The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain (9 page)

1253–8

In the summer of 1253 Henry determined to solve the Gascony problem in person, and he travelled there with a small army, several barons having refused to accompany him. He was, however, joined by local allies and had little difficulty in pacifying his lands. He was generous to all who submitted and in compensating those who had suffered at the hands of de Montfort, rewarding them with pensions, positions and land grants, and was even reconciled to de Montfort, again by means of paying for his friendship. He then made a treaty with Alfonso of Castile, which involved the marriage of Prince Edward to Alfonso’s half-sister, Eleanor. The wedding took place in November 1254. Having provided for his
elder son by settling many lands upon him, Henry now set about making ambitious plans for Edward’s nine-year-old sibling, Edmund. Pope Innocent IV was in conflict with the king of Sicily and proposed to Henry that he be deposed in favour of Edmund.

On his way home in the autumn of 1254 Henry paid a state visit to Louis IX in Paris, and he took this golden opportunity to impress his host and all of Paris with his kingly beneficence. He fed crowds of the capital’s poor before entertaining his host at a sumptuous banquet and distributing expensive gifts to the French nobility. Small wonder that he arrived back in England heavily in debt, having squandered all the money he had set aside for his crusade.

The king was psychologically incapable of tightening his belt. He borrowed heavily and was largely bankrolled by his brother, Richard. He began collecting again for a crusade and committed himself up to the hilt for the Sicilian venture, promising 135,000 marks to the pope for his help in gaining the crown for Edmund. But this scheme was not the only grandiose, self-deluding vision in which he indulged. He saw himself as a lead actor on a wider stage than England: he made plans to join with Alfonso of Castile in an expedition into Muslim North Africa, and he persuaded his brother Richard to take part in a papal conspiracy against the Emperor Frederick II by accepting the imperial title ‘King of the Romans’. All the old problems continued but became worse. The king demanded money from a reluctant parliament, which responded by demanding political reforms. Henry exploited to the full every possible source of revenue,
and this drew him into violations of Magna Carta. Opposition to the king deepened and widened, though many attributed his misrule to the influence of his foreign advisers.

In 1257 all Henry’s birds came home to roost. The pope was pressing him for the money he owed, but parliament disapproved of the Sicilian venture and refused to finance it. Richard left for his coronation in Aachen and was no longer available either to lend his brother money or offer him sound advice. Llewelyn-ap-Gruffydd was laying waste parts of the Welsh border and had the backing of Henry’s son-in-law, Alexander of Scotland. When Henry finally got round to leading an expedition to north Wales he achieved nothing and had to make a humiliating peace with Llewelyn. Archbishop Boniface turned against the king by summoning a convocation of bishops and clergy, which presented the king with a list of grievances. The royal court was split into factions, and even Prince Edward, now 19, declared against some of his father’s policies. Personal grief was added to political difficulty when Henry’s three-year-old daughter died.

1258

The parliament that met in April 1258 faced a dilemma. Its members wanted to impose administrative reforms and policy changes on the king – they especially wanted him to withdraw from the Sicilian adventure and get rid of his Poitevin advisers – but that would mean inducing Henry to abandon his oath to Pope Alexander, who might well respond by excommunicating the king and placing England
under an interdict (the withdrawal of all services performed by the clergy). In the event, anger at Henry’s foreign policy and its crippling financial cost drove parliament, which is sometimes known as the ‘Mad (Angry) Parliament’, to drastic measures. Led by Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, seven barons took the lead in presenting Henry with a list of demands. They persuaded parliament to declare that they would support the raising of a new tax (a general aid) only if the king would accept a programme of reform and negotiate a fresh agreement about Sicily with the pope. In his usual, weak-willed way Henry accepted this ultimatum.

A council of 24 was appointed to draw up a programme of reform, and 12 of the king’s councillors met with 12 baronial representatives at Oxford in June. They agreed the Provisions of Oxford, which has sometimes been called the foundation of parliamentary democracy, a development even more important than Magna Carta. It should, more accurately however, be seen as one step in a long journey towards the restraint of arbitrary royal power.

