Unfortunately for himself the third Henry inherited the continental
cosmopolitanism of his Angevin ancestors, and found
himself confronted with a nation which was growing ever more
and more insular in its ideals. He had all the ambitions of his
grandfather Henry II.; his dreams were of shattering the
newly-formed kingdom of France, the creation of Philip Augustus,
and of recovering all the lost lands of his forefathers on the Seine
and Loire. Occasionally his views grew yet wider—he would
knit up alliances all over Christendom and dominate the West.
Nothing could have been wilder and more unpractical than the
scheme on which he set his heart in 1255–1257, a plan for conquering
Naples and Sicily for his second son. Moreover it was
a great hindrance to him that he was a consistent friend and
supporter of the papacy. He had never forgotten the services
of the legates Pandulf and Gualo to himself and his father, and
was always ready to lend his aid to the political schemes of the
popes, even when it was difficult to see that any English interests
were involved in them. His designs, which were always shifting
from point to point of the continent, did not appeal in the least
to his subjects, who took little interest in Poitou or Touraine,
and none whatever in Italy. After the troubled times which
had lasted from 1214 to 1224 they desired nothing more than
peace, quietness and good governance. They had no wish to
furnish their master with taxation for French wars, or to follow
his banner to distant Aquitaine. But most of all did they dislike
his practice of flooding England with strangers from beyond
seas, for whom offices and endowments had to be found. The
moment that he had got rid of the honest and capable old
justiciar Hubert de Burgh, who had pacified the country during
his minority, and set the machinery of government once more
in regular order, Henry gave himself over to fostering horde
after horde of foreign favourites. There was first his Poitevin
chancellor, Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, with a numerous
band of his relations and dependents. As a sample of the
king’s methods it may be mentioned that he once made over
nineteen of the thirty-five sheriffdoms, within a fortnight, to Peter
of Rivaux, a nephew of the chancellor. Des Roches was driven
from office after two years (1234), and his friends and relatives
fell with him. But they were only the earliest of the king’s alien
favourites; quite as greedy were the second family of his mother,
Isabella of Angoulême, who after King John’s death had married
her old betrothed, Hugh of Lusignan. Henry secured great
English marriages for three of them, and made the fourth,
Aymer, bishop of Winchester. Their kinsmen and dependents
were equally welcomed. Even more numerous and no less expensive
to the realm were the Provençal and Savoyard relatives
of Henry’s queen, Eleanor of Provence. The king made one of
her uncles, Boniface of Savoy, archbishop of Canterbury—it
was three years before he deigned to come over to take up the
post, and then he was discovered to be illiterate and unclerical in
his habits, an unworthy successor for Langton and Edmund of
Abingdon, the great primates who went before him. Peter of
Savoy, another uncle, was perhaps the most shameless of all
the beggars for the king’s bounty; not only was he made earl
of Richmond, but his debts were repeatedly paid and great sums
were given him to help his continental adventures.
King Henry’s personal rule lasted from 1232, the year in which he deprived Hubert de Burgh of his justiciarship and confiscated most of his lands, down to 1258. It was thriftless, arbitrary, and lacking in continuity of policy, yet not tyrannical or cruel. If he had been a worse man he would have been put under control long before by his irritated subjects. All through these twenty-six years he was being opposed and criticised by a party which embraced the wisest and most patriotic section of the baronage and the hierarchy. It numbered among its leaders the good archbishop, Edmund of Abingdon, and Robert Grosseteste, the active and learned bishop of Lincoln; it was not infrequently aided by the king’s brother Richard, earl of Cornwall, who did not share Henry’s blind admiration for his foreign relatives. But it only found its permanent guiding spirit somewhat late in the reign, when Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, became the habitual mouthpiece of the grievances of the nation. The great earl had, oddly enough, commenced his career as one of the king’s foreign favourites. Simon de Monfort. He was the grandson of Amicia, countess of Leicester, but his father, Simon the Elder, a magnate whose French interests were greater than his English, had adhered to the cause of Philip Augustus in the days of King John and the Leicester estates had been confiscated. Simon, reared as a Frenchman, came over in 1230 to petition for their restoration. He not only obtained it, but to the great indignation of the English baronage married the king’s sister Eleanor in 1238. For some time he was in high favour with his brother-in-law, and was looked upon by the English as no better than Aymer de Valence or Peter of Savoy. But he quarrelled with the fickle king, and adhered ere long to the party of opposition. A long experience of his character and actions convinced barons and commons alike that he was a just and sincere man, a friend of good governance, and an honest opponent of arbitrary and unconstitutional rule. He had become such a thorough Englishman in his views and prejudices, that by 1250 he was esteemed the natural exponent of all the wrongs of the realm. He was austere and religious; many of his closest friends were among the more saintly of the national clergy. By the end of his life the man who had started as the king’s unpopular minion was known as “Earl Simon the Righteous,” and had become the respected leader of the national opposition to his royal brother-in-law.
Though Henry’s taxes were vexatious and never-ending,
though his subservience to the pope and his flighty interference
in foreign politics were ever irritating the magnates
and the people, and though outbreaks of turbulence
were not unknown during his long period of personal
Condition
of England under
Henry III.
rule, it would yet be a mistake to regard the central
years of the 13th century as an unprosperous period for
England. Indeed it would be more correct to regard the
period as one of steady national development in wealth, culture
and unity. The towns were growing fast, and extending their
municipal liberties; the necessities of John and the facile carelessness
of Henry led to the grant of innumerable charters and
privileges. As was to be seen again during the first period of the
reign of Charles I., political irritation is not incompatible either
with increasing material prosperity or with great intellectual
development. The king’s futile activity led to ever more frequent
gatherings of the Great Council, in which the theory of the
constitution was gradually hammered out by countless debates
between the sovereign and his subjects. Every time that Henry
confirmed the Great Charter, the fact that England was already
a limited monarchy became more evident. It is curious to find
that—like his father John—he himself contributed unconsciously
Beginnings of parliament.
to advances towards representative government.
John’s writ of 1213, bidding “discreet men” from each
shire to present themselves at Oxford, found its
parallel in another writ of 1253 which bids four knightly
delegates from each county to appear along with the tenants-in-chief,
for the purpose of discussing the king’s needs. When
county members begin to present themselves along with the
barons at the national assembly, the conception of parliament
is already reached. And indeed we may note that the precise
word “parliament” first appears in the chroniclers and in official
documents about the middle of Henry’s reign. By its end the
term is universally acknowledged and employed.
We may discern during these same years a great intellectual activity. This was the time of rapid development in the universities, where not only were the scholastic philosophy and systematic theology eagerly studied, but figures appear like that of the great Roger Bacon, a scientific Intellectual life. researcher of the first rank, whose discoveries in optics and chemistry caused his contemporaries to suspect him of magical arts. His teaching at Oxford in 1250–1257 fell precisely into the years of the worst misgovernance of Henry III. It was the same with law, an essentially 13th-century study; it was just in this age that the conception of law as something not depending on the pleasure of the king, nor compiled from mere collected ancestral customs, but existing as a logical entity, became
