This prelate, who resided at the court of Rome, by a deputation from the English church, drew bills of different values, but amounting on the whole to one hundred and fifty thousand five hundred and forty marks, on all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom; and granted these bills to Italian merchants, who, it was pretended, had advanced money for the service of the war against Mainfroy [c]. As there was no likelihood of the English prelates submitting, without compulsion, to such an extraordinary demand, Rustand, the legate, was charged with the commission of employing authority to that purpose; and he summoned an assembly of the bishops and abbots, whom he acquainted with the pleasure of the pope and of the king. Great were the surprise and indignation of the assembly. The Bishop of Worcester exclaimed, that he would lose his life rather than comply: the Bishop of London said, that the pope and king were more powerful than he; but if his mitre were taken off his head, he would clap on a helmet in its place [d]. The legate was no less violent on the other hand; and he told the assembly, in plain terms, that all ecclesiastical benefices were the property of the pope, and he might dispose of them, either in whole or in part, as he saw proper [e]. In the end, the bishops and abbots, being threatened with excommunication, which made all the revenues fall into the king's hands, were obliged to submit to the exaction; and the only mitigation which the legate allowed them was, that the tenths, already granted, should be accepted as a partial payment of the bills. But the money was still insufficient for the pope's purpose: the conquest of Sicily was as remote as ever: the demands which came from Rome were endless: Pope Alexander became so urgent a creditor, that he sent over a legate to England, threatening the kingdom with an interdict, and the king with excommunication, if the arrears, which he pretended to be due to him, were not instantly remitted [f]. And at last Henry, sensible of the cheat, began to think of breaking off the agreement, and of resigning into the pope's hands that crown, which it was not intended by Alexander, that he or his family should ever enjoy [g]. [FN [c] M. Paris, p. 612, 628. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 54. [d] M. Paris, p. 614. [e] Ibid. p. 619. [f] Rymer, vol. i. p. 624. M. Paris, p. 648. [g] Rymer, vol. i. p. 630.]

[MN Earl of Cornwall elected King of the Romans.] The Earl of Cornwall had now reason to value himself on his foresight, in refusing the fraudulent bargain with Rome, and in preferring the solid honours of an opulent and powerful prince of the blood of England, to the empty and precarious glory of a foreign dignity. But he had not always firmness sufficient to adhere to this resolution: his vanity and ambition prevailed at last over his prudence and his avarice; and he was engaged in an enterprise no less extensive and vexatious than that of his brother, and not attended with much greater probability of success. The immense opulence of Richard having made the German princes cast their eye on him as a candidate for the empire, he was tempted to expend vast sums of money on his election; and he succeeded so far as to be chosen King of the Romans, which seemed to render his succession infallible to the imperial throne. He went over to Germany, and carried out of the kingdom no less a sum than seven hundred thousand marks, if we may credit the account given by some ancient authors [h], which is probably much exaggerated [i]. His money, while it lasted, procured him friends and partisans; but it was soon drained from him by the avidity of the German princes; and having no personal or family connexions in that country, and no solid foundation of power, he found at last that he had lavished away the frugality of a whole life in order to procure a splendid title; and that his absence from England, joined to the weakness of his brother's government, gave reins to the factious and turbulent dispositions of the English barons, and involved his own country and family in great calamities. [FN [h] M. Paris, p. 638. The same author, a few pages before, makes Richard's treasures amount to little more than half the sum, p. 634. The king's dissipations and expenses, throughout his whole reign, according to the same author, had amounted only to about nine hundred and forty thousand marks, p. 638. [i] The sums mentioned by ancient authors, who were almost all monks, are often improbable, and never consistent. But we know, from an infallible authority, the public remonstrance to the council of Lyons, that the king's revenues were below sixty thousand marks a year: his brother, therefore, could never have been master of seven hundred thousand marks; especially as he did not sell his estates in England, as we learn from the same author: and we hear afterwards of his ordering all his woods to be cut, in order to satisfy the rapacity of the German princes. His son succeeded to the earldom of Cornwall, and his other revenues.]

[MN Discontents of the barons.] The successful revolt of the nobility from King John, and their imposing on him and his successors limitations of their royal power, had made them feel their own weight and importance, had set a dangerous precedent of resistance, and being followed by a long minority, had impoverished as well as weakened that crown, which they were at last induced, from the fear of worse consequences, to replace on the head of young Henry. In the king's situation, either great abilities and vigour were requisite to overawe the barons, or great caution and reserve to give them no pretence for complaints; and it must be confessed that this prince was possessed of neither of these talents. He had not prudence to choose right measures; he wanted even that constancy, which sometimes gives weight to wrong ones; he was entirely devoted to his favourites, who were always foreigners; he lavished on them, without discretion, his diminished revenue; and finding that his barons indulged their disposition towards tyranny, and observed not to their own vassals the same rules which they had imposed on the crown, he was apt, in his administration, to neglect all the salutary articles of the great charter, which he remarked to be so little regarded by his nobility. This conduct had extremely lessened his authority in the kingdom; had multiplied complaints against him; and had frequently exposed him to affronts, and even to dangerous attempts upon his prerogative. In the year 1244, when he desired a supply from Parliament, the barons, complaining of the frequent breaches of the great charter, and of the many fruitless applications which they had formerly made for the redress of this and other grievances, demanded, in return, that he should give them the nomination of the great justiciary and of the chancellor, to whose hands chiefly the administration of justice was committed; and if we may credit the historian [k], they had formed the plan of other limitations, as well as of associations to maintain them, which would have reduced the king to be an absolute cipher; and have held the crown in perpetual pupilage and dependence. The king, to satisfy them, would agree to nothing but a renewal of the charter, and a general permission to excommunicate all the violaters of it; and he received no supply, except a scutage of twenty shillings on each knight's fee, for the marriage of his eldest daughter to the King of Scotland; a burden which was expressly annexed to their feudal tenures. [FN [k] M. Paris, p. 432.]

Four years after, in a full Parliament, when Henry demanded a new supply, he was openly reproached with a breach of his word, and the frequent violations of the charter. He was asked, whether he did not blush to desire any aid from his people, whom he professedly hated and despised, to whom, on all occasions, he preferred aliens and foreigners, and who groaned under the oppressions which he either permitted or exercised over them. He was told that, besides disparaging his nobility, by forcing them to contract unequal and mean marriages with strangers, no rank of men was so low as to escape vexatious from him or his ministers; that even the victuals consumed in his household, the clothes which himself and his servants wore, still more the wine which they used, were all taken by violence from the lawful owners, and no compensation was ever made them for the injury; that foreign merchants, to the great prejudice and infamy of the kingdom, shunned the English harbours, as if they were possessed by pirates, and the commerce with all nations was thus cut off by these acts of violence; that loss was added to loss, and injury to injury, while the merchants, who had been despoiled of their goods, were also obliged to carry them at their own charge to whatever place the king was pleased to appoint them; that even the poor fishermen on the coast could not escape his oppressions and those of his courtiers; and finding that they had not full liberty to dispose of their commodities in the English market, were frequently constrained to carry them to foreign ports, and to hazard all the perils of the ocean, rather than those which awaited them from his oppressive emissaries; and that his very religion was a ground of complaint to his subjects, while they observed, that the waxen tapers and splendid silks, employed in so many useless processions, were the spoils which he had forcibly ravished from the true owners [l]. Throughout this remonstrance, in which the complaints, derived from an abuse of the ancient right of purveyance, may be supposed to be somewhat exaggerated, there appears a strange mixture of regal tyranny in the practices which gave rise to it, and of aristocratical liberty, or rather licentiousness, in the expressions employed by the Parliament. But a mixture of this kind is observable in all the ancient feudal governments; and both of them proved equally hurtful to the people. [FN [l] M. Paris, p. 498. See farther, p. 578. M. West. p. 348.]

