[Footnote 12: Genealogy of the sons and grandchildren of Henry II.:—

HENRY II. 1154-1189 - Henry RICHARD Geoffrey JOHN = (1) Avice of m. Margaret 1189-1199 m. Constance 1199-1216 Gloucester of France m. Berengaria of Brittany (2) Isabella of of Navarre Angouleme Arthur HENRY III. 1216-1272]

25. The Fall of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. 1187.—The divisions in Henry's family were stirred up afresh by the new king of France, Philip II., who had succeeded his father, Louis VII., in 1179. Philip was resolved to enlarge his narrow dominions at the expense of Henry. He was Henry's feudal lord, and he was crafty enough to know that by assisting Henry's sons he might be able to convert his nominal lordship into a real power. News, however, arrived in the midst of the strife which for a little time put an end to the discords of men and peoples. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, which had been established after the first crusade, had only maintained itself because the Mahommedan rulers of Egypt were the rivals and enemies of the Mahommedan rulers of Syria. Yet even with the advantage of divisions amongst their enemies, the Christians had only defended themselves with difficulty. A second crusade which had gone out to relieve them in Stephen's reign, under the Emperor Conrad III. and Louis VII. of France, had accomplished nothing. Their real defenders were two bodies of soldiers, known as the Knights Templars and the Knights of St. John, who were bound, like monks, to vows of celibacy, so that they might always be free to defend Jerusalem. At last a great Mahommedan warrior, Saladin, arose, who ruled both Egypt and Syria, and was therefore able to bring the united forces of the two countries against the Christian colony. In 1187 he destroyed the Christian army at Tiberias, and in the same year took Jerusalem and almost every city still held by the Christians in the East. Tyre alone held out, and that, too, would be lost unless help came speedily.

26. The Last Years of Henry II. 1188—1189.—For a moment the rulers of the West were shocked at the tidings from the East. In 1188 Philip, Henry, and Richard had taken the cross as the sign of their resolution to recover the Holy City from the infidel. To enable him to meet the expenses of a war in the East, Henry imposed upon England a new tax of a tenth part of all movable property, which is known as the Saladin tithe, but in a few months those who were pledged to go on the crusade were fighting with one another—first Henry and Richard against Philip, and then Philip and Richard against Henry. At last, in 1189, Henry, beaten in war, was forced to submit to Philip's terms, receiving in return a list of those of his own barons who had engaged to support Richard against his father. The list reached him when he was at Chinon, ill and worn out. The first name on it was that of his favourite son John. The old man turned his face to the wall. "Let things go now as they will," he cried bitterly. "I care no more for myself or for the world." After a few days of suffering he died. The last words which passed his lips were, "Shame, shame upon a conquered king."

27. The Work of Henry II.—The wisest and most powerful ruler can only assist the forces of nature; he cannot work against them. Those who merely glance at a map in which the political divisions of France are marked as they existed in Henry's reign, cannot but wonder that Henry did not make himself master of the small territory which was directly governed, in turn, by Louis VII. and Philip II. A careful study of the political conditions of his reign shows, however, that he was not really strong enough to do anything of the kind. His own power on the Continent was purely feudal, and he held authority over his vassals there because they had personally done homage to him. Henry, however, had also done homage to the king of France, and did not venture, even if he made war upon his lord, the king of France, to push matters to extremities against him, lest his sons as his own vassals might push matters to extremities against himself. He could not, in short, expel the king of France from Paris, lest he should provoke his own vassals to follow his example of insubordination and expel him from Bordeaux or Rouen. Moreover, Henry had too much to do in England to give himself heart and soul to Continental affairs, whilst the king of France, on the contrary, who had no foreign possessions, and was always at his post, would be the first to profit by a national French feeling whenever such a feeling arose. England under Henry II. was already growing more united and more national. The crown which Henry derived from the Conqueror was national as well as feudal. Henry, like his predecessors, had two strings to his bow. On the one hand he could call upon his vassals to be faithful to him because they had sworn homage to him, whilst he himself, as far as England was concerned, had sworn homage to no one. On the other hand, he could rally round him the national forces. To do this he must do justice and gain the goodwill of the people at large. It was this that he had attempted to do, by sending judges round the country and by improving the law, by establishing scutage to weaken the power of the barons, and by strengthening the national forces by the Assize of Arms. No doubt he had little thanks for his pains. Men could feel the weight of his arm and could complain of the heavy fines exacted in his courts of justice. It was only a later generation, which enjoyed the benefits of his hard discipline, which understood how much England owed to him.



CHAPTER XI.

RICHARD I. 1189—1199.

LEADING DATES

Accession of Richard I. 1189 Richard's Return to England from the Crusade 1194 Death of Richard I. 1199

1. Richard in England. 1189.—Richard was accepted without dispute as the master of the whole of the Angevin dominions. He was a warrior, not a statesman. Impulsive in his generosity, he was also impulsive in his passions. Having determined to embark on the crusade, he came to England eager to raise money for its expenses. With this object he not only sold offices to those who wished to buy them, and the right of leaving office to those who wished to retire, but also, with the Pope's consent, sold leave to remain at home to those who had taken the cross. Regardless of the distant future, he abandoned for money to William the Lion the treaty of Falaise, in which William had engaged to do homage to the English king.



2. William of Longchamps. 1189—1191.—To secure order during his absence Richard appointed two Justiciars—Hugh of Puiset, Bishop of Durham, and William of Longchamps, Bishop of Ely. At the same time he attempted to conciliate all who were likely to be dangerous by making them lavish grants of land, especially giving what was practically royal authority over five shires to his brother John. Such an arrangement was not likely to last. Before the end of 1189 Richard crossed to the Continent. Scarcely was he gone when the populace in many towns turned savagely on the Jews and massacred them in crowds. The Jews lived by money-lending, and money-lenders are never popular. In York they took refuge in the castle, and when all hope of defending themselves failed, slew their wives and children, set fire to the castle, and perished in the flames. The Justiciars were too much occupied with their own quarrels to heed such matters. Hugh was a stately and magnificent prelate. William was lame and misshapen, quick of wit and unscrupulous. In a few weeks he had deprived his rival of all authority. His own power did not last long. He had a sharp tongue, and did not hesitate to let all men, great and small, know how meanly he thought of them. Those whom he despised found a leader in John, who was anxious to succeed his brother, and thought that it might some day be useful to have made himself popular in England. In the autumn of 1191 William of Longchamps was driven out of the country.

3. The Third Crusade. 1189—1192.—Richard threw his whole heart—his lion's heart, as men called it—into the crusade. Alike by sea and by land, he knew better than any other leader of his age how to direct the operations of war. He was too impetuous to guard himself against the intrigues and personal rancour of his fellow-Crusaders. At Messina he quarrelled with the wily Philip II. of France, while he gave offence to all Germans by upholding the claims of Tancred to the crown of Sicily, which was also claimed by the German king, who afterwards became the Emperor Henry VI. In the spring of 1191 Richard sailed from Sicily for the Holy Land, conquering Cyprus on the way, where he married Berengaria of Navarre. Passing on to the coast of Syria, he found the Crusaders besieging Acre, and his own vigour greatly contributed to its fall. When Acre was taken Philip slipped home to plot against Richard, and Richard found every French Crusader and every German Crusader banded together against him. When he advocated the right of Guy of Lusignan to the crown of Jerusalem, they advocated the claim of Conrad of Montferrat. Jerusalem was not to be had for either of them. Twice Richard brought the Crusading host within a few miles of the Holy City. Each time he was driven to retreat by the failure of the Crusaders to support him. The last time his comrades invited him at least to reach a spot from which a view of the city could be gained. Richard refused. If he was not worthy, he said, to regain the city, he was not worthy to look on it.

4. The Return of Richard. 1192—1194.—In 1192 there was nothing for it but to return home. Enemies were watching for him on every shore. Landing at the head of the Adriatic, he attempted to make his way in disguise through Germany. With characteristic want of reflection, he roasted his meat at a village inn near Vienna with a jewelled ring on his finger. Attention was aroused, and he was arrested and delivered up to Leopold, Duke of Austria, who had been his bitter antagonist in the Holy Land, and Leopold delivered him up to his own feudal superior, the Emperor, Henry VI.



