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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part B.

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Title: The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol. I., Part B.

Author: David Hume


        
Release date: September 8, 2006 [eBook #19212]
                Most recently updated: September 1, 2016

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN THREE VOLUMES, VOL. I., PART B. ***




Produced by David Widger and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net







THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND

FROM THE INVASION OF JULIUS CÆSAR

TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND,


BY DAVID HUME, ESQ.

1688



London: James S. Virtue, City Road and Ivy Lane
New York: 26 John Street
1860

And

Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co.
March 17, 1901



In Three Volumes:

VOLUME ONE: The History Of England From The Invasion Of Julius Cæsar To
The End Of The Reign Of James The Second............ By David Hume, Esq.

VOLUME TWO: Continued from the Reign of William and Mary to the Death of
George II........................................... by Tobias Smollett.

VOLUME THREE: From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year
of the Reign of Queen Victoria............... by E. Farr and E.H. Nolan.




VOLUME ONE

Part B.

HENRY III. TO RICHARD III.




CHAPTER XII.

[Illustration: 1_155_henry3.jpg HENRY III.]




HENRY III.


{1216.} Most sciences, in proportion as they increase and improve,
invent methods by which they facilitate their reasonings, and, employing
general theorems, are enabled to comprehend, in a few propositions,
a great number of inferences and conclusions. History, also, being a
collection of facts which are multiplying without end, is obliged to
adopt such arts of abridgment, to retain the more material events, and
to drop all the minute circumstances, which are only interesting during
the time, or to the persons engaged in the transactions. This truth is
nowhere more evident than with regard to the reign upon which we are
going to enter. What mortal could have the patience to write or read a
long detail of such frivolous events as those with which it is filled,
or attend to a tedious narrative which would follow, through a series
of fifty-six years, the caprices and weaknesses of so mean a prince as
Henry? The chief reason why Protestant writers have been so anxious
to spread out the incidents of this reign, is in order to expose the
rapacity, ambition, and artifices of the court of Rome, and to prove,
that the great dignitaries of the Catholic church, while they pretended
to have nothing in view but the salvation of souls, had bent all their
attention to the acquisition of riches, and were restrained by no sense
of justice or of honor in the pursuit of that great object.[*] But this
conclusion would readily be allowed them, though it were not illustrated
by such a detail of uninteresting incidents; and follows indeed, by
an evident necessity, from the very situation in which that church
was placed with regard to the rest of Europe. For, besides that
ecclesiastical power, as it can always cover its operations under a
cloak of sanctity, and attacks men on the side where they dare not
employ their reason, lies less under control than civil government;
besides this general cause, I say, the pope and his courtiers were
foreigners to most of the churches which they governed; they could not
possibly have any other object than to pillage the provinces for present
gain; and as they lived at a distance, they would be little awed by
shame or remorse in employing every lucrative expedient which was
suggested to them. England being one of the most remote provinces
attached to the Romish hierarchy, as well as the most prone to
superstition, felt severely, during this reign, while its patience was
not yet fully exhausted, the influence of these causes, and we shall
often have occasion to touch cursorily upon such incidents. But we shall
not attempt to comprehend every transaction transmitted to us: and till
the end of the reign, when the events become more memorable, we shall
not always observe an exact chronological order in our narration.

     * M. Paris, p. 623.

The earl of Pembroke, who at the time of John’s death, was mareschal
of England, was, by his office, at the head of the armies, and
consequently, during a state of civil wars and convulsions, at the head
of the government; and it happened, fortunately for the young monarch
and for the nation, that the power could not have been intrusted into
more able and more faithful hands. This nobleman, who had maintained
his loyalty unshaken to John during the lowest fortune of that monarch,
determined to support the authority of the infant prince; nor was he
dismayed at the number and violence of his enemies. Sensible that
Henry, agreeably to the prejudices of the times, would not be deemed
a sovereign till crowned and anointed by a churchman, he immediately
carried the young prince to Glocester, where the ceremony of coronation
was performed, in the presence of Gualo, the legate, and of a few
noblemen, by the bishops of Winchester and Bath.[*] As the concurrence
of the papal authority was requisite to support the tottering throne,
Henry was obliged to swear fealty to the pope, and renew that homage to
which his father had already subjected the kingdom:[**] and in order to
enlarge the authority of Pembroke, and to give him a more regular
and legal title to it, a general council of the barons was soon after
summoned at Bristol, where that nobleman was chosen protector of the
realm.

     * M. Paris, p. 290. Hist Croyl. Cont. p. 474. W. Heming. p.
     562. Privet, p. 168.

     ** M. Paris, p. 200.

Pembroke, that he might reconcile all men to the government of his
pupil, made him grant a new charter of liberties, which, though mostly
copied from the former concessions extorted from John, contains some
alterations which may be deemed remarkable.[*] The full privilege of
elections in the clergy, granted by the late king, was not confirmed,
nor the liberty of going out of the kingdom without the royal consent:
whence we may conclude, that Pembroke and the barons, jealous of the
ecclesiastical power, both were desirous of renewing the king’s claim
to issue a congé d’élire to the monks and chapters, and thought it
requisite to put some check to the frequent appeals to Rome. But what
may chiefly surprise us is, that the obligation to which John had
subjected himself, of obtaining the consent of the great council before
he levied any aids or scutages upon the nation, was omitted; and this
article was even declared hard and severe, and was expressly left to
future deliberation. But we must consider, that, though this limitation
may perhaps appear to us the most momentous in the whole charter of
John, it was not regarded in that light by the ancient barons, who were
more jealous in guarding against particular acts of violence in the
crown than against such general impositions which, unless they were
evidently reasonable and necessary, could scarcely, without general
consent, be levied upon men who had arms in their hands, and who could
repel any act of oppression by which they were all immediately affected.
We accordingly find, that Henry, in the course of his reign, while he
gave frequent occasions for complaint with regard to his violations of
the Great Charter, never attempted, by his own will, to levy any aids
or scutages, though he was often reduced to great necessities, and was
refused supply by his people.

     * Rymer, vol. i. p. 215.

So much easier was it for him to transgress the law, when individuals
alone were affected, than even to exert his acknowledged prerogatives,
where the interest of the whole body was concerned.

This charter was again confirmed by the king in the ensuing year, with
the addition of some articles to prevent the oppressions by sheriffs;
and also with an additional charter of forests, a circumstance of great
moment in those ages, when hunting was so much the occupation of the
nobility, and when the king comprehended so considerable a part of the
kingdom within his forests, which he governed by peculiar and arbitrary
laws. All the forests, which had been enclosed since the reign of Henry
II., were disafforested, and new perambulations were appointed for that
purpose; offences in the forests were declared to be no longer capital,
but punishable by fine, imprisonment, and more gentle penalties; and all
the proprietors of land recovered the power of cutting and using their
own wood at their pleasure.

Thus these famous charters were brought nearly to the shape in which
they have ever since stood; and they were, during many generations, the
peculiar favorites of the English nation, and esteemed the most sacred
rampart to national liberty and independence. As they secured the rights
of all orders of men, they were anxiously defended by all, and became
the basis, in a manner, of the English monarchy, and a kind of original
contract which both limited the authority of the king and insured the
conditional allegiance of his subjects. Though often violated, they
were still claimed by the nobility and people; and as no precedents
were supposed valid that infringed them, they rather acquired than lost
authority, from the frequent attempts made against them in several ages
by regal and arbitrary power.

While Pembroke, by renewing and confirming the Great Charter, gave so
much satisfaction and security to the nation in general, he also applied
himself successfully to individuals; he wrote letters, in the king’s
name, to all the malcontent barons; in which he represented to them
that, whatever jealousy and animosity they might have entertained
against the late king, a young prince, the lineal heir of their ancient
monarchs, had now succeeded to the throne, without succeeding either
to the resentments or principles of his predecessor; that the desperate
expedient, which they had employed, of calling in a foreign potentate,
had, happily for them as well as for the nation, failed of entire
success, and it was still in their power, by a speedy return to their
duty, to restore the independence of the kingdom, and to secure that
liberty for which they so zealously contended; that as all past offences
of the barons were now buried in oblivion, they ought, on their part,
to forget their complaints against their late sovereign, who, if he had
been anywise blamable in his conduct had left to his son the salutary
warning, to avoid the paths which had led to such fatal extremities:
and that having now obtained a charter for their liberties, it was
their interest to show, by their conduct, that this acquisition was
not incompatible with their allegiance, and that the rights of king and
people, so far from being hostile and opposite, might mutually support
and sustain each other.[*]

These considerations, enforced by the character of honor and constancy
which Pembroke had ever maintained, had a mighty influence on the
barons; and most of them began secretly to negotiate with him, and
many of them openly returned to their duty. The diffidence which Lewis
discovered of their fidelity, forwarded this general propension towards
the king; and when the French prince refused the government of the
castle of Hertford to Robert Fitz-Walter, who had been so active against
the late king, and who claimed that fortress as his property, they
plainly saw that the English were excluded from every trust, and that
foreigners had engrossed all the confidence and affection of their new
sovereign.[**] The excommunication, too, denounced by the legate
against all the adherents of Lewis, failed not, in the turn which men’s
dispositions had taken, to produce a mighty effect upon them; and they
were easily persuaded to consider a cause as impious, for which they had
already entertained an unsurmountable aversion.[***] Though Lewis made
a journey to France, and brought over succors from that kingdom [****]
he found, on his return, that his party was still more weakened by the
desertion of his English confederates, and that the death of John had,
contrary to his expectations, given an incurable wound to his cause.
The earls of Salisbury Arundel, and Warrenne, together with William
Mareschal, eldest son of the protector, had embraced Henry’s party;
and every English nobleman was plainly watching for an opportunity of
returning to his allegiance.

     * Rymer, vol. i. p. 215. Brady’s App. No. 143.

     ** M. Paris, p. 200, 202.

     *** Ibid. p. 200 M. West, p. 277

     **** Chron. Dunst vol. i. p. 79.

Pembroke was so much strengthened by these accessions, that he ventured
to invest Mount Sorel; though, upon the approach of the count of Perche
with the French army, he desisted from his enterprise, and raised the
siege.[*] The count, elated with this success, marched to Lincoln; and
being admitted into the town, he began to attack the castle, which he
soon reduced to extremity. The protector summoned all his forces from
every quarter, in order to relieve a place of such importance; and he
appeared so much superior to the French, that they shut themselves up
within the city, and resolved to act upon the defensive.[**] But the
garrison of the castle, having received a strong reënforcement, made a
vigorous sally upon the besiegers; while the English army, by concert,
assaulted them in the same instant from without, mounted the walls by
scalade, and bearing down all resistance, entered the city sword in
hand. Lincoln was delivered over to be pillaged; the French army was
totally routed; the count de Perche, with only two persons more,
was killed, but many of the chief commanders, and about four hundred
knights, were made prisoners by the English.[***] So little blood was
shed in this important action, which decided the fate of one of the
most powerful kingdoms in Europe; and such wretched soldiers were those
ancient barons, who yet were unacquainted with every thing but arms!