As the king, in answer to their remonstrance, gave the Parliament only good words and fair promises, attended with the most humble submissions, which they had often found deceitful, he obtained at that time no supply; and therefore, in the year 1253, when he found himself again under the necessity of applying to Parliament, he had provided a new pretence, which he deemed infallible, and taking the vow of a crusade, he demanded their assistance in that pious enterprise [m]. The Parliament, however, for some time hesitated to comply; and the ecclesiastical order sent a deputation, consisting of four prelates, the primate, and the Bishops of Winchester, Salisbury, and Carlisle, in order to remonstrate with him on his frequent violations of their privileges, the oppressions with which he had loaded them and all his subjects [n], and the uncanonical and forced elections which were made to vacant dignities. "It is true," replied the king, "I have been somewhat faulty in this particular: I obtruded you, my Lord of Canterbury, upon your see: I was obliged to employ both entreaties and menaces, my Lord of Winchester, to have you elected: my proceedings, I confess, were very irregular, my Lords of Salisbury and Carlisle, when I raised you from the lowest stations to your present dignities: I am determined henceforth to correct these abuses; and it will also become you, in order to make a thorough reformation, to resign your present benefices, and try to enter again in a more regular and canonical manner [o]." The bishops, surprised at these unexpected sarcasms, replied, that the question was not at present how to correct past errors, but to avoid them for the future. The king promised redress both of ecclesiastical and civil grievances; and the Parliament in return agreed to grant him a supply, a tenth of the ecclesiastical benefices, and a scutage of three marks on each knight's fee: but as they had experienced his frequent breach of promise, they required that he should ratify the great charter in a manner still more authentic and more solemn than any which he had hitherto employed. All the prelates and abbots were assembled: they held burning tapers in their hands: the great charter was read before them: they denounced the sentence of excommunication against every one who should thenceforth violate that fundamental law: they threw their tapers on the ground, and exclaimed, MAY THE SOUL OF EVERY ONE WHO INCURS THIS SENTENCE SO STINK AND CORRUPT IN HELL! The king bore a part in this ceremony, and subjoined, "So help me God, I will keep all these articles inviolate, as I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, and as I am a king crowned and anointed [p]." Yet was the tremendous ceremony no sooner finished, than his favourites, abusing his weakness, made him return to the same arbitrary and irregular administration; and the reasonable expectations of his people were thus perpetually eluded and disappointed [q]. [FN [m] M. Paris, p. 518, 558, 568. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 293. [n] M. Paris, p. 568. [o] Ibid. p. 579. [p] M. Paris, p. 580. Ann. Burt. p. 323. Ann. Waverl. p. 210. W. Heming. p. 571. M. West. p. 353. [q] M. Paris, p. 597, 608.]

[MN 1258. Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.] All these imprudent and illegal measures afforded a pretence to Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, to attempt an innovation in the government, and to wrest the sceptre from the feeble and irresolute hand which held it. This nobleman was a younger son of that Simon de Montfort, who had conducted, with such valour and renown, the crusade against the Albigenses, and who, though he tarnished his famous exploits by cruelty and ambition, had left a name very precious to all the bigots of that age, particularly to the ecclesiastics. A large inheritance in England fell by succession to this family; but as the elder brother enjoyed still more opulent possessions in France, and could not perform fealty to two masters, he transferred his right to Simon, his younger brother, who came over to England, did homage for his lands, and was raised to the dignity of Earl of Leicester. In the year 1238, he espoused Eleanor, dowager of William, Earl of Pembroke, and sister to the king [r]; but the marriage of this princess with a subject and a foreigner, though contracted with Henry's consent, was loudly complained of by the Earl of Cornwall and all the barons of England; and Leicester was supported against their violence by the king's favour and authority alone [s]. But he had no sooner established himself in his possessions and dignities, than he acquired, by insinuation and address, a strong interest with the nation, and gained equally the affections of all orders of men. He lost, however, the friendship of Henry, from the usual levity and fickleness of that prince; he was banished the court; he was recalled; he was intrusted with the command of Guienne [t], where he did good service and acquired honour; he was again disgraced by the king, and his banishment from court seemed now final and irrevocable. Henry called him traitor to his face: Leicester gave him the lie, and told him, that if he were not his sovereign, he would soon make him repent of that insult. Yet was this quarrel accommodated, either from the good nature or timidity of the king; and Leicester was again admitted into some degree of favour and authority. But as this nobleman was become too great to preserve an entire complaisance to Henry's humours, and to act in subserviency to his other minions, he found more advantage in cultivating his interest with the public, and in inflaming the general discontents which prevailed against the administration. He filled every place with complaints against the infringement of the great charter, the acts of violence committed on the people, the combination between the pope and the king in their tyranny and extortions, Henry's neglect of his native subjects and barons; and though he himself a foreigner, he was more loud than any in representing the indignity of submitting to the dominion of foreigners. By his hypocritical pretensions to devotion, he gained the favour of the zealots and clergy: by his seeming concern for public good, he acquired the affections of the public: and besides the private friendships which he had cultivated with the barons, his animosity against the favourites created an union of interests between him and that powerful order. [FN [r] Ibid. p. 314. [s] M. Paris, p. 315. [t] Rymer, vol. i. p. 459, 513.]

A recent quarrel, which broke out between Leicester and William de Valence, Henry's half-brother, and chief favourite, brought matters to extremity [u], and determined the former to give full scope to his bold and unbounded ambition, which the laws and the king's authority had hitherto with difficulty restrained. He secretly called a meeting of the most considerable barons, particularly Humphrey de Bohun, high constable, Roger Bigod, earl mareschal, and the Earls of Warwick and Gloucester; men who by their family and possessions stood in the first rank of the English nobility. He represented to this company the necessity of reforming the state, and of putting the execution of the laws into other hands than those which had hitherto appeared, from repeated experience, so unfit for the charge with which they were intrusted. He exaggerated the oppressions exercised against the lower orders of the state, the violations of the barons' privileges, the continued depredations made on the clergy; and in order to aggravate the enormity of his conduct, he appealed to the great charter, which Henry had so often ratified, and which was calculated to prevent for ever the return of those intolerable grievances. He magnified the generosity of their ancestors, who, at a great expense of blood, had extorted that famous concession from the crown; but lamented their own degeneracy, who allowed so important an advantage, once obtained, to be wrested from them by a weak prince and by insolent strangers. And he insisted, that the king's word, after so many submissions and fruitless promises on his part, could no longer be relied on; and that nothing but his absolute inability to violate national privileges could henceforth ensure the regular observance of them. [FN [u] M. Paris, p. 649.]

These topics, which were founded in truth, and suited so well to the sentiments of the company, had the desired effect; and the barons embraced a resolution of redressing the public grievances, by taking into their own hands the administration of government. Henry having summoned a Parliament, in expectation of receiving supplies for his Sicilian project, the barons appeared in the hall, clad in complete armour, and with their swords by their side: the king on his entry, struck with the unusual appearance, asked them what was their purpose, and whether they intended to make him their prisoner [w]: Roger Bigod replied, in the name of the rest, that he was not their prisoner, but their sovereign; that they even intended to grant him large supplies, in order to fix his son on the throne of Sicily; that they only expected some return for this expense and service; and that, as he had frequently made submissions to the Parliament, had acknowledged his past errors, and had still allowed himself to be carried into the same path, which gave them such just reason of complaint, he must now yield to more strict regulations, and confer authority on those who were able and willing to redress the national grievances. Henry, partly allured by the hopes of supply, partly intimidated by the union and martial appearance of the barons, agreed to their demand: and promised to summon another Parliament at Oxford, in order to digest the new plan of government, and to elect the persons who were to be intrusted with the chief authority. [FN [w] Annal. Theokesbury.]

[MN 11th June. Provisions of Oxford.] This Parliament, which the royalists, and even the nation, from experience of the confusions that attended its measures, afterwards denominated the MAD PARLIAMENT, met on the day appointed; and as all the barons brought along with them their military vassals, and appeared with an armed force, the king, who had taken no precautions against them, was in reality a prisoner in their hands, and was obliged to submit to all the terms which they were pleased to impose upon him. Twelve barons were selected from among the king's ministers; twelve more were chosen by Parliament: to these twenty- four, unlimited authority was granted to reform the state; and the king himself took an oath, that he would maintain whatever ordinances they should think proper to enact for that purpose [x]. Leicester was at the head of the supreme council, to which the legislative power was thus in reality transferred; and all their measures were taken by his secret influence and direction. Their first step bore a specious appearance, and seemed well calculated for the end which they professed to be the object of all these innovations: they ordered that four knights should be chosen by each county; that they should make inquiry into the grievances of which their neighbourhood had reason to complain, and should attend the ensuing Parliament, in order to give information to that assembly of the state of their particular counties [y]: a nearer approach to our present constitution than had been made by the barons in the reign of King John, when the knights were only appointed to meet in their several counties, and there to draw up a detail of their grievances. Meanwhile the twenty-four barons proceeded to enact some regulations as a redress of such grievances as were supposed to be sufficiently notorious. They ordered that three sessions of Parliament should be regularly held every year in the months of February, June, and October; that a new sheriff should be annually elected by the votes of the freeholders in each county [z]; that the sheriffs should have no power of fining the barons who did not attend their courts, or the circuits of the justiciaries; that no heirs should be committed to the wardship of foreigners, and no castles intrusted to their custody; and that no new warrens or forests should be created, nor the revenues of any counties or hundreds be let to farm. Such were the regulations which the twenty-four barons established at Oxford, for the redress of public grievances. [FN [x] Rymer, vol. i. p. 655. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 334. Knyghton, p. 2445. [y] M. Paris, p. 657. Addit. p. 140. Ann. Burt. p. 412. [z] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 336.]

But the Earl of Leicester and his associates, having advanced so far to satisfy the nation, instead of continuing in this popular course, or granting the king that supply which they had promised him, immediately provided for the extension and continuance of their own authority. They roused anew the popular clamour which had long prevailed against foreigners; and they fell with the utmost violence on the king's half-brothers, who were supposed to be the authors of all national grievances, and whom Henry had no longer any power to protect. The four brothers, sensible of their danger, took to flight, with an intention of making their escape out of the kingdom; they were eagerly pursued by the barons; Aymer, one of the brothers, who had been elected to the see of Winchester, took shelter in his episcopal palace, and carried the others along with him; they were surrounded in that place, and threatened to be dragged out by force, and to be punished for their crimes and misdemeanors; and the king, pleading the sacredness of an ecclesiastical sanctuary, was glad to extricate them from this danger by banishing them the kingdom. In this act of violence, as well as in the former usurpations of the barons, the queen and her uncles were thought to have secretly concurred; being jealous of the credit acquired by the brothers, which they found had eclipsed and annihilated their own.

