The Project Gutenberg EBook of The History of England, by T.F. Tout This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net Title: The History of England From the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377) Author: T.F. Tout Editor: William Hunt and Reginald L. Poole Release Date: September 10, 2005 [EBook #16679] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND *** Produced by Lee Dawei, Anurag Garg, Turgut Dincer and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE DEATH OF EDWARD III. (1216-1377) BY T.F. TOUT, M.A. Professor of Mediæval and Modern History in the University of Manchester. THE POLITICAL HISTORY OF ENGLAND IN TWELVE VOLUMES Seventy-six years have passed since Lingard completed his HISTORY OF ENGLAND, which ends with the Revolution of 1688. During that period historical study has made a great advance. Year after year the mass of materials for a new History of England has increased; new lights have been thrown on events and characters, and old errors have been corrected. Many notable works have been written on various periods of our history; some of them at such length as to appeal almost exclusively to professed historical students. It is believed that the time has come when the advance which has been made in the knowledge of English history as a whole should be laid before the public in a single work of fairly adequate size. Such a book should be founded on independent thought and research, but should at the same time be written with a full knowledge of the works of the best modern historians and with a desire to take advantage of their teaching wherever it appears sound. The vast number of authorities, printed and in manuscript, on which a History of England should be based, if it is to represent the existing state of knowledge, renders co-operation almost necessary and certainly advisable. The History, of which this volume is an instalment, is an attempt to set forth in a readable form the results at present attained by research. It will consist of twelve volumes by twelve different writers, each of them chosen as being specialty capable of dealing with the period which he undertakes, and the editors, while leaving to each author as free a hand as possible, hope to insure a general similarity in method of treatment, so that the twelve volumes may in their contents, as well as in their outward appearance, form one History. As its title imports, this History will primarily deal with politics, with the History of England and, after the date of the union with Scotland, Great Britain, as a state or body politic; but as the life of a nation is complex, and its condition at any given time cannot be understood without taking into account the various forces acting upon it, notices of religious matters and of intellectual, social, and economic progress will also find place in these volumes. The footnotes will, so far as is possible, be confined to references to authorities, and references will not be appended to statements which appear to be matters of common knowledge and do not call for support. Each volume will have an Appendix giving some account of the chief authorities, original and secondary, which the author has used. This account will be compiled with a view of helping students rather than of making long lists of books without any notes as to their contents or value. That the History will have faults both of its own and such as will always in some measure attend co-operative work, must be expected, but no pains have been spared to make it, so far as may be, not wholly unworthy of the greatness of its subject. Each volume, while forming part of a complete History, will also in itself be a separate and complete book, will be sold separately, and will have its own index, and two or more maps. Vol. I. to 1066. By Thomas Hodgkin, D.C.L., Litt.D., Fellow of University College, London; Fellow of the British Academy. Vol. II. 1066 to 1216. By George Burton Adams, M.A., Professor of History in Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. Vol. III. 1216 to 1377. By T.F. Tout, M.A., Professor of Medieval and Modern History in the Victoria University of Manchester; formerly Fellow of Pembroke