     * M. Paris, p. 203

     ** Chron. Dunst vol. i. p. 81.

     *** M. Paris, p. 204, 205.

     **** Chron. de Mailr. p. 195.

Prince Lewis was informed of this fatal event while employed in the
siege of Dover, which was still valiantly defended against him by Hubert
de Burgh. He immediately retreated to London, the centre and life of his
party; and he there received intelligence of a new disaster, which
put an end to all his hopes. A French fleet, bringing over a strong,
reënforcement, had appeared on the coast of Kent; where they were
attacked by the English under the command of Philip d’Albiney, and were
routed with considerable loss. D’Albiney employed a stratagem against
them, which is said to have contributed to the victory: having gained
the wind of the French, he came down upon them with violence; and
throwing in their faces a great quantity of quick lime, which he
purposely carried on board, he so blinded them, that they were disabled
from defending themselves.[*]

After this second misfortune of the French, the English barons
hastened every where to make peace with the protector, and, by an early
submission, to prevent those attainders to which they were exposed
on account of their rebellion. Lewis, whose cause was now totally
desperate, began to be anxious for the safety of his person, and was
glad, on any honorable conditions, to make his escape from a country
where he found every thing was now become hostile to him. He concluded
a peace with Pembroke, promised to evacuate the kingdom, and only
stipulated in return an indemnity to his adherents, and a restitution of
their honors and fortunes, together with the free and equal enjoyment
of those liberties which had been granted to the rest of the nation.[**]
Thus was happily ended a civil war which seemed to be founded on the
most incurable hatred and jealousy, and had threatened the kingdom with
the most fatal consequences.

The precautions which the king of France used in the conduct of this
whole affair are remarkable. He pretended that his son had accepted of
the offer from the English barons without his advice, and contrary to
his inclination: the armies sent to England were levied in Lewis’s
name: when that prince came over to France for aid, his father publicly
refused to grant him any assistance, and would not so much as admit him
to his presence: even after Henry’s party acquired the ascendant, and
Lewis was in danger of falling into the hands of his enemies, it was
Blanche of Castile his wife, not the king his father, who raised armies
and equipped fleets for his succor.[***]

     *. M. Paris, p. 206. Ann. Waverl. p. 183. W. Heming. p. 563.
     Trivet, p. 109. M. West. p. 277. Knyghton, p. 2428.

     **. Rhymer, vol. i. p. 221. M. Paris, p. 207. Chron. Dunst.
     vol. i. p. 83. M. West. p. 278. Knyghton, p. 2429.

     *** M, Paris, p. 256. Chron. Dunst, vol. i. p. 82.

All these artifices were employed, not to satisfy the pope; for he had
too much penetration to be so easily imposed on: nor yet to deceive the
people; for they were too gross even for that purpose: they only served
for a coloring to Philip’s cause; and in public affairs men are often
better pleased that the truth, though known to every body, should
be wrapped up under a decent cover, than if it were exposed in open
daylight to the eyes of all the world.

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 favor; observed strictly the terms of peace which he had
granted them; restored them to their possessions; and endeavored, by an
equal behavior, to bury all past animosities in perpetual oblivion.
The clergy alone, who had adhered to Lewis, 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 favor; 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 earl of Pembroke did not long survive the pacification, which had
been chiefly owing to his wisdom and valor;[*] 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 neighbors; 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.

     * Brady’s App. No. 144. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 83.

     ** M. Paris, p. 210. * Trivet, p. 174

     *** Rymer, vol. i. p. 276.

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 Breauté,
Peter de Mauleon, and other barons, and both fortified the Gastle of
Biham for his defence, and made himself master by surprise of that of
Fotheringay. Pandulf, who was restored to his legateship, was active in
suppressing this rebellion; and with the concurrence of eleven bishops,
he pronounced the 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 associates
gradually deserted him; and he himself was obliged at last to sue for
mercy. He received a pardon, and was restored to his whole estate.

This impolitic lenity, too frequent in those times, was probably the
result of a secret combination among the barons, who never could endure
to see the total ruin of one of their own order: but it encouraged
Fawkes de Breauté, a man whom King John had raised from a low origin, to
persevere in the course of violence to which he had owed his fortune and
to set at nought all law and justice. When thirty-five verdicts were at
one time found against him, on account of his violent expulsion of so
many freeholders from their possessions, he came to the court of justice
with an armed force, seized the judge who had pronounced the verdicts,
and imprisoned him in Bedford Castle. He then levied open war against
the king; but being subdued and taken prisoner, his life was
granted him; but his estate was confiscated, and he was banished the
kingdom.[**]

     * Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 102.

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 198. M. Paris, p. 221, 224. Ann. Waverl
     p. 188, Chron. Dunst vol. i. p. 141, 146. M. West, p. 283.

{1222.} Justice was executed with greater severity against disorders
less premeditated, which broke out in London. A frivolous emulation in
a match of wrestling, between the Londoners on the one hand, and the
inhabitants of Westminster and those of the neighboring villages on the
other, occasioned this commotion. The former rose in a body, and pulled
down some houses belonging to the abbot of Westminster: but this riot,
which, considering the tumultuous disposition familiar to that capital,
would have been little regarded, seemed to become more serious by the
symptoms which then appeared of the former attachment of the citizens to
the French interest. The populace, in the tumult, made use of the cry
of war commonly employed by the French troops: “Mountjoy, Mountjoy,
God help us and our lord Lewis.” The justiciary made inquiry into the
disorder; and finding one Constantine Fitz-Arnulf to have been the
ring-*leader, an insolent man, who justified his crime in Hubert’s
presence, he proceeded against him by martial law, and ordered him
immediately to be hanged, without trial or form of process. He also cut
off the feet of some of Constantine’s accomplices.[*]

This act of power was complained of as an infringement of the Great
Charter: yet the justiciary, in a parliament summoned at Oxford, (for
the great councils about this time began to receive that appellation,)
made no scruple to grant in the king’s name a renewal and confirmation
of that charter. When the assembly made application to the crown for
this favor,--as a law in those times seemed to lose its validity if not
frequently renewed,--William de Briewere, one of the council of regency,
was so bold as to say openly, that those liberties were extorted by
force, and ought not to be observed: but he was reprimanded by the
archbishop of Canterbury, and was not countenanced by the king or his
chief ministers.[**] A new confirmation was demanded and granted two
years after; and an aid, amounting to a fifteenth of all movables, was
given by the parliament, in return for this indulgence. The king issued
writs anew to the sheriffs, enjoining the observance of the charter; but
he inserted a remarkable clause in the writs, that those who paid not
the fifteenth should not for the future be entitled to the benefit of
those liberties.[***]

     * M. Paris, p. 217, 218, 259. Ann. Waverl. p. 187. Chron.
     Dunst. vol. i. p. 129.

     ** M. West. p. 282.

     *** Clause ix. H. 3, m. 9, and m. 6, d.

The low state into which the crown was fallen, made it requisite for a
good minister to be attentive to the preservation of the royal
prerogatives, as well as to the security of public liberty. Hubert
applied to the pope, who had always great authority in the kingdom, and
was now considered as its superior lord, and desired him to issue a
bull, declaring the king to be of full age, and entitled to exercise in
person all the acts of royalty.[*] In consequence of this declaration,
the justiciary resigned into Henry’s hands the two important fortresses
of the Tower and Dover Castle, which had been intrusted to his custody;
and he required the other barons to imitate his example. They refused
compliance: the earls of Chester and Albemarle, John Constable of
Chester, John de Lacy, Brian de l’Isle, and William de Cantel, with some
others, even formed a conspiracy to surprise London, and met in arms at
Waltham with that intention: but finding the king prepared for defence,
they desisted from their enterprise. When summoned to court in order to
answer for their conduct, they scrupled not to appear, and to confess
the design: but they told the king that they had no bad intentions
against his person, but only against Hubert de Burgh, whom they were
determined to remove from his office.[**] They appeared too formidable
to be chastised; and they were so little discouraged by the failure of
their first enterprise, that they again met in arms at Leicester, in
order to seize the king, who then resided at Northampton: but Henry,
informed of their purpose, took care to be so well armed and attended,
that the barons found it dangerous to make the attempt; and they sat
down and kept Christmas in his neighborhood.[***] The archbishop and the
prelates, finding every thing tend towards a civil war, interposed with
their authority, and threatened the barons with the sentence of
excommunication, if they persisted in detaining the king’s castles. This
menace at last prevailed: most of the fortresses were surrendered;
though the barons complained that Hubert’s castles were soon after
restored to him, while the king still kept theirs in his own custody.
There are said to have been one thousand one hundred and fifteen castles
at that time in England.[****]

     * M. Paris, p. 220.

     ** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 137.

     *** M. Paris, p. 221. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 138.

     **** Coke’s Comment on Magna Charta, chap. 17.

It must be acknowledged that the influence of the prelates and the
clergy was often of great service to the public.

Though the religion of that age can merit no better name than that of
superstition, it served to unite together a body of men who had great
sway over the people, and who kept the community from falling to pieces,
by the factions and independent power of the nobles. And what was of
great importance, it threw a mighty authority into the hands of men, who
by their profession were averse to arms and violence, who tempered by
their mediation the general disposition towards military enterprises;
and who still maintained, even amidst the shock of arms, those secret
links, without which it is impossible for human society to subsist.

Notwithstanding these intestine commotions in England, and the
precarious authority of the crown, Henry was obliged to carry on war
in France; and he employed to that purpose the fifteenth which had been
granted him by parliament. Lewis VIII., who had succeeded to his father
Philip, instead of complying with Henry’s claim, who demanded the
restitution of Normandy and the other provinces wrested from England,
made an irruption into Poictou, took Rochelle[*] after a long siege,
and seemed determined to expel the English from the few provinces
which still remained to them. Henry sent over his uncle, the earl of
Salisbury, together with his brother, Prince Richard, to whom he had
granted the earldom of Cornwall, which had escheated to the crown.
Salisbury stopped the progress of Lewis’s arms, and retained the
Poictevin and Gascon vassals in their allegiance: but no military action
of any moment was performed on either side. The earl of Cornwall, after
two years’ stay in Guienne, returned to England.

     * Rymer, vol i. p. 269. Trivet, p. 179.

{1227.} 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 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 peers: Henry replied, that it was
first necessary to reinstate Waleran in possession, before the cause
could be tried; and he reiterated 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 malecontents took into the confederacy the earls of
Chester, Warrenne, Glocester, 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 vigor, 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 and
dexterity of the hand which held it.

     * M. Paris, p. 233.

     ** M. Paris, p. 233.

     *** M. Paris, p. 233.

The ablest and most virtuous minister that Henry ever possessed was
Hubert de Burgh;[*] a man who had been steady to the crown in the most
difficult and dangerous times, and who yet showed no disposition, in
the height of his power, to enslave or oppress the people. The only
exceptionable part of his conduct is that which is mentioned by Matthew
Paris,[**] if the fact be really true, and proceeded from Hubert’s
advice, namely, the recalling publicly and the annulling of the charter
of forests, a concession so reasonable in itself, and so passionately
claimed both by the nobility and people: but it must be confessed that
this measure is so unlikely, both from the circumstances of the times
and character of the minister, that there is reason to doubt of its
reality, especially as it is mentioned by no other historian. Hubert,
while he enjoyed his authority, had an entire ascendant over Henry, and
was loaded with honors and favors beyond any other subject.

{1231.} Besides acquiring the property of many castles and manors, 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 his 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 favorable,
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 the Devizes.
Hubert made his escape, was expelled the kingdom, was again received
into favor, recovered a great share of the king’s confidence, but
never showed any inclination to reinstate himself in power and
authority.[****]

     * Ypod. Neust. p. 464.

     ** Page 232. M. West (p. 216) ascribes this counsel to
     Peter, bishop of Winchester.

     *** M. Paris, p. 259.

     **** M. Paris, p. 259, 260, 261, 266. Chron. T. Wykes, p.
     41, 47 Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 220, 221. M. West, p. 291,
     301.

