Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 1/Chapter 53
CHAPTER LIII.
Great Seal of Henry III.
Henry III, or, as he was more generally designated, Henry of Winchester, was only ten years of age when the death of his father called him to the throne. It was almost an empty honour, the kingdom being in a most distracted, state. London and the southern counties acknowledged the authority of his rival Louis, to whom the King of Scotland and the Welsh prince had taken the oath of fealty as vassals.
In this position there were only two parties on whom the youthful monarch could rely for any effectual support: the first consisted of the barons and foreign mercenaries who had remained faithful to the late king; the second was the papal see, which, since the degrading surrender of the crown by John, considered itself lord paramount of England, and in that capacity naturally exerted all its influence to secure the succession to the son of him who had bestowed upon it so rich a gift.
About ten days after the death of his father, Henry was conducted to the abbey church of Gloucester; and having taken the coronation oath, and sworn fealty to the reigning Pope, Honorius, was crowned by his legate Gualo and the Bishops of Winchester, Exeter, and Bath, who placed upon his head a simple circlet of gold, the regal crown having been lost with the rest of the royal treasures in the disastrous passage of the Wash.
Immediately after this ceremony a proclamation was issued, in which the boy king lamented the dissensions between his father and the barons, which he professed his willingness to forgot, offered to his subjects a full amnesty for the past, and their liberties, as secured by the Great Charter, for the future. He also commanded the tenants of the crown to do homage to him for their possessions, and take the oath of allegiance. During a month the people were forbidden to appear in public without a white fillet round the head in honour of his coronation. The care of Henry's person was confided to the Earl of Pembroke, Earl Marshal of England, who was also named guardian of the kingdom.
Well did this illustrious nobleman merit the confidence reposed in him. It was owing to his loyalty and energy that the foreigners were driven from the kingdom.
The earl, in order that he might reconcile all orders in the state to the government of the new king, made him grant a fresh charter, which, though copied in most instances from the one extorted from John, contained several exceptions.
The privilege of elections granted to the clergy was not confirmed, nor the liberty of withdrawing from the kingdom without the consent of the crown.
In this omission we may perceive the germ of resistance to the supremacy of Rome. Even at a period when it was most necessary to conciliate its influence in favour of the young king, both the regent and the barons of the party were desirous of reserving the right of the crown to issue the congé d'elire to the monks and chapters, as some check upon the encroachments of the papacy.
But the greatest change was the omitting of the obligations to which John had subscribed, binding himself not to levy any aids or scutages, as they were termed, upon the nation without the consent of the great council: the article was even pronounced severe, and was expressly left to future deliberation.
When, at a later period of his reign, Henry was severely pressed for money, he never attempted by his mere will to exact any such imposts, though reduced to great necessity, and the supplies refused by the people. The barons would have opposed it. True, they were subservient enough where individual rights alone wore trampled on; but when the interests of the whole body were affected, they offered a formidable opposition to the oppression of the crown.
This charter was confirmed by the king in the following year, and several additional articles added, to prevent the oppressions of the sheriffs. The forest laws were modified: those which had been enclosed since the reign of Henry II. were thrown open: offences against the game laws were declared no longer capital, but punished by fine and imprisonment.
These last ameliorations were made in a separate charter. These charters were, during many generations, regarded by the nation as the palladium of their liberties; securing, as they did, the rights of all orders of men, they were zealously defended by all, and became the basis of a contract which limited the authority of the king, and ensured the conditional allegiance of the people. Though often violated, they were still appealed to; and as no precedent was supposed to invalidate them, they acquired, rather than lost, authority in the frequent attempts to set them aside which were made in after ages by royal and arbitrary power.
Whilst the Earl of Pembroke, by these wise proceedings, gave so much satisfaction to the nation in general, he made great personal efforts to recall the revolted barons to their allegiance by writing in the king's name to each.
In his letters he reminded them that whatever cause of offence John might have given them, his son, who had succeeded to the crown, inherited neither his principles nor resentments; that he was the lineal heir of their ancient kings; and pointed out how desperate was the expedient they had employed of calling in a foreign potentate—an expedient which, happily for them and the nation, had failed of success; that it was still in their power, by a speedy return to their duty, to restore the independence of the kingdom, and those liberties for which they had so zealously contended; adding that, as all their past offences were now buried in oblivion, they ought, on their part, to show equal magnanimity, and forget their complaints against their late sovereign, who, if he had been in any way blameable in his conduct, had left to his successor the salutary warning to avoid the paths which had led to such fatal and dangerous extremities.
