Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 55
CHAPTER LV.
Henry's bounty and profuse liberality to his foreign relations, his friends and favourites, might have appeared less intolerable to his subjects had anything been done for the honour of the nation. But the crown was so utterly subservient to the see of Rome, that it fell into contempt and well-deserved hatred. The regal vassal appeared to have no will but the Pontifif's, who was not slow to abuse his weakness.
It is true that the king, in 1242, declared war against Louis IX. of France, and undertook an expedition into Guienne at the earnest solicitation of the Count de la Marche, who promised to support him with all his force. He was unsuccessful in his attempts against that great monarch, was worsted at Taillebourg, was deserted by his allies, lost what remained to him of Poitou, and was obliged to return, with loss of honour, into England. The Gascon nobility were attached to the English government, because the distance of their sovereign allowed them to remain in a state of almost total independence; and they claimed, some time after, Henry's protection against an invasion which the King of Castile made upon that territory. Henry returned into Guienne, and was more successful in this expedition, but he thereby involved himself and his nobility in an enormous debt, which both increased their discontents and exposed him to greater danger from their enterprises.
Want of economy and an ill-judged liberality were Henry's great defects; and his debts, even before this expedition, had become so troublesome, that he sold all his plate and jewels, in order to discharge them. When this expedient was first proposed to him, he asked where he should find purchasers. It was replied, "The citizens of London." "On my word," said he, "if the treasury of Augustus were brought to sale, the citizens are able to be the purchasers: these clowns, who assume to themselves the name of barons, abound in everything, while we are reduced to necessaries." And he was thenceforth observed to be more forward and greedy in his exactions upon the citizens.
But the grievances which the English during this reign had reason to complain of in the civil government, seemed to have been still less burthensome than those which they suffered from usurpations and exactions of the court of Rome. On the death of Langton in 1238, the monks of Christ Church elected Walter de Hemesham, one of their own body, for his successor. But as Henry refused to confirm the election, the Pope, at his desire, annulled it, and immediately appointed Richard, Chancellor of Lincoln, for archbishop, without waiting for a new election. On the death of Richard in 1231, the monks elected Ralph de Neville, Bishop of Chichester; and though Henry was much pleased with the election, the Pope, who thought that prelate too much attached to the crown, assumed the power of annulling his election. He rejected two clergymen more, whom the monks had successively chosen; and he at last told them that if they would elect Edmund, treasurer of the church of Salisbury, he would confirm their choice, and his nomination was complied with. The Pope had the prudence to appoint both times very worthy primates; but men could not forbear observing his intention of thus drawing gradually to himself the right of bestowing that important dignity.
The avarice, however, more than the ambition of the See of Rome seems to have been in this age the ground of general complaint. The papal ministers, finding a vast stock of power amassed by their predecessors, were desirous of turning it to immediate profit, which they enjoyed at home, rather than of enlarging their authority in distant countries, where they never intended to reside. Everything was become venal in the Romish tribunals: simony was openly practised; no favours, and even no justice could be obtained without a bribe; the highest bidder was sure to have the preference, without regard either to the merits of the person or of the cause; and besides the usual perversions of right in the decision of controversies, the Pope openly assumed au absolute and uncontrolled authority of setting aside, by the plenitude of his apostolic power, all particular rule, and all privileges of patrons, churches, and convents. On pretence of remedying these abuses, Pope Honorius, in 1226, complaining of the poverty of his see as the source of all grievances, demanded from every cathedral two of the best prebends, and from every convent two monks' portions, to be set apart as a perpetual and settled revenue of the papal crown. But all men being sensible that the revenue would continue for ever, the abuses immediately return, his demand was unanimously rejected. About three years after, the Pope demanded and obtained the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues, which he levied in a very oppressive manner, requiring payment before the clergy had drawn their rent or tithes, and sending about usurers, who advanced them the money at exorbitant interest. In the year 1240, Otho, the legate, having in vain attempted the clergy in a body, obtained separately, by intrigues and menaces, large sums from the convents and prelates; and on his departure is said have carried more money out of the kingdom than he left in it.
This experiment was renewed four years afterwards by Martin, the legate, who brought from Rome full powers of suspending and excommunicating all priests who refused compliance with his demands; and the king, who relied on him for support to his tottering authority, never failed to support those exactions.