The man who succeeded him in the government of the king and kingdom, was
Peter, bishop of Winchester, a Poictevin by birth, who had been raised
by the late king, and who was no less distinguished by his arbitrary
principles and violent conduct, than by his courage and abilities. This
prelate had been left by King John justiciary and regent of the kingdom
during an expedition which that prince made into France; and his illegal
administration was one chief cause of that great combination among the
barons, which finally extorted from the crown the charter of liberties,
and laid the foundation of the English constitution. Henry, though
incapable, from his character, of pursuing the same violent maxims which
had governed his father, had imbibed the same arbitrary principles;
and in prosecution of Peter’s advice, he invited over a great number of
Poictevins and other foreigners, who, he believed, could more safely be
trusted than the English, and who seemed useful to counterbalance the
great and independent power of the nobility.[*] Every office and command
was bestowed on these strangers; they exhausted the revenues of the
crown, already too much impoverished;[**] they invaded the rights of the
people; and their insolence, still more provoking than their power, drew
on them the hatred and envy of all orders of men in the kingdom.[***]

{1233.} The barons formed a combination against this odious ministry,
and withdrew from parliament, on pretence of the danger to which
they were exposed from the machinations of the Poictevins. When again
summoned to attend, they gave for answer, that the king should dismiss
his foreigners, otherwise they would drive both him and them out of
the kingdom, and put the crown on another head, more worthy to wear it:
[****] such was the style they used to their sovereign. They at
last came to parliament, but so well attended, that they seemed in a
condition to prescribe laws to the king and ministry.

     * M. Paris, p. 263

     ** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 151.

     *** M. Paris, p. 258

     **** M. Paris, p 265.

Peter des Roches, however, had in the interval found means of sowing
dissension among them, and of bringing over to his party the earl of
Cornwall, as well as the earls of Lincoln and Chester. The confederates
were disconcerted in their measures: Richard, earl Mareschal, who had
succeeded to that dignity on the death of his brother William, was
chased into Wales; he thence withdrew into Ireland, where he
was treacherously murdered by the contrivance of the bishop of
Winchester.[*] The estates of the more obnoxious barons were
confiscated, without legal sentence or trial by their peers; [**] and
were bestowed with a profuse liberality on the Poictevins. Peter even
carried his insolence so far as to declare publicly, that the barons of
England must not pretend to put themselves on the same foot with those
of France, or assume the same liberties and privileges: the monarch in
the former country had a more absolute power than in the latter. It had
been more justifiable for him to have said, that men so unwilling to
submit to the authority of laws, could with the worst grace claim any
shelter or protection from them.

When the king at any time was checked in his illegal practices, and when
the authority of the Great Charter was objected to him, he was wont to
reply, “Why should I observe this charter, which is neglected by all my
grandees, both prelates and nobility?” It was very reasonably said to
him, “You ought, sir, to set them the example.” [***]

So violent a ministry as that of the bishop of Winchester could not be
of long duration; but its fall proceeded at last from the influence of
the church, not from the efforts of the nobles. Edmond, the primate,
came to court, attended by many of the other prelates, and represented
to the king the pernicious measures embraced by Peter des Roches, the
discontents of his people, the ruin of his affairs; and after requiring
the dismission of the minister and his associates, threatened him
with excommunication in case of his refusal. Henry, who knew that an
excommunication so agreeable to the sense of the people could not
fail of producing the most dangerous effects, was obliged to submit:
foreigners were banished; the natives were restored to their place in
council;[****] the primate, who was a man of prudence, and who took care
to execute the laws and observe the charter of liberties, bore the chief
sway in the government.

{1236.} But the English in vain flattered themselves that they should be
long free from the dominion of foreigners. The king, having married
Eleanor, daughter of the count of Provence,[*****] was surrounded by a
great number of strangers from that country, whom he caressed with the
fondest affection, and enriched by an imprudent generosity.[******]

     * Chron. Dunst. vol. i p. 219.

     ** M. Paris, p. 265.

     *** M. Paris, p. 608.

     **** M. Paris, p. 271, 272

     ***** Rymer, vol. i. p. 448.

     ****** M. Paris, p. 286.

The bishop of Valence, a prelate of the house of Savoy, and maternal
uncle to the queen, was his chief minister, and employed every art to
amass wealth for himself and his relations. Peter of Savoy, a brother of
the same family, was invested in the honor of Richmond, and received the
rich wardship of Earl Warrenne; Boniface of Savoy was promoted to the
see of Canterbury: many young ladies were invited over to Provence, and
married to the chief noblemen of England, who were the king’s wards.
[*] And, as the source of Henry’s bounty began to fail, his Savoyard
ministry applied to Rome, and obtained a bull, permitting him to resume
all past grants; absolving him from the oath which he had taken to
maintain them; even enjoining him to make such a resumption, and
representing those grants as invalid, on account of the prejudice which
ensued from them to the Roman pontiff, in whom the superiority of the
kingdom was vested.[**] The opposition made to the intended resumption
prevented it from taking place; but the nation saw the indignities to
which the king was willing to submit, in order to gratify the avidity of
his foreign favorites. About the same time he published in England the
sentence of excommunication, pronounced against the emperor Frederic,
his brother-in-law;[***] and said in excuse, that, being the pope’s
vassal, he was obliged by his allegiance to obey all the commands of his
holiness. In this weak reign, when any neighboring potentate insulted
the king’s dominions, instead of taking revenge for the injury, he
complained to the pope as his superior lord, and begged him to give
protection to his vassal.[****]

     * M. Paris, p. 236, 301, 305, 316, 541.

     **M. West. p. 302, 304.

     *** M. Paris, p. 484.

     ****M. West.p. 338.

{1247.} The resentment of the English barons rose high at the preference
given to foreigners; but no remonstrance or complaint could ever prevail
on the king to abandon them, or even to moderate his attachment towards
them. After the Provencals and Savoyards might have been supposed pretty
well satiated with the dignities and riches which they had acquired, a
new set of hungry foreigners were invited over, and shared among them
those favors which the king ought in policy to have conferred on the
English nobility, by whom his government could have been supported and
defended. His mother Isabella, who had been unjustly taken by the late
king from the count de la Marche, to whom she was betrothed, was no
mistress of herself by the death of her husband, than she married that
nobleman;[*] and she had born him four sons, Guy, William, Geoffrey, and
Aymer, whom she sent over to England, in order to pay a visit to their
brother. The good-natured and affectionate disposition of Henry was
moved at the sight of such near relations; and he considered neither his
own circumstances, nor the inclinations of his people, in the honors and
riches which he conferred upon them.[**] Complaints rose as high against
the credit of the Gascon, as ever they had done against that of the
Poictevin and of the Savoyard favorites; and to a nation prejudiced
against them, all their measures appeared exceptionable and criminal.
Violations of the Great Charter were frequently mentioned; and it is
indeed more than probable, that foreigners, ignorant of the laws, and
relying on the boundless affections of a weak prince, would, in an
age when a regular administration was not any where known, pay more
attention to their present interest than to the liberties of the people.
It is reported that the Poictevins and other strangers, when the
laws were at any time appealed to in opposition to their oppressions,
scrupled not to reply, “What did the English laws signify to them? They
minded them not.” And as words are often more offensive than actions,
this open contempt of the English tended much to aggravate the general
discontent, and made every act of violence committed by the foreigners
appear not only an injury, but an affront to them.[***]

I reckon not among the violations of the Great Charter some arbitrary
exertions of prerogative to which Henry’s necessities pushed him, and
which, without producing any discontent, were uniformly continued by all
his successors, till the last century. As the parliament often refused
him supplies, and that in a manner somewhat rude and indecent,[****] he
obliged his opulent subjects, particularly the citizens of London, to
grant him loans of money; and it is natural to imagine that the same
want of economy which reduced him to the necessity of borrowing,
would prevent him from being very punctual in the repayment.[*****] He
demanded benevolences, or pretended voluntary contributions, from his
nobility and prelates.[******]

     * Trivet, p. 174.

     ** M. Paris, p. 491. M. West. p. 338. Knyghton, p. 2436.

     *** M. Paris, p. 566, 666. Ann. Waverl. p. 214. Chron.
     Dunst. vol. i. p. 335.

     **** M. Paris, p. 301

     ***** M. Paris, p. 406.

     ****** M. Paris, p. 507

He was the first king of England, since the conquest, that could fairly
be said to lie under the restraint of law; and he was also the first
that practised the dispensing power, and he employed the clause of “non
obstante” in his grants and patents. When objections were made to this
novelty, he replied that the pope exercised that authority, and why
might not he imitate the example? But the abuse which the pope made of
his dispensing power, in violating the canons of general councils, in
invading the privileges and customs of all particular churches, and
in usurping on the rights of patrons, was more likely to excite the
jealousy of the people than to reconcile them to a similar practice in
their civil government. Roger de Thurkesby, one of the king’s justices,
was so displeased with the precedent, that he exclaimed, “Alas! what
times are we fallen into? Behold, the civil court is corrupted in
imitation of the ecclesiastical, and the river is poisoned from that
fountain.”

The king’s partiality and profuse bounty to his foreign relations, and
to their friends and favorites, would have appeared more tolerable to
the English, had any thing been done meanwhile for the honor of the
nation, or had Henry’s enterprises in foreign countries been attended
with any success or glory to himself or to the public; at least, such
military talents in the king would have served to keep his barons in
awe, and have given weight and authority to his government. But though
he declared war against Lewis IX. in 1242, and made an expedition into
Guienne, upon the invitation of his father-in-law, the count de
la Marche, who promised to join him with all his forces, he was
unsuccessful in his attempts against that great monarch, was worsted at
Taillebourg, was deserted by his allies, lost what remained to him of
Poictou, and was obliged to return with loss of honor into England.[*]

{1253.} The Gascon nobility were attached to the English government,
because the distance of their sovereign allowed them to remain in a
state of almost total independence; and they claimed, some time after,
Henry’s protection against an invasion which the king of Castile
made upon that territory. Henry returned into Guienne, and was more
successful in this expedition; but he thereby involved himself and his
nobility in an enormous debt, which both increased their discontents,
and exposed him to greater danger from their enterprises.[**]

     * M. Paris, p. 393, 394, 398, 399, 405. W. Heming. p. 574.
     Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 153.

     ** M. Paris, p. 414.

Want of economy and an ill-judged liberality were Henry’s great defects;
and his debts, even before this expedition, had become so troublesome,
that he sold all his plate and jewels, in order to discharge them. When
this expedient was first proposed to him, he asked where he should find
purchasers. It was replied, the citizens of London. “On my word,” said
he, “if the treasury of Augustus were brought to sale, the citizens are
able to be the purchasers: these clowns, who assume to themselves
the name of barons, abound in every thing, while we are reduced to
necessities.” [*] And he was thenceforth observed to be more forward and
greedy in his exactions upon the citizens.[**]

But the grievances which the English during this reign had reason
to complain of in the civil government, seem to have been still less
burdensome than those which they suffered from the usurpations and
exactions of the court of Rome. On the death of Langton, in 1228, the
monks of Christ-church elected Walter de Hemesham, one of their own
body, for his successor: but as Henry refused to confirm the election,
the pope, at his desire, annulled it;[***] and immediately appointed
Richard, chancellor of Lincoln, for archbishop, without waiting for a
new election. On the death of Richard, in 1231, the monks elected Ralph
de Neville, bishop of Chichester; and though Henry was much pleased with
the election, the pope, who thought that prelate too much attached
to the crown, assumed the power of annulling his election.[****] He
rejected two clergymen more, whom the monks had successively chosen; and
he at last told them that, if they would elect Edmond, treasurer of the
church of Salisbury, he would confirm their choice; and his nomination
was complied with. The pope had the prudence to appoint both times very
worthy primates; but men could not forbear observing his intention of
thus drawing gradually to himself the right of bestowing that important
dignity.

     * M. Paris, p. 501.