The considerations so temperately yet strongly urged, enforced by the high character for honour and consistency which Pembroke had ever maintained, had great influence with the barons, many of whom began secretly to negotiate with him, whilst others returned openly to their allegiance.
The suspicion which Louis discovered of their fidelity forwarded this general inclining towards the king; and when at last he refused the government of the castle of Hertford to Robert Fitzwalter, one of his most faithful adherents, who claimed that fortress as his property, they plainly saw that the English nobility were to be systematically excluded from every position of trust, and that his own countrymen and foreigners engrossed all the confidence and affection of their new sovereign.
The excommunication, too, which the legate of the Pope had pronounced against all the adherents of Louis, was not without effect. Men were easily convinced of the impiety of a cause which it was their interest to abandon.
Louis, who, on the death of John, had deemed his triumph certain, found, on the contrary, that it had given an incurable wound to his cause. On his return from France, where he had been to recruit his forces, he discovered his party among the English barons considerably weakened. The Earls of SaUsbury, Arundel, and Warrenne, together with William Mareschall, eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke, had returned to their natural allegiance, and the nobles who remained were only waiting an occasion to follow their example.
The regent felt himself so much strengthened by these accessions to the royal cause, that he resolved no longer to remain on the defensive, but at once proceeded to invest Mount Sorel; but on the approach of the Count de la Perche with the French army, he raised the siege, his forces not being sufficient to oppose him.
Elated with this success, the count marched to Lincoln, and being admitted within the walls, proceeded at once to attack the castle, which he soon reduced to great extremity. Fully sensible of the importance of relieving the place, the gallant Pembroke summoned all his forces from every quarter of the kingdom which owned the authority of Henry; and with such alacrity wore his orders obeyed, that in a short time he marched upon Lincoln with an army superior in numbers to the French, who, in their turn, shut themselves within the walls. The earl reinforced the garrison, which made a vigorous assault upon the besiegers, whilst, with his own army, he, at the same time, attacked the town, which the English entered, sword in hand, bearing down all opposition. Lincoln was given up to pillage, the French being totally defeated.
It is singular that the only persons slain were the Count de la Perche and two of his officers, but many of the principal leaders and upwards of 400 knights were taken prisoners; and yet this battle, if it may be considered worthy of the name, decided the fate of the kingdom.
Louis heard of this event, so fatal to his ambitious projects, while engaged in the siege of Dover, which, under the command of Hubert de Burgh, still held out against him, and instantly retreated to London, the stronghold of his party. Shortly after his arrival, intelligence was brought him of a fresh disaster, which completely put an end to his hopes of the conquest of England.
His consort, Blanche of Castile, had levied powerful reinforcements in France, which she had embarked in eighty large vessels, besides galleys and smaller ships, under the command of a noted pirate named Eustace le Moine.
To meet this formidable danger, Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary, collected forty sail from the cinque ports, and set out to sea to meet the enemy. So inferior was his force that several knights refused to follow him, alleging as a reason, or rather au excuse for their cowardice, that they were unacquainted with naval warfare, and bound only to fight on land by the tenure of their lands. The gallant leader seems to have been perfectly aware of the danger he courted, since, according to Lingard, he privately received the sacrament, and nobly gave orders to the garrison of Dover Castle not to surrender on any terms to the enemy, in the event of his being defeated—not even to save his own life, should it be threatened.
It was on this occasion that Hubert executed one of those extraordinary feats which only true genius can conceive. On coming in sight of the French fleet, he commanded his own ships to sail past them, as if he intended to surprise Calais. The enemy saw him pass them with shouts of derision.
To their astonishment, however, the English fleet suddenly tacked, and, with the wind in their favour, bore down upon them in a line on their rear. The battle began with volleys of arrows, which, most probably, did little execution on either side. It was when they came in close contact that the superiority of the British sailors was shown. With chains and hooks they lashed their vessels to those of the enemy; then scattered clouds of quicklime in the air, which the wind carried in the eyes of the French, half blinding them, and rendered their ships unmanageable by cutting their rigging with their axes.