Meanwhile, all the chief benefices of the kingdom were conferred on Italians. Great numbers of that nation were sent over at one time to be provided for; non-residence and pluralities were carried to an enormous height. Mansel, the king's chaplain, is computed to have held at once 700 ecclesiastical livings; and the abuses became so evident as to be palpable to the blindness of superstition itself. The people, entering into associations, rose against the Italian clergy, pillaged their barns, wasted their lands, insulted the persons of such of them as they found in the kingdom; and when the justices made inquiry into the authors of this disorder, the guilt was found to involve so many, and those of such high rank, that it passed unpunished. At last, when Innocent IV., in 1245, called a general council at Lyons, in order to excommunicate the Emperor Frederic, the king and nobility sent over agents to complain before the council of the rapacity of the Romish Church. They represented, among many other grievances, that the benefices of the Italian clergy in England had been estimated, and were found to amount to 60,000 marks a year—a sum which exceeded the annual revenue of the Crown itself. They obtained only an evasive answer from the Pope; but as mention had been made before the council of the feudal subjection of England to the See of Rome, the English agents, at whose head was Roger Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, exclaimed against the pretension, and insisted that King John had no right, without the consent of his barons, to subject the kingdom to so ignominious a servitude. The Popes, indeed, afraid of carrying matters too far against England, seem thenceforth to have little insisted on that pretension.
This chock, received at the council of Lyons, was not able to stop the court of Rome in its rapacity. Innocent exacted the revenues of all vacant benefices; the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues without exception; the third of such as exceeded 100 marks a year, and the half of such as were possessed by non-residents. He claimed the goods of all intestate clergymen; he pretended a title to inherit all money gotten by usury; he levied benevolences upon the people; and when the king, contrary to his usual practice, prohibited these exactions, he threatened to pronounce against him the same censures which he had emitted against the Emperor Frederic.
But the most oppressive expedient employed by the Pope was the embarking of Henry in a project for the conquest of Naples, or Sicily on this side the Faro, as it was called—an enterprise which threw much dishonour on the king, and involved him during some years in great trouble and expense. The Romish Church, taking advantage of favourable incidents, had reduced the kingdom of Sicily to the same state of feudal vassalage which she pretended to extend over England, and which, by reason of the distance, as well as high spirit of this latter kingdom, she was not able to maintain. After the death of the Emperor Frederic II., the succession of Sicily devolved on Conrad I., grandson of that monarch, whose natural son, Mainfroy, under pretence of governing the kingdom during the minority of the young prince, had formed the ambitious scheme of obtaining the crown himself.
Pope Innocent, who had carried on violent war against the emperor, and desired nothing more ardently than to deprive him of his Italian dominions, still continued hostilities against his successor. He pretended to dispose of the crown of Italy, not only as its temporal lord, but by right of his office as Christ's vicar; and he tendered it to the Earl of Cornwall, whose immense wealth, he flattered himself, would enable him to carry on the war successfully against Mainfroy.
Henry, tempted by so magnificent an offer, accepted the insidious proposal, without consulting either his brother or the Parliament, and gave the Pontiff unlimited credit to expend whatever money ho thought necessary for the subjugation of that kingdom. The consequence was, that he found himself speedily involved in an immense debt, amounting to 135,5-11 marks.
In this dilemma, unwilling to retreat, the king summoned a Parliament to grant him supplies, but omitted sending writs to the refractory barons; yet even those who attended were so sensible of the audacious cheat, that they refused to take his demands into consideration. In this extremity the clergy were his only resource.
The Pope, to aid him, published a crusade against Mainfroy. He leased a tenth of all the ecclesiastical benefices in England; granted Henry the goods of all churchmen who died intestate, and the revenues of ancient benefices. But these taxations, iniquitous as they undoubtedly were, were deemed less objectionable than another imposition, suggested by the Bishop of Hereford, and which might have opened the door to endless abuses.
This prelate, who resided at the court of Rome by deputation from the English Church, drew bills of different values, but amounting on the whole to 150,510 marks, on all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom; and granted these bills to Italian merchants, who, it was pretended, had advanced money for the service of the war against Mainfroy. As mere was no likelihood of the English prelates submitting without compulsion to such an extraordinary demand, Rustaad, the legate, was charged with the commission of employing authority for that purpose; and he summoned an assembly of the bishops and abbots, whom he acquainted with the pleasure of the Pope and of the king. Great were the surprise and indignation of the assembly: the Bishop of Worcester exclaimed that he would lose his life rather than comply; the Bishop of London said that the Pope and king were more powerful than he, but if his mitre were taken off his head, he would clap on a helmet in its place. The legate was no less violent on the other hand; and he told the assembly, in plain terms, that all ecclesiastical benefices were the property of the Pope, and he might dispose of them, either in whole or in part, as he saw proper. In the end, the bishops and abbots, being threatened with excommunication, which made all their revenues fall into the king's hands, wore obliged to submit to the exaction; and the only mitigation which the legate allowed them was, that the tenths already granted should be accepted as a partial payment of the bills. But the money was still insufficient for the Pope's purpose; the conquest of Sicily was as remote as ever. The demands which came from Rome were endless. Pope Alexander became so urgent a creditor, that he sent over a legate to England, threatening the kingdom with an interdict, and the king with excommunication, if the arrears which he pretended to be due to him were not instantly remitted; and at last Henry, sensible of the cheat, began to think of breaking off the agreement, and of resigning into the Pope's hands that crown which it was not intended by Alexander that he or his family should ever enjoy.