[MN Usurpations of the barons.] But the subsequent proceedings of the twenty-four barons were sufficient to open the eyes of the nation, and to prove their intention of reducing for ever both the king and the people under the arbitrary power of a very narrow aristocracy, which must at last have terminated either in anarchy, or in a violent usurpation and tyranny. They pretended that they had not yet digested all the regulations necessary for the reformation of the state and for the redress of grievances; and they must still retain their power, till that great purpose were thoroughly effected: in other words, that they must be perpetual governors, and must continue to reform, till they were pleased to abdicate their authority. They formed an association among themselves, and swore that they would stand by each other with their lives and fortunes; they displaced all the chief officers of the crown, the justiciary, the chancellor, the treasurer; and advanced either themselves or their own creatures in their place: even the officers of the king's household were disposed of at their pleasure: the government of all the castles was put into hands in whom they found reason to confide: and the whole power of the state being thus transferred to them, they ventured to impose an oath, by which all the subjects were obliged to swear, under the penalty of being declared public enemies, that they would obey and execute all the regulations, both known and unknown, of the twenty-four barons; and all this for the greater glory of God, the honour of the church, the service of the king, and the advantage of the kingdom [a]. No one dared to withstand this tyrannical authority. Prince Edward himself, the king's eldest son, a youth of eighteen, who began to give indications of that great and manly spirit which appeared throughout the whole course of his life, was, after making some opposition, constrained to take that oath which really deposed his father and his family from sovereign authority [b]. Earl Warrenne was the last person in the kingdom that could be brought to give the confederated barons this mark of submission. [FN [a] Chron T. Wykes, p. 52. [b] Ann. Burt. p. 411.]

But the twenty-four barons, not content with the usurpation of the royal power, introduced an innovation in the constitution of Parliament, which was of the utmost importance. They ordained that this assembly should choose a committee of twelve persons, who should, in the intervals of the sessions, possess the authority of the whole Parliament, and should attend, on a summons, the person of the king in all his motions. But so powerful were these barons, that this regulation was also submitted to; the whole government was overthrown, or fixed on new foundations; and the monarchy was totally subverted, without its being possible for the king to strike a single stroke in defence of the constitution against the newly-elected oligarchy.

[MN 1259.] The report that the King of the Romans intended to pay a visit to England gave alarm to the ruling barons, who dreaded lest the extensive influence and established authority of that prince would be employed to restore the prerogatives of his family, and overturn their plan of government [c]. They sent over the Bishop of Worcester, who met him at St. Omars; asked him, in the name of the barons, the reason of his journey, and how long he intended to stay in England; and insisted that, before he entered the kingdom, he should swear to observe the regulations established at Oxford. On Richard's refusal to take this oath, they prepared to resist him as a public enemy; they fitted out a fleet, assembled an army, and exciting the inveterate prejudices of the people against foreigners, from whom they had suffered so many oppressions, spread the report that Richard, attended by a number of strangers, meant to restore by force the authority of his exiled brothers, and to violate all the securities provided for public liberty. The King of the Romans was at last obliged to submit to the terms required of him [d]. [FN [c] M. Paris, p. 661. [d] Ibid. p. 661, 662. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 53.]

But the barons, in proportion to their continuance in power, began gradually to lose that popularity which had assisted them in obtaining it; and men repined that regulations, which were occasionally established for the reformation of the state, were likely to become perpetual, and to subvert entirely the ancient constitution. They were apprehensive lest the power of the nobles, always oppressive, should now exert itself without control, by removing the counterpoise of the crown; and their fears were increased by some new edicts of the barons, which were plainly calculated to procure to themselves an impunity in all their violences. They appointed that the circuits of the itinerant justices, the sole check on their arbitrary conduct, should be held only once in seven years; and men easily saw that a remedy, which returned after such long intervals against an oppressive power, which was perpetual, would prove totally insignificant and useless [e]. The cry became loud in the nation, that the barons should finish their intended regulations. The knights of the shires, who seem now to have been pretty regularly assembled, and sometimes in a separate house, made remonstrances against the slowness of their proceedings. They represented that, though the king had performed all the conditions required of him, the barons had hitherto done nothing for the public good, and had only been careful to promote their own private advantage, and to make inroads on the royal authority; and they even appealed to Prince Edward, and claimed his interposition for the interests of the nation and the reformation of the government [f]. The prince replied, that though it was from constraint, and contrary to his private sentiments, he had sworn to maintain the provisions of Oxford, he was determined to observe his oath: but he sent a message to the barons, requiring them to bring their undertaking to a speedy conclusion, and fulfil their engagements to the public: otherwise he menaced them, that, at the expense of his life, he would oblige them to do their duty, and would shed the last drop of his blood in promoting the interests, and satisfying the just wishes of the nation [g]. [FN [e] M. Paris, p. 667. Trivet, p. 209. [f] Annal. Burt. p. 427. [g] Id. ibid.]

The barons, urged by so pressing a necessity, published at last a new code of ordinances for the reformation of the state [h]; but the expectations of the people were extremely disappointed, when they found that these consisted only of some trivial alterations in the municipal law, and still more, when the barons pretended that the task was not yet finished, and that they must farther prolong their authority, in order to bring the work of reformation to the desired period. The current of popularity was now much turned to the side of the crown; and the barons had little to rely on for their support, besides the private influence and power of their families, which, though exorbitant, was likely to prove inferior to the combination of king and people. Even this basis of power was daily weakened by their intestine jealousies and animosities; their ancient and inveterate quarrels broke out when they came to share the spoils of the crown; and the rivalship between the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester, the chief leaders among them, began to disjoint the whole confederacy. The latter, more moderate in his pretensions, was desirous of stopping or retarding the career of the barons' usurpations; but the former, enraged at the opposition which he met with in his own party, pretended to throw up all concern in English affairs, and he retired into France [i]. [FN [h] Ann. Burt. p. 428, 439. [i] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 348.]

The kingdom of France, the only state with which England had any considerable intercourse, was at this time governed by Lewis IX., a prince of the most singular character that is to be met with in all the records of history. This monarch united, to the mean and abject superstition of a monk, all the courage and magnanimity of the greatest hero; and, what may be deemed more extraordinary, the justice and integrity of a disinterested patriot, the mildness and humanity of an accomplished philosopher. So far from taking advantage of the divisions among the English, or attempting to expel those dangerous rivals from the provinces which they still possessed in France, he had entertained many scruples with regard to the sentence of attainder pronounced against the king's father, had even expressed some intention of restoring the other provinces, and was only prevented from taking that imprudent resolution by the united remonstrances of his own barons, who represented the extreme danger of such a measure [k], and, what had a greater influence on Lewis, the justice of punishing, by a legal sentence, the barbarity and felony of John. Whenever this prince interposed in English affairs, it was always with an intention of composing the differences between the king and his nobility; he recommended to both parties every peaceable and reconciling measure; and he used all his authority with the Earl of Leicester, his native subject, to bend him to compliance with Henry. [MN 20th May.] He made a treaty with England, at a time when the distractions of that kingdom were at the greatest height, and when the king's authority was totally annihilated; and the terms which he granted might, even in a more prosperous state of their affairs, be deemed reasonable and advantageous to the English. He yielded up some territories which had been conquered from Poictou and Guienne; he ensured the peaceable possession of the latter province to Henry; he agreed to pay that prince a large sum of money; and he only required that the king should, in return, make a final cession of Normandy and the other provinces, which he could never entertain any hopes of recovering by force of arms [l]. This cession was ratified by Henry, by his two sons, and two daughters, and by the King of the Romans and his three sons: Leicester alone, either moved by a vain arrogance, or desirous to ingratiate himself with the English populace, protested against the deed, and insisted on the right, however distant, which might accrue to his consort [m]. Lewis saw, in his obstinacy, the unbounded ambition of the man; and as the barons insisted that the money due by treaty should be at their disposal, not at Henry's, he also saw, and probably with regret, the low condition to which this monarch, who had more erred from weakness than from any bad intention, was reduced by the turbulence of his own subjects. [FN [k] M. Paris, p. 604. [l] Rymer, vol. i. p. 675. M. Paris, p. 566. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 53. Trivet, p. 208. M. West. p. 371. [m] Chron. T. Wykes, p. 53.]

[MN 1261.] But the situation of Henry soon after wore a more favourable aspect. The twenty-four barons had now enjoyed the sovereign power near three years; and had visibly employed it, not for the reformation of the state, which was their first pretence, but for the aggrandizement of themselves and of their families. The breach of trust was apparent to all the world: every order of men felt it, and murmured against it: the dissensions among the barons themselves, which increased the evil, made also the remedy more obvious and easy; and the secret desertion, in particular, of the Earl of Gloucester to the crown, seemed to promise Henry certain success in any attempt to resume his authority. Yet durst he not take that step, so reconcilable both to justice and policy, without making a previous application to Rome, and desiring an absolution from his oaths and engagements [n]. [FN [n] Ann. Burt. p. 389.]

