SIMON DE MONTFORT.
Delay of the crisis--Simon de Montfort--Parliament of 1258--Provisions
of Oxford--Political troubles--Award of St. Lewis--Battle of
Lewes--Baronial government--Battle of Evesham--Closing years.
[Sidenote:
Why the constitutional
crisis was delayed.
]
[Sidenote:
Henry’s
dynastic
policy.
]
The long and dreary survey of the first forty years of Henry’s reign
has its chief use in enabling us to trace the string of events, the
accumulation of causes and motives, which produced the more striking
complications of the remaining sixteen years. We have seen that on
the one hand a gradually increasing spirit of resistance was being
roused among all classes of the people. Through a shifty, shuffling,
purposeless public policy on the king’s part, a sullen determination to
reign as despotically as his father had done constantly makes itself
apparent. The papal influence, too, by which his foreign policy was
guided, was gradually bringing him up to a point at which the national
spirit would no longer endure him. We cannot fail to perceive further
that Henry’s determination to act as his own minister could have but
one result--that, when the time for account came, the account would
be demanded of him himself personally; he would have no agents behind
whom he could screen himself, or whom he could sacrifice to justify
himself. Henry’s personal character, his pliancy and want of principle,
may perhaps have helped to put off the day of account, so long delayed,
and it may have been his own misfortune that he lived so long to try
the patience of the people. Another reason for their endurance was no
doubt the want of a leader, and that was a potent reason. In the early
difficulties of the reign the place of the leader of constitutional
opposition was occasionally taken by the Earl of Chester, a man in
whose conduct the desire of rule was stronger than the love of liberty;
and after his death it was occupied with higher principles and nobler
purposes by the Earl Marshall Richard. After Richard’s death no great
lay baron for a long time stood out from the rest as a leader. The
bishops proclaimed their grievances and the oppressions of the court,
but the bishops were forbidden by their order to take up arms against
the king. The great earldoms of the former age were extinct in spirit
if not in title, and possibly the king may have found means to keep
their modern representatives silent or inactive. The great earldom of
Leicester had been split in two, and one half, which bore the name of
Leicester, was, at the beginning of the reign, in the king’s hands,
although claimed by the Montforts. The earldom of Chester came, on the
extinction of the heirs, to the crown in 1237; Essex and Hereford were
held by one family; Cornwall by the king’s brother; Salisbury by his
cousin. Gloucester alone retained anything like its old importance, and
the Earl of Gloucester could not stand alone. Henry was wise enough to
see this, and so avoided the restoration of Chester by keeping it as
a provision for one of his sons. It was probably with the like object
that he connived at the marriage of his sister with Simon de Montfort,
to whom the Leicester inheritance must in the end come; and when the
earldom of the Marshalls escheated he gave it to his half-brother. If
all the great earldoms could be comfortably distributed among his near
kinsmen the baronial party would be without its natural head, and
might lie at his mercy. That this was a part of his plan we may infer
from his treatment of the bishoprics. He no doubt thought that he had
a safe hold on the clergy when his wife’s uncle was made archbishop
of Canterbury, his half-brother, Ethelmer of Lusignan, bishop of
Winchester, and another important bishopric, that of Hereford, was in
the hands of a Provençal kinsman. Edward III., a hundred years after
him, adopted somewhat the same plan of consolidating family power by
marrying his sons to the heiresses of the earldoms; and at an earlier
period in the history of the empire the German duchies more than once
take the form of a compact family party. Unfortunately, however, the
plan has seldom answered: people can hate their relations perhaps more
cordially than they can hate any one else; and in a generation or two,
when personal hatred is complicated with the rights of inheritance,
wars between cousins are apt to become internecine. Even in the present
reign we shall come upon one or two instances of this. One effect of
this statecraft on Henry’s part was to keep the constitutional party
divided and headless; another was to provoke opposition amongst those
in whom he might otherwise have trusted. His treatment of the Gascons
was such as at one period to throw even his son Edward and his brother
Richard into opposition; and as early as 1242 we have seen Earl Richard
of Cornwall taking an important place in the baronial councils; but
the leading and crowning instance is Simon de Montfort, the personal
enemy, the leader of constitutional opposition, the national champion,
whom Henry raised up for his own discomfiture as directly and as
persistently as if he had had from the beginning that object in view.