The imprisonment of Richard was joyful news to Philip and John. John did his best to get into his hands all the English and Continental dominions of his brother. His meanness was, however, by this time well known, and he was repelled on all sides. At last in 1193 the Emperor consented to let Richard go on payment of what was then the enormous ransom of 150,000 marks, or 100,000l. "Beware," wrote Philip to John when he heard that the Emperor's consent had been given; "the devil is loose again," Philip and John tried to bribe the Emperor to keep his prisoner, but in February 1194 Richard was liberated, and set out for England.

5. Heavy taxation.—Before Richard reappeared in England each tenant-in-chief had to pay the aid which was due to deliver his lord from prison (see p. 117), but this was far from being enough. Besides all kinds of irregular expedients the Danegeld had been practically revived, and to it was now given the name of carucage, a tax of two shillings on every plough-land. Another tax of a fourth part of all movable goods had also been imposed, for which a precedent had been set by Henry II. when he levied the Saladin tithe (see p. 157). Richard had now to gather in what was left unpaid of these charges. Yet so hated was John that Richard was welcomed with every appearance of joy, and John thought it prudent to submit to his brother. Philip, however, was still an open enemy, and as soon as Richard had gathered in all the money that he could raise in England he left the country never to return. On the Continent he could best defend himself against Philip, and, besides this, Richard was at home in sunny Aquitaine, and had no liking for his English realm.

6. The Administration of Hubert Walter. 1194—1198.—For four years the administration of England was in the hands of a new Justiciar, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Hubert Walter. He was a statesman of the school of Henry II., and he carried the jury system yet farther than Henry had done. The immense increase of taxation rendered it the more necessary to guard against unfairness, and Hubert Walter placed the selection of the juries of presentment (see p. 147) in the hands of four knights in every shire, who, as is probable, were chosen by the freeholders in the County Court, instead of being named by the sheriff. This was a further step in the direction of allowing the counties to manage their own affairs, and a still greater one was taken by the frequent employment of juries in the assessment of the taxes paid within the county, so as to enable them to take a prominent part in its financial as well as in its judicial business. In 1198 there was taken a new survey of England for taxable purposes, and again elected juries were employed to make the returns. In this year Archbishop Hubert retired from the Justiciarship, and was succeeded by Geoffrey Fitz-Peter. Archbishop Hubert's administration marks a great advance in constitutional progress, though it is probable that his motive was only to raise money more readily. The main constitutional problem of the Norman and Angevin reigns was how to bring the national organisation of the king's officials into close and constant intercourse with the local organisation of the counties. Henry I. and Henry II. had attacked the problem on one side by sending the judges round the country to carry the king's wishes and commands to each separate county. It still remained to devise a scheme by which the wishes and complaints of the counties could be brought to the king. Hubert Walter did not contrive that this should be done, but he made it easy to be done in the next generation, because before he left office he had increased the powers of the juries in each county and had accustomed them to deal independently with all the local matters in which the king and the county were both interested. It only remained to bring these juries together in one place where they might join in making the king aware of the wishes and complaints of all counties alike. When this had been accomplished there would, for the first time, be a representative assembly in England.



7. Death of Richard. 1199.—It was not only Richard's love for his old home which fixed him on the Continent. He knew that the weakest part of his dominions was there. His lands beyond sea had no natural unity. Normans did not love Angevins, neither did Angevins love the men of Poitou or Guienne. Philip was willingly obeyed in his own dominions, and he had all the advantage which his title of king of the French could give him. Richard fought desperately, and for the most part successfully, against the French king, and formed alliances with all who were opposed to him. He built on a rock overhanging the Seine above Les Andelys a mighty fortress—the Chateau Gaillard, or Saucy Castle, as he called it in jest. With characteristic haste he completed the building in a few months. "How fair a child is mine!" he called to his followers, "this child but a twelvemonth old." Other child he had none, and he had but the miserable John to look to to hold his dominions after he was gone. He did not live long enough to see whether his new castle could stand a siege. A peasant dug up a treasure on the land of the lord of Chalus in the Limousin. Richard claimed it as his right because he was the over-lord. On the refusal of the lord to surrender it he laid siege to Chalus. An arrow from the castle struck him on the shoulder. The wound rankled, and mortification followed. As Richard lay dying the castle surrendered, and the man who had aimed the fatal shot was brought before him. "What have I done to thee," asked Richard, "that thou shouldest slay me?" "Thou hast slain my father and two of my brothers with thy own hand," said the prisoner, "and thou wouldest fain have killed me too. Avenge thyself upon me as thou wilt. I will gladly endure the greatest torments thou canst devise, since I have seen thee on thy deathbed." Richard, generous to the last, bade his attendants set the prisoner free. They kept him till Richard was dead, and then tortured him to death.



8. Church and State under the Angevin Kings.—During the forty-five years of the reigns of Richard and his father the chief feature of English history is the growth of the power of the state. There was more justice and order, and also more taxation, at the end of the period than at the beginning. During the same period the influence of the Church grew less. The character of Thomas's resistance to the king was lower than that of Anselm, and not long after Thomas's murder Henry indirectly regained the power which he had lost, and filled the sees with officials and dependents who cared little for the higher aims of religion. The evil consequences of making the Church dependent on the king were at least as great as those of freeing the political and social life of the clergy from the control of the State. Even monasticism ceased to afford a strong example of self-denial. The very Cistercians, who had begun so well, had fallen from their original purity. They were now owners of immense tracts of pasture-land, and their keenness in money-making had become notorious. They exercised great influence, but it was the influence of great landlords, not the influence of ascetics.

9. Growth of Learning.—The decay of asceticism was to some extent brought about by the opening of new careers into which energetic men might throw themselves. They were needed as judges, as administrators, as councillors. A vigorous literature sprung up in the reign of Henry II., but at the end of the reign most of it was connected with the court rather than with the monasteries. Henry's Justiciar, Ranulf de Glanvile, wrote the first English law-book. His Treasurer, Richard Fitz-Nigel, set forth in the Dialogus de Scaccario the methods of his financial administration, and also produced 'The Deeds of King Henry and King Richard.' William of Newburgh, indeed, the best historian of these reigns, wrote in a small Yorkshire monastery, but Roger of Hoveden and Ralph de Diceto pursued their historical work under the influence of the court. Still more striking is the universality of the intellectual inquisitiveness of Walter Map. On the one hand, in his De Nugis Curialium he chattered over the manners of his contemporaries, and in his satirical poems scourged the greed and vices of the clergy, whilst on the other hand he took a principal part in spreading a knowledge of the legend of the high-souled King Arthur and of the quest of the Holy Grail. Giraldus Cambrensis again, or Gerald of Wales, wrote on all sorts of subjects with shrewd humour and extensive knowledge.

10. The University of Oxford.—There was already in England a place where learning was cherished for its own sake. For some time there had been growing up on the Continent gatherings for the increase of learning, which ultimately were known as universities, or corporations of teachers and scholars. One at Bologna had devoted itself to the study of the civil or Roman law. Another at Paris gave itself to the spread of all the knowledge of the time. In these early universities there were no colleges. Lads, very poor for the most part, flocked to the teachers and lodged themselves as best they could. Such a university, though the name was not used till later, had been gradually forming at Oxford. Its origin and early history is obscure, but in 1186 Giraldus, wishing to find a cultivated audience for his new book on the topography of Ireland, read it aloud at Oxford, where, as he tells us, 'the clergy in England chiefly flourished and excelled in clerkly lore.' It appears that there were already separate faculties or branches of study, and persons recognised as doctors or teachers in all of them.



