father's death. Never before had
it been useful for England that the king should be a child. As Henry
had oppressed no one and had broken no oaths, those who dared not
trust the father could rally to the son. The boy had two guardians,
one of whom was Gualo, the legate of Pope Honorius III., a man gentler
and less ambitious than Innocent III., whom he had just succeeded; the
other was William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, who had been constant
to John, not because he loved his evil deeds, but because, like many
of the older officials, he feared that the victory of the barons would
be followed by anarchy. These two had on their side the growing
feeling on behalf of English nationality; whereas, as long as John
lived, his opponents had argued that it was better to have a foreign
king like Louis than to have a king like John, who tyrannised over the
land by the help of foreign mercenaries. Henry's followers daily
increased, and in =1217= Louis was defeated by the Marshal at Lincoln.
Later in the year Hubert de Burgh, the Justiciar, sent out a fleet
which defeated a French fleet off Dover. Louis then submitted and left
the kingdom.
2. =The Renewal of the Great Charter. 1216--1217.=--The principles on
which William the Marshal intended to govern were signified by the
changes made in the Great Charter when it was renewed on the king's
accession in =1216=, and again on Louis's expulsion in =1217=. Most of
the clauses binding the king to avoid oppression were allowed to
stand; but those which prohibited the raising of new taxation without
the authority of the Great Council, and the stipulation which
established a body of twenty-five to distrain on John's property in
case of the breach of the Charter, were omitted. Probably it was
thought that there was less danger from Henry than there had been from
John; but the acceptance of the compromise was mainly due to the
feeling that, whilst it was desirable that the king should govern with
moderation, it would be a dangerous experiment to put the power to
control him in the hands of the barons, who might use it for their own
advantage rather than for the advantage of the nation. The whole
history of England for many years was to turn on the difficulty of
weakening the power of a bad king without producing anarchy.
[Illustration: Effigy of Henry III. from his tomb in Westminster
Abbey.]
[Illustration: Effigy of William Longespee, Earl of Salisbury (died
1227); from his tomb in Salisbury Cathedral: showing armour worn from
about 1225 to 1250.]
3. =Administration of Hubert de Burgh. 1219-1232.=--In =1219= William
the Marshal died. For some years the government was mainly in the
hands of Hubert de Burgh, who strenuously maintained the authority of
the king over the barons, whilst at the same time he set himself
distinctly at the head of the growing national feeling against the
admission of foreigners to wealth and high position in England. As a
result of the disturbances of John's reign many of the barons and of
the leaders of the mercenaries had either fortified their own castles
or had taken possession of those which belonged to the king. In =1220=
Hubert demanded the surrender of these castles as Henry II. had done
in the beginning of his reign. In =1221= the Earl of Aumale was forced
to surrender his castles, and in =1224= Faukes de Breaute, one of the
leaders of John's mercenaries who had received broad lands in England,
was reduced to submission and was banished on his refusal to give up
his great castle at Bedford. As long as Hubert ruled, England was to
belong to the English. His power was endangered from the very quarter
from which it ought to have received most support. In =1227= Henry
declared himself of age. He was weak and untrustworthy, always ready
to give his confidence to unworthy favourites. His present favourite
was Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester. The bishop was a greedy
and unscrupulous Poitevin, who regarded the king's favour as a means
of enriching himself and his Poitevin relatives and friends. Henry was
always short of money, and was persuaded by Peter that it was
Hubert's fault. In =1232= Hubert was charged with a whole string of
crimes and dismissed from office.
[Illustration: Simon, Bishop of Exeter (died 1223); from his tomb at
Exeter, showing rich mass-vestments.]
[Illustration: Beverley Minster, Yorkshire--the south transept; built
about 1220-1230.]
4. =Administration of Peter des Roches. 1232-1234.=--Henry was now
entirely under the power of Peter des Roches. In =1233= he ordered
Hubert to be seized. Though Hubert took sanctuary in a chapel, he was
dragged out, and a smith was ordered to put him in fetters. The man
refused to obey. "Is not this," he said, "that most faithful and
high-souled Hubert who has so often saved England from the ravages of
foreigners, and has given England back to the English?" Hubert was
thrown into the Tower, and was never again employed in any office of
state. As long as Peter des Roches ruled the king it would be hard to
keep England for the English. Poitevins and Bretons flocked over from
the Continent, and were appointed to all the influential posts which
fell vacant. The barons had the national feeling behind them when they
raised complaints against this policy. Their leader was Earl Richard
the Marshal, the son of the Earl William who had governed England
after the death of John. Without even the semblance of trial Henry
declared Earl Richard and his chief supporters guilty of treason. At a
Great Council held at Westminster some of the barons remonstrated.