[Sidenote:
Richard of
Cornwall.
]
The opinions of historians have differed widely in drawing the
characters of the two most influential men of this period. Richard,
King of the Romans, a dignity which he attained in 1257, the second
son of John, must have been on any showing a man of more energy
and enterprise than his brother Henry; it is attested by his early
achievements in war, by his crusade, and by the adventurous way in
which he attempted and really maintained his hold on Germany. He
was also a better manager; for whilst Henry was always hopelessly
overwhelmed with debt, Richard was always amply provided with money,
and able to lend his brother large sums, which kept him afloat for a
time, but did not get him out of his difficulties. Richard had also
much sounder ideas of policy, acting frequently with the baronial
party, resisting and remonstrating against his brother’s foolish
designs, and winning throughout both France and England no small
reputation for political sagacity. In opposition to these favorable
points must be set a strong public opinion existing at the time,
and since constantly re-echoed both in England and in Germany. The
English, disliking his attempts at foreign sovereignty, represented
him as a foolish, extravagant, tricky man, who for the name of Emperor
sacrificed his real interests and imperilled the interests of his
country; a man who would let the Germans delude him out of all his
treasure and then come back to England and take the unpopular side,
as he did in the barons’ war. The Germans, who always treated the
English kings as rich fools to be handled from time to time for their
own profit, got out of him all they could in the way of money and
privileges, and showed their gratitude by mocking him. A more careful
view of his career leads to the conclusion that both his abilities and
his success were underrated. He was certainly not a great sovereign,
but the probability is that, with the chances he had, he might have
done very much worse. He was one of the very last of the kings of the
Romans who thought of building up the empire as distinct from their
own dynastic power; who lavished what he had upon it instead of merely
using the power and dignity which it gave him to increase the wealth of
his own family. In respect to his conduct as an English earl we find
him always acting as a mediator and arbitrator, never urging the king
to his despotic and deceitful courses. If when the country was actually
at war he threw in his lot with his brother, rather than with Simon
de Montfort, whom he did not understand, but suspected and reasonably
disliked, he can hardly be visited with severe blame. He was the wisest
and most moderate, it would seem, of Henry’s advisers; but Henry was
not fond of being advised.
[Sidenote:
Simon de
Montfort.
]
Simon de Montfort was a very different man, and very different
estimates have been formed of him. On one side he is regarded as an
almost inspired statesman, a scholar, a saint, a martyr; on the other
he is a mere adventurer, a demagogue, a man full of selfish ambitions
and personal hatreds, a rebel, a traitor, a criminal. A short notice
of his chief actions may indicate what reason there is for either,
neither, or both of these estimates. Simon de Montfort was no doubt
an adventurer, descended from a race of counts that had played for
high stakes with very little capital, and had been persistently
pushing into power for some centuries. His father was the scarcely
less renowned Simon de Montfort, the persecutor of the Albigensian
heretics, who had, at the head of that cruel crusade, been made Count
of Toulouse, and perished in making good his claims. The Counts of
Evreux, his remoter ancestors, had made their way into that position
by a fortunate marriage as early as the time of Henry I. They had made
a bold attempt in the time of Lewis VI. to claim the high stewardship
of France; in later times one of the family had held, in the right
of his wife, the earldom of Gloucester after the death of Geoffrey
de Mandeville and Hawisia. Earl Simon, the Crusader, was a nephew of
the last Earl of Leicester of the house of Beaumont, on whose death
John divided his earldom into two, that of Winchester going to Saer
de Quincy as co-heir, and that of Leicester to Simon de Montfort. But
that Simon, although he was Earl of Leicester, had little to do with
England; he was an enemy of John, and the barons are said, at one time,
to have thought of calling him in as a deliverer. His crusade against
the Albigenses was directed really against Raymond of Toulouse, who was
John’s brother-in-law; and as John was never loth to keep the lands of
his enemies in his own hands, the revenues of the earldom seldom found
their way into the treasury of the Montforts. This Simon had four sons;
Amalric, Count of Montfort, was the eldest, and the second Simon, the
hero of the barons’ war, was the youngest. Amalric, of course, was his
father’s heir, but he contented himself with his patrimony in France;
and the two intermediate brothers being now dead, Simon, according
to Matthew Paris, attempted, at the Council of Bourges, in 1226 or
1227, to recover the county of Toulouse. Failing to do this, he came
to England to see whether he could not get the earldom of Leicester,
and his brother consented to make over to him such rights in it as he
possessed. After some years he succeeded. Henry allowed the arrangement
between the brothers to take effect, and gave Simon the honor of
Leicester. He had already failed in two attempts to make himself
a great position by marriage with the countesses of Flanders and
Boulogne. In a third he was more successful; Henry connived, as it was
said, at a clandestine marriage between Simon and his sister Eleanor,
the widow of the second William Marshall--an unlawful marriage, as she
had taken a vow of widowhood--and soon after, in 1239, gave him the
title of Earl. Richard of Cornwall, and others of the baronage were
exceedingly angry at this, and Henry himself in no long time quarrelled
with his new brother-in-law, who had to leave England, and had some
expense and trouble in obtaining the recognition of his marriage as
lawful.