The struggle was not a long one. The French, unused to this desperate mode of fighting, made but a feeble resistance; and of their immense fleet fifteen vessels only escaped, the rest being either sunken or taken.
One hundred and fifteen knights, with then: esquires, and upwards of 800 officers, were prisoners. Eustace le Moine, their leader, had concealed himself in the hold of his ship. When discovered he offered a large sum for his life; but Richard Fitzroy, one of John's illegitimate sons by a daughter of Earl Warrenne, rejected the proposal, and instantly struck off his head, which was afterwards stuck upon a pole and carried from town to town as a trophy of victory.
Hume, in his account of this great naval battle, assigns the command of the fleet to Philip d'Albiney; whilst Lingard, who is generally so accurate with respect to names and dates, distinctly states that Hubert de Burgh held that important post. It is more than probable that both the above-mentioned leaders were on board; in which case the supreme authority would have been in the hands of Hubert, as grand justiciary of the kingdom. In our own views, we incline to the last-named historian's account of the event.
After this signal triumph the barons who still adhered to the cause of Louis hastened to make their peace, in order to prevent the attainders which longer resistance might have brought upon them; and the French prince, seeing that his affairs were desperate, began to feel anxious for the safety of his person, and most desirous of withdrawing from a contest where everything wore a hostile aspect to him. He concluded a treaty with the Earl of Pembroke, by which he promised to quit the kingdom, merely stipulating an indemnity to the adherents who remained faithful to him, a restitution of their honours and fortunes, as well as the enjoyment of those liberties which had been granted in the late charter to the rest of the nation.
Thus, owing to the great prudence and loyalty of the regent, was ended a civil war which at one time threatened to subjugate England to a foreign yoke.
The precautions which the King of France, the father of Louis, took in the affair, are most remarkable. He asserted that the prince had accepted the invitation of the English barons without his advice, and contrary to his wishess; the forces sent to England were all levied in the name of Louis, and when he came over to France to solicit aid, his father publicly refused him the least assistance, and would not so much as receive him in his presence; and after the successes of Henry had placed the heir to his throne in a position of great danger, it was Blanche of Castile, his wife, and not the king his father, who raised the forces and equipped the fleet which Hubert de Burgh defeated.
These artifices were too transparent not to be Been through. But the politic monarch was better pleased that the truth should be veiled under a decent pretext than exposed to the gaze of the world. Neither the Pope nor the English nation were deceived by his professions of neutrality.
After the expulsion of the French, the prudence and equity of the protector's subsequent conduct contributed to cure entirely those wounds which had been made by intestine discord. He received the rebellious barons into favour; observed strictly the terms of peace which he had granted them; restored them to their possessions; and endeavoured, by an equal behaviour, to bury all past animosities in perpetual oblivion. The clergy alone, who had adhered to Louis, were sufferers in this revolution. As they had rebelled against their spiritual sovereign, by disregarding the interdict and excommunication, it was not in Pembroke's power to make any stipulations in their favour; and Gualo, the legate, prepared to take vengeance on them for their disobedience. Many of them were deposed, many suspended, some banished; and all who escaped punishment made atonement for their offence by paying large sums to the legate, who amassed an immense treasure by this expedient.
The Head of Eustace le Moine carried on a pole.
The Earl of Pembroke did not long survive the pacification which had been chiefly owing to his wisdom and valour; and he was succeeded in the government by Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, and Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary. The counsels of the latter were chiefly followed; and had he possessed equal authority in the kingdom with Pembroke, he seemed to be every way worthy of filling the place of that virtuous nobleman. But the licentious and powerful barons, who had once broken the reins of subjection to their prince, and had obtained by violence an enlargement of their liberties and independence, could ill be restrained by laws under a minority; and the people, no less than the king, suffered from their outrages and disorders. They retained by force the royal castles, which they had seized during the past convulsions, or which had been committed to their custody by the protector; they usurped the king's demesnes; they oppressed their vassals; they infested their weaker neighbours; they invited all disorderly people to enter in their retinue, and to live upon their lands; and they gave them protection in all their robberies and extortions.
The Barons enforcing their Rights from Henry III. (See page 273.)