     ** M. Paris, p. 501, 507, 518, 578, 606, 625, 548.

     *** M. Paris, p. 244.

     **** M. Paris, p. 254.

The avarice, however, more than the ambition of the see of Rome, seems
to have been in this age the ground of general complaint. The papal
ministers, finding a vast stock of power amassed by their predecessors,
were desirous of turning it to immediate profit, which they enjoyed at
home, rather than of enlarging their authority in distant countries,
where they never intended to reside. Every thing was become venal in the
Romish tribunals: simony was openly practised; no favors, and even no
justice, could be obtained without a bribe; the highest bidder was
sure to have the preference, without regard either to the merits of the
person or of the cause; and besides the usual perversions of right in
the decision of controversies, the pope openly assumed an absolute
and uncontrolled authority of setting aside, by the plenitude of his
apostolic power, all particular rules, and all privileges of patrons,
churches, and convents. On pretence of remedying these abuses, Pope
Honorius, in 1226, complaining of the poverty of his see as the source
of all grievances, demanded from every cathedral two of the best
prebends, and from every convent two monks’ portions, to be set apart
as a perpetual and settled revenue of the papal crown; but all men
being sensible that the revenue would continue forever, and the abuses
immediately return, his demand was unanimously rejected. About
three years after, the pope demanded and obtained the tenth of all
ecclesiastical revenues, which he levied in a very oppressive manner;
requiring payment before the clergy had drawn their rents or tithes,
and sending about usurers, who advanced them the money at exorbitant
interest. In the year 1240, Otho the legate, having in vain attempted
the clergy in a body, obtained separately, by intrigues and menaces,
large sums from the prelates and convents, and on his departure is said
to have carried more money out of the kingdom than he left in it This
experiment was renewed four years after with success by Martin the
nuncio, who brought from Rome powers of suspending and excommunicating
all clergymen that refused to comply with his demands. The king, who
relied on the pope for the support of his tottering authority, never
failed to countenance those exactions.

Meanwhile all the chief benefices of the kingdom were conferred on
Italians; great numbers of that nation were sent over at one time to be
provided for; non-residence and pluralities were carried to an enormous
height; Mansel, the king’s chaplain, is computed to have held at once
seven hundred ecclesiastical livings; and the abuses became so evident,
as to be palpable to the blindness of superstition itself. The people,
entering into associations, rose against the Italian clergy; pillaged
their barns; wasted their lands; insulted the persons of such of them
as they found in the kingdom;[*] and when the justices made inquiry into
the authors of this disorder, the guilt was found to involve so many,
and those of such high rank, that it passed unpunished.

* Rymer, vol. i. p. 323. M. Paris, p. 255, 257.

At last, when Innocent IV., in 1245, called a general council at Lyons,
in order to excommunicate the emperor Frederic, the king and nobility
sent over agents to complain, before the council, of the rapacity of the
Romish church. They represented, among many other grievances, that the
benefices of the Italian clergy in England had been estimated, and were
found to amount to sixty thousand marks[*] a year, a sum which exceeded
the annual revenue of the crown itself.[**] They obtained only an
evasive answer from the pope; but as mention had been made, before the
council, of the feudal subjection of England to the see of Rome,
the English agents, at whose head was Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk,
exclaimed against the pretension, and insisted that King John had no
right, without the consent of his barons, to subject the kingdom to
so ignominious a servitude.[***] The popes, indeed, afraid of carrying
matters too far against England, seem thenceforth to have little
insisted on that pretension.

This check, received at the council of Lyons, was not able to stop the
court of Rome in its rapacity: Innocent exacted the revenues of all
vacant benefices, the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues without
exception; the third of such as were exceeded a hundred marks a year;
the half of such as were possessed by non-residents.[****] He claimed
the goods of all intestate clergymen;[*****] he pretended a title to
inherit all money gotten by usury: he levied benevolences upon the
people; and when the king, contrary to his usual practice, prohibited
these exactions, he threatened to pronounce against him the same
censures which he had emitted against the emperor Frederic.[******]

     * Innocent’s bull in Rymer, vol. i. p. 471, says only fifty
     thousand marks a year.

     ** M. Paris, p. 451. The customs were part of Henry’s
     revenue, and amounted to six thousand pounds a year: they
     were at first email sums paid by the merchants for the use
     of the king’s ware-houses, measures, weights, etc. See
     Gilbert’s History of the Exch p. 214.

     *** M. Paris, p. 460.

     **** M. Paris, p. 480. Ann. Burt. p. 305, 573.

     ***** M. Paris, p. 474.

     ****** M. Paris, p. 476.

{1255.} But the most oppressive expedient employed by the pope, was the
embarking of Henry in a project for the conquest of Naples, or Sicily
on this side the Fare, as it was called; an enterprise which threw
much dishonor on the king, and involved him, during some years, in great
trouble and expense. The Romish church, taking advantage of favorable
incidents, had reduced the kingdom of Sicily to the same state of feudal
vassalage which she pretended to extend over England; and which, by
reason of the distance, as well as high spirit of this latter kingdom,
she was not able to maintain. After the death of the emperor Frederic
II., the succession of Sicily devolved to Conradine, grandson of that
monarch; and Mainfroy, his natural son, under pretence of governing
the kingdom during the minority of the prince, had formed a scheme
of establishing his own authority. Pope Innocent, who had carried
on violent war against the emperor Frederic, and had endeavored to
dispossess him of his Italian dominions, still continued hostilities
against his grandson; but being disappointed in all his schemes by the
activity and artifices of Mainfroy, he found that his own force alone
was not sufficient to bring to a happy issue so great an enterprise.
He pretended to dispose of the Sicilian crown, both as superior lord of
that particular kingdom, and as vicar of Christ, to whom all kingdoms of
the earth were subjected; and he made a tender of it to Richard, earl of
Cornwall, whose immense riches, he flattered himself, would be able to
support the military operations against Mainfroy. As Richard had the
prudence to refuse the present,[*] he applied to the king, whose levity
and thoughtless disposition gave Innocent more hopes of success; and he
offered him the crown of Sicily for his second son, Edmond.[**]
Henry, allured by so magnificent a present, without reflecting on
the consequences, without consulting either with his brother or the
parliament, accepted of the insidious proposal, and gave the pope
unlimited credit to expend whatever sums he thought necessary for
completing the conquest of Sicily. Innocent, who was engaged by his
own interests to wage war with Mainfroy, was glad to carry on his
enterprises at the expense of his ally: Alexander IV., who succeeded him
in the papal throne, continued the same policy, and Henry was surprised
to find himself on a sudden involved in an immense debt, which he had
never been consulted in contracting. The sum already amounted to a
hundred and thirty-five thousand five hundred and forty-one marks,
beside interest;[***] and he had the prospect, if he answered this
demand, of being soon loaded with more exorbitant expenses if he refused
it, of both incurring the pope’s displeasure, and losing the crown of
Sicily, which he hoped soon to have the glory of fixing on the head of
his son.

     * M. Paris, p.650.

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 502, 512, 530. M. Paris, p. 599, 613

     *** Rymer, vol i. p. 587. Chron. Dunst vol. i. p. 319.

He applied to the parliament for supplies; and that he might be sure not
to meet with opposition, he sent no writs to the more refractory barons:
but even those who were summoned, sensible of the ridiculous cheat
imposed by the pope, determined not to lavish their money on such
chimerical projects; and making a pretext of the absence of their
brethren, they refused to take the king’s demands into consideration.[*]
In this extremity the clergy were his only resource; and as both their
temporal and spiritual sovereign concurred in loading them, they were
ill able to defend themselves against this united authority.

The pope published a crusade for the conquest of Sicily; and required
every one who had taken the cross against the infidels, or had vowed to
advance money for that service, to support the war against Mainfroy, a
more terrible enemy, as he pretended, to the Christian faith than
any Saracen.[**] He levied a tenth on all ecclesiastical benefices in
England for three years; and gave orders to excommunicate all bishops
who made not punctual payment. He granted to the king the goods of
intestate clergymen; the revenues of vacant benefices, the revenues of
all non-residents.[***] But these taxations, being levied by some rule,
were deemed less grievous than another imposition, which arose from the
suggestion of the bishop of Hereford, and which might have opened the
door to endless and intolerable abuses.

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 a 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.[****] 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.

     * M. Paris, p. 614

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 547, 548, etc.

     *** Rymer, vol. i. p. 597, 598.

     **** M. Paris, p. 612, 628. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 54.

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.[*] 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.[**] In the end, the bishops and
abbots, being threatened with excommunication, which made all their
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;[***] 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.[****]

     * M. Paris, p. 614.

     ** M. Paris, p. 619

     *** Rymer, vol. i. p. 624. M. Paris, p. 648.

     **** Rymer, vol. i. p. 630.

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 honors 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 expensive 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,[*] which is
probably much exaggerated.[**] 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 connections 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.

     * 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 this whole reign, according to the same author,
     had amounted only to about nine hundred and forty thousand
     marks, (p. 638.)

     ** 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.

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 vigor 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 favorites, 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,[*] 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 pupillage 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 violators 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.

     * M. Paris, p. 432.

Four years after, in a full parliament, when Henry demanded a new
supply, he was openly reproached with the 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 vexations 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
harbors 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.[*] 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.

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.[**] 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,[***]
and the uncanonical and forced elections which were made to vacant
dignities.

     * M. Paris, p. 498. See further, p. 578. M. West. p. 348.

     ** M. Paris, p. 518, 558, 568. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 293.


     *** M. Paris, p. 568.

“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.” [*] 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.” [**] Yet was the tremendous ceremony
no sooner finished, than his favorites, 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.[***]

     * M. Paris, p. 579.

     ** Ibid. p. 580. Ann. Burt. p. 323. Ann. Waverl. p. 210. W
     Heming. p. 571. M. West. p. 353.

     *** M. Paris, p. 597, 608.

{1258.} All these imprudent and illegal measures afforded a pretence to
Simon de Mountfort, 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
Mountfort who had conducted with such valor 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;[*] 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 favor and authority
alone.[**] 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,[***] where he
did good service and acquired honor; he was again disgraced by the king,
and his banishment from court seemed now final and irrevocable. Henry
called him traiter 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 favor and authority. But as this nobleman was become too
great to preserve an entire complaisance to Henry’s humors, 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 himself a foreigner, he was
more loud than any in representing the indignity of submitting to the
dominion of foreigners.

     * M. Paris, p. 314.

     ** Ibid, p. 315.

     *** Rymer, vol. i. p. 459, 513.

By his hypocritical pretensions to devotion he gained the favor 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 favorites
created a union of interests between him and that powerful order.

A recent quarrel which broke out between Leicester and William de
Valence, Henry’s half brother and chief favorite, brought matters to
extremity,[*] 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
Glocester; 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 this conduct, he appealed to the Great Charter, which Henry
had so often ratified, and which was calculated to prevent forever 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 insure the
regular observance of them.

     * M. Paris, p. 649.

These topics, which were founded in truth, and suited so well 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
armor, 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 pretended to make him their prisoner.[*] 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.

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.[**] Leicester was at the head of this supreme council,
to which the legislative power was thus in reality transferred; and all
their measures were taken by his secret influence and direction.

     * Annal. Theokesoury.

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 655. Chron. Dunst. vol.i. p. 334.
     Knyghton p. 2445.

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 neighborhood 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;[*] 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;[**] 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.

     * M. Paris, p. 657. Addit. p. 140. Ann. Burt, p, 412.

     ** 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 clamor 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.

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
forever 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
that 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 offices 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 honor of the church, the service of the king, and the
advantage of the kingdom.[*]

     * Chron. T. Wykes, p. 52.

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.[*] Earl Warrenne was the last person in the kingdom
that could be brought to give the confederated barons this mark of
submission.

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-erected oligarchy.

{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.[**] 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. [***]

     * Ann. Burt. p. 411.

     ** M. Paris, p. 661.

     *** 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.[*] 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 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.[**] 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.[***]

The barons, urged by so pressing a necessity, published at last a new
code of ordinances for the reformation of the state: [****] 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 further prolong their authority, in order to
bring the work of reformation to the desired period.

     * M. Paris, p. 667. Trivet, p. 209.

     ** Ann. Burt. p. 427.

     *** Ann Burt. p. 427.

     **** Ann. Burt. p. 428, 439

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 Glocester, 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.[*]

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,[**] 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
a compliance with Henry.

     * Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 348.

     ** M. Paris, p. 604.

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 insured 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.[*]
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.[**] 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
intentions, was reduced by the turbulence of his own subjects.

{1261.} But the situation of Henry soon after wore a more favorable
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 Glocester 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.[***]

     * Rymer, vol. i. p 675. M. Paris, p. 566. Chron. T. Wykes,
     p, 53. Trivet, p. 208 M. West. p. 371.

     ** Chron. T. Wykes, p. 53.

     *** Ann. Burt. p. 389.

The pope was at this time much dissatisfied with the conduct of the
barons; who, in order to gain the favor 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 the order; and an attempt which had been made by them for further
liberty and greater independence on the civil power, was therefore less
acceptable to the court of Rome.[*] 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 further 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.[**] 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.[***] 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.[****]

     * Rymer, vol. i. p. 755.

     ** Ann. Burt. p. 389.

     *** Rymer, vol. i. p. 755.

     **** Rymer, vol. i. p. 722. M. Paris, p. 666. W. Heming. p,
     580. Ypod. Neust. p; 468. Knyghton, p. 2446.

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 thus 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:[*] he himself had been constrained by
violence to take that oath; yet was he 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.

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 reassembled 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.

{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 favor 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, be declared that
he had resumed the government, and was determined thenceforth to exert
the royal authority for the protection of his subjects.

     * M. Paris. D. 667.

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 honor; he placed new governors in most of the
castles; he changed all the officers of his household; 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.[*]

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.[**] 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 ol the English:
he forwarded all healing measures which might give security to
both parties: and he still endeavored, 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.

     * M. Paris, p. 668. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 55.

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 724.

{1263.} That bold and artful conspirator was nowise discouraged by
the bad success of his past enterprises. The death of Richard, earl
of Glocester, 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 with 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. Many of them engaged
in Leicester’s views, and among the rest, Gilbert, the young earl
of Glocester, 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 behavior 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 dishonorable 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, endeavoring 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 foil 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;[*] 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 further progress against the enemy by the disorders which soon
after broke out in England.

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.[**] 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,[***] 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 license to pillage the barons of the
opposite party, and even all neutral persons.

     * Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 354.

     ** Trivet, p. 211. M. West. p. 382, 392.

     *** Trivet, p. 211. M. West. p. 382.

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.[*] The Lombard bankers
were 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 neighborhood 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[**]

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.[***]

     * Chron T. Wykes, p. 59.

     ** Chron. T. Wykes, p. 57.

     *** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 358. Trivet, p. 211.

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 of 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.
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.

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;[*] 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 mareschal, Earl Warrenne, Humphrey Bohun, earl of Hereford,
John Lord Basset, Ralph Basset, Hammond l’Estrange, Roger Mortimer, Henry
de Piercy, Robert de 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 favor 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 clamor 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.[**]

     * M. Paris, p. 669. Trivet, p. 213.

     ** M. Paris, p. 668, Chron. T. Wykes, p. 58. W. Heming, p.
     580. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 363.

{1264.} This virtuous prince, the only man, who, in like circumstances,
could safely have been intrusted with such an authority by a neighboring
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 endeavors 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 honorable purpose: 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 Mountfort,
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. 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, reestablished 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.[*]

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.[**]

     * Rymer, vol. i. p. 776, 777, etc. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 58.
     Knyghton, p. 2446.

     ** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 363.

Without regard to his oaths and subscriptions, that enterprising
conspirator directed his two sons, richard and Peter de Mountfort, in
conjunction with Robert de Ferrers, earl of Derby, to attack the city of
Worcester; while Henry and Simon de Mountfort, 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, Glocester,
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.

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,[*] 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 Mountfort, 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. 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.

     * 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. Reënforced
[**unusual spelling but that is what it looks like] 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 coloring to his cause, he
previously sent a message with conditions of peace to Henry, submissive
in the language, but exorbitant in the demands;[*] 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
Mountfort, together with Humphrey de Bohun, earl of Hereford, who had
deserted to the barons; the second led by the earl of Glocester, 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.

     * M. Paris, p. 669. W. Heming. p. 583.

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 honor 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 ardor, and eager to revenge the insolence of the Londoners
against his mother,[*] 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 Glocester: 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.[**]

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 Pevencey, and made their escape
beyond sea:[***] 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.[****] 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.[*****]

     * M. Paris, p. 670. Chron. T. Wykes, P 62

     ** W. Heming. p. 583 M. West p. 337. Ypod. Neust. p. 469.

     *** Kynghton, p. 2450.

     **** M. Paris, p. 670.

     ***** M. West, p., 387.

     ****** Chron. T. Wyke, p. 63. W. Heming. p. 584.

     ******* W. Heming. p. 581.

There now appeared no further 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;[*] 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.

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.[**] He every where disarmed the
royalists, and kept all his own partisans in, a military posture:[***]
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.

     * M. Paris, p. 671. Knyghton, p. 2451.

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 790, 791, etc.

     *** Rymer, vol. i. p. 795. Brady’s Appeals, No. 211, 212.
     Chron. T. Wykes, p. 63.

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;[*]
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 further 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:[**] he even treated the
earl of Glocester 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.[***] 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 harbors. 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.[****]

     * Rymer, vol. i. p. 792.

     ** Knyghton, p. 2451.

     *** Chron. T. Wykes, p. 65.

     **** Chron. T. Wykes, p. 6.

No further 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 Glocester, and the
bishop of Chichester.[*] 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.

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
favored 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 sea-coast, to oppose
this projected invasion;[**] 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.

     * Rymer, vol. i. p. 793. Brady’s Appeals, No. 213.

     ** Brady’s Appeals, 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, Glocester, and Norfolk, and all others in general, who
concurred in the oppression and captivity of their sovereign.[*]
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.

{1265.} 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.[**] 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 and even in the most particular narratives delivered of
parliamentary transactions, as in the trial of Thomas à Becket, where
the events of each day, and almost of each hour, are carefully recorded
by contemporary authors,[***] there is not, throughout the whole, the
least appearance of a house of commons.

     * Rymer, vol. i. p. 798. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 373.

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 802.

     *** Fitz-Stephen, Hist. Quadrip. Hoveden, etc.

In all the general accounts given in preceding times of those
assemblies, the prelates and barons only are mentioned as the
constituent members. 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
inconveniencies, contributed to favor 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.

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 Ferrers, earl of Derby, was accused in the king’s name, seized, and
committed to custody, without being brought to any legal trial.[*] John
Gifford, menaced with the same fate, fled from London, and took shelter
in the borders of Wales. Even the earl of Glocester, 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.[**] 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.

     * Chron. T. Wykes, p. 66. Ann. Waverl. p. 216.

     ** M. Paris, p. 671. Ann. Waverl. p. 211.

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.

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 anguished 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.[*]
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.[**] 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.[***] 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.

     * Knyghton, p. 2451.

     ** Ann. Waverl. p. 216.

     *** Blackstone’s Mag. Chart. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 378.

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 Glocester, 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,[*] continued
still to menace ana negotiate, and that he might add authority to his
cause, he carried both the king and prince along with him. The earl of
Glocester 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 Glocester’s horse, and called
to his attendants that he had long enough enjoyed the pleasure of
their company, and now bade 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.

     * Chron. T. Wykes, p. 67. Ann. Waverl. p. 218. W. Heming, p.
     585. Chron Durst. vil. i 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 labored, the expectation of a new scene of
affairs, and the countenance of the earl of Glocester, 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 Mountfort, 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 favorable moment, appeared in
the field before him. 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 in 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 armor, 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, coöperate
towards the success of his selfish and dangerous purposes. A prince of
greater abilities and vigor 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.[*]

{1266.} The victory of Evesham, with the death of Leicester, proved
decisive in favor 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 valor and
activity of Prince Edward.[**] Adam de Gourdon, a courageous baron,
maintained himself during some time in the forests of Hampshire,
committed depredations in the neighborhood, and obliged the prince to
lead a body of troops into that country against him. Edward attacked the
camp of the rebels; and being transported by the ardor 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 favor, 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
favor, and was ever after faithfully served by him.[***]

     * Chron. de Mailr. p. 232.

     ** M. Paris p. 676. W. Heming. p. 588.

     *** M. Paris, p 575

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 Mountfort 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;[*] 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.

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 endeavoring 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. Paris, p. 675.

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 879; vol. ii. p. 4, 6. Chron. T. Wykes,
     p. 94 W. Heming. p. 589. Trivet, p. 240.

{1267.} The merits of the earl of Glocester, 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 Glocester 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.

{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;[*] and he
endeavored 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 Glocester 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.[**]

     * M. Paris, p. 677

     ** Chron. T. Wykes, p. 90.

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 this 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.

{1271.} Prince Edward, not discouraged by this event, continued his
voyage to the Holy Land, where he signalized himself by acts of valor;
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.[*] 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: 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,[**] and
to assist him in swaying that sceptre which was ready to drop from
his feeble and irresolute hands. 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.

     * M. Paris, p. 678, 679. W. Heming, p. 520.

     ** Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 404.

     *** Kymer, vol. i. p. 869. M. Paris, p. 678.

{1272.} His brother, the king of the Romans, (for he never attained the
title of emperor,) died about seven months before him.

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 favorites, 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
favorites, 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 are there
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.[*]

     * 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 Brittany. He had five other children, who died in their
infancy.

The following are the most remarkable laws enacted during this reign.
There had been great disputes between the civil and ecclesiastical
courts concerning bastardy. The common law had deemed all those to
be bastards who were born before wedlock; by the canon law they were
legitimate: and when any dispute of inheritance arose, it had formerly
been usual for the civil courts to issue writs to the spiritual,
directing them to inquire into the legitimacy of the person. The bishop
always returned an answer agreeable to the canon law, though contrary to
the municipal law of the kingdom. For this reason, the civil courts had
changed the terms of their writ; and instead of requiring the spiritual
courts to make inquisition concerning the legitimacy of the person, they
only proposed the simple question of fact, whether he were born before
or after wedlock. The prelates complained of this practice to the
parliament assembled at Merton in the twentieth of this king, and
desired that the municipal law might be rendered conformable to the
canon; but received from all the nobility the memorable reply, “Nolumus
leges Angliae mutare.” We will not change the laws of England.[*]

After the civil wars, the parliament summoned at Marlebridge gave their
approbation to most of the ordinances which had been established by the
reforming barons, and which though advantageous to the security of the
people, had not received the sanction of a legal authority. Among other
laws, it was there enacted, that all appeals from the courts of inferior
lords should be carried directly to the king’s courts, without passing
through the courts of the lords immediately superior.[**] It was
ordained, that money should bear no interest during the minority of
the debtor.[***] This law was reasonable, as the estates of minors
were always in the hands of their lords, and the debtors could not pay
interest where they had no revenue. The charter of King John had granted
this indulgence: it was omitted in that of Henry III., for what reason
is not known; but it was renewed by the statute of Marlebridge. Most
of the other articles of this statute are calculated to restrain the
oppressions of sheriffs, and the violence and iniquities committed
in distraining cattle and other goods. Cattle and the instruments of
husbandry formed at that time the chief riches of the people.

In the thirty-fifth year of this king, an assize was fixed of bread, the
price of which was settled according to the different prices of corn,
from one shilling a quarter to seven shillings and sixpence,[****]
money of that age. These great variations are alone a proof of bad
tillage:[*****] yet did the prices often rise much higher than any taken
notice of by the statute.

     * Statute of Merton, chap. 9.

     ** Statute of Marlb. chap. 20.

     *** Ibid. chap. 16.

     **** Statutes at large, p. 6.

     ***** We learn from Cicero’s orations against Verres, (lib.
     iii. cap. 81, 92,) that the price of corn in Sicily was,
     during the preetorship of Sacerdos five denarii amodius;
     during that of Verres, which immediately succeeded, only two
     sesterces; that is, ten times lower; a presumption, or
     rather a proof, of the very bad state of tillage in ancient
     times.