Peter des Roches replied saucily that there were no peers in England
as in France, meaning that in England the barons had no rights against
the king. Both Henry and Peter could, however, use their tongues
better than their swords. They failed miserably in an attempt to
overcome the men whom they had unjustly accused, till in =1234= Peter
stirred up some of the English lords in Ireland to seize on Earl
Richard's possessions there. The Earl hurried over to defend his
estates. Amongst his followers were many of Peter's confidants, who,
treacherously deserting him in the first battle, left him to be slain
by his enemies. Peter at least gained nothing by his villainy. Edmund
Rich, a saintly man, who had recently become Archbishop of Canterbury,
protested against his misdeeds. All England was behind the Archbishop,
and Henry was compelled to dismiss Peter and then to welcome back
Peter's enemies and to restore them to their rights. It was of no
slight importance that a man so devoted and unselfish as Edmund Rich
had put himself at the head of the movement. It was a good thing, no
doubt, to maintain that wealth should be in the hands rather of
natives than of foreigners; but after all every contention for
material wealth alone is of the earth, earthy. No object which appeals
exclusively to the selfish instincts can, in the long run, be worth
contending for. Edmund Rich's accession to the national cause was a
guarantee that the claims of righteousness and mercy in the management
of the national government would not altogether be forgotten, and
fortunately there were new forces actively at work in the same
direction. The friars, the followers of St. Francis and St. Dominic,
had made good their footing in England.
5. =Francis of Assisi.=--Francis, the son of a merchant in the Tuscan
town of Assisi, threw aside the vanities of youth after a serious
illness. He was wedded, he declared, to Poverty as his bride. He
clothed himself in rags. When his father sent him with a horseload of
goods to a neighbouring market, he sold both horse and goods, and
offered the money to build a church. His father was enraged, and
summoned him before the bishop that he might be deprived of the right
of inheriting that which he knew not how to use. Francis stripped
himself naked, renouncing even his clothes as his father's property.
"I have now," he said, "but one Father, He that is in heaven." He
wandered about as a beggar, subsisting on alms and devoting himself to
the care of the sick and afflicted. In his heroism of self-denial he
chose out the lepers, covered as they were with foul and infectious
sores, as the main objects of his tending. Before long he gathered
together a brotherhood of men like-minded with himself, who left all,
to give not alms but themselves to the help of the poor and sorrowful
of Christ's flock. In =1209= Innocent III. constituted them into a new
order, not of monks but of Friars (_Fratres_ or brethren). The special
title of the new order, which after ages have known by the name of
Franciscans, was that of Minorites (_Fratres Minores_), or the lesser
brethren, because Francis in his humility declared them to be less
than the least of Christ's servants. Like Francis, they were to be
mendicants, begging their food from day to day. Having nothing
themselves, they would be the better able to touch the hearts of those
who had nothing. Yet it was not so much the humility of Francis as his
loving heart which distinguished him amongst men. Not only all human
beings but all created things were dear to him. Once he is said to
have preached to birds. He called the sun and the wind his brethren,
the moon and the water his sisters. When he died the last feeble words
which he breathed were, "Welcome, sister Death!"
6. =St. Dominic.=--Another order arose about the same time in Spain.
Dominic, a Spaniard, was appalled, not by the misery, but by the
ignorance of mankind. The order which he instituted was to be called
that of the Friars Preachers, though they have in later times usually
been known as Dominicans. Like the Franciscans they were to be Friars,
or brothers, because all teaching is vain, as much as all charitable
acts are vain, unless brotherly kindness be at the root. Like the
Franciscans they were to be mendicants, because so only could the
world be convinced that they sought not their own good, but to win
souls to Christ.