No one was more infamous for these violent and illegal practices than the Earl of Albemarle; who, though he had early returned to his duty, and had been serviceable in expelling the French, augmented to the utmost the general disorder, and committed outrages in all the counties of the north. In order to reduce him to obedience, Hubert seized an opportunity of getting possession of Rockingham Castle, which Albemarle had garrisoned with his licentious retinue; but this nobleman, instead of submitting, entered into a secret confederacy with Fawkes de Briante, Peter de Mouleon, and other barons; fortified the castle of Beliam for his defence, and made himself master of that of Fotheringay. Pandulph, who had been re-appointed legate, showed great activity in the suppression of this rebellion. With the consent of eleven bishops, he pronounced sentence of excommunication against Albemarle and his adherents; an army was levied; a scutage of ten shillings—a knight's fee—was imposed on all the military tenants.
Albemarle's adherents, terrified by the vigour of these proceedings, gradually deserted him, and he himself was reduced to sue for mercy. Such was his influence, and the unsettled state of the nation, that he not only received a free pardon, but was restored to his whole estate.
This lenity, which was highly impolitic, was most probably owing to some secret combination amongst the turbulent barons, who could not endure to see the total ruin of one of their own order. It had the bad effect of encouraging Fawkes de Briante—one of John's unworthy favourites, who had risen from au obscure estate—to persevere in the course of violence and rapine to which he owed his fortune, and set at defiance the laws of the realm.
When thirty-five verdicts had been found against him for forcibly depriving the same number of freeholders of their estates, he came into the court-house accompanied by an armed force, seized the person of the judge who had presided, and imprisoned him in Bedford Castle, to the great scandal of the nation. He next levied open war against the crown; but being defeated and taken prisoner, his lands were confiscated, and he himself banished the kingdom.
If justice was thus blind or powerless where the culprits were noble, great Severity was exercised upon the humbler classes. A riot occurred at a wrestling-match between the citizens of London and the inhabitants of Westminster, in whivh the former destroyed several houses belonging to the abbot of the last-named place. Probably it might have passed unnoticed but for certain symptoms which the citizens displayed towards the French, making use of the French war-cry, "Mountjoy! Montjoy, and God help us and our lord Louis! This was the real offence for which they were punished. The justiciary made inquiry into the transaction, and proceeded against one Coustantine Fitz-Arnulf, one of the ringleaders, and by martial law ordered him to be hanged without any other form of trial. He also cut off the feet of some of his accomplices.
This act of cruelty, which tarnished the fair fame of Hubert, was also an infringement of the Great Charter; yet the same justiciary, in a parliament which was held at Oxford, granted a confirmation of the charter in the king's name.
The state of weakness into which the crown had fallen made it imperative for the ministers to use every exertion for the preservation of what remained of the royal prerogative, as well as to ensure the public liberties. Hubert applied to the Pope, the lord paramount of England, to issue a bull by which Henry was declared of age and entitled to govern. It was granted, and the justiciary resigned into the hands of the youthful sovereign the important fortresses of the Tower of London and Dover Castle, which had been committed to his custody, and at the same time called upon those barons who held similar trusts to imitate his example.
The nobles refused compliance; and the Earls of Chester and Albemarle, John de Lacy, Brian de L'Isle, and William de Cautel even entered into a conspiracy to surprise London, and assembled in arms at Waltham with that intention; but finding the king prepared to meet them, they at last desisted from their intention,
When summoned to appear at court to answer for there conduct, the rebels appeared, and not only confessed their design, but told Henry that, though they had no bad intentions against his person, they were determined to remove the justiciary, Hubert de Burgh, from his office. A second time they met in arms at Leicester with the same intention; but the primate and bishops, finding everything tending towards civil war, interposed their authority, and menaced them with excommunication if they persisted in detaining the king's castles. This threat prevailed, and most of the fortresses were surrendered.
The barons complained bitterly that the justiciary's castle was soon afterwards restored to him, whilst theirs were retained.
There were 1,115 of these strongholds, according to Hume, at that time in the kingdom.