The pope was at this time much dissatisfied with the conduct of the barons, who, in order to gain the favour of the people and clergy of England, had expelled all the Italian ecclesiastics, had confiscated their benefices, and seemed determined to maintain the liberties and privileges of the English church, in which the rights of patronage, belonging to their own families, were included. The extreme animosity of the English clergy against the Italians was also a source of his disgust to this order; and an attempt, which had been made by them for farther liberty and greater independence on the civil power, was therefore less acceptable to the court of Rome [o]. About the same time that the barons at Oxford had annihilated the prerogatives of the monarchy, the clergy met in a synod at Merton, and passed several ordinances, which were no less calculated to promote their own grandeur at the expense of the crown. They decreed, that it was unlawful to try ecclesiastics by secular judges; that the clergy were not to regard any prohibitions from civil courts; that lay patrons had no right to confer spiritual benefices; that the magistrate was obliged, without farther inquiry, to imprison all excommunicated persons; and that ancient usage, without any particular grant or charter, was a sufficient authority for any clerical possessions or privileges [p]. About a century before, these claims would have been supported by the court of Rome beyond the most fundamental articles of faith: they were the chief points maintained by the great martyr, Becket; and his resolution in defending them had exalted him to the high station which he held in the catalogue of Romish saints. But principles were changed with the times: the pope was become somewhat jealous of the great independence of the English clergy, which made them stand less in need of his protection, and even imboldened them to resist his authority, and to complain of the preference given to the Italian courtiers, whose interests, it is natural to imagine, were the chief object of his concern. He was ready, therefore, on the king's application, to annul these new constitutions of the church of England [q]. And, at the same time, he absolved the king, and all his subjects, from the oath which they had taken to observe the provisions of Oxford [r]. [FN [o] Rymer, vol. i. p. 755. [p] Ann. Burt. p. 389. [q] Rymer, vol. i. p. 755. [r] Ibid. p. 722. M. Paris, p. 666. W. Heming. p. 580. Ypod. Neust. p. 463. Knyghton, p. 2446.]

[MN Prince Edward.] Prince Edward, whose liberal mind, though in such early youth, had taught him the great prejudice which his father had incurred, by his levity, inconstancy, and frequent breach of promise, refused for a long time to take advantage of this absolution; and declared, that the provisions of Oxford, how unreasonable soever in themselves, and how much soever abused by the barons, ought still to be adhered to by those who had sworn to observe them [s]: he himself had been constrained by violence to take that oath; yet he was determined to keep it. By this scrupulous fidelity, the prince acquired the confidence of all parties, and was afterwards enabled to recover fully the royal authority, and to perform such great actions, both during his own reign and that of his father. [FN [s] M. Paris, p. 667.]

The situation of England, during this period, as well as that of most European kingdoms, was somewhat peculiar. There was no regular military force maintained in the nation: the sword, however, was not, properly speaking, in the hands of the people: the barons were alone intrusted with the defence of the community; and after any effort which they made, either against their own prince or against foreigners, as the military retainers departed home, the armies were disbanded, and could not speedily be re-assembled at pleasure. It was easy, therefore, for a few barons, by a combination, to get the start of the other party, to collect suddenly their troops, and to appear unexpectedly in the field with an army, which their antagonists, though equal, or even superior in power and interest, would not dare to encounter. Hence the sudden revolutions which often took place in those governments: hence the frequent victories obtained, without a blow, by one faction over the other: and hence it happened, that the seeming prevalence of a party was seldom a prognostic of its long continuance in power and authority.

[MN 1262.] The king, as soon as he received the pope's absolution from his oath, accompanied with menaces of excommunication against all opponents, trusting to the countenance of the church, to the support promised him by many considerable barons, and to the returning favour of the people, immediately took off the mask. After justifying his conduct by a proclamation, in which he set forth the private ambition, and the breach of trust, conspicuous in Leicester and his associates, he declared, that he had resumed the government, and was determined thenceforth to exert the royal authority for the protection of his subjects. He removed Hugh le Despenser and Nicholas de Ely, the justiciary and chancellor appointed by the barons; and put Philip Basset and Walter de Merton in their place. He substituted new sheriffs in all the counties, men of character and honour: he placed new governors in most of the castles: he changed all the officers of his household: [MN 23d April.] he summoned a Parliament, in which the resumption of his authority was ratified, with only five dissenting voices: and the barons, after making one fruitless effort to take the king by surprise at Winchester, were obliged to acquiesce in those new regulations [t]. [FN [t] M. Paris, p. 668. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 55.]

The king, in order to cut off every objection to his conduct, offered to refer all the differences between him and the Earl of Leicester, to Margaret, Queen of France [u]. The celebrated integrity of Lewis gave a mighty influence to any decision which issued from his court; and Henry probably hoped, that the gallantry, on which all barons, as true knights, valued themselves, would make them ashamed not to submit to the award of that princess. Lewis merited the confidence reposed in him. By an admirable conduct, probably as political as just, he continually interposed his good offices to allay the civil discords of the English: he forwarded all healing measures, which might give security to both parties: and he still endeavoured, though in vain, to soothe, by persuasion, the fierce ambition of the Earl of Leicester, and to convince him how much it was his duty to submit peaceably to the authority of his sovereign. [FN [u] Rymer, vol. i. p. 724.]

[MN 1263.] That bold and artful conspirator was nowise discouraged by the bad success of his past enterprises. The death of Richard, Earl of Gloucester, who was his chief rival in power, and who, before his decease, had joined the royal party, seemed to open a new field to his violence, and to expose the throne to fresh insults and injuries. It was in vain that the king professed his intentions of observing strictly the great charter, even of maintaining all the regulations made by the reforming barons at Oxford or afterwards, except those which entirely annihilated the royal authority: these powerful chieftains, now obnoxious to the court, could not peaceably resign the hopes of entire independence and uncontrolled power, with which they had flattered themselves, and which they had so long enjoyed. [MN Civil wars of the barons.] Many of them engaged in Leicester's views; and among the rest, Gilbert, the young Earl of Gloucester, who brought him a mighty accession of power, from the extensive authority possessed by that opulent family. Even Henry, son of the King of the Romans, commonly called Henry d'Allmaine, though a prince of the blood, joined the party of the barons against the king, the head of his own family. Leicester himself, who still resided in France, secretly formed the links of this great conspiracy, and planned the whole scheme of operations.

The princes of Wales, notwithstanding the great power of the monarchs, both of the Saxon and Norman line, still preserved authority in their own country. Though they had often been constrained to pay tribute to the crown of England, they were with difficulty retained in subordination, or even in peace; and almost through every reign since the Conquest, they had infested the English frontiers with such petty incursions and sudden inroads, as seldom merit to have place in a general history. The English, still content with repelling their invasions, and chasing them back into their mountains, had never pursued the advantages obtained over them, nor been able, even under their greatest and most active princes, to fix a total, or so much as a feudal subjection on the country. This advantage was reserved to the present king, the weakest and most indolent. In the year 1237, Lewellyn, Prince of Wales, declining in years, and broken with infirmities, but still more harassed with the rebellion and undutiful behaviour of his youngest son, Griffin, had recourse to the protection of Henry; and consenting to subject his principality, which had so long maintained, or soon recovered, its independence, to vassalage under the crown of England, had purchased security and tranquillity on these dishonourable terms. His eldest son and heir, David, renewed the homage to England; and having taken his brother prisoner, delivered him into Henry's hands, who committed him to custody in the Tower. That prince, endeavouring to make his escape, lost his life in the attempt; and the Prince of Wales, freed from the apprehensions of so dangerous a rival, paid thenceforth less regard to the English monarch, and even renewed those incursions, by which the Welsh, during so many ages, had been accustomed to infest the English borders. Lewellyn, however, the son of Griffin, who succeeded to his uncle, had been obliged to renew the homage, which was now claimed by England as an established right; but he was well pleased to inflame those civil discords, on which he rested his present security, and founded his hopes of future independence. He entered into a confederacy with the Earl of Leicester, and collecting all the force of his principality, invaded England with an army of thirty thousand men. He ravaged the lands of Roger de Mortimer, and of all the barons who adhered to the crown [w]; he marched into Cheshire, and committed like depredations on Prince Edward's territories; every place where his disorderly troops appeared was laid waste with fire and sword; and though Mortimer, a gallant and expert soldier, made stout resistance, it was found necessary that the prince himself should head the army against this invader. Edward repulsed Prince Lewellyn, and obliged him to take shelter in the mountains of North Wales: but he was prevented from making farther progress against the enemy, by the disorders which soon after broke out in England. [FN [w] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 354.]