For some years he appears to have been coolly treated, and perhaps
nursed his wrongs. But up to this time there is little about him to
distinguish him from the other foreigners with whom England swarmed.
By what process he educated himself into the ideas and position of an
English baron, we have but little information to show. It is clear,
however, that he did so; that he had much intercourse with the clergy,
especially with that section which, with Bishop Grosseteste, was
bent on resisting the royal exactions and papal usurpations; that he
devoted much thought and care to the education of his children; and
that when, in the parliament of 1244, the prelates and barons selected
a committee to treat with the king, his name, with that of Earl
Richard of Cornwall, was among the first chosen. In his own earldom,
nearly the only notice found of him, is that he persecuted the Jews of
Leicester, and this slight indication may show that he had somewhat
of his father’s spirit--that some persecuting zeal was an ingredient
in his peculiar form of piety. From this date we find him, however,
employed more and more in public business, and for several years
together commanding in Gascony, where the complaints of his severity
and impolicy were probably occasioned as much by Henry’s deceitful
treatment of his foreign adherents, as by Simon’s own fault. Of this,
however, it is impossible to judge certainly; we only know that the
bitter feelings which existed between him and the king were constantly
more and more embittered, and that Earl Richard, although sometimes
he was obliged to take Simon’s part, had the same personal antipathy,
which grew greater, and produced terrible results in the next
generation. In Gascony, however, Simon must have gained a good deal of
political experience; and he was already by inherited talent and early
training, a highly accomplished soldier and tactician.
Such was the man whom Henry III. had raised and trained to his own
confusion; a brilliant, religious, enterprising, experienced man,
who had cultivated popularity; and who, although a foreigner, an
adventurer, a man descended from high feudal parentage, and an adept
in all the lessons of feudal insubordination, had yet fitted himself
to be a leader of the English baronage in a crusade against tyranny.
Earl Simon’s greatness throws all the other actors into the shade, for
Bishop Grosseteste, who if he had lived, would no doubt have taken a
great place in the story, died in 1253; and of the other prelates,
besides Archbishop Boniface, the only one of much personal eminence at
the time, was Walter of Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester. Of the barons,
the most eminent were Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, and William
of Ferrers, the last Earl of Derby of that house which had been engaged
in every conspiracy and intrigue since the days of Stephen.
[Sidenote:
Parliament
of 1258.
]
The struggle opens at the parliament held at Midlent at Westminster,
in 1257, when the king presented his son Edmund to the barons as king
of Sicily, and announced that he had pledged the kingdom to the Pope
for 140,000 marks. He demanded an aid, a tenth of all church-revenue,
and the income of all vacant benefices for five years The clergy
remonstrated. The ears of all tingled, says the historian, and their
hearts died within them, but he succeeded in obtaining 52,000 marks,
and was encouraged to try again. This he did the next year, 1258, at a
parliament held soon after Easter at London. This assembly met on April
9, and continued until May 5. Every one brought up his grievances; the
king insisted on having money. The Pope had pledged himself to the
merchants, Henry had pledged himself to the Pope; was all Christendom
to be bankrupt? The barons listened with impatience; at last the time
was come for reform, and the king was obliged to yield. On May 2 he
consented that a parliament should be called at Oxford within a month
after Whitsuntide, and that then and there a commission of twenty-four
persons should be constituted, twelve members of the royal council
already chosen and twelve elected by the barons; then if the barons
would do their best to get the king out of his difficulties by a
pecuniary aid, he would, with the advice of these twenty-four, draw
up measures for the reform of the state of the kingdom, the royal
household and the Church. It will be remembered that in 1215 the
execution of the articles of Magna Carta was committed to twenty-five
barons, with power to constrain the king to make the necessary reforms;
in this case the arrangement is somewhat different, although the
method of proceeding is not quite dissimilar, and both alike afforded
precedents for that superseding of the royal authority by a commission
of government which we find in the reigns of Edward II. and Richard II.