The Earl of Cornwall had now reason to value himself on his foresight in refusing the fraudulent bargain with Rome, and in preferring the solid honours of an opulent and powerful prince of the blood of England, to the empty and precarious glory of a foreign dignity. But he had not always firmness sufficient to adhere to this resolution: his vanity and ambition prevailed at last over his prudence and his avarice; and he was engaged in an enterprise no less extensive and vexatious than that of his brother, and not attended with much greater probability of success. The immense opulence of Richard having made the German princes cast their eye on him as a candidate for the empire, he was tempted to expend vast sums of money on his election; and he succeeded so far as to be chosen King of the Romans, which seemed to render his succession infallible to the imperial throne. He went over to Germany, and carried out of the kingdom no less a sum than 700,000 marks, if we may credit the account given by some ancient authors, which is probably much exaggerated. His money, while it lasted, procured him friends and partisans; but it was soon drained from him by the avidity of the German princes; and having no personal or family connections in that country, and no solid foundation of power, he found at last that he had lavished away the frugality of a whole life in order to procure a splendid title; and that his absence from England, joined to the weakness of his brother's government, gave occasion to the barons once more to revolt, and involved his native country and family in great calamities.
The successful revolt of the nobles in the reign of King John, and their imposing on him and his successors a limit to the royal power, had made them feel their weight and importance in the state. This triumph, followed as it was by a long minority, had weakened as well as impoverished the crown.
In Henry's situation, either great abilities and vigour were necessary to overawe the nobility, or great prudence of conduct to avoid giving them just grounds of complaint. Unfortunately, he possessed neither of these qualities, having neither prudence to choose right measures, nor that constancy of purpose which sometimes ensures success to wrong. He was entirely devoted to his unworthy favourites, who were always foreigners; and upon these he lavished without discretion his diminished resources.
Henry, finding that the barons indulged in the most unbridled tyranny towards their own vassals, without observing the laws they had imposed upon the crown, unhesitatingly followed the evil example set before him. In his administration the Great Charter was continually violated—a course of conduct which not only lessened his authority in the kingdom, but multiplied the sources of discontent against him, exposed him to affronts and even dangers, and provoked resistance to his remainiug prerogatives.
The Battle of Taillebourg.
Matthew Paris relates that, in 1244, when ho desired a supply from parliament, the barons, complaining of the frequent violations of the Charter, demanded that in return for the money, he should resign the right of nominatiug the chancellor and great justiciary of the kingdom to them; and, if we may credit the same historian, they had formed further plans which, if successfully carried out, would have reduced the crown to a state of pupilage and dependence. The king, however, would consent to nothing but a renewal of the Great Charter, and a general permission to excominunicate all who might hereafter violate it. All he could obtain in return for his concession was a scutage of twenty shillings on each knight's fee for the marriage of his eldest daughter with the King of Scotland—an impost which was expressly provided for by their feudal tenures.
Four years afterwards, in full parliament, he was openly reproached for his broken word on having again violated his promises, and asked if he did not blush to desire aid from his people—whom he openly professed to despise and hate, and to whom he on all occasions preferred strangers and aliens—from a people who groaned under the exactions which ho either exercised over them or permitted others to inflict. He was told that, in addition to insulting his nobility, by forcing them to contract unequal marriages with foreigners, no class of his subjects was too obscure to escape the tyranny of himself and his ministers; that even the food he consumed in his household, the clothes which himself and his servants wore, and the wine they drank, were all taken by violence from their lawful owners, and no kind of compensation ever offered; that foreign merchants, to the shame of the kingdom, shunned the English harbours as if they were infested by pirates; and that all commerce was being gradually destroyed by those acts of unprincipled violence.
Unhappily, this was no exaggerated picture. In his reckless proceedings Henry even added insult to injury, by forcing the traders whom he despoiled of their goods to carry them at their own expense to whatever place he chose to appoint. Even the poor fishermen could not escape his 
Interior of Westminster Hall. Bishops denouncing Sentence of Excommunication against all who should oppose the Charter.
The king, says Matthew Paris, gave the parliament only good words and fair promises in answer to these remonstrances, acompanied with the most humble submissions, which they had too often found deceitful to be gulled by; the consequence was, that they unanimously refused the supply he asked, to the great disappointment of his rapacious favourites.
In 1253, he again found himself obliged to apply to parliament, which he did under pretence of having made a vow to undertake a crusade.