The Chronicle of Dunstable tells us, that in this reign wheat was once
sold for a mark, nay, for a pound a quarter; that is, three pounds of
our present money.[*] The same law affords us a proof of the little
communication between the parts of the kingdom, from the very different
prices which the same commodity bore at the same time. A brewer, says
the statute, may sell two gallons of ale for a penny in cities, and
three or four gallons for the same price in the country. At present,
such commodities, by the great consumption of the people, and the great
stocks of the brewers, are rather cheapest in cities. The Chronicle
above mentioned observes, that wheat one year was sold in many places
for eight shillings a quarter, but never rose in Dunstable above a
crown.

     * So also Knyghton, p. 2444.

Though commerce was still very low, it seems rather to have increased
since the conquest; at least, if we may judge of the increase of money
by the price of corn. The medium between the highest and lowest prices
of wheat, assigned by the statute, is four shillings and threepence a
quarter; that is, twelve shillings and ninepence of our present money.
This is near half of the middling price in our time. Yet the middling
price of cattle, so late as the reign of King Richard, we find to be
above eight, near ten times lower than the present. Is not this the true
inference, from comparing these facts, that, in all uncivilized nations,
cattle, which propagate of themselves, bear always a lower price than
corn, which requires more art and stock to render it plentiful than
those nations are possessed of? It is to be remarked, that Henry’s
assize of corn was copied from a preceding assize established by King
John; consequently, the prices which we have here compared of corn and
cattle may be looked on as contemporary; and they were drawn, not from
one particular year, but from an estimation of the middling prices for
a series of years. It is true, the prices assigned by the assize of
Richard were meant as a standard for the accompts of sheriffs and
escheators and as considerable profits were allowed to these ministers,
we may naturally suppose that the common value of cattle was somewhat
higher: yet still, so great a difference between the prices of corn and
cattle as that of four to one, compared to the present rates, affords
important reflections concerning the very different state of industry
and tillage in the two periods.

Interest had in that age mounted to an enormous height, as might
be expected from the barbarism of the times and men’s ignorance of
commerce. Instances occur of fifty per cent. paid for money.[*] There
is an edict of Philip Augustus, near this period, limiting the Jews in
France to forty-eight per cent.[**] Such profits tempted the Jews to
remain in the kingdom, notwithstanding the grievous oppressions to
which, from the prevalent bigotry and rapine of the age, they were
continually exposed. It is easy to imagine how precarious their state
must have been under an indigent prince, somewhat restrained in his
tyranny over his native subjects, but who possessed an unlimited
authority over the Jews, the sole proprietors of money in the kingdom,
and hated on account of their riches, their religion, and their usury;
yet will our ideas scarcely come up to the extortions which in fact we
find to have been practised upon them. In the year 1241, twenty thousand
marks were exacted from them;[***] two years after money was again
extorted; and one Jew alone, Aaron of York, was obliged to pay above
four thousand marks;[****] in 1250, Henry renewed his oppressions; and
the same Aaron was condemned to pay him thirty thousand marks upon an
accusation of forgery;[*****] the high penalty imposed upon him, and
which, it seems, he was thought able to pay, is rather a presumption of
his innocence than of his guilt.

     * M. Paris, p. 586.

     ** Brussel, Traité des Fiefs, vol. i, p. 576.

     *** M. Paris, p. 372.

     **** M. Paris, p. 410.

     ***** M. Paris, p. 525.

In 1255, the king demanded eight thousand marks from the Jews, and
threatened to hang them if they refused compliance. They now lost all
patience, and desired leave to retire with their effects out of the
kingdom. But the king replied, “How can I remedy the oppressions you
complain of? I am myself a beggar. I am spoiled, I am stripped of all
my revenues; I owe above two hundred thousand marks; and if I had said
three hundred thousand, I should not exceed the truth; I am obliged to
pay my son, Prince Edward, fifteen thousand marks a year; I have not a
farthing; and I must have money from any hand, from any quarter, or by
any means.” He then delivered over the Jews to the earl of Cornwall,
that those whom the one brother had flayed, the other might embowel, to
make use of the words of the historian.[*] King John, his father, once
demanded ten thousand marks from a Jew of Bristol; and on his refusal,
ordered one of his teeth to be drawn every day till he should comply.
The Jew lost seven teeth, and then paid the sum required of him.[**]
One talliage laid upon the Jews, in 1243, amounted to sixty thousand
marks;[***] a sum equal to the whole yearly revenue of the crown.

To give a better pretence for extortions, the improbable and absurd
accusation, which has been at different times advanced against that
nation, was revived in England, that they had crucified a child in
derision of the sufferings of Christ. Eighteen of them were hanged at
once for this crime;[****] though it is nowise credible that even the
antipathy borne them by the Christians, and the oppressions under which
they labored, would ever have pushed them to be guilty of that dangerous
enormity. But it is natural to imagine, that a race exposed to such
insults and indignities, both from king and people, and who had so
uncertain an enjoyment of their riches, would carry usury to the utmost
extremity, and by their great profits make themselves some compensation
for their continual perils.

Though these acts of violence against the Jews proceeded much from
bigotry, they were still more derived from avidity and rapine. So far
from desiring in that age to convert them, it was enacted by law in
France, that if any Jew embraced Christianity, he forfeited all his
goods, without exception, to the king or his superior lord. These
plunderers were careful lest the profits accruing from their dominion
over that unhappy race should be diminished by their conversion.[*****]

Commerce must be in a wretched condition where interest was so high, and
where the sole proprietors of money employed it in usury only, and
were exposed to such extortion and injustice. But the bad police of
the country was another obstacle to improvements, and rendered all
communication dangerous, and all property precarious. The Chronicle of
Dunstable says,[******] that men were never secure in their houses, and
that whole villages were often plundered by bands of robbers, though no
civil wars at that time prevailed in the kingdom.

     *M. Paris, p. 606.

     **M. Paris, p. 160.

     ***Madox, p. 152.

     ****M. Paris, p. 613.

     *****Brussel, vol. i. p. 622. Du Cange, verbo Judaei.

     ******Vol. i. p. 155.

In 1249, some years before the insurrection of the barons, two merchants
of Brabant came to the king at Winchester, and told him that they had
been spoiled of all their goods by certain robbers, whom they knew,
because they saw their faces every day in his court; that like practices
prevailed all over England, and travellers were continually exposed to
the danger of being robbed, bound, wounded, and murdered; that
these crimes escaped with impunity, because the ministers of justice
themselves were in a confederacy with the robbers; and that they, for
their part, instead of bringing matters to a fruitless trial by law,
were willing, though merchants, to decide their cause with the robbers
by arms and a duel. The king, provoked at these abuses, ordered a jury
to be enclosed, and to try the robbers: the jury, though consisting
of twelve men of property in Hampshire, were found to be also in a
confederacy with the felons, and acquitted them. Henry, in a rage,
committed the jury to prison, threatened them with severe punishment,
and ordered a new jury to be enclosed, who, dreading the fate of their
fellows, at last found a verdict against the criminals. Many of the
king’s own household were discovered to have participated in the guilt;
and they said for their excuse, that they received no wages from him,
and were obliged to rob for a maintenance.[*] “Knights and esquires,”
 says the Dictum of Kenilworth, “Who were robbers, if they have no land,
shall pay the half of their goods, and find sufficient security to
keep henceforth the peace of the kingdom.” Such were the manners of the
times!

One can the less repine, during the prevalence of such manners, at the
frauds and forgeries of the clergy; as it gives less disturbance to
society to take men’s money from them with their own consent, though by
deceits and lies, than to ravish it by open force and violence. During
this reign the papal power was at its summit, and was even beginning
insensibly to decline, by reason of the immeasurable avarice and
extortions of the court of Rome, which disgusted the clergy as well as
laity in every kingdom of Europe. England itself, though sunk in the
deepest abyss of ignorance and superstition, had seriously entertained
thoughts of shaking off the papal yoke;[**] and the Roman pontiff was
obliged to think of new expedients for rivetting it faster upon the
Christian world.

     * M. Paris, p. 509.

     ** M. Paris, p. 421.

For this purpose, Gregory IX. published his decretals,[*] which are a
collection of forgeries favorable to the court of Rome, and consist
of the supposed decrees of popes in the first centuries. But these
forgeries are so gross, and confound so palpably all language, history,
chronology, and antiquities,--matters more stubborn than any speculative
truths whatsoever,--that even that church, which is not startled at
the most monstrous contradictions and absurdities, has been obliged to
abandon them to the critics. But in the dark period of the thirteenth
century, they parsed for undisputed and authentic; and men, entangled
in the mazes of this false literature, joined to the philosophy, equally
false, of the times, had nothing wherewithal to defend themselves, but
some small remains of common sense, which passed for profaneness and
impiety, and the indelible regard to self-interest, which, as it was the
sole motive in the priests for framing these impostures, served also, in
some degree, to protect the laity against them.

     * Trivet, p. 191.

Another expedient, devised by the church of Rome, in this period, for
securing her power, was the institution of new religious orders, chiefly
the Dominicans and Franciscans, who proceeded with all the zeal and
success that attend novelties; were better qualified to gain the
populace than the old orders, now become rich and indolent; maintained
a perpetual rivalship with each other in promoting their gainful
superstitions; and acquired a great dominion over the minds, and
consequently over the purses, of men, by pretending a desire of poverty
and a contempt for riches. The quarrels which arose between these
orders, lying still under the control of the sovereign pontiff, never
disturbed the peace of the church, and served only as a spur to their
industry in promoting the common cause; and though the Dominicans lost
some popularity by their denial of the immaculate conception,--a
point in which they unwarily engaged too far to be able to recede with
honor,--they counterbalanced this disadvantage by acquiring more solid
establishments, by gaining the confidence of kings and princes, and
by exercising the jurisdiction assigned them of ultimate judges and
punishers of heresy. Thus the several orders of monks became a kind
of regular troops or garrisons of the Romish church; and though the
temporal interests of society, still more the cause of true piety, were
hurt, by their various devices to captivate the populace, they proved
the chief supports of that mighty fabric of superstition, and, till the
revival of true learning, secured it from any dangerous invasion.

The trial by ordeal was abolished in this reign by order of council; a
faint mark of improvement in the age.[*]

Henry granted a charter to the town of Newcastle, in which he gave the
inhabitants a license to dig coal. This is the first mention of coal in
England.

We learn from Madox,[**] that this king gave at one time one hundred
shillings to Master Henry, his poet; also the same year he orders this
poet ten pounds.

It appears from Selden, that in the forty-seventh of this reign, a
hundred and fifty temporal and fifty spiritual barons were summoned to
perform the service, due by their tenures.[***] In the thirty-fifth of
the subsequent reign, eighty-six temporal barons, twenty bishops,
and forty-eight abbots, were summoned to a parliament convened at
Carlisle.[****]

     * Rymer, vol. i. p. 228. Spelman, p. 326.

     ** Page 208.

     *** Titles of Honor, part ii. chap. 3.

     **** Parliamentary Hist. vol. i. p. 151.


1_178_carnaryon.jpg


CHAPTER XIII.

[Illustration: 1_176_edward1.jpg EDWARD I.]





{1272.} The English were as yet so little inured to obedience under
a regular government, that the death of almost every king, since the
conquest, had been attended with disorders, and the council, reflecting
on the recent civil wars, and on the animosities which naturally
remain after these great convulsions, had reason to apprehend dangerous
consequences from the absence of the son and successor of Henry. They
therefore hastened to proclaim Prince Edward, to swear allegiance to
him, and to summon the states of the kingdom, in order to provide for
the public peace in this important conjuncture.[*]

     * Rymer, vol. ii. p. 1 Walsing, p. 43. Trivet, p. 239.

