Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 56
CHAPTER LVI.
The violence and fury of Leicester's faction had risen to such a height in all parts of England, that the king, unable to resist their power, was obliged to set on foot a treaty of peace, and to make an accommodation with the barons on the most disadvantageous terms. He agreed to confirm anew the provisions of Oxford, even those which entirely annihilated the royal authority; and the barons were again reinstated in the sovereignty of the kingdom. They restored Hugh le Despenser to the office of chief justiciary; they appointed their own creatures sheriffs in every county of England; they took possession of all the royal castles and fortresses; they even named all the officers of the king's household; and they summoned a parliament to meet at Westminster, in order to settle more fully their plan of government. They here produced a new list of twenty-four barons, to whom they proposed that the administration should be entirely committed; and they insisted that the authority of this junta should continue, not only during the reign of the king, but also during that of Prince Edward.
This prince, the life and soul of the royal party, had, unhappily, before the king's accommodation with the barons, been taken prisoner by Leicester in a parley at Windsor; and that misfortune, more than any other incident, had determined Henry to submit to the ignominious conditions imposed upon him. But Edward having recovered his liberty by the treaty, employed his activity in defending the prerogatives of his family; and he gained a great party even among those who had first adhered to the cause of the barons. His cousin, Henry d'Almaine, Roger Bigod, earl marshal. Earl Warenne, Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford, John Basset, Ralph Basset, Hammond l'Estrange, Roger Mortimer, Henry de Piercy, Robert Bruce, Roger de Leybourue, with almost all the lords marchers, as they were called, on the borders of Wales and Scotland, the most warlike parts of the kingdom, declared in favour of the royal cause; and hostilities, which had scarcely been suppressed, were again renewed in every part of England. But the near balance of the parties, joined to the universal clamour of the people, obliged the king and barons to open anew the negotiations for peace; and it was agreed by both sides to submit their differences to the arbitration of the King of France.
This virtuous prince, the only man who, in like circumstances, could safely have been entrusted with such an authority by a neighbouring nation, had never ceased to interpose his good offices between the English factions; and had even, during the short interval of peace, invited over to Paris both the king and the Earl of Leicester, in order to accommodate the differences between them, but found that the fears and animosities on both sides, as well as the ambition of Leicester, were so violent as to render all his endeavours ineffectual. But when this solemn appeal ratified by the oaths and subscriptions of the leaders in both factions, was made to his judgment, he was not discouraged from pursuing his honourable purpose: he summoned the states of France at Amiens; and there, in the presence of that assembly, as well as in that of the King of England and Peter de Montfort, Leicester's son, he brought this great cause to a trial and examination. It appeared to him that the provisions of Oxford, even had they not been extorted by force, had they not been so exorbitant in their nature, and subversive of the ancient constitution, were expressly established as a temporary expedient, and could not, without breach of trust, be rendered perpetual by the barons. He therefore annulled these provisions; restored to the king the possession of his castles, and the power of nomination to the great offices; allowed him to retain what foreigners he pleased in the kingdom, and even to confer on them places of great trust and dignity; and, in a word, re-established the royal power on the same footing on which it stood before the meeting of the Parliament at Oxford.
But while he suppressed dangerous innovations, and preserved unimpaired the prerogatives of the English crown, he was not negligent of the rights of the people. Besides ordering a general amnesty for all past offences, he declared that his award was not in any way intended to derogate from the liberties enjoyed by the nation, in virtue of any concessions or charters from the crown.
The award of Louis may have been abstractedly just, and was certainly in accordance with the principles of the English constitution; but it involved measures which, under present circumstances, it was by no means expedient should be carried into effect. The barons, might, indeed, have pressed too heavily upon the royal prerogative, and seized on every side, with little scruple, the securities they considered necessary; but it was certain that if those securities were suddenly and completely relinquished, the national charters would become as wholly inoperative as they were before the parliament of Oxford. The word of the king had ceased to have any weight whatever; and the barons determined to resist the award of Louis, and once more to take up arms. Again the country was desolated by civil war, which was renewed with more than its former fury.
Henry III. at the Battle of Lewes.