The Welsh invasion was the appointed signal for the malecontent barons to rise in arms, and Leicester, coming over secretly from France, collected all the forces of his party, and commenced an open rebellion. He seized the person of the Bishop of Hereford; a prelate obnoxious to all the inferior clergy, on account of his devoted attachment to the court of Rome [x]. Simon, Bishop of Norwich, and John Mansel, because they had published the pope's bull, absolving the king and kingdom from their oaths to observe the provisions of Oxford, were made prisoners, and exposed to the rage of the party. The king's demesnes were ravaged with unbounded fury [y]: and as it was Leicester's interest to allure to his side, by the hopes of plunder, all the disorderly ruffians in England, he gave them a general licence to pillage the barons of the opposite party, and even all neutral persons. But one of the principal resources of his faction was the populace of the cities, particularly of London; and as he had, by his hypocritical pretensions to sanctity, and his zeal against Rome, engaged the monks and lower ecclesiastics in his party, his dominion over the inferior ranks of men became uncontrollable. Thomas Fitz-Richard, Mayor of London, a furious and licentious man, gave the countenance of authority to these disorders in the capital; and having declared war against the substantial citizens, he loosened all the bands of government, by which that turbulent city was commonly but ill restrained. On the approach of Easter, the zeal of superstition, the appetite for plunder, or what is often as prevalent with the populace as either of these motives, the pleasure of committing havoc and destruction, prompted them to attack the unhappy Jews, who were first pillaged without resistance, then massacred to the number of five hundred persons [z]. The Lombard bankers wore next exposed to the rage of the people; and though, by taking sanctuary in the churches, they escaped with their lives, all their money and goods became a prey to the licentious multitude. Even the houses of the rich citizens, though English, were attacked by night; and way was made by sword and by fire to the pillage of their goods, and often to the destruction of their persons. The queen, who, though defended by the Tower, was terrified by the neighbourhood of such dangerous commotions, resolved to go by water to the castle of Windsor; but as she approached the bridge, the populace assembled against her: the cry ran, DROWN THE WITCH; and besides abusing her with the most opprobrious language, and pelting her with rotten eggs and dirt, they had prepared large stones to sink her barge, when she should attempt to shoot the bridge; and she was so frightened, that she returned to the Tower [a]. [FN [x] Trivet, p. 211. M. West. p. 382, 392. [y] Trivet, p. 211. M. West. p. 382. [z] Chron. T. Wykes, p. 59. [a] Ibid. p. 57.]

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 [b]. [MN July.] 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 in 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. [MN 1263. 14th Oct.] 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 junto should continue, not only during the reign of the king, but also during that of Prince Edward. [FN [b] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 358. Trivet, p. 211.]

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 [c]; 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 at first adhered to the cause of the barons. His cousin Henry d'Allmaine, Roger Bigod, earl marshal, Earl Warrenne, Humphrey Bohun, Eaff of Hereford, John Lord Basset, Ralph Basset, Hammond l'Estrange, Roger Mortimer, Henry de Piercy, Robert do Brus, Roger de Leybourne, with almost all the lords marchers, as they were called, on the borders of Wales and of Scotland, the most warlike parts of the kingdom, declared in favour of the royal cause; and hostilities, which were scarcely well composed, 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 [d]. [FN [c] M. Paris, p. 669. Trivet, p. 213. [d] M. Paris, p. 668. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 58. W. Heming, p. 580. Chron Dunst. vol. i. p. 363.]

[MN Reference to the King of France.] This virtuous prince, the only man who, in like circumstances, could safely have been intrusted 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: [MN 1264.] 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. [MN 23d Jan.] 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 his kingdom, and even to confer on them places of trust and dignity; and, in a word, re-established the royal power in the same condition on which it stood before the meeting of the Parliament at Oxford. But while he thus suppressed dangerous innovations, and preserved unimpaired the prerogatives of the English crown, he was not negligent of the rights of the people; and besides ordering that a general amnesty should be granted for all past offences, he declared that his award was not anywise meant to derogate from the privileges and liberties which the nation enjoyed by any former concessions or charters of the crown [e]. [FN [e] Rymer, vol. i. p. 776, 777, &c. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 58. Knyghton, p. 2446.]

This equitable sentence was no sooner known in England, than Leicester and his confederates determined to reject it, and to have recourse to arms, in order to procure to themselves more safe and advantageous conditions [f]. [MN Renewal of the civil wars.] Without regard to his oaths and subscriptions, that enterprising conspirator directed his two sons, Richard and Peter de Montfort, in conjunction with Robert de Ferrars, Earl of Derby, to attack the city of Worcester; while Henry and Simon de Montfort, two others of his sons, assisted by the Prince of Wales, were ordered to lay waste the estate of Roger de Mortimer. He himself resided at London; and employing, as his instrument, Fitz-Richard, the seditious mayor, who had violently and illegally prolonged his authority, he wrought up that city to the highest ferment and agitation. The populace formed themselves into bands and companies; chose leaders; practised all military exercises; committed violence on the royalists; and to give them greater countenance in their disorders, an association was entered into between the city and eighteen great barons, never to make peace with the king but by common consent and approbation. At the head of those who swore to maintain this association were the Earls of Leicester, Gloucester, and Derby, with le Despenser, the chief justiciary; men who had all previously sworn to submit to the award of the French monarch. Their only pretence for this breach of faith was, that the latter part of Lewis's sentence was, as they affirmed, a contradiction to the former: he ratified the charter of liberties, yet annulled the provisions of Oxford; which were only calculated, as they maintained, to preserve that charter; and without which, in their estimation, they had no security for its observance. [FN [f] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 363.]

The king and prince finding a civil war inevitable, prepared themselves for defence; and summoning the military vassals from all quarters, and being reinforced by Baliol, Lord of Galloway, Brus, Lord of Annandale, Henry Piercy, John Comyn [g], and other barons of the north, they composed an army, formidable, as well from its numbers as its military prowess and experience. The first enterprise of the royalists was the attack of Northampton, which was defended by Simon de Montfort, with many of the principal barons of that party; and a breach being made in the walls by Philip Basset, the place was carried by assault, and both the governor and the garrison were made prisoners. [MN 5th April.] The royalists marched thence to Leicester and Nottingham; both which places having opened their gates to them, Prince Edward proceeded with a detachment into the county of Derby, in order to ravage with fire and sword the lands of the earl of that name, and take revenge on him for his disloyalty. Like maxims of war prevailed with both parties throughout England; and the kingdom was thus exposed in a moment to greater devastation, from the animosities of the rival barons, than it would have suffered from many years of foreign or even domestic hostilities, conducted by more humane and more generous principles. [FN [g] Rymer, vol. i. p 772. M. West. p. 385. Ypod. Neust. p. 469.]

The Earl of Leicester, master of London, and of the counties in the south-east of England, formed the siege of Rochester, which alone declared for the king in those parts, and which, besides Earl Warrenne, the governor, was garrisoned by many noble and powerful barons of the royal party. The king and prince hastened from Nottingham, where they were then quartered, to the relief of the place; and on their approach, Leicester raised the siege, and retreated to London, which, being the centre of his power, he was afraid might, in his absence, fall into the king's hands, either by force, or by a correspondence with the principal citizens, who were all secretly inclined to the royal cause. Reinforced by a great body of Londoners, and having summoned his partisans from all quarters, he thought himself strong enough to hazard a general battle with the royalists, and to determine the fate of the nation in one great engagement; which, if it proved successful, must be decisive against the king, who had no retreat for his broken troops in those parts; while Leicester himself, in case of any sinister accident, could easily take shelter in the city. To give the better colouring to his cause, he previously sent a message with conditions of peace to Henry, submissive in the language, but exorbitant in the demands [h]; and when the messenger returned with the lie and defiance from the king, the prince, and the King of the Romans, he sent a new message, renouncing in the name of himself and of the associated barons, all fealty and allegiance to Henry. He then marched out of the city, with his army divided into four bodies: the first commanded by his two sons, Henry and Guy de Montfort, together with Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford, who had deserted to the barons; the second led by the Earl of Gloucester, with William de Montchesney and John Fitz-John; the third, composed of Londoners, under the command of Nicholas de Segrave; the fourth headed by himself in person. The Bishop of Chichester gave a general absolution to the army, accompanied with assurances that, if any of them fell in the ensuing action, they would infallibly be received into heaven, as the reward of their suffering in so meritorious a cause. [FN [h] M. Paris, p. 669. W. Heming. p. 583.]