This is one of the instances in which the influence of the clergy was exerted for the service of the nation. It is true that many of the prelates were little better than the feudal barons; that great corruptions had crept into the Church; that the assumption by the papacy of the suzerainty of England was against all law and common sense. Still, the great sway they held over the people kept the community from falling back into a state of anarchy and confusion. It threw authority into the hands of men who, by their profession, were adverse to arms and deeds of violence, and who still maintained, amid civil war and the shook of arms, those secret links without which it is impossible for human society to exist.
Notwithstanding the disturbed state of his kingdom, Henry found himself obliged to carry on war against France, and for this purpose employed the subsidy of a fifteenth which had been granted him by parliament.
His former rival, now king of that country under the title of Louis VIII., instead of complying with Henry's claim for Normandy, which he had promised to restore, entered Poitou, took Rochelle, after an obstinate siege, and seemed determined to expel the English from such provinces as remained to them in France.
The king sent over his uncle, the Earl of Salisbury, and his brother. Prince Richard, whom he had created Earl of Cornwall. They succeeded in arresting the progress of Louis, and retained the Poitevin and Gascon vassals in their allegiance, but no great action was fought on either side.
The Earl of Cornwall, after remaining two years in Guienne, returned to England.
This prince was nowise turbulent or factious in his disposition: his ruling passion was to amass money, in which he succeeded so well as to become the richest subject in Christendom; yet his attention to gain threw him sometimes into acts of violence, and gave great disturbance to the government. There was a manor, which had formerly belonged to the earldom of Cornwall, but had been granted to Waleran de Ties before Richard had been invested with that dignity, and while the earldom remained in the crown, Richard claimed this manor, and expelled the proprietor by force; Waleran complained. The king ordered his brother to do justice to the man, and restore him to his rights; the earl said that he would not submit to these orders till the cause should be decided against him by the judgment of his pewrs. Henry replied that it was first necessary to reinstate Waleran in possession before the cause could be tried, and rwiterated his orders to the earl. We may judge of the state of the government, when this affair had nearly produced a civil war. The Earl of Cornwall, finding Henry peremptory in his commands, associated himself with the young Earl of Pembroke, who had married his sister, and who was displeased on account of the king's requiring him to deliver up some royal castles which were in his custody. These two malcontents took into the confederacy the Earls of Chester, Warrenue, Gloucester, Hereford, Warwick, and Ferrers, who were all disgusted on a like account. They assembled an army, which the king had not the power or courage to resist; and he was obliged to give his brother satisfaction by grants of much greater importance than the manor, which had been the first ground of the quarrel.
The character of the king, as he grew to man's estate, became every day better known, and he was found in every respect unqualified for maintaining a proper sway among those turbulent barons whom the feudal constitution subjected to his authority. Gentle, humane, and merciful even to a fault, he seems to have been steady in no other circumstance of his character, but to have received every impression from those who surrounded him and whom he loved, for the time, with the most imprudent and most unreserved affection. Without activity or vigour, he was unfit to conduct war; without policy or art, he was ill fitted to maintain peace; his resentments, though hasty and violent, were not dreaded, while he was found to drop them with such facility; his friendships were little valued, because they were neither derived from choice nor maintained with constancy. A proper pageant of state in a regular monarchy, where his ministers could have conducted all affairs in his name and by his authority; but too feeble in those disorderly times to sway a sceptre, whose weight depended entirely on the firmness of the hand which held it. The ablest and most virtuous monitor that ever Henry possessed was Hubert de Burgh, a man who had been faithful to the crown in the most difficult and dangerous times, and yet showed no desire, even when at the height of power, to enslave or oppress the people.
The only exceptionable part of his conduct is that mentioned by Matthew Paris—of the credibility of which, however, grave doubts may be urged—namely, that it was by his advice the forest charter was annulled a concession so wise in itself, and so passionately desired both by the nobility and people.