The northern counties and those of the west remained attached to the cause of the king; while the adherents of the barons lay in the midland and south-eastern counties, the cinque ports, and in the neighbourhood of London. The citizens of the capital, especially, were conspicuous for the firmness with which they supported the barons, and the powerful assistance which they rendered to the insurgent cause. At the opening of the campaign various successes attended the movements of the royal troops. Elated by his good fortune, Henry marched to the south with the view of gaining the adhesion of the cinque ports. Meanwhile Leicester had remained in London; and thence, while watching the successful career of the king, had employed himself, with the calmness of a skilful general, in concentrating a body of forces. Having accomplished this object, he marched from the capital, determined to meet the king in the south, and compel him to a decisive battle. The army of Henry was greatly superior in numbers to the force marching against him, and therefore he resolved to await his enemies in the spot where he was already encamped—in a hollow or valley at Lewes, in Sussex. Leicester marched his troops to the downs about two miles from Lewes, where he encamped for the night.
The interval of repose was not suffered to pass unimproved. Leicester employed it in arousing in his favour all the superstitious feelings of his soldiery. In time of war or peace he had always been noted for his strict observance of religious forms; and he compared his own life and the cause in which he was engaged with the perjuries and treacheries of Henry, which he said had withdrawn from that king all favour of Heaven. He commanded that his army should wear a white cross, in token that they were engaged in a sacred war; and the Bishop of Chichester, one of his associates, gave a solemn absolution to the troops, promising honour to those who lived, and to those who fell the welcome of martyrs in heaven.
The evening hours were thus spent in exciting to the utmost the enthusiasm of the troops. On the morning of the 14th of May (A.D. 1264), the earl prepared for the attack, and, leaving a reserve behind him, he descended upon the royal forces. On the king's side were the barons whose names have been already mentioned, together with John Baliol and John Comyn from beyond the Scottish border. On the side of Leicester were the Earls Gloucester, Warrenne, and Derby, Robert de Roos, John Fitz-John, Godfrey de Lucy, John de Vescy, Nicholas Seagrave, Richard Grey, William Marmion, and many other powerful nobles.
As the two armies joined battle, the attack was commenced by Prince Edward, who on this day displayed evidence of that military talent and gallantry which was afterwards to become so conspicuous. The prince led a body of troops upon a force of Londoners, who had armed themselves in the cause they supported. Unskilled in the art of war, and probably much inferior in their appointments, the citizens gave way before the heavy cavalry of Edward, which cut them to pieces. The prince remembered the insults they had offered to Ms mother, and in his eagerness for vengeance he pursued the flying Londoners, perfectly regardless of what might happen to the rest of the royal army. Leicester meanwhile took advantage of this impetuosity, and collecting his forces into a compact and dense mass, he led them against the main body of the king's troops, and completely defeated them. Henry himself was taken prisoner, with his brother the King of the Romans, Robert Bruce, and John Comyn.
When the prince returned from the pursuit on which he was engaged, he perceived the fatal error he had committed. The ground was covered with the bodies of his friends, and he learnt from a few breathless fugitives that his father with many of his chief nobles were in the hands of Leicester, and were shut up in the priory of Lewes. Scarcely had he received this news, when ho was attacked by a troop of cavalry, and was compelled to surrender. The Earl Warrenne, and with him the king's half-brothers, escaped from the field, and reached the Continent. It is stated that in this battle 5,000 Englishmen were slain by the hands of their countrymen.
On the following morning a treaty, called the "Mise of Lewes," was entered into between the defeated king and his barons. It was arranged that Prince Edward, with Henry, the son of the King of the Romans, should remain in the hands of Leicester as hostages for their fathers, and that another attempt should be made finally to arrange matters by arbitration. The earl, however, who now found himself possessed of almost unlimited power, refused to release the king and his brother, and kept them, as well as their sons, in imprisonment. In this course of action he was supported by the people and by a large majority of the ecclesiastics; and when the Pope issued sentence of excommunication against Leicester and his party, many of the clergy defied the papal authority, and still held up to the admiration of their hearers the man who had been placed under the ban of Rome. They described him as the reformer of abuses, the protector of the oppressed, the avenger of the Church, and the father of the poor.