7. =The Coming of the Friars. 1220-1224.=--In =1220= the first
Dominicans arrived in England. Four years later, in =1224=, the first
Franciscans followed them. Of the work of the early Dominicans in
England little is known. They preached and taught, appealing to those
whose intelligence was keen enough to appreciate the value of
argument. The Franciscans had a different work before them. The misery
of the dwellers on the outskirts of English towns was appalling. The
townsmen had made provision for keeping good order amongst all who
shared in the liberties,[13] or, as we should say, in the privileges
of the town; but they made no provision for good order amongst the
crowds who flocked to the town to pick up a scanty living as best they
might. These poor wretches had to dwell in miserable hovels outside
the walls by the side of fetid ditches into which the filth of the
town was poured. Disease and starvation thinned their numbers. No man
cared for their bodies or their souls. The priests who served in the
churches within the town passed them by, nor had they any place in the
charities with which the brethren of the gilds assuaged the
misfortunes of their own members. It was amongst these that the
Franciscans lived and laboured, sharing in their misery and their
diseases, counting their lives well spent if they could bring comfort
to a single human soul.
[Footnote 13: A phrase which may serve to keep in mind the medieval
meaning of '_libertas_' is to be found in the statement that a
certain monastery kept up a pair of stocks '_pro libertate
servanda_'--that is to say, to keep up its franchise of putting
offenders into the stocks.]
8. =Monks and Friars.=--The work of the friars was a new phase in the
history of the Church. The monks had made it their object to save
their own souls; the friars made it their object to save the bodies
and souls of others. The friars, like the monks, taught by the example
of self-denial; but the friars added active well-doing to the passive
virtue of restraint. Such examples could not fail to be attended with
consequences of which those who set them never dreamed, all the more
because the two new orders worked harmoniously towards a common end.
The Dominicans quickened the brain whilst the Franciscans touched the
heart, and the whole nation was the better in consequence.
[Illustration: Longthorpe Manor House, Northampton; built about 1235.
Some of the larger windows are later.]
9. =The King's Marriage. 1236.=--In =1236= Henry married Eleanor, the
daughter of the Count of Provence. The immediate consequence was the
arrival of her four uncles with a stream of Provencals in their train.
Amongst these uncles William, Bishop-elect of Valence, took the lead.
Henry submitted his weak mind entirely to him, and distributed rank
and wealth to the Provencals with as much profusion as he had
distributed them to the Poitevins in the days of Peter des Roches. The
barons, led now by the king's brother, Richard of Cornwall,
remonstrated when they met in the Great Council, which was gradually
acquiring the right of granting fresh taxes, though all reference to
that right was dropped out of all editions of the Great Charter issued
in the reign of Henry. For some time they granted the money which
Henry continually asked for, coupling, however, with their grant the
demand that Henry should confirm the Charter. The king never refused
to confirm it. He had no difficulty in making promises, but he never
troubled himself to keep those which he had made.
[Illustration: A ship in the reign of Henry III.]
10. =The Early Career of Simon de Montfort. 1231--1243.=--Strangely
enough, Simon de Montfort, the man who was to be the chief opponent of
Henry and his foreign favourites, was himself a foreigner. He was
sprung from a family established in Normandy, and his father, the
elder Simon de Montfort, had been the leader of a body of Crusaders
from the north of France, who had poured over the south to crush a
vast body of heretics, known by the name of Albigeois, from Albi, a
town in which they swarmed. The elder Simon had been strict in his
orthodoxy and unsparing in his cruelty to all who were unorthodox.
From him the younger Simon inherited his unswerving religious zeal and
his constancy of purpose. There was the same stern resolution in both,
but in the younger man these qualities were coupled with a
statesmanlike instinct, which was wanting to the father. Norman as he
was, he had a claim to the earldom of Leicester through his
grandmother, and in =1231= this claim was acknowledged by Henry. For
some time Simon continued to live abroad, but in =1236= he returned to
England to be present at the king's marriage. He was at once taken
into favour, and in =1238= married the king's sister, Eleanor. His
marriage was received by the barons and the people with a burst of
indignation. It was one more instance, it was said, of Henry's
preference for foreigners over his own countrymen. In =1239= Henry
turned upon his brother-in-law, brought heavy charges against him, and
drove him from his court. In =1240= Simon was outwardly reconciled to
Henry, but he was never again able to repose confidence in one so
fickle. In =1242= Henry resolved to undertake an expedition to France
to recover Poitou, which had been gradually slipping out of his
hands. At a Great Council held before he sailed, the barons, who had
no sympathy with any attempt to recover lost possessions in France,
not only rated him soundly for his folly, but, for the first time,
absolutely refused to make him a grant of money. Simon told him to his
face that the Frenchman was no lamb to be easily subdued. Simon's
words proved true. Henry sailed for France, but in =1243= he
surrendered all claims to Poitou, and returned discomfited. If he did
not bring home victory he brought with him a new crowd of Poitevins,
who were connected with his mother's second husband. All of them
expected to receive advancement in England, and they seldom expected
it in vain.