11. Country and Town.—Intellectual progress was accompanied by material progress. In the country the old system of cultivation by the labour service of villein-tenants still prevailed, but in many parts the service had been commuted, either for a money payment or for payments in kind, such as payments of a fixed number of eggs or fowls, or of a fixed quantity of honey or straw. Greater progress was made in the towns. At the time of the Conquest there were about eighty towns in England, most of them no larger than villages. The largest towns after London were Winchester, Bristol, Norwich, York, and Lincoln, but even these had not a population much above 7,000 apiece. In the smaller towns trade was sufficiently provided for by the establishment of a market to which country people brought their grain or their cattle, and where they provided themselves in turn with such rude household necessaries as they required. Even before the Conquest port towns had grown up on the coast, but foreign trade was slight, imports being almost entirely confined to luxuries for the rich. The order introduced by the Normans and the connection between England and the king's Continental possessions was followed by an increase of trade, and there arose in each of the larger towns a corporation which was known as the Merchant Gild, and which was, in some instances at least, only a development of an older association existing in the times before the Conquest. No one except the brothers of the Merchant Gild was allowed to trade in any article except food, but any one living in the town might become a brother on payment of a settled fee. The first Merchant Gild known was constituted in 1093. A little later, Henry I. granted charters to some of the towns, conferring on them the right of managing their own affairs; and his example was followed, in far greater profusion, by Henry II. and Richard I. Though the organisation of the Merchant Gild was originally distinct from the organisation of the town, and the two were in theory kept apart, the Merchant Gild, to which most of the townsmen belonged, usually encroached upon the authorities of the town, regulated trade to its own advantage, and practically controlled the choice of officers, the principal officer being usually styled an Alderman, with power to keep order and generally to provide for the well-being of the place. In this way the tradesmen and merchants of the towns prepared themselves unconsciously for the time when they would be called on to take part in managing the affairs of the country. Even in these early times, however, the artisans in some of the trades attempted to combine together.

12. Condition of London.—Of all the towns London had been growing most rapidly in wealth and population, and during the troubles in which John had been pitted against William of Longchamps it had secured the right of being governed by a Mayor and Aldermen of its own, instead of being placed under the jurisdiction of the King's sheriff. The Mayor and Aldermen, however, did not represent all the townsmen. In London, though there is no evidence of the existence of a Merchant Gild, there was a corporation composed of the wealthier traders, by which the city was governed. The Mayor and Aldermen were chosen out of this corporation, as were the juries elected to assess the taxes. Artisans soon came to believe that these juries dealt unfairly with the poor. One of the Aldermen, William Longbeard, made himself the mouthpiece of their complaints and stirred them up against the rest. Hubert Walter sent a messenger to seize him, but William Longbeard slew the messenger and fled into the church of Mary-at-Bow. Here, according to the ideas of his age, he should have been safe, as every church was considered to be a sanctuary in which no criminal could be arrested. Hubert Walter, however, came in person to seize him, set the church on fire, and had him dragged out. William Longbeard was first stabbed, and then tried and hanged, and for the time the rich tradesmen had their way against the poorer artisans.



13. Architectural Changes.—Even in the most flourishing towns the houses were still mostly of wood or rubble covered with thatch, and only here and there was to be found a house of stone. So slight, indeed, were the ordinary buildings, that it was provided by the Assize of Clarendon that the houses of certain offenders should be carried outside the town and burnt. Here and there, however, as in the case of the so-called Jews' house at Lincoln, stone houses were erected. In the larger houses the arrangements were much as they had been before the Conquest, the large hall being still the most conspicuous part, though another apartment, known as the solar, to which an ascent was made by steps from the outside, and which served as a sitting-room for the master of the house, had usually been added. The castles reared by the king or the barons were built for defence alone, and it was in the great cathedrals and churches that the skill of the architect was shown. An enormous number of parish churches of stone were raised by Norman builders to supersede earlier buildings of wood. For some time the round-arched Norman architecture which had been introduced by Eadward the Confessor was alone followed, such as may be studied in the Galilee of Durham (see p. 160) the nave of St. Albans (see p. 109) and the tower of Castor (see p. 136). Gradually the pointed arch of Gothic architecture took its place, and after a period of transition, of which the nave of Durham, and the choirs of Canterbury and of Ripon afford examples (see pp. 130, 150, 166), the graceful style now known as Early English was first used on a large scale in 1192 in the choir of the cathedral of Lincoln.



Books recommended for further study of Part II.

STUBBS, W. (Bishop of Oxford). Constitutional History of England. Vol i. chaps. ix.-xiii.

FREEMAN, E. A. History of the Norman Conquest. Vols. iv. and v. History of William Rufus.

GREEN, J. R. History of the English People. Vol. i. pp. 115-189.

NORGATE, Miss K. England under the Angevin Kings. Vols. i. and ii. pp. 1-388.

CUNNINGHAM, W. Growth of English Industry and Commerce during the Early and Middle Ages, pp. 129-173.

WAKEMAN, H. O., and HASSALL, A. Constitutional Essays.

ADAMS, G. B. The Political History of England. Vol. ii. From the Norman Conquest to the Death of John (1066-1216).



PART III.

THE GROWTH OF THE PARLIAMENTARY CONSTITUTION. 1199-1399.



CHAPTER XII.

JOHN. 1199-1216.

LEADING DATES

Accession of John 1199 Loss of Normandy 1204 England under an Interdict 1208 Magna Carta 1215 Death of John 1216

1. The Accession of John. 1199.—After Richard's death there were living but two descendants of Henry II. in the male line—John, Richard's only surviving brother, and Arthur, the young son of John's elder brother, Geoffrey. The English barons had to make their choice between uncle and nephew, and, as had been done in the days of AElfred, they preferred the grown man to the child. It was the last time when that principle of election was confessedly acted on. Archbishop Hubert in announcing the result used words which seem strange now: "Forasmuch," he declared to the people assembled to witness John's coronation, "as we see him to be prudent and vigorous, we all, after invoking the Holy Spirit's grace, for his merits no less than his royal blood, have with one consent chosen him for our king." In reality, John was of all men most unworthy. He was without dispute the worst of the English kings. Like William II. he feared not God nor regarded man. Though William indeed was more vicious in his private life, John's violence and tyranny in public life was as great as William's, and he added a meanness and frivolity which sank him far below him.

2. John's First War with Philip II. 1199—1200.—On the Continent John had a difficult game to play. Normandy and Aquitaine submitted to him, but Anjou and its dependent territories declared for Arthur, who was Duke of Brittany in right of his mother. Philip II., who had long been the rival of Richard, now took the field in 1199 as the rival of John in support of Arthur; but for the moment he ruined his chance of success by keeping in his own hands the castles which he took from John instead of making them over to Arthur. Arthur's supporters took offence, and in 1200 Philip made peace with John. Philip acknowledged John as Richard's heir, but forced him in return to pay a heavy sum of money, and to make other concessions.

3. John's Misconduct in Poitou. 1200—1201.—John did not know how to make use of the time of rest which he had gained. Being tired of his wife, Avice of Gloucester, he persuaded some Aquitanian bishops to divorce him from her, though he took care to keep the lands which he had received from her at her marriage. He then married Isabella of Angouleme, though she was betrothed to a Poitevin noble, Hugh of Lusignan. Hugh was enraged, and, together with many of his neighbours, took arms against John. In 1201 John charged all the barons of Poitou with treason, and bade them clear their character by selecting champions to fight with an equal number of English and Norman knights.

4. The Loss of Normandy and Anjou. 1202—1204.—The Poitevin barons, instead of accepting the wager of battle, appealed to Philip as John's over-lord, and in 1202 Philip summoned John to answer their complaints before his peers. John not only did not appear, but made no excuse for his absence; and Philip afterwards pretended that the peers had condemned him to forfeit his lands. After this Philip, in alliance with Arthur, invaded Normandy. John's aged mother, Eleanor, who was far more able and energetic than her son, took up his cause against her grandson Arthur. She was besieged by Arthur at Mirebeau when John came to her help, and not only raised the siege, but carried off Arthur as a prisoner. Many of his vassals rose against him, and finding himself unable to meet them in the field he wreaked his vengeance on his helpless prisoner. A little before Easter 1203 Arthur ceased to live. How the boy died has never been known, but it was generally believed that he was drowned in the Seine near Rouen—some said by his uncle's own hands. The murderer was the first to suffer from the crime. Philip at once invaded Normandy. The Norman barons had long ceased to respect John, and very few of them would do anything to help him. Philip took castle after castle. John was indeed capable of a sudden outbreak of violence, but he was incapable of sustained effort. He now looked sluggishly on, feasting and amusing himself whilst Philip was conquering Normandy. "Let him alone," he lazily said; "I shall some day win back all that he is taking from me now." His best friends dropped off from him. The only fortress which made a long resistance was that Chateau Gaillard which Richard had built to guard the Seine. In 1204 it was at last taken, and before the end of that year Normandy, Maine, Anjou, and Touraine, together with part of Poitou, had submitted to Philip.