The parliament hesitated to comply, and the ecclesiastical order sent a deputation to Henry, consisting of four prelates—the primate, and the Bishops of Winchester, Salisbury, and Carlisle—to remonstrate with him on his frequent violation of their privileges, the oppressions with which he had loaded them as well as the rest of his subjects, and the uncanonical and forced elections made to the vacant dignities in the Church. "It is true," replied the king, "I have been somewhat faulty in this particular: I obtruded you, my lord of Canterbury, on your see; I was obliged to employ both entreaties and menaces, my lord of Winchester, to have you elected; my proceedings, I confess, were very irregular, my lords of Salisbury and Carlisle, when I raised you from the lowest stations to your present dignities. I am determined henceforth to correct these abuses; and it will also become you, in order to make a thorough reformation, to resign your present benefices, and try to enter again in a more regular and canonical manner." The bishops, surprised at these unexpected sarcasms, replied that the question was not at present how to correct past errors, but to avoid them for the future. The king promised redress, both of ecclesiastical and civil grievances; and the parliament in return agreed to grant him a supply, a tenth of the ecclesiastical benefices, and a scutage of three marks on each knight's fee; but as they had experienced his frequent breach of promise, they required that he should ratify the great charter in a manner still more authentic and more solemn than any which he had hitherto employed. All the prelates and abbots were assembled; they held burning tapers in their hands; the great charter was read before them; they denounced the sentence of excommunication against every one who should thenceforth violate the fundamental law; they threw their tapers on the ground, and exclaimed, "May the soul of every one who incurs this sentence so stink and corrupt in hell!" The king bore a part in this ceremony, and subjoined, "So help me God, I will keep all these articles inviolate, as I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, and as 1 am a king crowned and anointed." Yet was the tremendous ceremony no sooner finished, than his favourites, abusing his weakness, made him return to the same arbitrary and irregular administration, and the expectations and hopes of the nation were again eluded and disappointed.
The universal discontent which ensued afforded a pretext to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, to attempt, by means of a revolution, to wrest the sceptre from the feeble and irresolute hands which held it. This powerful noble was the younger son of that Simon de Montfort who displayed so much skill and courage in the crusade against the unfortunate Albigenses, but who tarnished his fame by the most execrable cruelty; for the history of religious persecution does not present a darker page than the one in which the sufferings of the Albigenses is recorded.
It was a short-sighted policy which induced the Church of Rome to draw the sword against these seceders from her pale. The blood of the martyrs for conscience' sake never sinks into the soil like barren seed; it is sure to germinate and bring forth fruit in time, and he who sheds it is doomed to the contempt and execration of mankind.
A large inheritance in Britain had fallen to the victorious crusader, whose eldest son, unable to perform fealty to the Kings of France and England, had transferred it to his younger brother Simon, who came over and did homage for his lands, and the title of Earl of Leicester.
In 1238 he married Eleanor, the king's sister, the widow of William, Earl of Pembroke; but the union of the princess with a subject and a foreigner, though contracted with Henry's consent, was loudly complained of, not only by the Earl of Cornwall, but most of the English barons. The bridegroom, however, was protected against their violence by his brother-in-law, who little imagined the ungrateful return he would meet with.
No sooner had Leicester succeeded in establishing himself in his new possessions and dignities, than he acquired, by insinuation and address, great popularity and influence with the nation, gaining the affections of all orders of men—a circumstance which lost him the friendship of the feeble monarch, who first banished him from court, then weakly recalled him, and finally, to rid himself of his presence, entrusted him with the government of Guienne, where, to do the earl justice, he did good service, and acquired great honour.
Instead of being rewarded, as he had every reason to expect, he was once more exiled. Henry called Lira a traitor to his face; on which the haughty noble gave him the lie, and told him that, if he were not his sovereign, he would soon make him repent the insult.
This second quarrel was, however, accommodated, either through the good nature or fear of Henry, and the offender admitted once more to some share of favour and authority. With all his defects, Leicester appears to have been of too noble and independent a nature to observe a compliance with his brother-in-law's capricious humours, or to act in subserviency to his minions. Perhaps ho found it more to his advantage to cultivate the good opinion of the people, and to inflame the general discontent against the wretched administration of the kingdom. He filled every place with his complaints against the violations of the great charter, the acts of violence committed on the people, the iniquitous combination between the Pope and the king in their mutual acts of tyranny and extortion, and the neglect shown to his native subjects and barons by Henry.
In this last complaint, although a foreigner himself, he was more zealous than any other noble in the realm, in representing the indignity of submitting to be governed by strangers. By hypocritical and politic pretensions to devotion, he succeeded in obtaining the favour of the clergy, whilst, at the same time, he secured the affections of the people. He carefully cultivated the friendship of the barons by pretending an animosity against the favourites, which animosity served as the basis of union between himself and that powerful order. A violent quarrel which broke out between Leicester and William de Valence, Henry's half-brother and chief favourite, brought matters to extremity, and determined the former to give full scope to his long-cherished schemes of ambition, which the laws and the royal authority had hitherto with no little difficulty restrained.
He secretly called an assembly of the most powerful nobles, particularity Humphrey of Hereford, high constable; Roger of Norfolk, earl marshal; and the Earls of Warwick and Gloucester—men who, by their exalted rank and immense possessions, stood first in the rank of English nobility.