[MN Battle of Lewes. 14th May.] Leicester, who possessed great talents for war, conducted his march with such skill and secrecy, that he had well nigh surprised the royalists in their quarters at Lewes in Sussex: but the vigilance and activity of Prince Edward soon repaired this negligence; and he led out the king's army to the field in three bodies. He himself conducted the van, attended by Earl Warrenne and William de Valence: the main body was commanded by the King of the Romans and his son Henry: the king himself was placed in the rear at the head of his principal nobility. Prince Edward rushed upon the Londoners, who had demanded the post of honour in leading the rebel army, but who, from their ignorance of discipline and want of experience, were ill fitted to resist the gentry and military men, of whom the prince's body was composed. They were broken in an instant; were chased off the field; and Edward, transported by his martial ardour, and eager to revenge the insolence of the Londoners against his mother [i], put them to the sword for the length of four miles, without giving them any quarter, and without reflecting on the fate which in the mean time attended the rest of the army. The Earl of Leicester, seeing the royalists thrown into confusion by their eagerness in the pursuit, led on his remaining troops against the bodies commanded by the two royal brothers: he defeated, with great slaughter, the forces headed by the King of the Romans; and that prince was obliged to yield himself prisoner to the Earl of Gloucester; he penetrated to the body where the king himself was placed, threw it into disorder, pursued his advantage, chased it into the town of Lewes, and obliged Henry to surrender himself prisoner [k]. [FN [i] M. Paris, p. 670. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 62. W. Heming. p. 583. M. West. p. 387. Ypod. Neust. p. 469. H. Knyghton, p. 2450. [k] M. Paris, p. 670. M. West. p. 387.]

Prince Edward, returning to the field of battle from his precipitate pursuit of the Londoners, was astonished to find it covered with the dead bodies of his friends and still more to hear, that his father and uncle were defeated and taken prisoners, and that Arundel, Comyn Brus, Hamond L'Estrange, Roger Leybourne, and many considerable barons of his party, were in the hands of the victorious enemy. Earl Warrenne, Hugh Bigod, and William de Valence, struck with despair at this event, immediately took to flight, hurried to Pevensey, and made their escape beyond sea [l]: but the prince, intrepid amidst the greatest disasters, exhorted his troops to revenge the death of their friends, to relieve the royal captives, and to snatch an easy conquest from an enemy disordered by their own victory [m]. He found his followers intimidated by their situation; while Leicester, afraid of a sudden and violent blow from the prince, amused him by a feigned negotiation, till he was able to recall his troops from the pursuit, and to bring them into order [n]. There now appeared no farther resource to the royal party, surrounded by the armies and garrisons of the enemy, destitute of forage and provisions, and deprived of their sovereign, as well as of their principal leaders, who could alone inspirit them to an obstinate resistance. The prince, therefore, was obliged to submit to Leicester's terms, which were short and severe, agreeably to the suddenness and necessity of the situation: he stipulated, that he and Henry d'Allmaine should surrender themselves prisoners as pledges in lieu of the two kings; that all other prisoners on both sides should be released [o]; and that, in order to settle fully the terms of agreement, application should be made to the King of France, that he should name six Frenchmen, three prelates, and three noblemen: these six to choose two others of their own country; and these two to choose one Englishman, who, in conjunction with themselves, were to be invested by both parties with full powers to make what regulations they thought proper for the settlement of the kingdom. The prince and young Henry accordingly delivered themselves into Leicester's hands, who sent them under a guard to Dover castle. Such are the terms of agreement commonly called the MISE of Lewes, from an obsolete French term of that meaning: for it appears, that all the gentry and nobility of England, who valued themselves on their Norman extraction, and who disdained the language of their native country, made familiar use of the French tongue till this period, and for some time after. [FN [l] Chron. T. Wykes, p. 63. [m] W. Heming. p. 584. [n] Ibid. [o] M. Paris, p. 671 Knyghton, p. 2451.]

Leicester had no sooner obtained this great advantage, and gotten the whole royal family in his power, than he openly violated every article of the treaty, and acted as sole master, and even tyrant of the kingdom. He still detained the king in effect a prisoner, and made use of that prince's authority to purposes the most prejudicial to his interests, and the most oppressive of his people [p]. He every where disarmed the royalists, and kept all his own partisans in a military posture [q]: he observed the same partial conduct in the deliverance of the captives, and even threw many of the royalists into prison, besides those who were taken in the battle of Lewes: he carried the king from place to place, and obliged all the royal castles, on pretence of Henry's commands, to receive a governor and garrison of his own appointment: all the officers of the crown and of the household were named by him; and the whole authority, as well as arms of the state, was lodged in his hands: he instituted in the counties a new kind of magistracy, endowed with new and arbitrary powers, that of conservators of the peace [r]: his avarice appeared bare-faced, and might induce us to question the greatness of his ambition, at least the largeness of his mind, if we had not reason to think, that he intended to employ his acquisitions as the instruments for attaining farther power and grandeur. He seized the estates of no less than eighteen barons, as his share of the spoil gained in the battle of Lewes: he engrossed to himself the ransom of all the prisoners; and told his barons, with a wanton insolence, that it was sufficient for them that he had saved them, by that victory, from the forfeitures and attainders which hung over them [s]: he even treated the Earl of Gloucester in the same injurious manner, and applied to his own use the ransom of the King of the Romans, who, in the field of battle, had yielded himself prisoner to that nobleman. Henry, his eldest son, made a monopoly of all the wool in the kingdom, the only valuable commodity for foreign markets which it at that time produced [t]. The inhabitants of the cinque-ports, during the present dissolution of government, betook themselves to the most licentious piracy, preyed on the ships of all nations, threw the mariners into the sea, and, by these practices, soon banished all merchants from the English coasts and harbours. Every foreign commodity rose to an exorbitant price; and woollen cloth, which the English had not then the art of dyeing, was worn by them white, and without receiving the last hand of the manufacturer. In answer to the complaints which arose on this occasion, Leicester replied, that the kingdom could well enough subsist within itself, and needed no intercourse with foreigners; and it was found that he even combined with the pirates of the cinque-ports, and received as his share the third of their prizes [u]. [FN [p] Rymer, vol. i. p. 790, 791, &c. [q] Ibid. p. 795. Brady's Appeals, No. 211, 212. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 63. [r] Rymer, vol. i. p. 792. [s] Knyghton, p. 2451. [t] Chron. T. Wykes, p. 65. [u] Ibid.]

No farther mention was made of the reference to the King of France, so essential an article in the agreement of Lewes; and Leicester summoned a Parliament, composed altogether of his own partisans, in order to rivet, by their authority, that power which he had acquired by so much violence, and which he used with so much tyranny and injustice. An ordinance was there passed, to which the king's consent had been previously extorted, that every act of royal power should be exercised by a council of nine persons, who were to be chosen and removed by the majority of three, Leicester himself, the Earl of Gloucester, and the Bishop of Chichester [w]. By this intricate plan of government, the sceptre was really put into Leicester's hands; as he had the entire direction of the Bishop of Chichester, and thereby commanded all the resolutions of the council of three, who could appoint or discard at pleasure every member of the supreme council. [FN [w] Rymer, vol. i. p. 793. Brady's App. No. 213.]

But it was impossible that things could long remain in this strange situation. It behoved Leicester either to descend with some peril into the rank of a subject or to mount up with no less into that of a sovereign; and his ambition, unrestrained either by fear or by principle, gave too much reason to suspect him of the latter intention. Meanwhile he was exposed to anxiety from every quarter; and felt that the smallest incident was capable of overturning that immense and ill-cemented fabric which he had reared. The queen, whom her husband had left abroad, had collected in foreign parts an army of desperate adventurers, and had assembled a great number of ships, with a view of invading the kingdom, and of bringing relief to her unfortunate family. Lewis, detesting Leicester's usurpations and perjuries, and disgusted at the English barons, who had refused to submit to his award, secretly favoured all her enterprises, and was generally believed to be making preparations for the same purpose. An English army, by the pretended authority of the captive king, was assembled on the seacoast to oppose this projected invasion [x]; but Leicester owed his safety more to cross winds, which long detained and at last dispersed and ruined the queen's fleet, than to any resistance which, in their present situation, could have been expected from the English. [FN [x] Brady's App. No. 216, 217. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 373. M. West. p. 385.]

Leicester found himself better able to resist the spiritual thunders which were levelled against him. The pope, still adhering to the king's cause, against the barons, despatched Cardinal Guido as his legate into England, with orders to excommunicate, by name, the three earls, Leicester, Gloucester, and Norfolk, and all others, in general, who concurred in the oppression and captivity of their sovereign [y]. Leicester menaced the legate with death, if he set foot within the kingdom; but Guido, meeting in France the Bishops of Winchester, London, and Worcester, who had been sent thither on a negotiation, commanded them, under the penalty of ecclesiastical censures, to carry his bull into England, and to publish it against the barons. When the prelates arrived off the coast, they were boarded by the piratical mariners of the cinque-ports, to whom probably they gave a hint of the cargo which they brought along with them: the bull was torn and thrown into the sea; which furnished the artful prelates with a plausible excuse for not obeying the orders of the legate. Leicester appealed from Guido to the pope in person; but before the ambassadors, appointed to defend his cause, could reach Rome, the pope was dead; and they found the legate himself, from whom they had appealed, seated on the papal throne, by the name of Urban IV. That daring leader was nowise dismayed with this incident; and as he found that a great part of his popularity in England was founded on his opposition to the court of Rome, which was now become odious, he persisted with the more obstinacy in the prosecution of his measures. [FN [y] Rymer, vol. i. p. 798. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 373.]