5. Causes of Philip's Success.—It was not owing to John's vigour that Aquitaine was not lost as well as Normandy and Anjou. Philip had justified his attack on John as being John's feudal lord, and as being therefore bound to take the part of John's vassals whom he had injured. Hitherto the power of the king over his great vassals, which had been strong in England, had been weak in France. Philip made it strong in Normandy and Anjou because he had the support there of the vassals of John. That these vassals favoured him was owing partly to John's contemptible character, but also to the growth of national unity between the inhabitants of Normandy and Anjou on the one hand and those of Philip's French dominions on the other. Normans and Angevins both spoke the same language as the Frenchmen of Paris and its neighbourhood. Their manners and characters were very much the same, and the two peoples very soon blended with one another. They had been separated merely because their feudal organisation had been distinct, because the lord over one was John and over the other was Philip. In Aquitaine it was otherwise. The language and manners there, though much nearer to those of the French than they were to those of the English, differed considerably from the language and manners of the Frenchmen, Normans, and Angevins. What the men of Aquitaine really wanted was independence. They therefore now clung to John against Philip as they had clung to Richard against Henry II. They resisted Henry II. because Henry II. ruled in Anjou and Normandy, and they wished to be free from any connection with Anjou and Normandy. They resisted Philip because Philip now ruled in Anjou and Normandy. They were not afraid of John any longer, because they thought that now that England alone was left to him, he would be too far off to interfere with them.

6. The Election of Stephen Langton to the Archbishopric of Canterbury. 1205.—In England John had caused much discontent by the heavy taxation which he imposed, not with the regularity of Henry II. and Hubert Walter, but with unfair inequality. In 1205 Archbishop Hubert Walter died. The right of choosing a new archbishop lay with the monks of the monastery of Christchurch at Canterbury, of which every archbishop, as the successor of St. Augustine, was the abbot. This right, however, had long been exercised only according to the wish of the king, who practically named the archbishop. This time the monks, without asking John's leave, hurriedly chose their sub-prior Reginald, and sent him off with a party of monks to Rome, to obtain the sanction of the Pope. Reginald was directed to say nothing of his election till he reached Rome; but he was a vain man, and had no sooner reached the Continent than he babbled about his own dignity as an archbishop. When John heard this he bade the monks choose the Bishop of Norwich, John de Grey, the king's treasurer; and the monks, thoroughly frightened, chose him as if they had not already made their election. John had, however, forgotten to consult the bishops of the province of Canterbury, who had always been consulted by his father and brother, and they too sent messengers to the Pope to complain of the king.



7. Innocent III. and Stephen Langton. 1206.—The Pope was Innocent III., who at once determined that John must not name bishops whose only merit was that they were good state officials. Being an able man, he soon discovered that Reginald was a fool. He therefore in 1206 sent for a fresh deputation of monks, and, as soon as they arrived in Rome, bade them make a new choice in the name of their monastery. At Innocent's suggestion they chose Stephen Langton, one of the most pious and learned men of the day, whose greatness of character was hardly suspected by anyone at the time.

8. John's Quarrel with the Church. 1206—1208.—The choice of an archbishop in opposition to the king was undoubtedly something new. The archbishopric of Canterbury was a great national office, and a king as skilful as Henry II. would probably have succeeded in refusing to allow it to be disposed of by the Pope and a small party of monks. John was unworthy to be the champion of any cause whatever. In 1207, after an angry correspondence with Innocent, he drove the monks of Christchurch out of the kingdom. Innocent in reply threatened England with an interdict, and in the spring of 1208 the interdict was published.

9. England under an Interdict. 1208.—An interdict carried with it the suppression of all the sacraments of the Church except those of baptism and extreme unction. Even these were only to be received in private. No words of solemn import were pronounced at the burial of the dead. The churches were all closed, and to the men of that time the closing of the church-doors was like the closing of the very gate of heaven. In the choice of the punishment inflicted there was some sign that the Papacy was hardly as strong in the thirteenth as it had been in the eleventh century. Gregory VII. had smitten down kings by personal excommunication; Innocent III. found it necessary to stir up resistance against the king by inflicting sufferings on the people. Yet there is no evidence of any indignation against the Pope. The clergy rallied almost as one man round Innocent, and songs proceeded from the monasteries which mocked the few official bishops who took John's side as money-makers who cared more for marks than for Mark, and more for lucre than for Luke, whilst John de Grey was branded with the title of 'that beast of Norwich.' John taking no heed of the popular feeling, seized the property of the clergy who obeyed the interdict. Yet he was not without fear lest the barons should join the clergy against him, and to keep them in obedience he compelled them to entrust to him their eldest sons as hostages. One lady to whom this order came replied that she would never give her son to a king who had murdered his nephew.

10. John Excommunicated. 1209.—In 1209 Innocent excommunicated John himself. John cared nothing for being excluded from the services of the Church, but he knew that if the excommunication were published in England few would venture to sit at table with him, or even to speak with him. For some time he kept it out of the country, but it became known that it had been pronounced at Rome, and even his own dependents began to avoid his company. He feared lest the barons whom he had wearied with heavy fines and taxes might turn against him, and he needed large sums of money to defend himself against them. First he turned on the Jews, threw them into prison, and after torturing those who refused to pay, wrung from them 40,000l. The abbots were next summoned before him and forced by threats to pay 100,000l. Besides this the wealthy Cistercians had to pay an additional fine, the amount of which is uncertain, but of which the lowest estimate is 27,000l. In 1211 some of the barons declared against John, but they were driven from the country, and those who remained were harshly treated. Some of their sons who had been taken as hostages were hanged or starved to death.



11. The Pope threatens John with Deposition. 1212—1213.—In 1212 Innocent's patience came to an end, and he announced that he would depose John if he still refused to give way, and would transfer his crown to his old enemy, Philip II. The English clergy and barons were not likely to oppose the change. Philip gathered a great army in France to make good the claim which he expected Innocent to give him. John, indeed, was not entirely without resource. The Emperor Otto IV. was John's sister's son, and as he too had been excommunicated by Innocent he made common cause with John against Philip. Early in 1213 John gathered an army of 60,000 men to resist Philip's landing, and if Otto with his Germans were to attack France from the east, a French army would hardly venture to cross into England, unless indeed it had no serious resistance to fear. John, however, knew well that he could not depend on his own army. Many men in the host hated him bitterly, and he feared deposition, and perhaps death, at the hands of those whom he had summoned to his help.

12. John's Submission. 1213.—Under these circumstances John preferred submission to the Pope to submission to Philip or his own barons. He invited Pandulf, the Pope's representative, to Dover. He swore to admit Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, to restore to their rights all those of the clergy or laity whom he had banished, and to give back the money which he had wrongfully exacted. Two days later he knelt before Pandulf and did homage to the Pope for England and Ireland. He was no longer to be an independent king but the Pope's vassal. In token of his vassalage he agreed that he and his successors should pay to Innocent and his successors 1,000 marks a year, each mark being equal to 13s. 4d., or two-thirds of a pound. Innocent had reached his aim as far as John was concerned. In his eyes the Papacy was not merely the guide of the Church, it was an institution for controlling kings and forcing them to act in accordance with the orders of the Popes. It remained to be seen whether the Pope's orders would be always unselfish, and whether the English barons and clergy would submit to them as readily as did this most miserable of English kings.