11. =Papal Exactions. 1237--1243.=--Disgusted as were the English
landowners by the preference shown by the king to foreigners, the
English clergy were no less disgusted by the exactions of the Pope.
The claim of Innocent III. to regulate the proceedings of kings had
been handed down to his successors and made them jealous of any ruler
too powerful to be controlled. The Emperor Frederick II. had not only
succeeded to the government of Germany, and to some influence over the
north of Italy, but had inherited Naples and Sicily from his mother.
The Pope thus found himself, as it were, between two fires. There was
constant bickering between Frederick and Gregory IX., a fiery old man
who became Pope in =1227=, and in =1238= Gregory excommunicated
Frederick, and called on all Europe to assist him against the man whom
he stigmatised as the enemy of God and the Church. As the king of
England was his vassal in consequence of John's surrender, he looked
to him for aid more than to others, especially as England, enjoying
internal peace more than other nations, was regarded as especially
wealthy. In =1237=, the year before Frederick's excommunication,
Gregory sent Cardinal Otho as his legate to demand money from the
English clergy. The clergy found a leader in Robert Grossetete, Bishop
of Lincoln, a wise and practical reformer of clerical disorders; but
though they grumbled, they could get no protection from the king, and
were forced to pay. Otho left England in =1241=, carrying immense sums
of money with him, and the promise of the king to present three
hundred Italian priests to English benefices before he presented a
single Englishman. In =1243= Gregory IX. was succeeded by Innocent
IV., who was even more grasping than his predecessor.
12. =A Weak Parliamentary Opposition. 1244.=--Against these evils the
Great Council strove in vain to make head. It was now beginning to be
known as Parliament, though no alteration was yet made in its
composition. In =1244= clergy and barons joined in remonstrating with
the king, and some of them even talked about restraining his power by
the establishment of a Justiciar and Chancellor, together with four
councillors, all six to be elected by the whole of the baronage.
Without the consent of the Chancellor thus chosen no administrative
act could be done. The scheme was a distinct advance upon that of the
barons who, in =1215=, forced the Great Charter upon John. The barons
had then proposed to leave the appointment of executive officials to
the king, and to appoint a committee of twenty-five, who were to have
nothing to do with the government of the country, but were to compel
the king by force to keep the promises which he had made. In =1244=
they proposed to appoint the executive officials themselves. It was
the beginning of a series of changes which ultimately led to that with
which we are now familiar, the appointment of ministers responsible to
Parliament. It was too great an innovation to be accepted at once,
especially as it was demanded by the barons alone. The clergy, who
were still afraid of the disorders which might ensue if power were
lodged in the hands of the barons, refused to support it, and for a
time it fell to the ground. At the same time Richard of Cornwall
abandoned the baronial party. He had lately married the queen's
sister, which may have drawn him over to the king; but it is also
probable that his own position as the king's brother made him
unwilling to consent to a scheme which would practically transfer the
government from the king to the barons. On the other hand Earl Simon
was found on the side of the barons. He held his earldom by
inheritance from his English grandmother, and the barons were willing
to forgive his descent from a foreign grandfather when they found him
prepared to share their policy.
13. =Growing Discontent. 1244--1254.=--The clergy had to learn by
bitter experience that it was only by a close alliance with the barons
that they could preserve themselves from wrong. In =1244= a new envoy
from the Pope, Master Martin, travelled over England wringing money
from the clergy. Though he was driven out of the country in =1245=,
the Papal exactions did not cease. The Pope, moreover, continued to
present his own nominees to English benefices, and in =1252=
Grossetete complained that these nominees drew three times as much
income from England as flowed into the royal exchequer. For a time
even Henry made complaints, but in =1254= Innocent IV. won him over to
his side. Frederick II. had died in =1250=, and his illegitimate son,
Manfred, a tried warrior and an able ruler, had succeeded him as king
of Sicily and Naples. Innocent could not bear that that crown should
be worn by the son of the man whom he had hated bitterly, and offered
it to Edmund, the second son of Henry III. Henry lept at the offer,
hoping that England would bear the expense of the undertaking. England
was, however, in no mood to comply. Henry had been squandering money
for years. He had recently employed Earl Simon in Gascony, where Simon
had put down the resistance of the nobles with a heavy hand. The
Gascons complained to Henry, and Henry quarrelled with Simon more
bitterly than before. In =1254= Henry crossed the sea to restore order
in person. To meet his expenses he borrowed a vast sum of money, and
this loan, which he expected England to meet, was the only result of
the expedition.