The popularity which Leicester at this time enjoyed was unexampled; and here we see again the not unfrequent spectacle of a man, strong in the affections of the people, becoming much more a king than he who wears the crown. The earl exercised his authority upon all those barons who still adhered to the royal cause, and compelled them to quit their strongholds, to give up their possessions, and submit to a trial by their peers. In the judgments passed upon these men we see the rapid advance which had lately taken place in civilisation. There were no sentences to death, or abominable torture, or chains; and in most cases the punishment inflicted consisted of a short exile to Ireland. The king's name was still employed in all acts of government, and his captivity was rendered as light as was consistent with the safe custody of his person. Every indulgence, together with all outward demonstrations of respect, was accorded to him, and a similar mildness was evinced towards the other royal prisoners.
Immediately before the battle of Lewes, the queen had escaped to the Continent, where she received offers of assistance from different foreign princes. To them the proceedings of the barons appeared only as a rebellion against the king; and they were interested in repressing such attempts against royal authority. With their assistance, the queen collected a large force of mercenaries, which was assembled at the port of Damme, in Flanders, in readiness to pass over into England. Leicester was not long in taking measures against this new danger. Secure in the good opinion of the people, he sent heralds throughout the country, summoning the men-at-arms from towns and castles, cities and boroughs, to meet him on Barham Downs. The call was generally responded to; and the earl having formed an encampment of his army on the downs, he took the command of a fleet which he had collected from the neighbouring ports. For some time he cruised about the Channel, waiting for the fleet from Damme to set sail, and intending to intercept it and prevent it from reaching the English shores. But the queen's supporters, who entertained a salutary fear of a sea-fight with the English, did not venture to leave their shelter; and eventually her troops were disbanded, and the enterprise was relinquished.
But the downfall of the earl was at hand. Gifted, as he undoubtedly was, with a most powerful intellect, he was not superior to the demoralising influences of his high position. Possessed already to its full extent of the substance of power, he further aimed at the enjoyment of its forms. He asserted in too marked a manner his superiority over the barons associated with him—a proceeding to which those haughty chiefs were little disposed to submit. Prince Edward, who had been placed with his father, and with him enjoyed considerable liberty of person, carefully observed this growing dissatisfaction, and fomented it by every means at his command. It is worthy of remark here that the Parliament assembled by Leicester to consider the case of Prince Edward, and by the decision of which he was placed with his father, was assembled early in 1265, and appears to have been the first Parliament at which representatives of the cities and boroughs were present.
The dissensions among the barons increased rapidly. The Earl of Gloucester declared himself the rival of De Montfort, and with the assistance of his brother, Thomas de Clare, who was an attendant of the prince, arranged a plan by which Edward might escape from confinement. The scheme succeeded; a swift horse was conveyed to the prince, on which he evaded pursuit, and reached Ludlow, where the Earl of Gloucester had fixed his headquarters. The earl was not remarkable for prudence or good sense; but the temper of the nobles had shown itself in too marked a manner to be mistaken, and he perceived that they would require pledges for the fulfilment of the charters before they would render any support to the royal cause. He therefure caused the prince to take such pledges, and to undertake that he would govern according to law, and would expel the foreigners from the realm. The Earl of Derby had already entered into communication with the prince, and within a short time afterwards the Earl Warrenne sailed from the Continent, and landed in South Wales with 120 knights, and a troop of foot soldiers. Prince Edward also made arrangements with other nobles who were favourable to him, and effected a simultaneous rising in different parts of the country. Simon de Montfort, eldest son of the Earl of Leicester, was stationed in Sussex with a small force, while the earl himself, retaining possession of the king's person, remained at Hereford. Leicester was extremely anxious that his son should join him, and so concentrate their forces—a measure which Edward used every exertion to prevent. The prince took possession of the fords of the Severn, and destroyed the boats and bridges on that river. Some skirmishing took place between the rival armies, and the skill of the two leaders was displayed in various warlike manoeuvres. At length Leicester succeeded in crossing the river, and proceeded to Worcester, where he awaited the arrival of his son. But Simon de Montfort showed little of his father's ability, and the active Prince Edward attacked him by night near Kenilworth, and captured all his horses and treasure. Many of his best men fell into the hands of the prince, and their leader was compelled to make his escape as best he could to the neighbouring castle, which was then in the possession of the De Montfort family.