To this assembly he exposed the necessity of reforming the state, and entrusting the execution of the laws to other hands than those which had proved themselves, by bitter experience, so totally unfitted for the charge confided to them. In his harangue he did not forget to inveigh against the oppression exercised against the lower orders, or exaggerate on the violations of the privileges of the barons, and the depredations committed on the clergy; and, in order to aggravate the enormity of his brother-in-law's conduct, he appealed to the great charter, which Henry had so often sworn to maintain and so frequently violated.
This violation, he urged, with great show of justice, of privileges which their ancestors had wrung from the crown by an enormous sacrifice of blood and treasure, ought not to be endured, unless they were prepared to set the seal upon their own degeneracy by permitting such important advantages to be torn from them by a weak prince and his insolent foreign favourites. To all suggestions of a remonstrance the speaker replied by observing that the king's word had been too frequently broken, although confirmed by oaths, ever again to be relied upon, and that nothing short of his being placed in a position of utter inability to violate the national privileges could henceforth ensure the regular observance of them.
These complaints, which were founded in truth, accorded so entirely with the sentiments of the assembly, that they produced the desired effort, and the barons pledged themselves to a resolution of reducing the public grievances, by taking into their own hands the administration of the kingdom.
Henry having summoned a parliament, in expectation of receiving supplies for his Sicilian project, the barons appeared in the hall, clad in complete armour, and with their swords by their side. The king, on his entry, struck with the unusual appearance, asked them what was their purpose, and whether they intended to make him their prisoner. Roger Bigod replied, in the name of the rest, that he was not their prisoner, but their sovereign; that they even intended to grant him large supplies, in order to fix his son on the throne of Sicily; that they only expected some return for this expense and service; and that, as he had frequently made submissions to the parliament, had acknowledged his past errors, and still allowed himself to be carried into the same path, which gave them such just reason of complaint, he must now yield to more strict regulations, and confer authority on those who were able and willing to redress the national grievances. Henry, partly allured by the hopes of supply, partly intimidated by the union and martial appearance of the barons, agreed to their demand; and promised to summon another parliament at Oxford, in order to digest the new plan of government, and to elect the persons who were to be entrusted with the chief authority.
This parliament, which the royalists, and even the nation, from experience of the confusions that attended its measures, afterwards denominated the mad parliament, met on the day appointed; and as all the barons brought along with them their military vassals, and appeared with an armed force, the king, who had taken no precautions against them was in reality a prisoner in their hands, and was obliged to submit to all the terms which they were pleased to impose upon him. Twelve barons were selected from among the king's ministers, twelve more were chosen by parliament: to these twenty-four, unlimited authority was granted to reform the state; and the king himself took an oath that he would maintain whatever ordinances they should think proper to enact for that purpose. Leicester was at the head of this supreme council, to which the legislative power was thus in reality transferred; and all their measures were taken by his secret influence and direction. The first step bore a specious appearance, and seemed well calculated for the end which they professed to be the object of all these innovations: they ordered that four knights should be chosen by each county; that they should make inquiry into the grievances of which their neighbourhood had reason to complain, and should attend the ensuing parliament, in order to give information to that assembly of the state of their particular counties—a nearer approach to our present constitution than had been made by the barons in the reign of King John, when the knights were only appointed to meet in their several counties, and there to draw up a detail of their grievances. Meanwhile the twenty-four barons proceeded to enact some regulations as a redress of such grievances as were supposed to be sufficiently notorious: they ordered that three sessions of parliament should be regularly held every year, in the months of February, June, and October; that a new sheriff should be annually elected by the votes of the freeholders in each county; that the sheriffs should have no power of fining the barons who did not attend their courts or the circuits of the justiciaries; that no heirs should be committed to the wardship of foreigners, and no castles entrusted to their custody; and that no new warrens or forests should be created, nor the revenues of any counties or hundreds be let to farm. Such were the regulations which the twenty-four barons established at Oxford, for the redress of public grievances.
But the Earl of Leicester and his associates, having advanced so far to satisfy the nation, instead of continuing in this popular course, or granting the king that supply which they had promised him, immediately provided for the extension and continuance of their own authority. They roused anew the popular clamour which had long prevailed against foreigners; and they fell with the utmost violence on the king's half-brothers, who were supposed to be the authors of all national grievances, and whom Henry had no longer any power to protect. The four brothers, sensible of their danger, took to flight, with an intention of making their escape out of the kingdom; they were eagerly pursued by the barons. Aymer, one of the brothers, who had been elected to the see of Winchester, took shelter in his episcopal palace, and carried the others along with him they were surrounded in that place, and threatened to be dragged out by force, and to be punished for their crimes and misdemeanours; and the king, pleading the sacredness of an ecclesiastical sanctuary, was glad to extricate them from this danger by banishing them the kingdom.
In this act of violence, as well as in the former usurpations of the barons, the queen and her uncles are supposed to have secretly concurred, being jealous of the credit acquired by the brothers, which had entirely eclipsed their own.