There is no preserved official record of the list of constitutional reforms contained in the Provisions of Oxford, but notes in the
Annals
of Burton Abbey suggest that these were the main baronial demands: parliament was to meet three times a year on dates of its own choosing; the king was to rule through a council of 15 members approved by parliament; the office of justiciar (a combination of chief minister and royal deputy) was to be reinstated; the chancellor and treasurer were to be accountable to the council; principal
royal officers were to be appointed for annual terms; royal castles were to be in the hands of castellans answerable to the council and not Henry’s Poitevin relations; and four knights in each county were to be appointed to inquire into alleged offences committed by Henry’s officials.

The Provisions identified clearly the gulf that had opened between the Plantagenet monarchy, which still entertained European ambitions, and a baronage whose members thought of themselves as ‘English’ and had little interest in fighting or paying for foreign wars. Their xenophobic attitude towards foreign interference in English affairs was widely shared. ‘Let strangers come here but go away again quickly, like visitors, not settlers,’ ran a popular song of the day. The barons also revealed the dominant interest of the magnates in local political and judicial matters. They were genuinely concerned to protect their feudal vassals from exploitation in the king’s courts and aimed to improve the standing of their own manorial and other lesser courts. Thus, for example, the Provisions had decreed that four elected knights were to attend every shire court and gather complaints relating to alleged injuries and trespasses and to make sure that they were presented to the justiciar. The increased involvement of the knights (and to a lesser extent the town burgesses) in the work of local government was, perhaps, the most important long-term outcome of the Provisions of Oxford.

Because the majority of the barons supported the Provisions, Henry had no real alternative but to accept this humiliating restriction of his authority, but he had no intention
of submitting permanently. In October he pacified his opponents by formally swearing to uphold the Provisions, which were expanded and clarified at a parliament meeting in Westminster, but he also appealed secretly to the pope to absolve him from this oath.

Meanwhile, Henry was forced to come to terms with Llewelyn-ap-Gruffydd, who, following his military successes, had begun styling himself ‘Prince of Wales’. He had formed an alliance with the Scottish barons in opposition to the boy king Alexander III (Henry’s son-in-law) and kept a careful eye on events in England to see how he could benefit from the divisions between the king and his barons.

Henry’s initial reaction was vigorous. Undeterred by the military reverses of 1256–7, he planned a new campaign in the summer. But Llewelyn sent envoys to Simon de Montfort and Simon persuaded the king to agree a truce that would run until August 1259. This infuriated the lords who held lands in Wales and the border that had been overrun by the self-styled ‘Prince of Wales’, and this was a cause of division in the baronial ranks. However, it enabled Simon and his colleagues to concentrate on domestic reforms, which they regarded as more urgent.

1259–63

The baronial committee of 24 worked assiduously to put more flesh on the Provisions of Oxford and, particularly, to
define more precisely the relationship between central government and the various law courts. As well as baronial leaders and government officers, the best legal brains in the country were brought to bear on a complete overhaul of most aspects of the judicial system. Old laws were reinforced, and new ones were drafted that covered aspects of relationships between all classes in society – everything from taxation and inheritance to murder (differentiated for the first times from accidental death). Agreement was not arrived at without argument, but the new measures reached their final form in the Provisions of Westminster of October 1259. This was a major achievement, the greatest since Magna Carta.