The earl, unacquainted with this disaster, advanced his army to Evesham on the Avon. On arriving there he perceived his own standards on the hills, advancing from the direction of Kenilworth. His eyes were gladdened by the sight, and he advanced unsuspiciously to meet the destruction which was gathering around him. The standards were those of his son in the hands of his enemies; and when at length this was discovered it was too late to retreat. Meanwhile Prince Edward had directed a combined movement of troops in his flank and rear, so that the earl found himself completely surrounded. As he perceived the high degree of military skill evinced in these arrangements, he is said to have complained that his enemies had learnt from him the art of war. He then exclaimed, "May the Lord have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are Prince Edward's."
If such was the old general's opinion, it is not probable that he expressed it openly, and it is certain that he took measures for defence as energetically as though he were assured of victory. Having spent a short time in prayer, and taken the sacrament, as was his custom before going into battle, he marshalled his men in compact order, and placed himself at their head. In the first instance he endeavoured to force his way through the royal troops with the intention of reaching Kenilworth. The attempt was frustrated, and ho then formed his troops in a solid mass on the summit of a hill, which was speedily surrounded by his enemies. The king, who still remained with the earl, had been encased in armour and placed on horseback. During the confusion of the fight the old man was thrown from his horse, and only escaped being slain by calling out, "Hold your hand, I am Harry of Winchester." The prince, who heard the voice, ran to his father's assistance, placed him on horseback, and carried him to a place of safety. Again and again the royalist troops advanced against the little band on the hill, and again and again were repulsed with heavy loss. Leicester's horse was killed under him—a serious accident in those days, when the motions of the knight were encumbered by a mass of armour—but the earl rose to his feet, and continued the struggle in that position. But the numbers of his foes were overpowering; as a few men with toil and difficulty were driven back, a hundred others stepped forward to supply their place, and it became evident that the contest was hopeless. Leicester then sent messengers to the royalists to demand whether they gave quarter; and the answer returned was that there was no quarter for traitors. His son Henry fell by his side, and each moment some one of the best and bravest of his friends was also struck down. At length the earl himself, after surviving most of the champions of his cause, and standing, as it were, alone, met the fate of his companions, and fell, sword in hand.
The acts of slaughter by which this victory was followed appear in very unfavourable contrast to the humanity which had been displayed by Leicester and his associates on a similar occasion. The usages of chivalry were altogether lost sight of; and such was the hatred of the royalists towards their opponents, inflamed still further by the gallant resistance they had met with, that no mercy was shown to them. No prisoners were taken, no quarter was given to rich or poor, no offer of ransom stayed the uplifted arm of the smiter; and barons and knights, yeomen and citizens, were mingled in an indiscriminate slaughter.
Leicester was beyond the vengeance of his foes, but nevertheless they gratified their brutal rage upon his inanimate corpse, which they cut up and disfigured in a horrible manner, and in this state presented it to a lady, the wife of one of the earl's most deadly enemies, to whom they appear to have considered that it would prove an acceptable gift. According to their custom, the people of England declared the dead hero to be a martyr, and from the reported holiness of his past life, they considered it certain that miracles would be wrought by him after his death; and such was generally believed to be the case, although, for fear of the king, they did not dare openly to express the belief which they held in secret. Whatever degree of justice there may have been in the popular view of his character, his name was reverenced among the people for many years, under the named of Sir Simon the Righteous.
Combat between Prince Edward and the Baron Adam Gourdon.
(See page 296.)