The subsequent proceedings of the confederate barons were inefficient to open the eyes of the nation to their real design, which was neither more nor less than reducing both the king and the people under the arbitrary power of a very limited aristocracy, which, had it been carried out, must have terminated at last in anarchy or tyranny.
They artfully pretended that they had not yet digested all the regulations necessary for the reformation of the state, and the redress of grievances; that they must still retain their power till the great purpose was effected; or, in other words, that they intended to remain perpetual governors till it pleased them to abdicate their authority; and, in order to cement their power, they formed an association amongst themselves, and swore that they would stand by each other with their lives and fortunes.
The justiciary, the chancellor, and treasurer of the kingdom were removed from their offices, and creatures of the barons thrust into their places; even the offices of the king's household were disposed of at their pleasure, and the government of all castles put into hands in which they could confide; and the whole power of the state being thus transferred into their hands, they put the crowning act to their usurpations by imposing an oath, which all subjects were obliged to swear under penalty of being proclaimed public enemies, that they would obey and execute all regulations, both known and unknown, of the twenty-four barons.
Never had men a more glorious opportunity of covering themselves with honour, and securing the gratitude of their country, than the confederates now possessed; but, instead of devoting themselves to establishing the liberties of their country, reforming the abuses, and correcting the laws, they selfishly preferred their personal aggrandisement.
The history of the twenty-four barons is the history of the English aristocracy as a party for centuries. We seldom or ever find them in opposition to the crow, wringing from it the surrender of its prerogatives, unless to arrogate those very prerogatives to themselves. In their short-sighted policy, little did they foresee that a power was gradually springing into existence which would one day call them to as severe an account as they had called their monarchs—the power of the people.
Edward, the king's eldest son, then a youth of eighteen, who, even at that early age, gave indications of the noble, manly spirit which distinguished him in after life, was, after some opposition, forced to take the oath, which virtually deposed his father and his family from sovereign authority. The last person in the kingdom who held out was Earl of Warenne, but even he was eventually compelled to submit.
Not content with this usurpation of the royal power, the barons introduced an innovation in the constitution which was utterly at variance with its letter and spirit. They ordained that parliament should choose a committee of twelve persons, who should, in the intervals between the sessions, possess all the authority of the whole parliament, and attend, on a summons to that effect, the person of the king wherever he might reside. So powerful were the confederates, that even this regulation was submitted to, and thus the entire government was overthrown, or fixed upon a new foundation; the monarchy subsisted without its being possible for the king to strike a single stroke in defence of the constitution against the newly-elected oligarchy.
The lesson to Henry must have been a bitter one, for he was the last person in the kingdom who had a right to complain. He could invoke no law which he had not been the first to violate. The degradation and restraint he endured was the just punishment of his perfidy and countless perjuries.
The report that the King of the Romans intended visiting England alarmed the confederated nobles, who dreaded lest his extensive influence should be employed to restore his family, and overturn their new system of government. Under this impression they sent the Bishop of Worcester to meet him at St. Omers, to demand, in their name, the reason of his journey; how long he intended to remain in the kingdom; and to insist that, before he set foot in it, he should swear to observe the regulations established at Oxford.
On Richard's refusal to take this oath, they prepared to resist him as a public enemy. They fitted out a fleet, assembled an army, and, exciting the inveterate prejudices of the people against foreigners, from whom they had suffered so many oppressions, spread the report that Richard, attended by a number of strangers, meant to restore by force the authority of his exiled brothers, and to violate all the securities provided for public liberty. The King of the Romans was at last obliged to submit to the terms required of him.
But the barons, in proportion to their continuance in power, began gradually to lose that popularity which had assisted them in obtaining it; and men repined that regulations, which were occasionally established for the reformation of the state, were likely to become perpetual, and to subvert entirely the ancient constitution. They were apprehensive lest the power of the nobles, always oppressive, should now exert itself without control, by removing the counterpoise of the crown; and their fears were increased by some new edicts of the barons, which were plainly calculated to procure to themselves an immunity in all their violences. They appointed that the circuits of the itinerant justices, the sole check on their arbitrary conduct, should be held only once in seven years; and men easily saw that a remedy which returned, after such long intervals, against an oppressive power which was perpetual, would prove totally insignificant and useless. The cry became loud in the nation that the barons should finish their intended regulations. The knights of the shires, who seem now to have been pretty regularly assembled, and sometimes in a separate house, made remonstrances against the slowness of their proceedings. They represented that, though the king had performed all the conditions required of him, the barons had hitherto done nothing for the public good, and had only been careful to promote their own private advantage, and to make inroads on royal authority; and they even appealed to Prince Edward, and claimed his interposition for the interests of the nation and the reformation of the government. The prince replied that, though it was from constraint, and contrary to his private sentiments, he had sworn to maintain the provisions of Oxford, he was determined to observe his oath; but he sent a message to the barons, requiring them to bring their undertaking to a speedy conclusion, and fulfil their engagements to the public: otherwise, be menaced them that, at the expense of his life, he would oblige them to do their duty, and would shed the last drop of his blood in promoting the interests and satisfying the just wishes of the nation.