[MN 1265. 20th Jan.] That he might both increase and turn to advantage his popularity, Leicester summoned a new Parliament in London, where he knew his power was uncontrollable; and he fixed this assembly on a more democratical basis than any which had ever been summoned since the foundation of the monarchy. Besides the barons of his own party, and several ecclesiastics who were not immediate tenants of the crown, he ordered returns to be made of two knights from each shire, and what is more remarkable, of deputies from the boroughs, an order of men which, in former ages, had always been regarded as too mean to enjoy a place in the national councils [z]. [MN House of Commons.] This period is commonly esteemed the epoch of the House of Commons in England; and it is certainly the first time that historians speak of any representatives sent to Parliament by the boroughs. In all the general accounts given in preceding times of those assemblies, the prelates and barons only are mentioned as the constituent members; and even in the most particular narratives delivered of parliamentary transactions, as in the trial of Thomas a Becket, where the events of each day, and almost of each hour, are carefully recorded by contemporary authors [a], there is not, throughout the whole, the least appearance of a House of Commons. But though that House derived its existence from so precarious and even so invidious an origin as Leicester's usurpation, it soon proved, when summoned by the legal princes, one of the most useful, and, in process of time, one of the most powerful members of the national constitution; and gradually rescued the kingdom from aristocratical as well as from regal tyranny. But Leicester's policy, if we must ascribe to him so great a blessing, only forwarded by some years an institution, for which the general state of things had already prepared the nation; and it is otherwise inconceivable, that a plant set by so inauspicious a hand could have attained to so vigorous a growth, and have flourished in the midst of such tempests and convulsions. The feudal system, with which the liberty, much more the power of the Commons, was totally incompatible, began gradually to decline; and both the king and the commonalty, who felt its inconveniences, contributed to favour this new power, which was more submissive than the barons to the regular authority of the crown, and at the same time afforded protection to the inferior orders of the state. [FN [z] Rymer, vol. i. p. 802. [a] Fitz-Stephen, Hist. Quadrip. Hoveden, &c.]

Leicester having thus assembled a Parliament of his own model, and trusting to the attachment of the populace of London, seized the opportunity of crushing his rivals among the powerful barons. Robert de Ferrars, Earl of Derby, was accused in the king's name, seized, and committed to custody without being brought to any legal trial [b]. John Gifford, menaced with the same fate, fled from London, and took shelter in the borders of Wales. Even the Earl of Gloucester, whose power and influence had so much contributed to the success of the barons, but who of late was extremely disgusted with Leicester's arbitrary conduct, found himself in danger from the prevailing authority of his ancient confederate; and he retired from Parliament [c]. This known dissension gave courage to all Leicester's enemies and to the king's friends, who were now sure of protection from so potent a leader. Though Roger Mortimer, Hamond L'Estrange, and other powerful marchers of Wales, had been obliged to leave the kingdom, their authority still remained over the territories subjected to their jurisdiction; and there were many others who were disposed to give disturbance to the new government. The animosities, inseparable from the feudal aristocracy, broke out with fresh violence, and threatened the kingdom with new convulsions and disorders. [FN [b] Chron. T. Wykes, p. 66. Ann. Waverl. p. 216. [c] M. Paris, p. 671. Ann. Waverl. p. 216.]

The Earl of Leicester, surrounded with these difficulties, embraced a measure from which he hoped to reap some present advantages, but which proved in the end the source of all his future calamities. The active and intrepid Prince Edward had languished in prison ever since the fatal battle of Lewes; and as he was extremely popular in the kingdom, there arose a general desire of seeing him again restored to liberty [d]. Leicester, finding that he could with difficulty oppose the concurring wishes of the nation, stipulated with the prince, that, in return, he should order his adherents to deliver up to the barons all their castles, particularly those on the borders of Wales; and should swear neither to depart the kingdom during three years, nor introduce into it any foreign forces [e]. The king took an oath to the same effect, and he also passed a charter, in which he confirmed the agreement or MISE of Lewes; and even permitted his subjects to rise in arms against him if he should ever attempt to infringe it [f]. So little care did Leicester take, though he constantly made use of the authority of this captive prince, to preserve to him any appearance of royalty or kingly prerogatives! [FN [d] Knyghton, p. 2451. [e] Ann. Waverl. p. 216. [f] Blackstone's Mag. Charta. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 378.]

[MN 11th Mar.] In consequence of this treaty, Prince Edward was brought into Westminster-hall, and was declared free by the barons: but instead of really recovering his liberty, as he had vainly expected, he found that the whole transaction was a fraud on the part of Leicester; that he himself still continued a prisoner at large, and was guarded by the emissaries of that nobleman; and that, while the faction reaped all the benefit from the performance of his part of the treaty, care was taken that he should enjoy no advantage by it. As Gloucester, on his rupture with the barons, had retired for safety to his estates on the borders of Wales, Leicester followed him with an army to Hereford [g]; continued still to menace and negotiate; and that he might add authority to his cause, he carried both the king and prince along with him. The Earl of Gloucester here concerted with young Edward the manner of that prince's escape. He found means to convey to him a horse of extraordinary swiftness; and appointed Roger Mortimer, who had returned into the kingdom, to be ready at hand with a small party to receive the prince, and to guard him to a place of safety. Edward pretended to take the air with some of Leicester's retinue, who were his guards; and making matches between their horses, after he thought he had tired and blown them sufficiently, he suddenly mounted Gloucester's horse and called to his attendants, that he had long enough enjoyed the pleasure of their company, and now bid them adieu. They followed him for some time, without being able to overtake him; and the appearance of Mortimer with his company put an end to their pursuit. [FN [g] Chron. T. Wykes, p. 67. Ann. Waverl. p. 218. W. Heming. p. 585. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 383, 384.]

The royalists, secretly prepared for this event, immediately flew to arms; and the joy of this gallant prince's deliverance, the oppressions under which the nation laboured, the expectation of a new scene of affairs, and the countenance of the Earl of Gloucester, procured Edward an army which Leicester was utterly unable to withstand. This nobleman found himself in a remote quarter of the kingdom, surrounded by his enemies, barred from all communication with his friends by the Severn, whose bridges Edward had broken down, and obliged to fight the cause of his party under these multiplied disadvantages. In this extremity he wrote to his son, Simon de Montfort, to hasten from London with an army for his relief; and Simon had advanced to Kenilworth with that view, where, fancying that all Edward's force and attention were directed against his father, he lay secure and unguarded. But the prince, making a sudden and forced march, surprised him in his camp, dispersed his army, and took the Earl of Oxford and many other noblemen prisoners, almost without resistance. Leicester, ignorant of his son 's fate, passed the Severn in boats during Edward's absence, and lay at Evesham, in expectation of being every hour joined by his friends from London; when the prince, who availed himself of every favourable moment, appeared in the field before him. [MN Battle of Evesham and death of Leicester. 4th Aug.] Edward made a body of his troops advance from the road which led to Kenilworth, and ordered them to carry the banners taken from Simon's army; while he himself, making a circuit with the rest of his forces, purposed to attack the enemy on the other quarter. Leicester was long deceived by this stratagem, and took one division of Edward's army for his friends; but at last, perceiving his mistake, and observing the great superiority and excellent disposition of the royalists, he exclaimed that they had learned from him the art of war, adding, "The Lord have mercy on our souls, for I see our bodies are the prince's!" The battle immediately began, though on very unequal terms. Leicester's army, by living on the mountains of Wales without bread, which was not then much used among the inhabitants, had been extremely weakened by sickness and desertion, and was soon broken by the victorious royalists; while his Welsh allies, accustomed only to a desultory kind of war, immediately took to flight, and were pursued with great slaughter. Leicester himself; asking for quarter, was slain in the heat of the action, with his eldest son Henry, Hugh le Despenser, and about one hundred and sixty knights, and many other gentlemen of his party. The old king had been purposely placed by the rebels in the front of the battle; and being clad in armour, and thereby not known by his friends, he received a wound, and was in danger of his life; but crying out, I AM HENRY OF WINCHESTER, YOUR KING, he was saved, and put in a place of safety by his son, who flew to his rescue.

The violence, ingratitude, tyranny, rapacity, and treachery of the Earl of Leicester, give a very bad idea of his moral character, and make us regard his death as the most fortunate event which, in this conjuncture, could have happened to the English nation; yet must we allow the man to have possessed great abilities, and the appearance of great virtues, who, though a stranger, could at a time when strangers were the most odious, and the most universally decried, have acquired so extensive an interest in the kingdom, and have so nearly paved his way to the throne itself. His military capacity and his political craft were equally eminent: he possessed the talents both of governing men and conducting business: and though his ambition was boundless, it seems neither to have exceeded his courage nor his genius; and he had the happiness of making the low populace, as well as the haughty barons, co-operate towards the success of his selfish and dangerous purposes. A prince of greater abilities and vigour than Henry, might have directed the talents of this nobleman either to the exaltation of his throne, or to the good of his people: but the advantages given to Leicester by the weak and variable administration of the king, brought on the ruin of royal authority, and produced great confusions in the kingdom, which however, in the end, preserved and extremely improved national liberty and the constitution. His popularity, even after his death, continued so great, that though he was excommunicated by Rome, the people believed him to be a saint; and many miracles were said to be wrought upon his tomb [h]. [FN [h] Chron. de Mailr. p. 232.]