Hubert's share in this unpopular act is most unlikely, both from his character and the circumstances of the times; and there is every reason to doubt its reality, especially as it is asserted by no other historian. This great man, while he enjoyed his authority, had an entire ascendancy over Henry, and was loaded with honours and favours beyond any other subject. Besides acquiring the property of many castles and mayors, he married the eldest sister of the King of Scots, was created Earl of Kent, and, by an unusual concession, was made chief justiciary of England for life; yet Henry, in a sudden caprice, threw off this faithful minister, and exposed him to the violent persecutions of his enemies. Among other frivolous crimes objected to him, he was accused of gaining the king's affections by enchantment, and of purloining from the royal treasury a gem, which had the virtue to render the wearer invulnerable, and of sending this valuable curiosity to the Prince of Wales. The nobility, who hated Hubert on account of his zeal in resuming the rights and possessions of the crown, no sooner saw the opportunity favourable, than they inflamed the king's animosity against him, and pushed him to seek the total ruin of his minister. Hubert took sanctuary in a church; the king ordered him to be dragged from thence. He recalled those orders; he afterwards renewed them. He was obliged by the clergy to restore him to the sanctuary. He constrained him soon after to surrender himself prisoner, and he confined him in the castle of Devizes. Hubert made his escape, was expelled the kingdom, was again received into favour, recovered a great share of the king's confidence, but never showed any inclination to reinstate himself in power and authority.
The man who succeeded him in the government of the kingdom and the favour of the king was Peter, Bishop of Winchester, a Poitevin by birth—a prelate who had been greatly favoured by John, and was no less distinguished by his arbitrary principles than by his great courage and abilities. He had been nominated justiciary and regent of England by King John, during an expedition which that monarch made into France; and there is little doubt that his illegal and oppressive administration was one of the causes of that combination amongst the barons which finally extorted from the crown the Magna Charta, and laid the foundation of the English constitution.
Henry, though incapable, from the weakness of his character, of pursuing the same violent course as his father had done, inherited all his arbitrary principles, and, by the advice of his new minister, invited over to England a great number of Poitevins and other foreigners, upon whom he conferred offices of considerable trust, as a means of counter-balancing the power of his nobility. Every post was confided to these strangers, who exhausted the revenues of the crown and invaded the rights of the people, till their insolence, which was even more offensive than their power, drew on them the hatred and envy of all classes of men throughout the kingdom.
In this crisis, the barons acted in a manner worthy of the descendants of those who had wrung the charter of English freedom from the hand of the tyrant John. Their first act of open opposition to this odious ministry was to withdraw in a body from parliament, under pretence that they were exposed to danger from the machinations of these foreigners.
When again summoned to attend, they demanded that the king should dismiss them, otherwise, they boldly declared, they would drive both him and them out of the kingdom, and place the crown upon the head of one more worthy to wear it. And when at last they did make their appearance in parliament, it was so well attended, that they seemed in a condition to prescribe laws both to the king and minister.
Peter des Roches had, however, in the meantime found means of sowing dissension amongst them, and found means of bringing over to his party the Earls of Cornwall, Lincoln, and Chester. The patriot barons were disconcerted in their measures. Doubt crept in amongst them; they no longer acted in unity.
Richard, the earl marshal, who had succeeded to that dignity on the death of his brother William, was chased into Wales, from whence he withdrew to Ireland, where he was barbarously murdered by the contrivance of the Bishop of Winchester. The estates of the more obnoxious barons were confiscated without any legal sentence or trial by the peers, and bestowed with profuse liberality upon the Poitevins.
Peter had even the insolence to say that the barons of England must not presume to put themselves on an equality with the barons of France, or assume the same liberties and privileges, the king of the former country having a more absolute power than the latter.
When the king at any time was checked in his illegal proceedings, and the authority of the Great Charter invoked, he was wont to reply—
"Why should I observe this charter, which is violated by all my nobles and prelates?"
On one occasion it was said to him—
"You ought, sire, to set them the example."
In the opposition of the nobility, and the discontent of the people, we may trace the slow but gradual growth of civil liberty. True, the struggle for absolute power was frequently renewed, and sometimes with success, but that success was only temporary. The nation never really gave way; and once more the Church came to the aid of the nation. Edmund, the primate, came to court, attended by many other prelates, and represented to the king the injustice of the measures pursued by Peter des Roches, the discontent and sufferings of the people, the ruin of his affairs, and after demanding the dismission of the obnoxious minister, threatened him with excommunication in the event of a refusal.
Henry, who knew that in the event of the primate carrying his threat into execution the entire nation would side against him, was compelled to submit; the foreigners were banished from the kingdom, and the English restored to their places in the council.
The primate, who was a prudent man, took care to execute the laws, and observe the charter of liberties. He bore the chief sway in the government.