The remonstrances of the knights of the shire, and the spirited conduct of the heir to the crown, obliged the barons at last to publish a new code of ordinances for the reformation of the state; but the expectations of the nation were bitterly disappointed when they found that they consisted only in some trivial alterations in the municipal laws, and that their rulers intended to prolong their authority still further, under pretence that the task they had assumed was not yet accomplished.
The current of popular opinion now turned in favour of the crown—indeed, so much so, that the barons had little left to rely on for support beyond personal influence and the power of their families, which, although exceedingly great, could not match itself against the combination of the king and people.
France was at this time governed by Louis IX., a monarch of the most singular character that is to be met with in all the records of history. He united to the abject superstition of the monk all the courage and great qualities of a hero, and what may appear still more extraordinary, the justice and integrity of a patriot, the mildness and humanity of a philosopher.
So far from taking advantage of the divisions amongst the English in attempting to expel them from the provinces which they still held in France, he entertained many doubts as to the justice of the sentence of attainder pronounced against Henry's father, the licentious and worthless John, and had even expressed some intention of restoring his forfeited possessions.
Whenever this prince interposed in English affairs, it was always with an intention of composing the differences between the king and his nobility. He recommended to both parties every peaceable and reconciling measure, and he used all his authority with the Earl of Leicester, his native subject, to bend him to compliance with Henry. He made a treaty with England (May 20) at a time when the distractions of that kingdom were at the greatest height, and when the king's authority w.is totally annihilated, and the terms which ho granted might, even in a more prosperous state of their afhairs, be deemed reasonable and advantageous to the English. He yielded up some territories which had been conquered from Poitou and Guieune; he ensured the peaceable possession of the latter province to Henry; he agreed to pay that prince a large sum of money; and he only required that the king should, in return, make a final cession of Normandy and the other provinces, which he could never entertain any hopes of recovering by force of arms. This cession was ratified by Henry, by his two sons and two daughters, and by the King of the Romans and his three sons.
But the situation of Henry soon after wore a still more favourable aspect. The twenty-four barons had now enjoyed the sovereign power nearly three years, and had visibly employed it, not for the reformation of the state, which was their first pretence, but for the agrandisement of themselves and their favourites. The dissension amongst the barons themselves, whilst it added to the evil, made the remedy more obvious and easy. The desertion of the Earl of Gloucester to the crown seemed to promise Henry certain success in the event of his attempting to resume his authority, but he dared not take that step without first applying to Rome for absolution from the oaths and engagements he had contracted.
The king could not have made his application at a more fortunate period, for the Pope felt much dissatisfied with the conduct of the barons, who, in order to conciliate the nation, had expelled all the Italian ecclesiastics from the kingdom and confiscated their benefices. He proved himself willing, therefore, on Henry's application, to absolve him and all his subjects from the oath they had taken to observe the provisions of Oxford.
Prince Edward, whose liberal mind, though in such early youth, had taught him the great prejudice which his father had incurred by his levity, inconstancy, and frequent breach of promise, refused for a long time to take advantage of this absolution; and declared that the provisions of Oxford, how unreasonable soever in themselves, and how much soever abused by the barons, ought still to be adhered to by those who had sworn to observe them. He himself had been constrained by violence to take that oath; yet was he determined to keep it. By this scrupulous fidelity the prince acquired the confidence of all parties, and was afterwards enabled to recover fully the royal authority.
As soon as the king received the Pope's absolution from his oath, accompanied with menaces of excommuuication against all opponents, trusting to the countenance of the Church, to the support promised him by many considerable barons, and to the returning favour of the people, he immediately took off the mask. After justifying his conduct by a proclamation, in which he set forth the private ambition and the breach of trust conspicuous in Leicester and his associates, he declared that he had resumed the government, and was determined thenceforth to exert the royal authority for the protection of his subjects. He removed Hugh le Despenser and Nicholas of Ely, the justiciary and chancellor appointed by the barons, and put Philip Basset and Walter de Merton in their place. Ho substituted new sheriffs in all the counties, men of character and honour; he placed new governors in most of the castles, he changed all the officers of his household; he summoned a parliament, in which the resumption of his authority was ratified, with only five dissenting voices; and the barons, after making one fruitless effort to take the king by surprise at Winchester, were obliged to acquiesce in those now regulations.
The king, in order to cut off every objection to his conduct, offered to refer all the differences between him and the Earl of Leicester to Margaret, Queen of France. The celebrated integrity of Louis gave a mighty influence to any decision which issued from his court; and Henry probably hoped that the gallantry on which all barons, as true knights, valued themselves, would make them ashamed not to submit to the award of that princess.