[Sidenote:
Parliament
at Oxford.
]
At Oxford the parliament met on June 11, and the barons presented
a long list of grievances which they insisted should be reformed.
If this list be compared with the list of grievances on which Magna
Carta was drawn up, it will be found that many points are common
to the two documents. We may thus infer that notwithstanding the
constant confirmations of the charters which were issued by the king,
the observance of them was evaded by violence or by chicanery; that
the king enforced some of the most offensive feudal rights, and that
his officers found little check on their exactions. Castles had been
multiplied, the itinerant judges had made use of their office to exact
large sums in the shape of fines, and the sheriffs had oppressed the
country in the same way. English fortresses had been placed in the
hands of foreigners, and the forest laws had been disregarded. A great
number of other evil customs are now recounted. But, strange to say,
there is no proposal to restore the missing articles of the Charter
of Runnymede, by which taxation without the consent of the national
council is forbidden.
[Sidenote:
Provisions of
Oxford.
]
These grievances were to be redressed before the end of the year; and
the aliens were to be removed at once from all places of trust. But
this was not the most critical part of the business. The Provisions
of Oxford, as they were called, were intended to be much more than an
enforcement of Magna Carta; a body of twenty-four was chosen, twelve
by the king, twelve by the earls and barons, to reform the grievances;
of the king’s twelve the most eminent were his three half-brothers,
the Lusignans, his nephew Henry of Cornwall, and the Earls of Warenne
and Warwick; of the baronial twelve the chief were the Bishop of
Worcester, the Earls of Leicester, Gloucester, and Hereford, Roger
Mortimer, Hugh Bigot, and Hugh le Despenser. A next step was to restore
the three great dignities of the administration which had been so long
in abeyance; Hugh Bigot was made justiciar, but the great seal still
remained in the hands of a keeper who must be supposed to have taken
the oath of chancellor. The king was then provided with a council of
fifteen advisers; each of the two twelves selected two out of the
other twelve, and these four nominated the fifteen, subject to the
approval of the whole twenty-four. The chiefs of this permanent council
were the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Worcester, and the
Earls of Gloucester, and Leicester. The fifteen were to hold three
annual sessions, or parliaments, in February, June, and October; and
with them the barons were to negotiate through another committee of
twelve. There was another body still, also consisting of twenty-four
members, who had the special task of negotiating the financial aids;
and the original twenty-four were empowered to undertake the reform
of the Church. Of course these several committees contained very much
the same elements, the Earls of Leicester, Gloucester, and Norfolk,
Roger Mortimer, and others being elected to each. It was a cumbrous
arrangement, and scarcely likely to be permanent, but was accepted
with great solemnity. Everybody was sworn to obey, and several minor
measures were ordered to give security to the new constitution. It
is this framework of government, the permanent council of fifteen,
the three annual parliaments, the representation of the community of
the realm through twelve representative barons, that is historically
known as the Constitution of the Provisions of Oxford. Henry was again
and again forced to swear to it, and to proclaim it throughout the
country. The grievances of the barons were met by a set of ordinances
called the Provisions of Westminster, which were produced after some
trouble in October 1259. Before the scheme had begun to work the
foreign favorites and kinsmen fled from the court and were allowed to
quit the country with some scanty remnant of their ill-gotten gains.
Their departure left the royalist members of the new administration in
a hopeless minority.
[Sidenote:
Disunion
among the
barons.
]
[Sidenote:
The Barons’
War, 1263.
]
[Sidenote:
Award of
Lewis IX.