The victory of Evesham restored the king at once to his authority. He proceeded to Warwick, where his brother, the King of the Romans, had advanced to meet him, accompanied by many of the noble prisoners of Lewes, who now for the first time regained their liberty. Within a mouth afterwards a Parliament assembled at Winchester. The king was little more than a cipher among the company of his barons. He knew that by their arms his success had been won, and that he owed their support not to any desire for an absolute monarchy, but to a resistance to a power which seemed likely to exceed that of royalty itself. Henry, therefore, made no attempt to revoke the Great Charter; and widely different as his real sentiment and desires may have been, he assented to those measures of constitutional government which were laid before him But the Parliament of Winchester was not proof against personal animosities, and it passed heavy sentences against the family and some of the adherents of Leicester, at the same time depriving the citizens of London of their charter.
These were not the times in which such measures would be quietly submitted to. In every part of the kingdom some baron raised the standard of insurrection, and maintained a desultory warfare upon the troops and property of the king. Simon de Montfort, with a small band of desperate men, maintained a position for many months in the isles of Axholme and Ely, while his retainers still held the castle of Kenilworth against repeated attacks. The cinque porta preserved an obstinate defence, and in the forests of Hampshire the famous Adam Gourdon defied the royal authority. This baron was one of the most gallant soldiers of his time, and from the recesses of the forest he conducted rapid movements against the royal troops, inflicting upon them heavy losses. Prince Edward took the field against the rebels, and during two years he had full opportunity of gratifying his taste for war. He passed hither and thither throughout the country, striking a blow now in this direction, now in that, and with varying success.
Circular Part of the Temple Church, London.
All the efforts of the prince proved unavailing to bring the insurgents to submission, and it became necessary to relax the stringent measures of punishment which had been adopted, and to make a display of clemency on the part of the government, as an inducement to the rebels to lay down their arms. For this purpose a committee was appointed, consisting of twelve bishops and barons, and their award, known as the "Dictum de Kenilworth," was formally adopted by the king and Parliament. This award appears to have been generally received with satisfaction; but at this juncture the Earl of Gloucester quarrelled with the king, and assumed a warlike attitude, asserting that the Dictum of Kenilworth was not sufficiently lenient, nor such as the barons had a right to expect. The citizens of London, indignant at the loss of their charter, witnessed the dissension between the king and Gloucester with great satisfaction, and when the earl took up arms they opened their gates to receive him. But Gloucester was ill-prepared to maintain the contest on which he had entered, and at the approach of the royal army he demanded leave to negotiate. The permission was granted, and Gloucester obtained a pardon for himself on condition of entire submission to the king, while the Londoners purchased their safety for a fine of, 25,000 marks.
Henry was naturally of a humane disposition, and he was further dissuaded from harsh measures by the letters of the Pope, who at this time exerted his influence in the cause of humanity and mercy. The determined attitude of the people also showed very clearly the policy of such a course of action. It is not an easy thing to conquer Englishmen, even by Englishmen, and the king had good reason to dread the prolonged hostility of his stubborn subjects. It would appear, however, that one chivalrous act on the part of Prince Edward contributed in no small degree to extinguish the spirit of disaffection. In a battle fought in a wood near Alton, the prince encountered the redoubtable Adam Gourdon in single combat. The prince struck him from his horse, and when the vanquished knight lay at his mercy, instead of dispatching him Edward gave him his life, and, on the same night, presented him honourably to the queen, and obtained for him a full pardon. The story ends like a romance, for we are informed that the prince "took Sir Adam de Gourdon into his especial favour, and was ever afterwards faithfully served by him."
On the 18th of November, A.D. 1267, a Parliament was held at Marlborough, in which the king adopted some of the most important enactments of the Earl of Leicester, and added to them other laws equally calculated to promote the welfare of the people. The resistance of the insurgents, which was by no means unreasonable, was almost immediately removed by these measures; one after another the barons threw down their arms, the last to do so being the fugitives of the Isle of Ely. These at length joined in accepting the Dictum de Kenilworth, which they had seen scrupulously fulfilled in the case of others.