Walter Giffard, archbishop of York, the earl of Cornwall, son of
Richard, king of the Romans, and the earl of Glocester, were appointed
guardians of the realm, and proceeded peaceably to the exercise of
their authority, without either meeting with opposition from any of the
people, or being disturbed with emulation and faction among themselves.
The high character acquired by Edward during the late commotions, his
military genius, his success in subduing the rebels, his moderation
in settling the kingdom, had procured him great esteem, mixed with
affection, among all orders of men; and no one could reasonably
entertain hopes of making any advantage of his absence, or of raising
disturbance in the nation. The earl of Glocester himself, whose great
power and turbulent spirit had excited most jealousy, was forward
to give proofs of his allegiance; and the other malecontents, being
destitute of a leader, were obliged to remain in submission to the
government.

Prince Edward had reached Sicily in his return from the Holy Land, when
he received intelligence of the death of his father; and he discovered a
deep concern on the occasion. At the same time, he learned the death of
an infant son, John whom his princess, Eleanor of Castile, had born him
at Acre, in Palestine; and as he appeared much less affected with that
misfortune, the king of Sicily expressed a surprise at this difference
of sentiment; but was told by Edward, that the death of a son was a
loss which he might hope to repair; the death of a father was a loss
irreparable.[*]

Edward proceeded homeward; but as he soon learned the quiet settlement
of the kingdom, he was in no hurry to take possession of the throne, but
spent near a year in France, before he made his appearance in England.

{1273.} In his passage by Chalons, in Burgundy, he was challenged by
the prince of the country to a tournament which he was preparing; and as
Edward excelled in those martial and dangerous exercises, the true image
of war, he declined not the opportunity of acquiring honor in that
great assembly of the neighboring nobles. But the image of war was here
unfortunately turned into the thing itself. Edward and his retinue were
so successful in the jousts, that the French knights, provoked at their
superiority, made a serious attack upon them, which was repulsed, and
much blood was idly shed in the quarrel.[**] This rencounter received
the name of the petty battle of Chalons.

{1274.} Edward went from Chalons to Paris, and did homage to Philip for the
dominions which he held in France.[***] He thence returned to Guienne,
and settled that province, which was in some confusion. He made
his journey to London through France; in his passage, he accommodated at
Montreuil a difference with Margaret, countess of Flanders, heiress of
that territory;[****] he was received with joyful acclamations by his
people, and was solemnly crowned at Westminster by Robert, archbishop of
Canterbury.

     * Walsing. p. 44. Trivet. p. 240.

     ** Walsing. p. 44. Trivet. p. 241. M. West. p. 402.

     *** Walsing p. 45.

     **** Rymer. vol. ii. p. 32, 33.

The king immediately applied himself to the reestablishment of his
kingdom, and to the correcting of those disorders which the civil
commotions and the loose administration of his father had introduced
into every part of government. The plan of his policy was equally
generous and prudent. He considered the great barons both as the
immediate rivals of the crown and oppressors of the people; and he
purposed, by an exact distribution of justice, and a rigid execution
of the laws, to give at once protection to the inferior orders of the
state, and to diminish the arbitrary power of the great, on which their
dangerous authority was chiefly founded. Making it a rule in his own
conduct to observe, except on extraordinary occasions, the privileges
secured to them by the Great Charter, he acquired a right to insist
upon their observance of the same charter towards their vassals and
inferiors; and he made the crown be regarded by all the gentry and
commonalty of the kingdom, as the fountain of justice, and the general
asylum against oppression.

{1275.} Besides enacting several useful statutes, in a parliament which
he summoned at Westminster, he took care to inspect the conduct of all
his magistrates and judges, to displace such as were either negligent
or corrupt, to provide them with sufficient force for the execution of
justice, to extirpate all bands and confederacies of robbers, and to
repress those more silent robberies which were committed either by the
power of the nobles or under the countenance of public authority. By
this rigid administration, the face of the kingdom was soon changed; and
order and justice took place of violence and oppression: but amidst the
excellent institutions and public-spirited plans of Edward, there still
appears somewhat both of the severity of his personal character and of
the prejudices of the times.

As the various kinds of malefactors, the murderers, robbers,
incendiaries, ravishers, and plunderers, had become so numerous and
powerful, that the ordinary ministers of justice, especially in the
western counties, were afraid to execute the laws against them, the king
found it necessary to provide an extraordinary remedy for the evil; and
he erected a new tribunal, which, however useful, would have been
deemed in times of more regular liberty, a great stretch of illegal and
arbitrary power. It consisted of commissioners, who were empowered
to inquire into disorders and crimes of all kinds, and to inflict the
proper punishments upon them. The officers charged with this unusual
commission, made their circuits throughout the counties of England most
infested with this evil, and carried terror into all those parts of
the kingdom. In their zeal to punish crimes, they did not sufficiently
distinguish between the innocent and guilty; the smallest suspicion
became a ground of accusation and trial; the slightest evidence was
received against criminals; prisons were crowded with malefactors, real
or pretended; severe fines were levied for small offences; and the king,
though his exhausted exchequer was supplied by this expedient, found it
necessary to stop the course of so great rigor, and after terrifying and
dissipating by this tribunal the gangs of disorderly people in England,
he prudently annulled the commission;[*] and never afterwards renewed
it.

Among the various disorders to which the kingdom was subject, no one was
more universally complained of than the adulteration of the coin; and as
this crime required more art than the English of that age, who chiefly
employed force and violence in their iniquities, were possessed of, the
imputation fell upon the Jews.[**] Edward also seems to have indulged a
strong prepossession against that nation; and this ill-judged zeal for
Christianity being naturally augmented by an expedition to the Holy
Land, he let loose the whole rigor of his justice against that unhappy
people. Two hundred and eighty of them were hanged at once for this
crime in London alone, besides those who suffered in other parts of the
kingdom.[***]

     * Spel. Gloss, in verbo Trailbaston. But Spelman was either
     mistaken in placing this commission in the fifth year of the
     king, or it was renewed in 1305. See Rymer, vol. ii. p. 960.
     Trivet, p. 838., M. West. p. 450.

     ** Walsing. p. 48 Heming. vol. i. p. 6.

     *** T. Wykes, p. 107.

The houses and lands, (for the Jews had of late ventured to make
purchases of that kind,) as well as the goods of great multitudes, were
sold and confiscated; and the king, lest it should be suspected that the
riches of the sufferers were the chief part of their guilt, ordered a
moiety of the money raised by these confiscations to be set apart, and
bestowed upon such as were willing to be converted to Christianity. But
resentment was more prevalent with them than any temptation from their
poverty; and very few of them could be induced by interest to embrace
the religion of their persecutors. The miseries of this people did not
here terminate. Though the arbitrary talliages and exactions levied upon
them had yielded a constant and a considerable revenue to the crown,
Edward prompted by his zeal and his rapacity, resolved some time
after[*] to purge the kingdom entirely of that hated race, and to seize
to himself at once their whole property as the reward of his labor.[**]
He left them only money sufficient to bear their charges into foreign
countries, where new persecutions and extortions awaited them: but the
inhabitants of the cinque ports, imitating the bigotry and avidity of
their sovereign, despoiled most of them of this small pittance, and even
threw many of them into the sea; a crime for which the king, who was
determined to be the sole plunderer in his dominions, inflicted a
capital punishment upon them. No less than fifteen thousand Jews were at
this time robbed of their effects, and banished the kingdom: very few of
that nation have since lived in England: and as it is impossible for a
nation to subsist without lenders of money, and none will lend without
a compensation, the practice of usury, as it was then called,
was thenceforth exercised by the English themselves upon their
fellow-citizens, or by Lombards and other foreigners. It is very much
to be questioned, whether the dealings of these new usurers were equally
open and unexceptionable with those of the old. By a law of Richard, it
was enacted, that three copies should be made of every bond given to a
Jew; one to be put into the hands of a public magistrate, another
into those of a man of credit, and a third to remain with the Jew
himself.[***] But as the canon law, seconded by the municipal, permitted
no Christian to take interest, all transactions of this kind must, after
the banishment of the Jews, have become more secret and clandestine, and
the lender, of consequence, be paid both for the use of his money, and
for the infamy and danger which he incurred by lending it.

     * In the year 1290.

     ** Walsing. p. 54. Heming. vol. i. p. 20. Trivet, p 266.

     *** Trivet, p. 128.

The great poverty of the crown, though no excuse, was probably the cause
of this egregious tyranny exercised against the Jews; but Edward also
practised other more honorable means of remedying that evil. He employed
a strict frugality in the management and distribution of his revenue: he
engaged the parliament to vote him a fifteenth of all movables; the pope
to grant him the tenth of all ecclesiastical revenues for three years;
and the merchants to consent to a perpetual imposition of half a mark on
every sack of wool exported, and a mark on three hundred skins. He
also issued commissions to inquire into all encroachments on the royal
demesne; into the value of escheats, forfeitures, and Wardships; and
into the means of repairing or improving every branch of the revenue.[*]
The commissioners, in the execution of their office, began to carry
matters too far against the nobility, and to question titles to estates
which had been transmitted from father to son for several generations.
Earl Warrenne, who had done such eminent service in the late reign,
being required to show his titles, drew his sword; and subjoined, that
William the bastard had not conquered the kingdom for himself alone: his
ancestor was a joint adventurer in the enterprise; and he himself was
determined to maintain what had from that period remained unquestioned
in his family. The king, sensible of the danger, desisted from making
further inquiries of this nature.

{1276.} But the active spirit of Edward could not long remain without
employment. He soon after undertook an enterprise more prudent for
himself, and more advantageous to his people. Lewellyn, prince of Wales,
had been deeply engaged with the Mountfort faction; had entered into
all their conspiracies against the crown; had frequently fought on
their side; and, till the battle of Evesham, so fatal to that party, had
employed every expedient to depress the royal cause, and to promote
the success of the barons. In the general accommodation made with the
vanquished, Lewellyn had also obtained his pardon; but as he was the
most powerful, and therefore the most obnoxious vassal of the crown, he
had reason to entertain anxiety about his situation, and to dread the
future effects of resentment and jealousy in the English monarch. For
this reason he determined to provide for his security by maintaining a
secret correspondence with his former associates; and he even made his
addresses to a daughter of the earl of Leicester, who was sent to him
from beyond sea, but being intercepted in her passage near the Isles of
Scilly, was detained in the court of England.[**]

     * Ann. Waverl.p. 235.

     ** Walsing. p. 46, 47. Heming. vol. i. p. 5. Trivet, p. 248

This incident increasing the mutual jealousy between Edward and
Lewellyn, the latter, when required to come to England, and do homage to
the new king, scrupled to put himself in the hands of an enemy, desired
a safe-conduct from Edward, insisted upon having the king’s son and
other noblemen delivered to him as hostages, and demanded that his
consort should previously be set at liberty.[*] The king, having now
brought the state to a full settlement, was not displeased with
this occasion of exercising his authority, and subduing entirely the
principality of Wales. He refused all Lewellyn’s demands, except that
of a safe-conduct; sent him repeated summons to perform the duty of a
vassal; levied an army to reduce him to obedience; obtained a new aid of
a fifteenth from parliament; and marched out with certain assurance of
success against the enemy.