]
England had now, it would appear, adopted a new form of government,
but it must have been already sufficiently clear that so many rival
interests and ambitious leaders would not work together, that Henry
would avail himself of the first pretext for repudiating his promises,
and that a civil war would almost certainly follow. The first year
of this provisional government passed away quietly. The King of the
Romans, who returned from Germany in January, 1259, was obliged to
swear to the provisions. In November Henry went to France, returning
in April, 1260. Immediately on his return he began to intrigue for the
overthrow of the government, sent for absolution to Rome, and prepared
for war. Edward, his eldest son, tried to prevent him from breaking his
word, but before the king had begun the contest the two great earls
had quarrelled; Gloucester could not bear Leicester, Leicester could
not bear a rival. A general reconciliation was the prelude as usual to
a general struggle. In February, 1261, Henry repudiated his oath, and
seized the Tower. In June he produced a papal Bull which absolved him
from his oath to observe the Provisions. The chiefs of the government,
Leicester and Gloucester, took up arms, but they avoided a battle. The
summer was occupied with preparations for a struggle, and peace was
made in the winter. In 1262 Henry went again to France for six months,
and on his return again swore to the Provisions; that year the Earl of
Gloucester died, and Edward began to draw nearer to his father. Simon
was without a rival, and no doubt created in Edward that spirit of
jealous mistrust which never again left him. The next year was one of
open war. The young Earl of Gloucester refused to swear allegiance to
Edward; Simon insisted that the pertinacious aliens should be again
expelled. Twice if not three times in this year Henry was forced to
confirm the Provisions; but Edward saw that they had now become a mere
form under which the sovereignty of Simon de Montfort was scarcely
hidden; and the increasing conviction of this induced the barons to
refer the whole question to the arbitration of Lewis IX. of France.
This was done on December 16, 1263. An examination of the names of the
barons which appear in the two lists of sureties who undertake the
carrying out of this arbitration, shows that Simon de Montfort had now
lost some of his most important allies. The young Earl of Gloucester
appears in neither list, but the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, Hugh
Bigot, and Roger Mortimer are now on the king’s side, and no earl
except Leicester himself appears in the baronial party, the foremost
layman there being Hugh le Despenser, the justiciar. There can be no
doubt that since the outbreak of the war much moral weight had fallen
to the royalists, and it seems most probable that Earl Simon had rather
offended than propitiated the men who regarded themselves as his
equals. The conduct of the barons after the award of Lewis IX. seems to
place them in the wrong, and to show either that Simon de Montfort’s
views had developed, under the late changes, in the direction of
personal ambition and selfish ends, or that other causes were at
work, of which we have no information. The barons were so distinctly
justified in their first proceedings, that an equitable consideration
cannot be refused to their later difficulties. Both parties, however,
equally bound themselves to abide by the arbitration.
Henry took the wise course of being personally present on the occasion
and taking his son Edward with him. Some of the barons also appeared
in person, but not the Earl of Leicester, who was supporting the Welsh
princes in their war with Mortimer, a method of continuing the struggle
which was neither honest nor patriotic. At Amiens Lewis heard the
cause, and did not long hesitate about his answer, which was delivered
on January 23, 1264. By this award the King of France entirely annulled
the Provisions of Oxford, and all engagements which had been made
respecting them. Not content with doing this in general terms, he
forbade the making of new statutes, as proposed and carried out in the
Provisions of Westminster, ordered the restoration of the royal castles
to the king, restored to him the power of nominating the officers of
state and the sheriffs, the nomination of whom had been withdrawn from
him by the Provisions of Oxford; he annulled the order that natives of
England alone should govern the realm of England, and added that the
king should have full and free power in this kingdom as he had had in
time past. All this was in the king’s favor. The arbitrator, however,
added that all the charters issued before the time of the Provisions
should hold good, and that all parties should condone enmities and
injuries arising from the late troubles.
[Sidenote:
Motives for
the decision
of the
French king.
]
Lewis mentions as his chief motive for thus giving the verdict
practically in the king’s favor, the fact that the Provisions had
already been annulled by the Pope, and the parties bound by them
released from their oaths. But we cannot suppose that he was entirely
guided by this consideration; it is probable that he did not understand
the limits which the growth of constitutional life had put upon the
exercise of royal power as early as Magna Carta, or the shameless way
in which Henry had broken his engagements. He may, very reasonably,
have regarded England as much the same sort of country as his own, and
have seen in the strengthening of the royal power--a thing absolutely
necessary in France at the time--a measure as necessary for England. He
may have been moved by Henry’s own pleadings, or by the more weighty
if more moderate statements which we can imagine were laid before him,
by Edward. And the care that he shows for the restoration of peace and
good feeling, may well be interpreted to prove that, although his award
was more favorable to the one party than to the other, he yet did not
think the defeated party entirely in the wrong.