[Illustration: A bed in the reign of Henry III.]
14. =The Knights of the Shire in Parliament. 1254.=--During the king's
absence the queen and Earl Richard, who were left as regents, and who
had to collect money as best they might, gathered a Great Council, to
which, for the first time, representative knights, four from each
shire, were summoned. They were merely called on to report what amount
of aid their constituents were willing to give, and the regents were
doubtless little aware of the importance of the step which they were
taking. It was only, to all appearances, an adaptation of the summons
calling on the united jury to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages
of the clergy in the reign of John. It might seem as if the regents
had only summoned a united jury to give evidence of their
constituents' readiness to grant certain sums of money. In reality the
new scheme was sure to take root, because it held out a hope of
getting rid of a constitutional difficulty which had hitherto proved
insoluble--the difficulty, that is to say, of weakening the king's
power to do evil without establishing baronial anarchy in its place.
It was certain that the representatives of the freeholders in the
counties would not use their influence for the destruction of order.
[Illustration: Barn of thirteenth-century date at Raunds,
Northamptonshire.]
15. =Fresh Exactions. 1254-1257.=--At the end of =1254= Henry returned
to England. In =1255= a new Pope, Alexander IV., confirmed his
predecessor's grant of the kingdom of Sicily to Edmund, on condition
that Henry should give a large sum of money for the expenses of a war
against Manfred. To make it easy for Henry to find the money,
Alexander gave him a tenth of the revenues of the English clergy, on
the plea that the clergy had always borne their share of the expenses
of a crusade, and that to fight for the Pope against Manfred was
equivalent to a crusade. Immense sums were wrung from the clergy, who
were powerless to resist Pope and king combined. Their indignation was
the greater, not only because they knew that religion was not at stake
in the Pope's effort to secure his political power in Italy, but also
because the Papal court was known to be hopelessly corrupt, it being a
matter of common talk that all things were for sale at Rome. The
clergy indeed were less than ever in a condition to resist the king
without support. Grossetete was dead, and the Archbishop of
Canterbury, the queen's uncle, Boniface of Savoy, whose duty it was to
maintain the rights of the Church, was a man who cared nothing for
England except on account of the money he drew from it. Other
bishoprics as well were held by foreigners. The result of the weakness
of the clergy was that they were now ready to unite with the barons,
whom they had deserted in =1244= (see p. 195). Henry's misgovernment,
in fact, had roused all classes against him, as the townsmen and the
smaller landowners had been even worse treated than the greater
barons. In =1257= one obstacle to reform was removed. Richard of
Cornwall, the king's brother, who was formidable through his wealth
and the numbers of his vassals, had for some time taken part against
them. In =1257= he was chosen king of the Romans by the German
electors, an election which would make him Emperor as soon as he had
been crowned by the Pope. He at once left England to seek his fortunes
in Germany, where he was well received as long as he had money to
reward his followers, but was deserted as soon as his purse was empty.
16. =The Provisions of Oxford. 1258.=--The crisis in England came in
=1258=, whilst Richard was still abroad. Though thousands were dying
of starvation in consequence of a bad harvest, Henry demanded for the
Pope the monstrous sum of one-third of the revenue of all England.
Then the storm burst. At a Parliament at Westminster the barons
appeared in arms and demanded, first, the expulsion of all foreigners,
and, secondly, the appointment of a committee of twenty-four--twelve
from the king's party and twelve from that of the barons--to reform
the realm. The king unwillingly consented, and the committee was
appointed. Later in the year Parliament met again at Oxford to receive
the report of the new committee. The Mad Parliament, as it was
afterwards called in derision, was resolved to make good its claims.