College, Oxford. Vol. IV. 1377 to 1485. By C. Oman, M.A., Fellow of All Souls' College, and Deputy Professor of Modern History in the University of Oxford. Vol. V. 1485 to 1547. By H.A.L. Fisher, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of New College, Oxford. Vol. VI. 1547 to 1603. By A.F. Pollard, M.A., Professor of Constitutional History in University College, London. Vol. VII. 1603 to 1660. By F.C. Montague, M.A., Professor of History in University College, London; formerly Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. Vol. VIII. 1660 to 1702. By Richard Lodge, M.A., Professor of History in the University of Edinburgh; formerly Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. Vol. IX. 1702 to 1760. By I.S. Leadam, M.A., formerly Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford. Vol. X. 1760 to 1801. By the Rev. William Hunt, M.A., D. Litt, Trinity College, Oxford. Vol. XI. 1801 to 1837. By the Hon. George C. Brodrick, D.C.L., late Warden of Merton College, Oxford, and J K. Fotheringham, M.A., Magdalen College, Oxford, Lecturer in Classics at King's College, London. Vol. XII. 1837 to 1901. By Sidney J Low, M.A., Balliol College, Oxford, formerly Lecturer on History at King's College, London. The Political History of England IN TWELVE VOLUMES EDITED BY WILLIAM HUNT, D. LITT., AND REGINALD L. POOLE, M.A. III. THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF HENRY III. TO THE DEATH OF EDWARD III. 1216-1377 CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. THE REGENCY OF WILLIAM MARSHAL. 19 Oct., 1216. Death of King John Position of parties The Church on the king's side 28 Oct. Coronation of Henry III 11 Nov. Great council at Bristol 12 Nov. The first charter of Henry III 1216-17. Progress of the war 1217. Rising of Wilkin of the Weald Louis' visit to France 22 April. Return of Louis from France Sieges of Dover, Farnham, and Mount Sorrel 20 May. The fair of Lincoln 23 Aug. The sea-fight off Sandwich 11 Sept. Treaty of Lambeth 6 Nov. Reissue of the great charter Restoration of order by William Marshal 14 May, 1219. Death of William Marshal His character and career CHAPTER II. THE RULE OF HUBERT DE BURGH. 1219. Pandulf the real successor of William Marshal July, 1221. Langton procures Pandulf's recall Ascendency of Hubert de Burgh Jan.-Feb., 1221. The rebellion of Albemarle July, 1222. The sedition of Constantine FitzAthulf 1221-24. Marriage alliances 1219-23. War in Wales April, 1223. Henry III. declared by the pope competent to govern June, 1224. Revolt of Falkes de Bréauté 20 June-14 Aug. Siege of Bedford Fall of Falkes Papal and royal taxation April, 1227. End of the minority Relations with France during the minority The Lusignans and the Poitevin barons 1224. Louis VIII.'s conquest of Poitou 1225. Expedition of Richard of Cornwall and William Longsword to Gascony Nov., 1226. Accession of Louis IX. in France 1229-30. Henry III.'s campaign in Brittany and Poitou 21-30 July, 1230. Siege of Mirambeau 1228. The Kerry campaign 2 May, 1230. Death of William of Braose 1231. Henry III.'s second Welsh campaign Aug. Death of Archbishop Richard le Grand Gregory IX. and Henry III. 1232. Riots of Robert Twenge 29 July. Fall of Hubert de Burgh 1231. Death of William Marshal the Younger 1232. Death of Randolph of Blundeville, Earl of Chester CHAPTER III. THE ALIEN INVASION. 1232-34. Rule of Peter des Roches Aug., 1233. Revolt of Richard Marshal 23 Nov. Fight near Monmouth 1234. Richard Marshal in Ireland 1 April. Defeat and death of the Earl Marshal near Kildare 2 April. Edmund Rich consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury 9 April. Fall of Peter des Roches Beginning of Henry III.'s personal government Character of Henry III. The alien invasions 14 Jan., 1236. Henry's marriage to Eleanor of Provence The Savoyards in England Revival of Poitevin influence 1239. Simon of Montfort Earl of Leicester 1237. The legation of Cardinal Otto 1239. Quarrel of Gregory IX. and Frederick II. 1235. Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln 16 Nov., 1240. Death of Edmund Rich in exile Henry III. and Frederick II. Attempted reconquest of Poitou May-Sept., 1242. The campaign of Taillebourg 1243. Truce with France The Lusignans in England The baronial opposition Grosseteste's opposition to Henry III., and Innocent IV. 1243. Relations with Scotland and Wales 1240. Death of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth 1246. Death of David ap Llewelyn CHAPTER IV. POLITICAL RETROGRESSION and NATIONAL PROGRESS. 1248-58. Characteristics of the history of these ten years Decay of Henry's power in Gascony 1248-52. Simon de Montfort, seneschal of Gascony Aug., 1253. Henry III. in Gascony 1254. Marriage and establishment of Edward the king's son Edward's position in Gascony Edward's position in Cheshire 1254. Llewelyn ap Griffith sole Prince of North Wales Edward in the four cantreds and in West Wales 1257. Welsh campaign of Henry and Edward Revival of the baronial opposition 1255. Candidature of Edmund, the king's son, for Sicily 1257. Richard of Cornwall elected and crowned King of the Romans Leicester as leader of the opposition Progress in the age of Henry III The cosmopolitan and the national ideals French influence The coming of the friars 1221. Gilbert of Freynet and the first Dominicans in England 1224. Arrival of Agnellus of Pisa and the first Franciscans in England Other mendicant orders in England The influence of the friars The universities Prominent English schoolmen Paris and Oxford The mendicants at Oxford Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus Academic influence in public life Beginnings of colleges Intellectual characteristics of thirteenth century Literature in Latin and French Literature in English Art Gothic architecture The towns and trade CHAPTER V. THE BARONS' WAR. 2 April, 1258. Parliament at London 11 June. The Mad Parliament The Provisions of Oxford 22 June. Flight of the Lusignans Appointment of the Fifteen Working of the new Constitution 4 Dec., 1259. Treaty of Paris Its unpopularity in England and France 1259. Dissensions among the baronial leaders 1259. Provisions of Westminster 1261. Henry III.'s repudiation of the Provisions 1263. Reconstitution of parties The changed policy of the marchers Outbreak of civil war The appeal to Louis IX 23 Jan., 1264. Mise of Amiens Renewal of the struggle 4 April. Sack of Northampton The campaign in Kent and Sussex 14 May. Battle of Lewes Personal triumph of Montfort CHAPTER VI. THE RULE OF MONTFORT AND THE ROYALIST RESTORATION. 15 May. Mise of Lewes 15 Dec. Provisions of Worcester Jan.-Mar., 1265. The Parliament of 1265 Split up of the baronial party Quarrel of Leicester and Gloucester 28 May. Edward's escape 22 June. Treaty of Pipton Small results of the alliance of Llewelyn and the barons The campaign in the Severn valley 4 Aug. Battle of Evesham The royalist restoration 1266. The revolt of the Disinherited 15 May. Battle of Chesterfield 31 Oct. The _Dictum de Kenilworth_ Michaelmas. The Ely rebellion April, 1267. Gloucester's support of the Disinherited July. End of the rebellion 25 Sept. Treaty of Shrewsbury 1267. Statute of Marlborough 1270-72. Edward's Crusade 16 Nov., 1272. Death of Henry III CHAPTER VII. THE EARLY FOREIGN POLICY AND LEGISLATION OF EDWARD I. Character of Edward I. 1272-74. Rule of the regency Edward's doings in Italy and France Edward's relations with Philip III. 1273-74. Wars of Béarn and Limoges Edward I. and Gregory X. May-July, 1274. Council of Lyons Relations of Edward I. and Rudolf of Hapsburg 23 May, 1279. Treaty of Amiens 1281. League of Macon 1282. Sicilian vespers 1285. Deaths of Philip III., Charles of Anjou, Peter of Aragon, and Martin IV. Bishop Burnell 1275. Statute of Westminster, the first 1278. Statute of Gloucester Hundred Rolls and _placita de quo warranto_ Archbishops Kilwardby and Peckham 1279. Statute of Mortmain 1285. _Circumspecte agatis_ 1285. Statute of Westminster, the second (De _Donis_) 1285. Statute of Winchester CHAPTER VIII. THE CONQUEST OF NORTH WALES. Execution of the Treaty of Shrewsbury Llewelyn's refusal of homage 1277. Edward's first Welsh campaign 1277. Treaty of Aberconway Edward's attempts to introduce English law into the ceded districts 1282. The Welsh revolt 1282. Edward's second Welsh campaign Llewelyn's escape to the Upper Wye 11 Dec. Battle of Orewyn Bridge 1283. Parliaments and