[Sidenote:
Effects of
the award
of Lewis.
]
The award, however, was entirely in favor of the crown. The new form
of government was already giving way, and both parties might have and
ought to have submitted to the sentence. Henry had had a severe lesson,
and might not offend again; the baronage had had their chance, and had
been found wanting both in unity of aim and in administrative power.
Neither party, however, acquiesced in the admonition, and each of
course laid on the other the blame of disregarding a judgment by which
both had sworn to stand. At first the war was continued on the Welsh
marches principally; Edward’s forces assisting Mortimer, and Montfort
continuing to support Llewelyn, the Prince of Wales, his opponent. But
when the king returned from France, as he did in February, the struggle
became general.
[Sidenote:
Military
successes of
the king and
of Simon de
Montfort.
]
The responsibility of this rests unquestionably with Simon de Montfort;
how far he was justified by the greatness of the necessity, is another
question. He had the sympathy of the Londoners, which was probably
shared by the burghers of the great towns, that of the clergy, except
those who were led by the Pope entirely, of the universities, and of
the great body of the people. The barons by themselves would have
treated with the king; they would probably have thrown over Earl
Simon, if only they could have got rid of the foreigners, and had
England for the English. On March 31, however, whilst negotiations were
proceeding, the Londoners broke into riot against the king, and he
in his anger put an end to the consultation. The war began favorably
for the king; Northampton was taken, Nottingham opened her gates, and
Tutbury, the castle of the Ferrers, surrendered to Edward. Earl Simon
had his successes too, and captured Warwick. Both parties then turned
southwards. Earl Simon besieged Rochester, the king marched to relieve
it. Henry also took Tunbridge, the Earl of Gloucester’s castle, for the
young Earl of Gloucester was now on the barons’ side; then he collected
his forces at Lewes, where he arrived in the first week of May.
[Sidenote:
Battle of
Lewes.
Victory of
the Barons.
]
Lewes castle belonged to the Earl of Warenne, who had throughout
stood on the king’s side. The barons also collected their host in the
immediate neighborhood; but before fighting they made one bid for
peace. The two bishops who were the chief political advisers of the
barons--the Bishops of Worcester and London--brought the proposition
to the king; they would give 50,000 marks in payment for damages done
in the late struggle, if he would confirm the Provisions of Oxford. The
offer was sealed by the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester, and dated on
May 13. The king returned an answer of defiance, which was accompanied
by a formal challenge on the part of the King of the Romans, Edward,
and the rest of the royalist barons. No time was lost; on the very
next day the battle was fought, and fortune declared against the king.
He had the larger force, but all the skill, care, and earnestness was
on the side of the barons. Simon, who had broken his leg a few months
before--an accident which prevented him from going to meet the King of
France at Amiens--had been obliged to use a carriage during the late
marches; he now posted his carriage in a conspicuous place, and himself
went elsewhere. Edward, thinking that if he could capture the earl, the
struggle would be over, attacked the post where the carriage was seen,
routed and pursued the defenders, and going too far in pursuit, left
his father exposed to the attack of the earl. King Henry was a brave
man, but of course no general, for he had never seen anything like
real war before. He defended himself stoutly; two horses were killed
under him, and he was wounded and bruised by the swords and maces of
his adversaries, who were in close hand-to hand combat. When he had
lost most of his immediate retainers, he retreated into the priory of
Lewes. The King of the Romans, who had commanded the centre of the
royal army, was already compelled to retreat, and, whilst Henry was
still struggling, had been taken captive in a windmill, which made the
adversaries very merry. A general rout followed. The baronial party was
victorious long before Edward returned from his unfortunate pursuit,
and many of the king’s most powerful friends secured themselves by
flight. The next day an arbitration was determined on, called the Mise
of Lewes, and the king gave himself and his son into the hands of
Simon, who, from that time to the end of the struggle in the next year,
ruled in the king’s name.
[Sidenote:
The Mise of
Lewes.