The scheme of reinforcing Parliament by the election of knights of the
shire had indeed been suffered to fall into disuse since its
introduction in =1254=, yet every tenant-in-chief had of old the right
of attending, and though the lesser tenants-in-chief had hitherto
seldom or never exercised that right, they now trooped in arms to
Oxford to support the barons. To this unwonted gathering the committee
produced a set of proposals which have gone by the name of the
Provisions of Oxford. There was to be a council of fifteen, without
the advice of which the king could do no act, and in this council the
baronial party had a majority. The offices of state were filled in
accordance with the wishes of the twenty-four, and the barons thus
entered into possession of the authority which had hitherto been the
king's. The danger of the king's tyranny was averted, but it remained
to be seen whether a greater tyranny would not be erected in its
stead. One clause of the Provisions of Oxford was not reassuring. The
old Parliaments, which every tenant-in-chief had at least the
customary right of attending, were no longer to exist. Their place was
to be taken by a body of twelve, to be chosen by the barons, which was
to meet three times a year to discuss public affairs with the council
of fifteen.
17. =The Expulsion of the Foreigners. 1258.=--The first difficulty of
the new government was to compel the foreigners to surrender their
castles. William de Valence, the king's half-brother, headed the
resistance of the foreigners. The barons swore that no danger should
keep them back till they had cleared the land of foreigners and had
obtained the good laws which they needed. Earl Simon set the example
by surrendering his own castles at Kenilworth and Odiham. The national
feeling was with Simon and the barons, and at last the foreigners were
driven across the sea. For a time all went well. The committee of
twenty-four continued its work and produced a further series of
reforms. All persons in authority were called on to swear to be
faithful to the Provisions of Oxford, and the king and his eldest son,
Edward, complied with the demand.
18. =Edward and the Barons. 1259.=--Early in =1259= Richard came back
to England, and gave satisfaction by swearing to the Provisions.
Before long signs of danger appeared. The placing complete authority
in the hands of the barons was not likely to be long popular, and Earl
Simon was known to be in favour of a wider and more popular scheme.
Hugh Bigod, who had been named Justiciar by the barons, gave offence
by the way in which he exercised his office. Simon was hated by the
king, and he knew that many of the barons did not love him. The
sub-tenants--the Knights Bachelors of England as they called
themselves--doubting his power to protect them, complained, not to
Simon, but to Edward, the eldest son of the King, that the barons had
obtained the redress of their own grievances, but had done nothing for
the rest of the community. Edward was now a young man of twenty,
hot-tempered and impatient of control, but keen-sighted enough to
know, what his father had never known, that the royal power would be
increased if it could establish itself in the affections of the
classes whose interests were antagonistic to those of the barons. He
therefore declared that he had sworn to the Provisions, and would keep
his oath; but that if the barons did not fulfil their own promises, he
would join the community in compelling them to do so. The warning was
effectual, and the barons issued orders for the redress of the
grievances of those who had found so high a patron.
19. =The Breach amongst the Barons. 1259--1261.=--Simon had no wish to
be involved in a purely baronial policy. He had already fallen out
with Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, the leader of the barons
who had resisted the full execution of the promises made at Oxford in
the interest of the people at large. "With such fickle and faithless
men," said Simon to him, "I care not to have ought to do. The things
we are treating of now we have sworn to carry out. And thou, Sir Earl,
the higher thou art the more art thou bound to keep such statutes as
are wholesome for the land." The king fomented the rising quarrel, and
in =1261= announced that the Pope had declared the Provisions to be
null and void, and had released him from his oath to observe them.
20. =Royalist Reaction and Civil War. 1261.=--Henry now ruled again in
his own fashion. Even the Earl of Gloucester discovered that if the
king was to be resisted it must be by an appeal to a body of men more
numerous than the barons alone. He joined Simon in inviting a
Parliament to meet, at which three knights should appear for each
county, thus throwing over the unfortunate narrowing of Parliament to
a baronial committee of twelve, which had been the worst blot on the
Provisions of Oxford. In the summer of =1262= the Earl of Gloucester
died, and was succeeded by his son, Earl Gilbert, one of Simon's
warmest personal admirers. In =1263= Simon, now the acknowledged head
of the barons and of the nation, finding that the king could not be
brought to keep the Provisions, took arms against him. He was a master
in the art of war, and gained one fortified post after another. Henry,
being, as usual, short of money, called on the Londoners for a loan.