13. The Resistance of the Barons and Clergy. 1213.—At first John seemed to have gained all that he wanted by submission. Pandulf bade Philip abandon all thought of invading England, and when Philip refused to obey, John's fleet fell upon the French fleet off the coast of Flanders and destroyed it. John even proposed to land with an army in Poitou and to reconquer Normandy and Anjou. His subjects thought that he ought to begin by fulfilling his engagements to them. John having received absolution, summoned four men from each county to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy which he had bound himself to make good. The meeting thus summoned was the germ of the future House of Commons. It was not a national political assembly, but it was a national jury gathered together into one place. The exiled barons were recalled, and John now hoped that his vassals would follow him to Poitou. They refused to do so, alleging their poverty and the fact that they had already fulfilled their feudal obligation of forty days' service by attending him at Dover. They had, in fact, no interest in regaining Normandy and Anjou for John. Though the English barons still spoke French, and were proud of their Norman descent, they now thought of themselves as Englishmen and cared for England alone. John turned furiously on the barons, and was only hindered from attacking them by the new Archbishop, who threatened to excommunicate everyone who took arms against them. It was time for all Englishmen who loved order and law to resist John. Stephen Langton put himself at the head of the movement, and at a great assembly at St. Paul's produced a charter of Henry I., by which that king had promised to put an end to the tyranny of the Red King, and declared amidst general applause that it must be renewed by John. It was a memorable scene. Up to this time it had been necessary for the clergy and the people to support the king against the tyranny of the barons. Now the clergy and people offered their support to the barons against the tyranny of the king. John had merely the Pope on his side. Innocent's view of the situation was very simple. John was to obey the Pope, and all John's subjects were to obey John. A Papal legate arrived in England, fixed the sum which John was to pay to the clergy, and refused to listen to the complaints of those who thought themselves defrauded.

14. The Battle of Bouvines. 1214.—In 1214 John succeeded in carrying his barons and their vassals across the sea. With one army he landed at Rochelle, and recovered what had been lost to him on the south of the Loire, but failed to make any permanent conquests to the north of that river. Another army, under John's illegitimate brother, the Earl of Salisbury, joined the Emperor Otto in an attack on Philip from the north. The united force of Germans and English was, however, routed by Philip at Bouvines, in Flanders. "Since I have been reconciled to God," cried John, when he heard the news, "and submitted to the Roman Church, nothing has gone well with me." He made a truce with Philip, and temporarily renounced all claims to the lands to the north of the Loire.

15. The Struggle between John and the Barons. 1214—1215. When John returned he called upon all his vassals who had remained at home to pay an exorbitant scutage. In reply they met at Bury St. Edmunds. The charter of Henry I., which had been produced at St. Paul's the year before, was again read, and all present swore to force John to accept it as the rule of his own government. John asked for delay, and attempted to divide his antagonists by offering to the clergy the right of free election to bishoprics and abbacies. Then he turned against the barons. Early in 1215 he brought over a large force of foreign mercenaries, and persuaded the Pope to threaten the barons with excommunication. His attempt was defeated by the constancy of Stephen Langton. The demands of the barons were placed in writing by the archbishop, and, on John's refusal to accept them, an army was formed to force them on the king. The army of God and the Holy Church, as it was called, grew rapidly. London admitted it within its walls, and the accession of London to the cause of the barons was a sign that the traders of England were of one mind with the barons and the clergy. John found that their force was superior to his own, and at Runnimede on June 15, 1215, confirmed with his hand and seal the articles of the barons, with the full intention of breaking his engagement as soon as he should be strong enough to do so.



16. Magna Carta. 1215.—Magna Carta, or the Great Charter, as the articles were called after John confirmed them, was won by a combination between all classes of freemen, and it gave rights to them all.

(a) Its Concessions.—The Church was to be free, its privileges were to be respected, and its right to free elections which John had granted earlier in the year was not to be infringed on. As for the laity, the tenants-in-chief were to pay only fixed reliefs when they entered on their estates. Heirs under age were to be the king's wards, but the king was to treat them fairly, and do nothing to injure their land whilst it was in his hands. The king might continue to find husbands for heiresses and wives for heirs, but only amongst those of their own class. The tenants-in-chief again were bound to pay aids to the king when he needed ransom from imprisonment, or money to enable him to bear the expenses of knighting his eldest son or of marrying his eldest daughter. For all other purposes the king could only demand supplies from his tenants-in-chief with the consent of the Common Council of the realm. As only the tenants-in-chief were concerned, this Common Council was the Great Council of tenants-in-chief, such as had met under the Norman and Angevin kings. A fresh attempt, however, was made to induce the smaller tenants-in-chief to attend, in addition to the bishops, abbots, and barons, by a direction that whilst these were to be summoned personally, the sheriffs should in each county issue a general summons to the smaller tenants-in-chief. Though the sub-tenants had no part in the Common Council of the realm, they were relieved by a direction that they should pay no more aids to their lords than their lords paid to the king, and by a general declaration that all that had been granted to their lords by the king should be allowed by their lords to them. The Londoners and other townsmen had their privileges assured to them; and all freemen were secured against heavy and irregular penalties if they committed an offence.

(b) Its Securities.—Such were the provisions of this truly national act, which Englishmen were for ages engaged in maintaining and developing. The immediate question was how to secure what had been gained. The first thing necessary for this purpose was to make the courts of law the arbitrators between the king and his subjects. In a series of articles it was declared that the sworn testimony of a man's peers should be used whenever fines or penalties were imposed, and this insistence on the employment of the jury system as it then existed was emphasised by the strong words to which John placed his seal: "No freeman may be taken, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or in any way destroyed, nor will we go against him, or send against him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. To none will we sell or deny or delay right or justice." It was a good security if it could be maintained, but it would avail nothing against a king who was willing and able to use force to set up the old tyranny once more. In the first place John must dismiss all his foreign mercenaries. So little, however, was John trusted that it was thought necessary in the second place to establish a body of twenty-five—twenty-four barons and the Mayor of London—which was to guard against any attempt of the king to break his word. If John infringed upon any of the articles of the Charter the twenty-five, with the assistance of the whole community of the kingdom, had the right of distraining upon the king's lands till enough was obtained to make up the loss to the person who had suffered wrong. In other words, there was to be a permanent organisation for making war upon the king.

17. War between John and the Barons. 1215—1216.—John waited for the moment of vengeance. Not only did he refuse to send his mercenaries away, but he sent to the Continent for large reinforcements. Pope Innocent declared the barons to be wicked rebels, and released John from his oath to the Great Charter. War soon broke out. John's mercenaries were too strong for the barons, and in the beginning of 1216 almost all England with the exception of London had been overrun by them. Though the Pope laid London under an interdict, neither the citizens nor the barons paid any attention to it. They sent to Louis, the eldest son of Philip of France, to invite him to come and be their king in John's stead. Louis was married to John's niece, and might thus be counted as a member of the English royal family. The time had not yet come when a man who spoke French was regarded as quite a foreigner amongst the English barons. On May 21, 1216, Louis landed with an army in the Isle of Thanet.



18. Conflict between Louis and John. 1216.—John, in spite of his success, found himself without sufficient money to pay his mercenaries, and he therefore retreated to Winchester. Louis entered London in triumph, and afterwards drove John out of Winchester. Innocent indeed excommunicated Louis, but no one took heed of the excommunication. Yet John was not without support. The trading towns of the East, who probably regarded Louis as a foreigner, took his part, and many of his old officials, to whom the victory of the barons seemed likely to bring back the anarchy of Stephen's time, clung to him. One of these, a high-spirited and strong-willed man, Hubert de Burgh, held out for John in Dover Castle. John kept the field and even won some successes. As he was crossing the Wash the tide rose rapidly and swept away his baggage. He himself escaped with difficulty. Worn out in mind and body, he was carried on a litter to Newark, where on October 19, 1216, he died.



CHAPTER XIII.

HENRY III. 1216-1272.