[MN Settlement of the government.] The victory of Evesham, with the death of Leicester, proved decisive in favour of the royalists, and made an equal, though an opposite, impression on friends and enemies in every part of England. The King of the Romans recovered his liberty: the other prisoners of the royal party were not only freed, but courted by their keepers: Fitz-Richard, the seditious Mayor of London, who had marked out forty of the most wealthy citizens for slaughter, immediately stopped his hand on receiving intelligence of this great event: and almost all the castles, garrisoned by the barons, hastened to make their submissions, and to open their gates to the king. The isle of Axholme alone, and that of Ely, trusting to the strength of their situation, ventured to make resistance; but were at last reduced, as well as the castle of Dover, by the valour and activity of Prince Edward [i]. [MN 1266.] Adam de Gourdon, a courageous baron, maintained himself during some time in the forests of Hampshire, committed depredations in the neighbourhood, and obliged the prince to lead a body of troops into that county against him. Edward attacked the camp of the rebels; and being transported by the ardour of battle, leaped over the trench with a few followers, and encountered Gourdon in single combat. The victory was long disputed between these valiant combatants; but ended at last in the prince's favour, who wounded his antagonist, threw him from his horse, and took him prisoner. He not only gave him his life, but introduced him that very night to the queen at Guildford, procured him his pardon, restored him to his estate, received him into favour, and was ever after faithfully served by him [k]. [FN [i] M. Paris, p. 676. W. Heming, p. 588. [k] M. Paris, p. 675.]

A total victory of the sovereign over so extensive a rebellion commonly produces a revolution of government, and strengthens as well as enlarges, for some time, the prerogatives of the crown: yet no sacrifices of national liberty were made on this occasion; the great charter remained still inviolate; and the king, sensible that his own barons, by whose assistance alone he had prevailed, were no less jealous of their independence than the other party, seems thenceforth to have more carefully abstained from all those exertions of power which had afforded so plausible a pretence to the rebels. The clemency of this victory is also remarkable: no blood was shed on the scaffold: no attainders, except of the Montfort family, were carried into execution: and though a Parliament, assembled at Winchester, attainted all those who had borne arms against the king, easy compositions were made with them for their lands [1]; and the highest sum levied on the most obnoxious offenders exceeded not five years' rent of their estate. Even the Earl of Derby, who again rebelled, after having been pardoned and restored to his fortune, was obliged to pay only seven years' rent, and was a second time restored. The mild disposition of the king, and the prudence of the prince, tempered the insolence of victory, and gradually restored order to the several members of the state, disjointed by so long a continuance of civil wars and commotions. [FN [l] Id. ibid.]

The city of London, which had carried farthest the rage and animosity against the king, and which seemed determined to stand upon its defence after almost all the kingdom had submitted, was, after some interval, restored to most of its liberties and privileges; and Fitz-Richard the mayor, who had been guilty of so much illegal violence, was only punished by fine and imprisonment. The Countess of Leicester, the king's sister, who had been extremely forward in all attacks on the royal family, was dismissed the kingdom with her two sons, Simon and Guy, who proved very ungrateful for this lenity. Five years afterwards, they assassinated, at Viterbo in Italy, their cousin Henry d'Allmaine, who at that very time was endeavouring to make their peace with the king; and by taking sanctuary in the church of the Franciscans, they escaped the punishment due to so great an enormity [m]. [FN [m] Rymer, vol. i. p. 879. vol. ii. p. 4, 5. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 94. W. Heming. p. 589. Trivet, p. 240.]

[MN 1267.] The merits of the Earl of Gloucester, after he returned to his allegiance, had been so great in restoring the prince to his liberty, and assisting him in his victories against the rebellious barons, that it was almost impossible to content him in his demands; and his youth and temerity, as well as his great power, tempted him, on some new disgust, to raise again the flames of rebellion in the kingdom. The mutinous populace of London, at his instigation, took to arms; and the prince was obliged to levy an army of thirty thousand men in order to suppress them. Even this second rebellion did not provoke the king to any act of cruelty; and the Earl of Gloucester himself escaped with total impunity. He was only obliged to enter into a bond of twenty thousand marks, that he should never again be guilty of rebellion: a strange method of enforcing the laws, and a proof of the dangerous independence of the barons in those ages! These potent nobles were, from the danger of the precedent, averse to the execution of the laws of forfeiture and felony against any of their fellows; though they could not, with a good grace, refuse to concur in obliging them to fulfil any voluntary contract and engagement into which they had entered.

[MN 1270.] The prince, finding the state of the kingdom tolerably composed, was seduced, by his avidity for glory and by the prejudices of the age, as well as by the earnest solicitations of the King of France, to undertake an expedition against the infidels in the Holy Land [n]; and he endeavoured previously to settle the state in such a manner as to dread no bad effects from his absence. As the formidable power and turbulent disposition of the Earl of Gloucester gave him apprehensions, he insisted on carrying him along with him, in consequence of a vow which that nobleman had made to undertake the same voyage: in the mean time, he obliged him to resign some of his castles, and to enter into a new bond not to disturb the peace of the kingdom [o]. He sailed from England with an army, and arrived in Lewis's camp before Tunis in Africa, where he found that monarch already dead from the intemperance of the climate and the fatigues of his enterprise. The great, if not only, weakness of this prince in his government, was the imprudent passion for crusades; but it was his zeal chiefly that procured him from the clergy the title of St. Lewis, by which he is known in the French history; and if that appellation had not been so extremely prostituted, as to become rather a term of reproach, he seems by his uniform probity and goodness, as well as his piety, to have fully merited the title. He was succeeded by his son Philip, denominated the Hardy; a prince of some merit, though much inferior to that of his father. [FN [n] M. Paris, p. 677. [o] Chron. T. Wykes, p. 90.]

[MN 1271.] Prince Edward, not discouraged by this event, continued his voyage to the Holy Land, where he signalized himself by acts of valour; revived the glory of the English name in those parts; and struck such terror into the Saracens, that they employed an assassin to murder him, who wounded him in the arm, but perished in the attempt [p]. Meanwhile, his absence from England was attended with many of those pernicious consequences which had been dreaded from it. The laws were not executed: the barons oppressed the common people with impunity [q]: they gave shelter on their estates to bands of robbers, whom they employed in committing ravages on the estates of their enemies: the populace of London returned to their usual licentiousness: and the old king, unequal to the burden of public affairs, called aloud for his gallant son to return [r], and to assist him in swaying that sceptre which was ready to drop from his feeble and irresolute hands. [MN 1272. 16th Nov. Death,] At last, overcome by the cares of government and the infirmities of age, he visibly declined, and he expired at St. Edmondsbury, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and fifty-sixth of his reign; the longest reign that is to be met with in the English annals. His brother, the King of the Romans, (for he never attained the title of Emperor,) died about seven months before him. [FN [p] M. Paris, p. 678, 679. W. Heming. p. 520. [q] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 404. [r] Rymer, vol. i. p. 869. M. Paris, p. 678.]

[MN and character of the king.] The most obvious circumstance of Henry's character is his incapacity for government, which rendered him as much a prisoner in the hands of his own ministers and favourites, and as little at his own disposal, as when detained a captive in the hands of his enemies. From this source, rather than from insincerity or treachery, arose his negligence in observing his promises; and he was too easily induced, for the sake of present convenience, to sacrifice the lasting advantages arising from the trust and confidence of his people. Hence too were derived his profusion to favourites, his attachment to strangers, the variableness of his conduct, his hasty resentments, and his sudden forgiveness and return of affection. Instead of reducing the dangerous power of his nobles, by obliging them to observe the laws towards their inferiors, and setting them the salutary example in his own government, he was seduced to imitate their conduct, and to make his arbitrary will, or rather that of his ministers, the rule of his actions. Instead of accommodating himself, by a strict frugality, to the embarrassed situation in which his revenue had been left by the military expeditions of his uncle, the dissipations of his father, and the usurpations of the barons; he was tempted to levy money by irregular exactions, which, without enriching himself, impoverished, at least disgusted, his people. Of all men, nature seemed least to have fitted him for being a tyrant; yet there are instances of oppression in his reign, which, though derived from the precedents left him by his predecessors, had been carefully guarded against by the great charter, and are inconsistent with all rules of good government. And on the whole, we may say, that greater abilities, with his good dispositions, would have prevented him from falling into his faults; or, with worse dispositions, would have enabled him to maintain and defend them.

This prince was noted for his piety and devotion, and his regular attendance on public worship; and a saying of his on that head is much celebrated by ancient writers. He was engaged in a dispute with Lewis IX. of France, concerning the preference between sermons and masses: he maintained the superiority of the latter, and affirmed that he would rather have one hour's conversation with a friend, than hear twenty of the most elaborate discourses pronounced in his praise [s]. [FN [s] Walsing. Edw. I. p. 43.]

Henry left two sons, Edward, his successor, and Edmond, Earl of Lancaster; and two daughters, Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and Beatrix, Duchess of Britany. He had five other children, who died in their infancy.