On their refusal Edward seized a sum of money which belonged to them,
and so exasperated them that, on the queen's passing under London
Bridge, the citizens reviled her and pelted her with stones. The war
was carried on with doubtful results, and by the end of the year both
parties agreed to submit to the arbitration of the king of France.
21. =The Mise of Amiens. 1264.=--The king of France Louis IX.,
afterwards known as St. Louis, was the justest and most unselfish of
men. In =1259= he had surrendered to Henry a considerable amount of
territory in France, which Henry had been unable to reconquer for
himself; and was well satisfied to obtain from Henry in return a
formal renunciation of the remainder of the lands which Philip II. had
taken from John. Yet, well-intentioned as Louis was, he had no
knowledge of England, and in France, where the feudal nobility was
still excessively tyrannical, justice was only to be obtained by the
maintenance of a strong royal power. He therefore thought that what
was good for France was also good for England, and in the beginning of
=1264= he relieved Henry from all the restrictions which his subjects
had sought to place upon him. The decision thus taken was known as
the Mise, or settlement, of Amiens, from the place at which it was
issued.
22. =The Battle of Lewes. 1264.=--The Mise of Amiens required an
unconditional surrender of England to the king. The Londoners and the
trading towns were the first to reject it. Simon put himself at the
head of a united army of barons and citizens. In the early morning of
May 14 he caught the king's army half asleep at Lewes. Edward charged
at the Londoners, against whom he bore a grudge since they had
ill-treated his mother, and cleared them off the field with enormous
slaughter. When he returned the battle was lost. Henry himself was
captured, and Richard, king of the Romans, was found hiding in a
windmill. Edward, in spite of his success, had to give himself up as a
prisoner.
[Illustration: A fight between armed and mounted knights of the time
of Henry III.]
[Illustration: Seal of Robert Fitzwalter, showing a mounted knight in
complete mail armour. Date, about 1265.]
23. =Earl Simon's Government. 1264-1265.=--Simon followed up his
victory by an agreement called the Mise of Lewes, according to which
all matters of dispute were again to be referred to arbitration. In
the meantime there were to be three Electors, Earl Simon himself, the
Earl of Gloucester, and the Bishop of Chichester. These were to elect
nine councillors, who were to name the ministers of state. To keep
these councillors within bounds a Parliament was called, in which with
the barons, bishops, and abbots there sat not only chosen knights for
each shire, but also for the first time two representatives of certain
towns. This Parliament met in =1265=. It was not, indeed, a full
parliament, as only Simon's partisans amongst the barons were
summoned, but it was the fullest representation of England as a whole
which had yet met, and not a merely baronial committee like that
proposed in =1258=. The views of Simon were clearly indicated in an
argumentative Latin poem written after the battle of Lewes by one of
his supporters. In this poem the king's claim to do as he likes with
his own is met by a demand that he shall rule according to law. Such a
demand was made by others than the poet. "The king," a great lawyer of
the day had said, "is not subject to any man, but to God and the law."
The difficulty still remained of ascertaining what the law was. The
poet did not, indeed, anticipate modern theories, and hold that the
law was what the representatives of the people made it to be; but he
held that the law consisted in the old customs, and that the people
themselves must be appealed to as the witnesses of what those old
customs were. "Therefore," he wrote, "let the community of the kingdom
advise, and let it be known what the generality thinks, to whom their
own laws are best known. Nor are all those of the country so ignorant
that they do not know better than strangers the customs of their own
kingdom which have been handed down to them by their ancestors."[14]
The poet, in short, regarded the Parliament as a national jury, whose
duty it was to give evidence on the laws and customs of the nation, in
the same way that a local jury gave evidence on local matters.
[Footnote 14:
"Igitur communitas regni consulatur;
Et quid universitas sentiat, sciatur,
Cui leges propriae maxime sunt notae.
Nec cuncti provinciae sic sunt idiotae,
Quin sciant plus caeteris regni sui mores,
Quos relinquunt posteris hii qui sunt priores."]
[Illustration: Effigy of a knight at Gosperton, showing armour worn
from about 1250 to 1300. Date, about 1270.]