LEADING DATES

Accession of Henry III. 1216 The Fall of Hubert de Burgh 1232 The Provisions of Oxford 1258 Battle of Lewes 1264 Battle of Evesham 1265 Death of Henry III. 1272

1. Henry III. and Louis. 1216—1217.—Henry III., the eldest son of John, was but nine years old at his father's death. Never before had it been useful for England that the king should be a child. As Henry had oppressed no one and had broken no oaths, those who dared not trust the father could rally to the son. The boy had two guardians, one of whom was Gualo, the legate of Pope Honorius III., a man gentler and less ambitious than Innocent III., whom he had just succeeded; the other was William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, who had been constant to John, not because he loved his evil deeds, but because, like many of the older officials, he feared that the victory of the barons would be followed by anarchy. These two had on their side the growing feeling on behalf of English nationality; whereas, as long as John lived, his opponents had argued that it was better to have a foreign king like Louis than to have a king like John, who tyrannised over the land by the help of foreign mercenaries. Henry's followers daily increased, and in 1217 Louis was defeated by the Marshal at Lincoln. Later in the year Hubert de Burgh, the Justiciar, sent out a fleet which defeated a French fleet off Dover. Louis then submitted and left the kingdom.

2. The Renewal of the Great Charter. 1216—1217.—The principles on which William the Marshal intended to govern were signified by the changes made in the Great Charter when it was renewed on the king's accession in 1216, and again on Louis's expulsion in 1217. Most of the clauses binding the king to avoid oppression were allowed to stand; but those which prohibited the raising of new taxation without the authority of the Great Council, and the stipulation which established a body of twenty-five to distrain on John's property in case of the breach of the Charter, were omitted. Probably it was thought that there was less danger from Henry than there had been from John; but the acceptance of the compromise was mainly due to the feeling that, whilst it was desirable that the king should govern with moderation, it would be a dangerous experiment to put the power to control him in the hands of the barons, who might use it for their own advantage rather than for the advantage of the nation. The whole history of England for many years was to turn on the difficulty of weakening the power of a bad king without producing anarchy.



3. Administration of Hubert de Burgh. 1219-1232.—In 1219 William the Marshal died. For some years the government was mainly in the hands of Hubert de Burgh, who strenuously maintained the authority of the king over the barons, whilst at the same time he set himself distinctly at the head of the growing national feeling against the admission of foreigners to wealth and high position in England. As a result of the disturbances of John's reign many of the barons and of the leaders of the mercenaries had either fortified their own castles or had taken possession of those which belonged to the king. In 1220 Hubert demanded the surrender of these castles as Henry II. had done in the beginning of his reign. In 1221 the Earl of Aumale was forced to surrender his castles, and in 1224 Faukes de Breaute, one of the leaders of John's mercenaries who had received broad lands in England, was reduced to submission and was banished on his refusal to give up his great castle at Bedford. As long as Hubert ruled, England was to belong to the English. His power was endangered from the very quarter from which it ought to have received most support. In 1227 Henry declared himself of age. He was weak and untrustworthy, always ready to give his confidence to unworthy favourites. His present favourite was Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester. The bishop was a greedy and unscrupulous Poitevin, who regarded the king's favour as a means of enriching himself and his Poitevin relatives and friends. Henry was always short of money, and was persuaded by Peter that it was Hubert's fault. In 1232 Hubert was charged with a whole string of crimes and dismissed from office.



4. Administration of Peter des Roches. 1232-1234.—Henry was now entirely under the power of Peter des Roches. In 1233 he ordered Hubert to be seized. Though Hubert took sanctuary in a chapel, he was dragged out, and a smith was ordered to put him in fetters. The man refused to obey. "Is not this," he said, "that most faithful and high-souled Hubert who has so often saved England from the ravages of foreigners, and has given England back to the English?" Hubert was thrown into the Tower, and was never again employed in any office of state. As long as Peter des Roches ruled the king it would be hard to keep England for the English. Poitevins and Bretons flocked over from the Continent, and were appointed to all the influential posts which fell vacant. The barons had the national feeling behind them when they raised complaints against this policy. Their leader was Earl Richard the Marshal, the son of the Earl William who had governed England after the death of John. Without even the semblance of trial Henry declared Earl Richard and his chief supporters guilty of treason. At a Great Council held at Westminster some of the barons remonstrated. Peter des Roches replied saucily that there were no peers in England as in France, meaning that in England the barons had no rights against the king. Both Henry and Peter could, however, use their tongues better than their swords. They failed miserably in an attempt to overcome the men whom they had unjustly accused, till in 1234 Peter stirred up some of the English lords in Ireland to seize on Earl Richard's possessions there. The Earl hurried over to defend his estates. Amongst his followers were many of Peter's confidants, who, treacherously deserting him in the first battle, left him to be slain by his enemies. Peter at least gained nothing by his villainy. Edmund Rich, a saintly man, who had recently become Archbishop of Canterbury, protested against his misdeeds. All England was behind the Archbishop, and Henry was compelled to dismiss Peter and then to welcome back Peter's enemies and to restore them to their rights. It was of no slight importance that a man so devoted and unselfish as Edmund Rich had put himself at the head of the movement. It was a good thing, no doubt, to maintain that wealth should be in the hands rather of natives than of foreigners; but after all every contention for material wealth alone is of the earth, earthy. No object which appeals exclusively to the selfish instincts can, in the long run, be worth contending for. Edmund Rich's accession to the national cause was a guarantee that the claims of righteousness and mercy in the management of the national government would not altogether be forgotten, and fortunately there were new forces actively at work in the same direction. The friars, the followers of St. Francis and St. Dominic, had made good their footing in England.

5. Francis of Assisi.—Francis, the son of a merchant in the Tuscan town of Assisi, threw aside the vanities of youth after a serious illness. He was wedded, he declared, to Poverty as his bride. He clothed himself in rags. When his father sent him with a horseload of goods to a neighbouring market, he sold both horse and goods, and offered the money to build a church. His father was enraged, and summoned him before the bishop that he might be deprived of the right of inheriting that which he knew not how to use. Francis stripped himself naked, renouncing even his clothes as his father's property. "I have now," he said, "but one Father, He that is in heaven." He wandered about as a beggar, subsisting on alms and devoting himself to the care of the sick and afflicted. In his heroism of self-denial he chose out the lepers, covered as they were with foul and infectious sores, as the main objects of his tending. Before long he gathered together a brotherhood of men like-minded with himself, who left all, to give not alms but themselves to the help of the poor and sorrowful of Christ's flock. In 1209 Innocent III. constituted them into a new order, not of monks but of Friars (Fratres or brethren). The special title of the new order, which after ages have known by the name of Franciscans, was that of Minorites (Fratres Minores), or the lesser brethren, because Francis in his humility declared them to be less than the least of Christ's servants. Like Francis, they were to be mendicants, begging their food from day to day. Having nothing themselves, they would be the better able to touch the hearts of those who had nothing. Yet it was not so much the humility of Francis as his loving heart which distinguished him amongst men. Not only all human beings but all created things were dear to him. Once he is said to have preached to birds. He called the sun and the wind his brethren, the moon and the water his sisters. When he died the last feeble words which he breathed were, "Welcome, sister Death!"

6. St. Dominic.—Another order arose about the same time in Spain. Dominic, a Spaniard, was appalled, not by the misery, but by the ignorance of mankind. The order which he instituted was to be called that of the Friars Preachers, though they have in later times usually been known as Dominicans. Like the Franciscans they were to be Friars, or brothers, because all teaching is vain, as much as all charitable acts are vain, unless brotherly kindness be at the root. Like the Franciscans they were to be mendicants, because so only could the world be convinced that they sought not their own good, but to win souls to Christ.

7. The Coming of the Friars. 1220-1224.—In 1220 the first Dominicans arrived in England. Four years later, in 1224, the first Franciscans followed them. Of the work of the early Dominicans in England little is known. They preached and taught, appealing to those whose intelligence was keen enough to appreciate the value of argument. The Franciscans had a different work before them. The misery of the dwellers on the outskirts of English towns was appalling. The townsmen had made provision for keeping good order amongst all who shared in the liberties,[13] or, as we should say, in the privileges of the town; but they made no provision for good order amongst the crowds who flocked to the town to pick up a scanty living as best they might. These poor wretches had to dwell in miserable hovels outside the walls by the side of fetid ditches into which the filth of the town was poured. Disease and starvation thinned their numbers. No man cared for their bodies or their souls. The priests who served in the churches within the town passed them by, nor had they any place in the charities with which the brethren of the gilds assuaged the misfortunes of their own members. It was amongst these that the Franciscans lived and laboured, sharing in their misery and their diseases, counting their lives well spent if they could bring comfort to a single human soul.