The country being now restored to a state of tranquillity. Prince Edward took the cross, and determined to proceed to the Holy Land. The papal legate had actively urged him to take this step, and he had the example of Louis IX., afterwards called Saint Louis, who had lately departed on a second crusade. Before quitting the country, Edward took measures which displayed a high degree of wisdom and foresight, having for their object to preserve the peace of the realm during his absence. Among these was a new charter, securing to the citizens of London the restoration of their liberties, and a free pardon to all those nobles who still remained proscribed by the king. In the month of July, A.D. 1270, the prince departed with his wife Eleanor, his cousin Henry, the son of the King of the Romans, and nearly 200 English nobles and knights of high degree. The best and bravest of the chivalry of England had assembled round their gallant prince, with all the pomp and pageantry with which the nobles of that age marched forth to war; few, indeed, among them were likely ever to return; but such considerations affected them little, while the Church followed them with its blessing, and the minstrels accompanied them to sing the story of their prowess, and to raise their name from the dust. With the belief that he should attain honour here, and happiness in heaven, the soldier of the cross might hurl a double defiance at death, and bear an undaunted brow over the deserts of Syria, or the mountains of Judæa.
The young Henry D'Almaine, the son of the King of the Romans, was one of the first to perish in this disastrous expedition. The manner of his death was unusually tragical. He had been dispatched back to England by Edward upon some secret mission, and took his way through Italy, passing through the city of Viterbo, where a new Pope was then being elected. One morning, at an early hour, when he was engaged in saying prayers in one of the churches, he was suddenly aroused by a well-known voice at his side, which exclaimed, in menacing tones, "Thou traitor, thou shalt not escape us!" Turning round hastily, he perceived his two cousins, Simon and Guy de Montfort, who, with their mother the Countess of Leicester, had been driven out of England. The countess was King Henry's sister, and her sons referred this harsh measure to the influence of the King of the Romans, who had ever been considered as their bitterest enemy. The two De Montforts were in complete armour, and, drawing their swords, they advanced upon their cousin. Henry, who was utterly without means of defence, clung to the altar before which he had knelt, and two priests who were in the church threw themselves before him. But his foes were implacable: they neither respected the sanctuary, nor the persons of the ministers of God. The two priests were slain before the altar, and Henry, after being pierced with many wounds, was dragged without the church, where his body was mutilated by the murderers, in revenge for the indignities which had been inflicted upon the corpse of their father. They then effected their escape to the castle of the Count Aldobrandini, one of whose daughters had been married to Guy de Montfort, and by whom it is related that they were protected from the consequences of their infamous deed.
The King of the Romans had lately married a young German bride, and he was then occupying himself with feastings and displays, still believing that he should live to call himself Emperor of Germany. But the death of his son was a fatal blow to such vain ambition, and the shock affected him so, severely that he died in December, a.d. 1271. In the winter following the king was attacked by an illness Which also proved mortal. His last moments were characterised by great demonstrations of piety, and Henry II. followed his brother to the grave on the 16th of November, a.d. 1272, The abbey church of St. Peter's at Westminster had been rebuilt by him, and he desired that his bones should be laid there, in the grave formerly occupied by Edward the Confessor. The remains of that saintly king had been removed by Henry, and placed in a golden shrine.
As the body of the king was about to be lowered into the grave, the barons who were present placed their hands in turn upon it, and took an oath of allegiance to Edward, then absent in the Holy Land. Henry III. died at the age of sixty-five years, during fifty-six of which he had worn the crown. A few words only are needed to sum up the character of this prince as it is presented to us in contemporary records. He was certainly not without good qualities, which would probably have been more conspicuous in a humbler sphere of life. He was, as had been said of one of his predecessors, rather a monk than a king; he was humane, generous, true to his friends, but he was guided in the choice of those friends rather by his own inclinations than by any regard for the public good, or to the characters of the persons whom he so distinguished. He was remarkable for weaknesses rather than for vices; but in the case of one placed in the seat of authority, it may be considered that such weaknesses are not less than vicious, and may be productive of more serious injury to the governed than positive vices. Few men who have occupied the English throne have rendered themselves so thoroughly contemptible in the eyes of all men as did Henry III. During the whole of his long reign, from the regency of the Earl of Pembroke to the assumption of power by the Earl of Leicester, Henry was a king only in name, and in those instances where he exercised the royal authority, he did so for purposes of exaction and extortion of money from his oppressed subjects.