24. =The Battle of Evesham. 1265.=--Simon's constitution was
premature. Men wanted a patriotic king who could lead the nation
instead of one who, like Henry, used it for his own ends. The new
rulers were sure to quarrel with one another. If Simon was still Simon
the Righteous, his sons acted tyrannically. The barons began again to
distrust Simon himself, and the young Earl of Gloucester, like his
father before him, put himself at the head of the dissatisfied barons,
and went over to the king. Edward escaped from confinement, by urging
his keepers to ride races with one another, and then galloping off
when their horses were too tired to follow him. Edward and Gloucester
combined forces, and, falling on Earl Simon at Evesham, defeated him
utterly. Simon was slain in the fight and his body barbarously
mutilated; but his memory was treasured, and he was counted as a saint
by the people for whom he had worked. Verses have been preserved in
which he is compared to Archbishop Thomas, who had given himself as a
sacrifice for the Church, as Simon had given himself as a sacrifice
for the nation.
[Illustration: Building operations in the reign of Henry III., with
the king giving directions to the architect.]
25. =The Last Years of Henry III. 1265--1272.=--The storm which had
been raised was some time in calming down. Some of Earl Simon's
followers continued to hold out against the king. When at last they
submitted, they were treated leniently, and in =1267=, at a Parliament
at Marlborough, a statute was enacted embodying most of the demands
for the redress of grievances made by the earlier reformers. The
kingdom settled down in peace, because Henry now allowed Edward to be
the real head of the government. Edward, in short, carried on Earl
Simon's work in ruling justly, with the advantage of being raised
above jealousies by his position as heir to the throne. In =1270=
England was so peaceful that Edward could embark on a crusade. At Acre
he very nearly fell a victim to a fanatic belonging to a body which
counted assassination a religious duty. His wife, Eleanor of Castile,
who was tenderly attached to him, had to be led out of his tent, lest
her bitter grief should distract him during an operation which the
surgeons held to be necessary. In =1272= Henry III. died, and his
son, though in a distant land, was quietly accepted as his successor.
[Illustration: East end of Westminster Abbey Church: begun by Henry
III. in 1245.]
[Illustration: Nave of Salisbury Cathedral Church, looking west. Date,
between 1240 and 1250.]
[Illustration: A king and labourers in the reign of Henry III.]
26. =General Progress of the Country.=--In spite of the turmoils of
Henry's reign the country made progress in many ways. Men busied
themselves with replacing the old round-arched churches by large and
more beautiful ones, in that Early English style of which Lincoln
Cathedral was the first example on a large scale. In =1220= it was
followed by Beverley Minster (see p. 189). The nave of Salisbury
Cathedral was begun in =1240= (see p. 206), and a new Westminster
Abbey grew piecemeal under Henry's own supervision during the greater
part of the reign (see p. 205). Mental activity accompanied material
activity. At Oxford there were reckoned 15,000 scholars. Most
remarkable was the new departure taken by Walter de Merton, Henry's
Chancellor. Hitherto each scholar had shifted for himself, lived where
he could, and been subjected to little or no discipline. In founding
Merton College, the first college which existed in the University,
Merton proposed not only to erect a building in which the lads who
studied might be boarded and placed under supervision, but to train
them with a view to learning for its own sake, and not to prepare them
for the priesthood. The eagerness to learn things difficult was
accompanied by a desire to increase popular knowledge. For the first
time since the Chronicle came to an end, which was soon after the
accession of Henry II., a book--Layamon's _Brut_--appeared in the
reign of John in the English language, and one at least of the songs
which witness to the interest of the people in the great struggle with
Henry III. was also written in the same language. Yet the great
achievement of the fifty-six years of Henry's reign was--to use the
language of the smith who refused to put fetters on the limbs of
Hubert de Burgh (see p. 188)--the giving of England back to the
English. In =1216= it was possible for Englishmen to prefer a
French-born Louis as their king to an Angevin John. In =1272= England
was indeed divided by class prejudices and conflicting interests, but
it was nationally one. The greatest grievance suffered from Henry III.
was his preference of foreigners over his own countrymen. In
resistance to foreigners Englishmen had been welded together into a
nation, and in their new king Edward they found a leader who would not
only prove a wise and thoughtful ruler, but who was every inch an
Englishman.
_Genealogy of John's Sons and Grandsons._
JOHN, 1199-1216
|
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HENRY III. = Eleanor of Richard, Eleanor = Simon de
1216-1272 | Provence Earl of Cornwall Montfort
| and King of the Romans
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EDWARD I. Edmund, titular King of Sicily
1272-1307