Over the next four years, Henry had three major problems: the baronial revolt was a severe check to his authority; Llewelyn threatened the geographical integrity of his kingdom; and there were rumours that his eldest son, Edward, was plotting against him. The situation was confused and all parties – king, barons, Llewelyn’s supporters, shire knights, town burgesses and the heir to the throne – were pursuing their own interests, and it was this that would eventually undermine the constitutional reform movement. For the time being, however, the initiative lay with Simon and his followers. While Henry spent long periods on the continent looking after his Gascon territories and seeking the support of the French king and the pope, Urban IV, the Earl of Leicester strove to hold his coalition together and to come to terms with Henry. His task was made easier by the behaviour of the young Edward (19 years old in 1258). The heir to the throne surrounded himself with an entourage of hired,
foreign mercenaries and behaved with an arrogance that often tipped over into cruelty. When the prince’s party stayed at Wallingford Priory they ate the monks out of house and home and beat them when they protested. Englishmen were outraged by such events and particularly resented their country’s ‘invasion’ by German and French soldiers.

In May 1261 news arrived from Rome that Pope Alexander had absolved Henry from his oath to abide by the Provisions of Westminster. The king brought more mercenaries into the country and took up residence in the Tower of London. In August he announced his repudiation of the Provisions and his intention to take royal castles back into his possession and appoint his own advisers. In September he summoned representatives of the shires to meet at Windsor and not to attend the parliament at St Albans. He and Edward had reconciled their differences, and the king opened up fresh negotiations with Llewelyn.

The baronage was now divided between a majority who were appalled by Henry’s behaviour and a minority who remained loyal to the king and his papal backer. But still there was no open breach because Earl Simon tried to negotiate a peaceful settlement by appealing to Louis IX as arbitrator. Not until June 1263 did parliament, meeting at Oxford, denounce Henry III as false to his oath and proclaim war against all violators of the Provisions. Once again, a show of force was sufficient to cause Henry to buckle. He reached a new settlement with Simon, surrendered several castles (including Windsor and the Tower of London) and, once more, submitted to the Provisions. But the king was
intriguing secretly to undermine the earl and in October was behind a plot to capture the earl and kill him. This failure was the spark that finally ignited the Barons’ War.

1264–5

In January, in return for a ‘charitable donation’ of 2,000 livres to the crusading cause, Louis IX declared in favour of Henry. The French king dismissed the Provisions but supported ‘the rights English people had enjoyed’ before 1258. Both sides declared their acceptance of this in the Mise (Agreement) of Amiens. The barons could claim that all their actions were in defence of ancient rights and that Henry had violated Magna Carta, but as far as many shire knights and town burgesses were concerned, the Mise of Amiens seemed like a declaration of war. They were faced with the loss of parliamentary representation and all the other privileges they had gained since 1258. Simon de Montfort now found himself at the head of a widespread revolt against the crown, so he made a new treaty with Llewelyn in order to secure his western flank and turned his attention to the military defeat of Henry and Edward.

The war began well for the royal army – Edward seized Northampton, and Henry marched towards Nottingham – but while they tried to secure the Midlands Simon turned his attention to London, fortified the capital and then marched to the royalist stronghold of Rochester, vital to Henry as a point of contact with loyal forces on the Kent coast and with his agents beyond the Channel. While the
siege of the castle was in progress, Henry and Edward belatedly hastened southwards (April). They took Tonbridge and encamped near Lewes. Simon marched to meet them, his army swollen by supporters from London and the southern counties. He offered the king a fresh agreement, which was defiantly rejected.

The Battle of Lewes took place on 14 May. The royal army outnumbered the barons’ force and enjoyed early success, as Edward and his trained mercenaries easily broke the ranks of the Londoners who fled headlong from the thundering hooves and flashing swords of the vengeful prince. Determined to avenge himself on the disloyal citizens, Edward spent several hours hunting them down and killing all he could find. Had he controlled his anger and stayed with the main battle the result would probably have been different. Here Simon and his captains won an easy victory. In the day’s fighting only about 600 were killed, most of them the Londoners Edward had butchered. Henry and his son were taken prisoner and obliged to reach a new agreement, the Mise of Lewes.

A triumphal Latin song written by an anonymous monk declares:

Simon de Montfort had few experienced men of arms.

The royal army, including the greatest warriors

in England, was large … But God is on the side