The Earl of Leicester was nowise discouraged by the bad success of his former enterprises: the death of Richard, Earl of Gloucester, who was his chief rival in power, seemed to open a fresh field to his ambition, and expose the throne to renewed violence. It was in vain that Henry declared his intention of strictly observing the Great Charter, and even of maintaining the regulations made at Oxford, with the exception of those which annihilated the royal authority; the barons could not peaceably resign the uncontrolled power they had so long enjoyed. Many of them entered into Leicester's views, and, among the rest, Gilbert, the young Earl of Gloucester, who brought with him a great accession of power from the great wealth and authority he had inherited. Even Henry, son of the King of the Romans—commonly called Henry d'Almaine—though a prince of the blood, joined the party of the barons against the interests of his family.
The Bishop of Worcester meeting the King of the Romans. (See page 286.)
The princes of Wales, notwithstanding the great power of the monarchs both of the Saxon and Norman lines, had still preserved authority in their own country. Though they had frequently been forced to pay tribute to the crown of England, they were with difficulty retained in a state of vassalage, or even in peace; and almost through every reign since the Conquest had infested the English frontiers with such petty excursions and inroads as seldom secured a place in general history.
In 1237, Lewellyn, Prince of Wales, declining in years and stricken in infirmities, but still more harassed by the unnatural rebellion of his youngest son, Griffin, had recourse to the protection of Henry, subjecting his principality, which had so long maintained its independence, to vassalage under the crown of England.
His eldest son and heir, David, renewed the homage to England, and having taken his brother prisoner, delivered him into the hands of Henry, who kept him a prisoner in the Tower. Griffin lost his life in attempting to escape from his imprisonment, and the Prince of Wales, freed from the apprehension of so dangerous a rival, paid henceforth less regard to the English monarch, and soon renewed those incursions by which the Welsh, during so many ages, had infested the English borders.
London Bridge in the 13th Century. Escape of Queen Eleanor. (See page 290.)
Lewellyn, the son of Griffin, who succeeded to his uncle, although he had performed homage to England, was well pleased to inflame those civil discords on which he rested for security. For this purpose he entered into an alliance with Leicester, and collecting all the forces of his principality, invaded England with an array of thirty thousand men.
He ravaged the lands of Roger de Mortimer, and of all the barons who adhered to the crown; he marched into Cheshire, and committed like depredations on Prince Edward's territories; every place where his disorderly troops appeared was laid waste with fire and sword; and though Mortimer, a gallant and expert soldier, made stout resistance, it was at length found necessary that the prince himself should head the army against this invader. Edward repulsed Prince Lewellyn, and obliged him to take shelter in the mountains of North Wales; but he was prevented from making further progress against the enemy by receiving intelligence of the disorders which soon after broke out in England.
The Welsh invasion was the appointed signal for the malcontent barons to rise in arms; and Leicester, coming over secretly from France, collected all the forces of his party, and commenced an open rebellion. He seized the person of the Bishop of Hereford—a prelate obnoxious to all the inferior clergy, on account of his devoted attachment to the court of Rome. Simon, Bishop of Norwich, and John Mansel, because they had published the Pope's bull, absolving the king and kingdom from their oaths to observe the provisions of Oxford, were made prisoners, and exposed to the rage of the party. The king's demesnes were ravaged with unbounded fury; and as it was Leicester's interest to allure to his side, by the hopes of plunder, all the disorderly ruffians in England, he gave them a general licence to pillage the barons of the opposite party, and even all neutral persons. But one of the principal resources of his faction was the populace of the cities, particularly of London; and as he had, by his pretensions to sanctity, and his zeal against Rome, engaged the monks and lower ecclesiastics in his party, his dominion over the inferior ranks of men became uncontrollable. Thomas Fitz-Richard, Mayor of London, a furious and licentious man, gave the countenance of authority to these disorders in the capital; and having declared war against the substantial citizens, he loosened all the bands of government by which that turbulent city was commonly but ill restrained. On the approach of Easter, the zeal of superstition, the appetite for plunder, or what is often as prevalent with the populace as either of these motives, the pleasure of committing havoc and destruction, prompted them to attack the unhappy Jews, who were first pillaged without resistance, then massacred to the number of 600 persons. The Lombard bankers were next exposed to the rage of the people; and though, by taking sanctuary in the churches, they escaped with their lives, all their money and goods became a prey to the licentious multitude. Not content with these excesses, the houses of the rich citizens, though English, were attacked by night; and way was made by sword and fire to the pillage of their goods, and often to the destruction of their persons.
The queen, who, though defended by the Tower, was terrified by the neighbourhood of such dangerous commotions, resolved to go by water to the castle of Windsor; but as she approached the bridge the populace assembled against her. There was a general cry of "Drown the witch;" and besides abusing her with the most opprobrious language, and pelting her with rotten eggs and dirt, they had prepared large stones to sink the barge when the royal party should attempt to shoot the bridge. At this moment the mayor interposed for the queen's protection, and conveyed her in safety to St. Paul's.