{1277.} Besides the great disproportion of force between the kingdom
and the principality, the circumstances of the two states were entirely
reversed; and the same intestine dissensions which had formerly weakened
England, now prevailed in Wales, and had even taken place in the
reigning family. David and Roderic, brothers to Lewellyn, dispossessed
of their inheritance by that prince, had been obliged to have recourse
to the protection of Edward, and they seconded with all their interest,
which was extensive, his attempts to enslave their native country. The
Welsh prince had no resource but in the inaccessible situation of
his mountains, which had hitherto, through many ages, defended his
forefathers against all attempts of the Saxon and Norman conquerors; and
he retired among the hills of Snowdun, resolute to defend himself to the
last extremity. But Edward, equally vigorous and cautious, entering by
the north with a formidable army, pierced into the heart of the country;
and having carefully explored every road before him, and secured every
pass behind him, approached the Welsh army in its last retreat. He here
avoided the putting to trial the valor of a nation proud of its ancient
independence, and inflamed with animosity against its hereditary
enemies; and he trusted to the slow, but sure effects of famine, for
reducing that people to subjection. The rude and simple manners of the
natives, as well as the mountainous situation of their country, had made
them entirely neglect tillage, and trust to pasturage alone for their
subsistence; a method of life which had hitherto[*] secured them against
the irregular attempts of the English, out exposed them to certain ruin,
when the conquest of the country was steadily pursued, and prudently
planned by Edward. Destitute of magazines, cooped up in a narrow corner,
they, as well as their cattle, suffered all the rigors of famine; and
Lewellyn, without being able to strike a stroke for his independence,
was at last obliged to submit at discretion, and receive the terms
imposed upon him by the victor.[**] He bound himself to pay to Edward
fifty thousand pounds, as a reparation of damages; to do homage to the
crown of England; to permit all the other barons of Wales, except four
near Snowdun, to swear fealty to the same crown; to relinquish the
country between Cheshire and the River Conway; to settle on his brother
Roderic a thousand marks a year, and on David five hundred; and to
deliver ten hostages as security for his future submission.[***]

Edward, on the performance of the other articles, remitted to the prince
of Wales the payment of the fifty thousand pounds;[****] which were
stipulated by treaty, and which, it is probable, the poverty of
the country made it absolutely impossible for him to levy. But,
notwithstanding this indulgence, complaints of iniquities soon arose
on the side of the vanquished: the English, insolent on their easy and
bloodless victory, oppressed the inhabitants of the districts which were
yielded to them: the lords marchers committed with impunity all kinds
of violence on their Welsh neighbors: new and more severe terms were
imposed on Lewellyn himself; and Edward, when the prince attended him
at Worcester, exacted a promise that he would retain no person in his
principality who should be obnoxious to the English monarch.[****]

     * Rymer, vol. ii. p. 68. Walsing, p. 46 Trivet, p. 247

     ** T. Wykes, p. 105.

     *** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 88. Walsing. p. 47. Trivet, p. 251.
     T. Wykes p. 106.

     **** Rymer, p. 92.

     ***** Dr. Powell’s Hist. of Wales, p.344, 345.

There were other personal insults which raised the indignation of the
Welsh, and made them determine rather to encounter a force which they
had already experienced to be so much superior, than to bear oppression
from the haughty victors. Prince David, seized with the national spirit,
made peace with his brother, and promised to concur in the defence of
public liberty. The Welsh flew to arms; and Edward, not displeased with
the occasion of making his conquest final and absolute, assembled all
his military tenants, and advanced into Wales with an army which the
inhabitants could not reasonably hope to resist. The situation of the
country gave the Welsh at first some advantage over Luke de Tany, one
of Edward’s captains, who had passed the Menau with a detachment;[*]
but Lewelly, being surprised by Mortimer, was defeated and slain in an
action, and two thousand of his followers were put to the sword.[**]
David, who succeeded him in the principality, could never collect an
army sufficient to face the English; and being chased from hill to hill,
and hunted from one retreat to another, was obliged to conceal himself
under various disguises, and was at last betrayed in his lurking-place
to the enemy.


{1283.} Edward sent him in chains to Shrewsbury; and bringing him to
a formal trial before all the peers of England, ordered this sovereign
prince to be hanged, drawn, and quartered, as a traitor, for defending
by arms the liberties of his native country, together with his own
hereditary authority.[***] All the Welsh nobility submitted to the
conqueror; the laws of England, with the sheriffs and other ministers of
justice, were established in that principality; and though it was long
before national antipathies were extinguished, and a thorough union
attained between the people, yet this important conquest, which it had
required eight hundred years fully to effect, was at last, through the
abilities of Edward, completed by the English.

{1284} The king, sensible that nothing kept alive the ideas of military
valor and of ancient glory so much as the traditional poetry of the
people, which, assisted by the power of music and the jollity of
festivals, made deep impression on the minds of the youth, gathered
together all the Welsh bards, and from a barbarous, though not absurd
policy, ordered them to be put to death.[****]

     * Walsing. p. 50. Heming. vol. i p. 9. Trivet, p. 258. T
     Wykes, p. 110.

     ** Heming. vol. i. p. 11. Trivet, p. 257. Ann. Waverl. p.
     235.

     *** Heming. vol. i. p. 12. Trivet, p. 269. Ann Waverl. p.
     288 T Wykes, p. 111. M. West. p. 411.

     **** Sir J. Wynne, p. 15. crown; and henceforth gives a
     title to the eldest son of the kings of England.

There prevails a vulgar story, which, as it well suits the capacity
of the monkish writers, is carefully recorded by them; that Edward,
assembling the Welsh, promised to give them a prince of unexceptionable
manners, a Welshman by birth, and one who could speak no other language.
On their acclamations of joy, and promise of obedience, he invested in
the principality his second son, Edward, then an infant, who had been
born at Carnarvon. The death of his eldest son Alphonso, soon after,
made young Edward heir of the monarchy; the principality of Wales was
fully annexed.

[Illustration: 1_178_carnaryon.jpg CARNARVON CASTLE]

{1286.} The settlement of Wales appeared so complete to Edward, that
in less than two years after, he went abroad, in order to make peace
between Alphonso, king of Arragon, and Philip the Fair, who had lately
succeeded his father, Philip the Hardy, on the throne of France.[*] The
difference between these two princes had arisen about the kingdom of
Sicily, which the pope, after his hopes from England failed him, had
bestowed on Charles, brother to St. Lewis, and which was claimed upon
other titles by Peter, king of Arragon, father to Alphonso. Edward had
powers from both princes to settle the terms of peace, and he succeeded
in his endeavors; but as the controversy nowise regards England, we
shall not enter into a detail of it. He staid abroad above three years;
and on his return found many disorders to have prevailed, both from open
violence and from the corruption of justice.

Thomas Chamberlain, a gentleman of some note, had assembled several of
his associates at Boston, in Lincolnshire, under pretence of holding
a tournament, an exercise practised by the gentry only; but in reality
with a view of plundering the rich fair of Boston, and robbing the
merchants. To facilitate his purpose, he privately set fire to the town;
and while the inhabitants were employed in quenching the flames,
the conspirators broke into the booths, and carried off the goods.
Chamberlain himself was detected and hanged; but maintained so steadily
the point of honor to his accomplices, that he could not be prevailed
on, by offers or promises, to discover any of them. Many other instances
of robbery and violence broke out in all parts of England; though the
singular circumstances attending this conspiracy have made it alone be
particularly recorded by historians.[**]

     * Rymer, vol. ii. p. 149,150, 174.

     ** Heming vol. i. p. 16, 17.

{1289.} But the corruption of the judges, by which the fountains of
justice were poisoned, seemed of still more dangerous consequence.
Edward, in order to remedy this prevailing abuse, summoned a parliament,
and brought the judges to a trial; where all of them, except two, who
were clergymen, were convicted of this flagrant iniquity, were fined,
and deposed. The amount of the fines levied upon them is alone a
sufficient proof of their guilt; being above one hundred thousand marks,
an immense sum in those days, and sufficient to defray the charges of an
expensive war between two great kingdoms. The king afterwards made all
the new judges swear that they would take no bribes; but his expedient
of deposing and fining the old ones, was the more effectual remedy.

We now come to give an account of the state of affairs in Scotland,
which gave rise to the most interesting transactions of this reign, and
of some of the subsequent; though the intercourse of that kingdom with
England, either in peace or war, had hitherto produced so few events of
moment, that, to avoid tediousness, we have omitted many of them, and
have been very concise in relating the rest. If the Scots had, before
this period, any real history worthy of the name, except what they glean
from scattered passages in the English historians, those events, however
minute, yet being the only foreign transactions of the nation, might
deserve a place in it.

Though the government of Scotland had been continually exposed to those
factions and convulsions which are incident to all barbarous and to many
civilized nations; and though the successions of their kings, the
only part of their history which deserves any credit had often been
disordered by irregularities and usurpations; the true heir of the
royal family had still in the end prevailed, and Alexander III., who
had espoused the sister of Edward, probably inherited, after a period
of about eight hundred years, and through a succession of males, the
sceptre of all the Scottish princes who had governed the nation since
its first establishment in the island. This prince died in 1286, by a
fall from his horse at Kinghorn,[*] without leaving any male issue, and
without any descendant, except Margaret, born of Eric, king of Norway,
and of Margaret, daughter of the Scottish monarch. This princess,
commonly called the Maid of Norway, though a female, and an infant, and
a foreigner, yet being the lawful heir of the kingdom, had, through
her grandfather’s care, been recognized successor by the states of
Scotland;[**] and on Alexander’s death, the dispositions which had been
previously made against that event, appeared so just and prudent, that
no disorders, as might naturally be apprehended, ensued in the kingdom.

     * Heming. vol. i. p. 29. Trivet, p. 267.

     ** Rymer, vol. ii. p. 266.

Margaret was acknowledged queen of Scotland; five guardians, the bishops
of St. Andrews and Glasgow, the earls of Fife and Buchan, and James,
steward of Scotland, entered peaceably upon the administration; and the
infant princess, under the protection of Edward, her great uncle, and
Eric, her father, who exerted themselves on this occasion, seemed firmly
seated on the throne of Scotland. The English monarch was naturally led
to build mighty projects on this incident; and having lately, by force
of arms, brought Wales under subjection, he attempted, by the marriage
of Margaret with his eldest son, Edward, to unite the whole island into
one monarchy, and thereby to give it security both against domestic
convulsions and foreign invasions.

{1290.} The amity which had of late prevailed between the two nations,
and which, even in former times, had never been interrupted by any
violent wars or injuries, facilitated extremely the execution of this
project, so favorable to the happiness and grandeur of both kingdoms;
and the states of Scotland readily gave their assent to the English
proposals, and even agreed that their young sovereign should be
educated in the court of Edward. Anxious, however, for the liberty
and independency of their country, they took care to stipulate very
equitable conditions, ere they intrusted themselves into the hands of so
great and so ambitious a monarch. It was agreed that they should enjoy
all their ancient laws, liberties, and customs; that in case young
Edward and Margaret should die without issue, the crown of Scotland
should revert to the next heir, and should be inherited by him free
and independent; that the military tenants of the crown should never be
obliged to go out of Scotland, in order to do homage to the sovereign
of the united kingdoms, nor the chapters of cathedral, collegiate, or
conventual churches, in order to make elections; that the parliaments
summoned for Scottish affairs should always be held within the bounds of
that kingdom; and that Edward should bind himself, under the penalty of
one hundred thousand marks, payable to the pope for the use of the holy
wars to observe all these articles.[*]

     * Rymer, vol. ii. p. 482.

It is not easy to conceive that two nations could have treated more on
a footing of equality than Scotland and England maintained during the
whole course of this transaction; and though Edward gave his assent to
the article concerning the future independency of the Scottish crown,
with a “saving of his former rights,” this reserve gave no alarm to the
nobility of Scotland, both because these rights, having hitherto been
little heard of had occasioned no disturbance, and because the Scots
had so near a prospect of seeing them entirely absorbed in the rights of
their sovereignty.

{1291.} But this project, so happily formed and so amicably conducted,
failed of success, by the sudden death of the Norwegian princess, who
expired on her passage to Scotland,[*] and left a very dismal prospect
to the kingdom. Though disorders were for the present obviated by the

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