[Footnote 13: A phrase which may serve to keep in mind the medieval meaning of 'libertas' is to be found in the statement that a certain monastery kept up a pair of stocks 'pro libertate servanda'—that is to say, to keep up its franchise of putting offenders into the stocks.]

8. Monks and Friars.—The work of the friars was a new phase in the history of the Church. The monks had made it their object to save their own souls; the friars made it their object to save the bodies and souls of others. The friars, like the monks, taught by the example of self-denial; but the friars added active well-doing to the passive virtue of restraint. Such examples could not fail to be attended with consequences of which those who set them never dreamed, all the more because the two new orders worked harmoniously towards a common end. The Dominicans quickened the brain whilst the Franciscans touched the heart, and the whole nation was the better in consequence.



9. The King's Marriage. 1236.—In 1236 Henry married Eleanor, the daughter of the Count of Provence. The immediate consequence was the arrival of her four uncles with a stream of Provencals in their train. Amongst these uncles William, Bishop-elect of Valence, took the lead. Henry submitted his weak mind entirely to him, and distributed rank and wealth to the Provencals with as much profusion as he had distributed them to the Poitevins in the days of Peter des Roches. The barons, led now by the king's brother, Richard of Cornwall, remonstrated when they met in the Great Council, which was gradually acquiring the right of granting fresh taxes, though all reference to that right was dropped out of all editions of the Great Charter issued in the reign of Henry. For some time they granted the money which Henry continually asked for, coupling, however, with their grant the demand that Henry should confirm the Charter. The king never refused to confirm it. He had no difficulty in making promises, but he never troubled himself to keep those which he had made.



10. The Early Career of Simon de Montfort. 1231—1243.—Strangely enough, Simon de Montfort, the man who was to be the chief opponent of Henry and his foreign favourites, was himself a foreigner. He was sprung from a family established in Normandy, and his father, the elder Simon de Montfort, had been the leader of a body of Crusaders from the north of France, who had poured over the south to crush a vast body of heretics, known by the name of Albigeois, from Albi, a town in which they swarmed. The elder Simon had been strict in his orthodoxy and unsparing in his cruelty to all who were unorthodox. From him the younger Simon inherited his unswerving religious zeal and his constancy of purpose. There was the same stern resolution in both, but in the younger man these qualities were coupled with a statesmanlike instinct, which was wanting to the father. Norman as he was, he had a claim to the earldom of Leicester through his grandmother, and in 1231 this claim was acknowledged by Henry. For some time Simon continued to live abroad, but in 1236 he returned to England to be present at the king's marriage. He was at once taken into favour, and in 1238 married the king's sister, Eleanor. His marriage was received by the barons and the people with a burst of indignation. It was one more instance, it was said, of Henry's preference for foreigners over his own countrymen. In 1239 Henry turned upon his brother-in-law, brought heavy charges against him, and drove him from his court. In 1240 Simon was outwardly reconciled to Henry, but he was never again able to repose confidence in one so fickle. In 1242 Henry resolved to undertake an expedition to France to recover Poitou, which had been gradually slipping out of his hands. At a Great Council held before he sailed, the barons, who had no sympathy with any attempt to recover lost possessions in France, not only rated him soundly for his folly, but, for the first time, absolutely refused to make him a grant of money. Simon told him to his face that the Frenchman was no lamb to be easily subdued. Simon's words proved true. Henry sailed for France, but in 1243 he surrendered all claims to Poitou, and returned discomfited. If he did not bring home victory he brought with him a new crowd of Poitevins, who were connected with his mother's second husband. All of them expected to receive advancement in England, and they seldom expected it in vain.

11. Papal Exactions. 1237—1243.—Disgusted as were the English landowners by the preference shown by the king to foreigners, the English clergy were no less disgusted by the exactions of the Pope. The claim of Innocent III. to regulate the proceedings of kings had been handed down to his successors and made them jealous of any ruler too powerful to be controlled. The Emperor Frederick II. had not only succeeded to the government of Germany, and to some influence over the north of Italy, but had inherited Naples and Sicily from his mother. The Pope thus found himself, as it were, between two fires. There was constant bickering between Frederick and Gregory IX., a fiery old man who became Pope in 1227, and in 1238 Gregory excommunicated Frederick, and called on all Europe to assist him against the man whom he stigmatised as the enemy of God and the Church. As the king of England was his vassal in consequence of John's surrender, he looked to him for aid more than to others, especially as England, enjoying internal peace more than other nations, was regarded as especially wealthy. In 1237, the year before Frederick's excommunication, Gregory sent Cardinal Otho as his legate to demand money from the English clergy. The clergy found a leader in Robert Grossetete, Bishop of Lincoln, a wise and practical reformer of clerical disorders; but though they grumbled, they could get no protection from the king, and were forced to pay. Otho left England in 1241, carrying immense sums of money with him, and the promise of the king to present three hundred Italian priests to English benefices before he presented a single Englishman. In 1243 Gregory IX. was succeeded by Innocent IV., who was even more grasping than his predecessor.

12. A Weak Parliamentary Opposition. 1244.—Against these evils the Great Council strove in vain to make head. It was now beginning to be known as Parliament, though no alteration was yet made in its composition. In 1244 clergy and barons joined in remonstrating with the king, and some of them even talked about restraining his power by the establishment of a Justiciar and Chancellor, together with four councillors, all six to be elected by the whole of the baronage. Without the consent of the Chancellor thus chosen no administrative act could be done. The scheme was a distinct advance upon that of the barons who, in 1215, forced the Great Charter upon John. The barons had then proposed to leave the appointment of executive officials to the king, and to appoint a committee of twenty-five, who were to have nothing to do with the government of the country, but were to compel the king by force to keep the promises which he had made. In 1244 they proposed to appoint the executive officials themselves. It was the beginning of a series of changes which ultimately led to that with which we are now familiar, the appointment of ministers responsible to Parliament. It was too great an innovation to be accepted at once, especially as it was demanded by the barons alone. The clergy, who were still afraid of the disorders which might ensue if power were lodged in the hands of the barons, refused to support it, and for a time it fell to the ground. At the same time Richard of Cornwall abandoned the baronial party. He had lately married the queen's sister, which may have drawn him over to the king; but it is also probable that his own position as the king's brother made him unwilling to consent to a scheme which would practically transfer the government from the king to the barons. On the other hand Earl Simon was found on the side of the barons. He held his earldom by inheritance from his English grandmother, and the barons were willing to forgive his descent from a foreign grandfather when they found him prepared to share their policy.

13. Growing Discontent. 1244—1254.—The clergy had to learn by bitter experience that it was only by a close alliance with the barons that they could preserve themselves from wrong. In 1244 a new envoy from the Pope, Master Martin, travelled over England wringing money from the clergy. Though he was driven out of the country in 1245, the Papal exactions did not cease. The Pope, moreover, continued to present his own nominees to English benefices, and in 1252 Grossetete complained that these nominees drew three times as much income from England as flowed into the royal exchequer. For a time even Henry made complaints, but in 1254 Innocent IV. won him over to his side. Frederick II. had died in 1250, and his illegitimate son, Manfred, a tried warrior and an able ruler, had succeeded him as king of Sicily and Naples. Innocent could not bear that that crown should be worn by the son of the man whom he had hated bitterly, and offered it to Edmund, the second son of Henry III. Henry lept at the offer, hoping that England would bear the expense of the undertaking. England was, however, in no mood to comply. Henry had been squandering money for years. He had recently employed Earl Simon in Gascony, where Simon had put down the resistance of the nobles with a heavy hand. The Gascons complained to Henry, and Henry quarrelled with Simon more bitterly than before. In 1254 Henry crossed the sea to restore order in person. To meet his expenses he borrowed a vast sum of money, and this loan, which he expected England to meet, was the only result of the expedition.