]
The Mise of Lewes contained seven articles, the most important of
which prescribed the employment of native counsellors, and bound the
king to act by the advice of the council which would be provided for
him. Measures were also taken for obtaining a new arbitration. Thus
England for the second time within seven years passed under a new
constitution. The system devised at the Council of Oxford in 1258 was
not revived, but a parliament was called for June 22, to devise or
ratify a new scheme. This assembly comprised four knights from each
shire, as well as the ordinary elements, the bishops and abbots, earls
and barons, who formed the usual parliament. In it the new form of
government was drawn up. This time the king was bound to act by the
advice of nine counsellors. Three electors or nominators were first
to be chosen--whether by the whole body of the parliament or by the
barons only, it is not said; and these three were to name the nine.
Of the nine three were to be in constant attendance on the king, and
his sovereign authority was, in fact, to be exercised by and through
them. They were to nominate the great functionaries of the state and
the other ministers whose appointment had before rested with the king,
and their authority was to last until all the points of controversy
were settled by the arbitration provided in the Mise of Lewes. The
three electors chosen were the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester
and the Bishop of Chichester, Stephen Berksted, a man who comes into
prominence now for the first time, but who was probably the agent of
the constitutional party among the clergy, which had been hitherto
represented by the Bishop of Worcester.
[Sidenote:
Conduct of
the new Government.
]
These men governed England until the battle of Evesham. But their reign
was not an easy or peaceful one. The Pope was still zealous for Henry,
and left no means untried by which the bishops might be detached from
the barons. The queen collected a great army in France and prepared to
invade England, assisted by the Archbishop of Canterbury, her uncle,
and all the English refugees who had come under the rod of Earl Simon.
Mortimer also made an attempt to prolong the state of war on the
border. Nothing, however, came of these preparations during this year:
the new government professed itself to be provisional, and negotiations
were resumed, by which the king of France, now better informed, was to
settle all controversies. In December a summons went forth for a new
parliament.
[Sidenote:
The Parliament
of Simon
de Montfort.
]
This is the famous parliament, as it is called, of Simon de Montfort,
the first assembly of the sort to which representatives of the borough
towns were called; and thus to some extent forms a landmark in English
history. It was not made a precedent, and in fact it is not till thirty
years after that the representatives of the towns begin regularly to
sit in parliament; but it is nevertheless a very notable date. Nor was
the assembly itself what would be called a full and free parliament,
only those persons being summoned who were favorable to the new
_regime_; but five earls and eighteen barons, and an overwhelming
number of the lower clergy, knights, and burghers, who were of
course supporters of Earl Simon. It met on January, 20, 1265, and did
not effect much. Edward, however, was allowed to make terms for his
liberation, and Simon secured for himself and his family the earldom
of Chester, giving up to Edward, however, other estates by way of
exchange. The liberation of Edward, who was released on the condition
of surrendering his castles, staying for three years in England and
keeping the peace, led immediately to the earl’s overthrow. Edward was
to live under surveillance at Hereford--far too near the Mortimers and
the Welsh border. This was carried out; Edward was liberated on March
10.
[Sidenote:
Impolicy of
Earl Simon’s
sons.
]
Already, however, dissensions were springing up. Earl Simon’s sons, who
did very little credit to his instructions, and on whom perhaps some of
the blame may rest of which otherwise it is impossible to acquit their
father, managed to offend the Earl of Gloucester. They challenged the
Clares to a tournament at Dunstable. When they were ready and already
angry and prepared to turn the festive meeting into a battle, it was
suddenly stopped by the king or by Earl Simon, acting in his name.
Gloucester and his kinsmen deemed themselves insulted, and immediately
began to negotiate with the Mortimers; and, when hostilities were just
beginning, Edward escaped from his honorable keeping at Hereford and
joined the party.
[Sidenote:
Battle of Evesham.
Death
of Earl Simon.
]
From this point action is rapid. Simon, with the king in his train,
marched into the West, and advanced into South Wales. Edward and
Gloucester, joined by Mortimer, mustered their adherents in the
Cheshire and Shropshire country, and then rushed down by way of
Worcester on the town of Gloucester, which surrendered on June, 29,
thus cutting off the earl’s return to England. The younger Simon de
Montfort, the earl’s second son, was summoned to his father’s aid, came
up from Pevensey, which he was besieging, plundered Winchester, and
took up his position at Kenilworth. His father meantime had got back to
Hereford and formed a plan for surrounding Edward. Edward, however, had
now learned vigilance and caution. He took the initiative, succeeded
in routing the young Simon and nearly capturing Kenilworth, and thus
turned the tables on the earl. Simon marched on to Evesham, expecting
to meet his son; instead of his son he met his nephew; and on August
4, the battle fought there reversed the judgment of Lewes. There the
great earl fell, and with him Hugh le Despenser, the baron’s justiciar,
fighting bravely, but without much hope.
