78
Henry Ill
articles omitted. Yet it was difficult to catch him out. He was not in the least a ‘gory tyrant’, like his father; he simply maddened every one by his useless extravagance, by never paying his debts, and by never keeping his promises. Remonstrance of the barons.At last the barons found that he had promised the Pope an enormous sum of money, in return for which the Pope had promised to one of Henrys sons the crown of Sicily. Sicily, forsooth! What had England to do with an island in the Mediterranean, while French pirates were burning the towns on our south coast without a single King’s ship being sent to prevent them?
National rising, 1257–65.This was in 1257. The barons met the King in council after council and utterly refused to pay a penny for the Sicilian job. Endless documents were drawn up for the King to sign. He signed them quite readily, promised whatever he was asked, but never kept his word. Simon de Montfort.The chief spokesman of the barons was one Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. The nation and all the best of the churchmen rallied heartily to Simons side, especially the men of London, and things ended in a kind of war; where, at the battle of Lewes in 1264, the King and his eldest son, Prince Edward, fell into Earl Simons hands. For a year Simon governed in the King’s name; but he was a hot-headed and rather grasping man, and quarrelled with his own best supporters. He even called in the aid of the Welsh. Prince Edward learns a lesson.At last Prince Edward escaped from captivity, rallied his father’s friends, defeated and slew Simon at Evesham, and put his father back on the throne. Little vengeance was taken; and the last seven years of Henry's reign were peaceful, so peaceful indeed, that, though Prince Edward was away in Palestine when Henry died