14. The Knights of the Shire in Parliament. 1254.—During the king's absence the queen and Earl Richard, who were left as regents, and who had to collect money as best they might, gathered a Great Council, to which, for the first time, representative knights, four from each shire, were summoned. They were merely called on to report what amount of aid their constituents were willing to give, and the regents were doubtless little aware of the importance of the step which they were taking. It was only, to all appearances, an adaptation of the summons calling on the united jury to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy in the reign of John. It might seem as if the regents had only summoned a united jury to give evidence of their constituents' readiness to grant certain sums of money. In reality the new scheme was sure to take root, because it held out a hope of getting rid of a constitutional difficulty which had hitherto proved insoluble—the difficulty, that is to say, of weakening the king's power to do evil without establishing baronial anarchy in its place. It was certain that the representatives of the freeholders in the counties would not use their influence for the destruction of order.



15. Fresh Exactions. 1254-1257.—At the end of 1254 Henry returned to England. In 1255 a new Pope, Alexander IV., confirmed his predecessor's grant of the kingdom of Sicily to Edmund, on condition that Henry should give a large sum of money for the expenses of a war against Manfred. To make it easy for Henry to find the money, Alexander gave him a tenth of the revenues of the English clergy, on the plea that the clergy had always borne their share of the expenses of a crusade, and that to fight for the Pope against Manfred was equivalent to a crusade. Immense sums were wrung from the clergy, who were powerless to resist Pope and king combined. Their indignation was the greater, not only because they knew that religion was not at stake in the Pope's effort to secure his political power in Italy, but also because the Papal court was known to be hopelessly corrupt, it being a matter of common talk that all things were for sale at Rome. The clergy indeed were less than ever in a condition to resist the king without support. Grossetete was dead, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, the queen's uncle, Boniface of Savoy, whose duty it was to maintain the rights of the Church, was a man who cared nothing for England except on account of the money he drew from it. Other bishoprics as well were held by foreigners. The result of the weakness of the clergy was that they were now ready to unite with the barons, whom they had deserted in 1244 (see p. 195). Henry's misgovernment, in fact, had roused all classes against him, as the townsmen and the smaller landowners had been even worse treated than the greater barons. In 1257 one obstacle to reform was removed. Richard of Cornwall, the king's brother, who was formidable through his wealth and the numbers of his vassals, had for some time taken part against them. In 1257 he was chosen king of the Romans by the German electors, an election which would make him Emperor as soon as he had been crowned by the Pope. He at once left England to seek his fortunes in Germany, where he was well received as long as he had money to reward his followers, but was deserted as soon as his purse was empty.

16. The Provisions of Oxford. 1258.—The crisis in England came in 1258, whilst Richard was still abroad. Though thousands were dying of starvation in consequence of a bad harvest, Henry demanded for the Pope the monstrous sum of one-third of the revenue of all England. Then the storm burst. At a Parliament at Westminster the barons appeared in arms and demanded, first, the expulsion of all foreigners, and, secondly, the appointment of a committee of twenty-four—twelve from the king's party and twelve from that of the barons—to reform the realm. The king unwillingly consented, and the committee was appointed. Later in the year Parliament met again at Oxford to receive the report of the new committee. The Mad Parliament, as it was afterwards called in derision, was resolved to make good its claims. The scheme of reinforcing Parliament by the election of knights of the shire had indeed been suffered to fall into disuse since its introduction in 1254, yet every tenant-in-chief had of old the right of attending, and though the lesser tenants-in-chief had hitherto seldom or never exercised that right, they now trooped in arms to Oxford to support the barons. To this unwonted gathering the committee produced a set of proposals which have gone by the name of the Provisions of Oxford. There was to be a council of fifteen, without the advice of which the king could do no act, and in this council the baronial party had a majority. The offices of state were filled in accordance with the wishes of the twenty-four, and the barons thus entered into possession of the authority which had hitherto been the king's. The danger of the king's tyranny was averted, but it remained to be seen whether a greater tyranny would not be erected in its stead. One clause of the Provisions of Oxford was not reassuring. The old Parliaments, which every tenant-in-chief had at least the customary right of attending, were no longer to exist. Their place was to be taken by a body of twelve, to be chosen by the barons, which was to meet three times a year to discuss public affairs with the council of fifteen.

17. The Expulsion of the Foreigners. 1258.—The first difficulty of the new government was to compel the foreigners to surrender their castles. William de Valence, the king's half-brother, headed the resistance of the foreigners. The barons swore that no danger should keep them back till they had cleared the land of foreigners and had obtained the good laws which they needed. Earl Simon set the example by surrendering his own castles at Kenilworth and Odiham. The national feeling was with Simon and the barons, and at last the foreigners were driven across the sea. For a time all went well. The committee of twenty-four continued its work and produced a further series of reforms. All persons in authority were called on to swear to be faithful to the Provisions of Oxford, and the king and his eldest son, Edward, complied with the demand.

18. Edward and the Barons. 1259.—Early in 1259 Richard came back to England, and gave satisfaction by swearing to the Provisions. Before long signs of danger appeared. The placing complete authority in the hands of the barons was not likely to be long popular, and Earl Simon was known to be in favour of a wider and more popular scheme. Hugh Bigod, who had been named Justiciar by the barons, gave offence by the way in which he exercised his office. Simon was hated by the king, and he knew that many of the barons did not love him. The sub-tenants—the Knights Bachelors of England as they called themselves—doubting his power to protect them, complained, not to Simon, but to Edward, the eldest son of the King, that the barons had obtained the redress of their own grievances, but had done nothing for the rest of the community. Edward was now a young man of twenty, hot-tempered and impatient of control, but keen-sighted enough to know, what his father had never known, that the royal power would be increased if it could establish itself in the affections of the classes whose interests were antagonistic to those of the barons. He therefore declared that he had sworn to the Provisions, and would keep his oath; but that if the barons did not fulfil their own promises, he would join the community in compelling them to do so. The warning was effectual, and the barons issued orders for the redress of the grievances of those who had found so high a patron.

19. The Breach amongst the Barons. 1259—1261.—Simon had no wish to be involved in a purely baronial policy. He had already fallen out with Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, the leader of the barons who had resisted the full execution of the promises made at Oxford in the interest of the people at large. "With such fickle and faithless men," said Simon to him, "I care not to have ought to do. The things we are treating of now we have sworn to carry out. And thou, Sir Earl, the higher thou art the more art thou bound to keep such statutes as are wholesome for the land." The king fomented the rising quarrel, and in 1261 announced that the Pope had declared the Provisions to be null and void, and had released him from his oath to observe them.

20. Royalist Reaction and Civil War. 1261.—Henry now ruled again in his own fashion. Even the Earl of Gloucester discovered that if the king was to be resisted it must be by an appeal to a body of men more numerous than the barons alone. He joined Simon in inviting a Parliament to meet, at which three knights should appear for each county, thus throwing over the unfortunate narrowing of Parliament to a baronial committee of twelve, which had been the worst blot on the Provisions of Oxford. In the summer of 1262 the Earl of Gloucester died, and was succeeded by his son, Earl Gilbert, one of Simon's warmest personal admirers. In 1263 Simon, now the acknowledged head of the barons and of the nation, finding that the king could not be brought to keep the Provisions, took arms against him. He was a master in the art of war, and gained one fortified post after another. Henry, being, as usual, short of money, called on the Londoners for a loan. On their refusal Edward seized a sum of money which belonged to them, and so exasperated them that, on the queen's passing under London Bridge, the citizens reviled her and pelted her with stones. The war was carried on with doubtful results, and by the end of the year both parties agreed to submit to the arbitration of the king of France.

21. The Mise of Amiens. 1264.—The king of France Louis IX., afterwards known as St. Louis, was the justest and most unselfish of men. In 1259 he had surrendered to Henry a considerable amount of territory in France, which Henry had been unable to reconquer for himself; and was well satisfied to obtain from Henry in return a formal renunciation of the remainder of the lands which Philip II. had taken from John. Yet, well-intentioned as Louis was, he had no knowledge of England, and in France, where the feudal nobility was still excessively tyrannical, justice was only to be obtained by the maintenance of a strong royal power. He therefore thought that what was good for France was also good for England, and in the beginning of 1264 he relieved Henry from all the restrictions which his subjects had sought to place upon him. The decision thus taken was known as the Mise, or settlement, of Amiens, from the place at which it was issued.