[Sidenote:
Dictum de
Kenilworth.
]
[Sidenote:
Death of
Henry III.
]
The interest of the reign, and indeed its importance, ends here. Simon
is the hero of the latter part of it, and the death of Simon closes it,
although the king reigns for seven years longer. The war does not end
here: the remnant of the baronial party held out at Kenilworth until
October, 1266. There the last supporters of Earl Simon, the men whose
attitude towards Henry was unpardonable, had made their stand. The
final agreement which was drawn up at the siege, and which is called
the Dictum de Kenilworth, was intended to settle all differences, and
for the most part it did so, by allowing those who had incurred the
penalty of forfeiture to redeem their possessions by fines. But until
the end of 1267 there were constant outbreaks. The Isle of Ely was made
the refuge of one set, just as it had been two hundred years before, in
the time of the Conqueror. The Earl of Gloucester raised the banner
of revolt, declaring that the king was dealing too hardly with the
victims, and the Londoners were very loth indeed to lose the power and
advantages which they had secured by their alliance with Simon. But
gradually all the storm subsided. In the parliament of Marlborough,
in November, 1267, the King renewed the Provisions of Westminster of
1259, by which the most valuable legal reforms of the constitutional
party became embodied in statutes. In 1268 the papal legate held a
council for the permanent maintenance of peace, and Edward, with many
of the leading nobles, took the Cross. In 1270, they went on Crusade,
and the Londoners were restored to favor. In December, 1271 the King
of the Romans died, broken-hearted at the loss of his son Henry, who
was murdered by the Montforts at Viterbo. In 1272, on November 16,
Henry III., died; and so completely was the kingdom then at peace, that
Edward, although far away from England, was at once proclaimed king,
and oaths of fealty were taken to him in his absence.
[Sidenote:
The struggle
continued.
]
The long struggle had not yet come to an end: more than twenty years
were yet to elapse before Edward I. recognized the fundamental justice
of the claims of his subjects, and admitted all the estates to that
full and equal share in the action of the country which lies at the
basis of our national constitution. We may perhaps ask whether Simon
de Montfort deserves that character of a hero, the hero of mediæval
history, which is commonly attributed to him. We can only attempt to
realize the motives that swayed him. There is no doubt that he was a
great man, a much greater man as he was a much better and wiser man
than Henry, and perhaps better, certainly wiser and greater, than such
men as Gloucester. But that he was absolutely a patriot, or absolutely
wise and good, it is needless to affirm and impossible to prove; nor is
it necessary that in attempting to estimate his personal eminence we
are to look at him through the medium of his political glories. There
is no question that the objects which were aimed at by the baronial
policy were necessary, and the attainment of them, when they were
attained, was beneficial. It is possible, though not probable, that had
Simon never existed those objects would never have been attained; also
it is quite possible that if he had not forced on rebellion the objects
might have been attained long before they were. That we cannot decide.
But there are three points to be considered. Were the aims of the
barons beneficial? Was Simon a great and good man? Were all the motives
of his party and the means taken to realize them good and justifiable?
To the first two questions unhesitatingly we may answer, yes. The
barons wanted only what was fair. Simon de Montfort was a great and
good man. The third question is not so easy. It is better to allow that
there were mixed motives and unjustifiable expedients. Simon was not
successful as an administrator, he could not maintain peace even when
he had the whole kingdom at his feet. His expedient for governing was
fanciful and cumbrous. His own conduct in his elevation was not quite
free from the charge of rapacity. He stands out best and most grandly
in comparison with the meanness with which he was surrounded--the
paltry, faithless king, the selfish and unscrupulous baronage. He is
relatively great; but he is not perfect. He is scarcely a patriot--a
foreigner could hardly be expected to be so. He is somewhat more
distinctly a hero, but he never quite rids himself of the character of
the adventurer.