financial expedients Subjection of Gwynedd completed 3 Oct. Parliament of Shrewsbury and execution of David The Edwardian castles Mid-Lent, 1284. Statute of Wales Effect of the conquest upon the march Peckham and the ecclesiastical settlement of _Wales_ 1287. Revolt of Rhys ap Meredith CHAPTER IX. THE SICILIAN AND THE SCOTTISH ARBITRATIONS. Edward I. at the height of his fame April, 1286-Aug 1289, Edward's long visit to France 1289. The Sicilian arbitration 1287. Treaty of Oloron 1288. Treaty of Canfranc 1291. Treaty of Tarascon Maladministration during Edward's absence Judicial and official scandals 1289. Special commission for the trial of offenders 1290. Statute of Westminster, the third (_Quia emptores_) The feud between Gloucester and Hereford 1291. The courts at Ystradvellte and Abergavenny Humiliation of the marcher earls 1290. Expulsion of the Jews The rise of the Italian bankers 1272-86. Early relations of Edward to Scotland 1286. Death of Alexander III. of Scotland 1286-89. Regency in the name of the Maid of Norway 1289. Treaty of Salisbury 1290. Treaty of Brigham Death of the Maid of Norway The claimants to the Scottish throne May, 1291. Parliament of Norham. Edward recognised as overlord of Scotland 1291-92. The great suit for Scotland 17 Nov., 1292. John Balliol declared King of Scots Edward's conduct in relation to Scotland 1290. Death of Eleanor of Castile Transition to the later years of the reign Edward's later ministers CHAPTER X. THE FRENCH AND SCOTTISH WARS AND THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS. Commercial rivalry of English and French seamen 15 May, 1293. Battle off Saint-Mahé 1294. Edmund of Lancaster's failure to procure a settlement with Philip IV. The French occupation of Gascony June, 1294. War with France Preparations for a French campaign 1294. Revolts of Madog, Maelgwn, and Morgan Edward's danger at Aberconway 22 Jan., 1293. Battle of Maes Madog July. Welsh revolts suppressed 1295. Failure of the Gascon campaign Failure of attempted coalition against France Organisation of the English navy Treason of Sir Thomas Turberville The naval attack on England Rupture between Edward and the Scots 5 July. Alliance between the French and Scots Nov. The "Model Parliament" 1296. Gascon expedition and death of Edmund of Lancaster Edward's invasion of Scotland 27 April. Battle of Dunbar 10 July. Submission of John Balliol Conquest and administration of Scotland The Ragman Roll Sept., 1294. Consecration of Archbishop Winchelsea 29 Feb., 1296. Boniface VIII. issues _Clericis laicos_. Conflict of Edward and Winchelsea 24 Feb., 1297. Parliament at Salisbury Conflict of Edward with the earls July. Break up of the clerical opposition Increasing moderation of baronial opposition 24 Aug. Edward's departure for Flanders May. Revolt of the Scots under William Wallace. 11 Sept. Battle of Stirling Bridge. 12 Oct. Confirmation of the charters with new clauses. CHAPTER XI. THE SCOTTISH FAILURE. 1297. Edward's unsuccessful campaign in Flanders 31 Jan., 1298. Truce of Tournai, and end of the French war July. Edward's invasion of Scotland 22 July. Battle of Falkirk Slowness of Edward's progress towards the conquest of Scotland 19 June, 1299. Treaty of Montreuil 9 Sept. Marriage of Edward and Margaret of France Mar., 1300. _Articuli super cartas_ July-Aug. Carlaverock campaign 20 Jan.-14 Feb., 1301. Parliament of Lincoln The barons' letter to the pope Edward of Carnarvon, Prince of Wales 1302. Philip IV.'s troubles with the Flemings and Boniface VIII 20 May, 1303. Peace of Paris between Edward and Philip Increasing strength of Edward's position The decay of the earldoms Additions to the royal demesne 1303. Conquest of Scotland seriously undertaken 24 July, 1304. Capture of Stirling Aug., 1305. Execution of Wallace and completion of the conquest The settlement of the government of Scotland 1305. Disgrace of Winchelsea and Bek Edward I. and Clement V. 1307. Statute of Carlisle 1305. Ordinance of Trailbaston 10 Jan., 1306. Murder of Comyn Rising of Robert Bruce 25 Mar. Bruce crowned King of Scots Preparations for a fresh conquest of Scotland 7 July, 1307. Death of Edward I. CHAPTER XII. GAVESTON, THE ORDAINERS, AND BANNOCKBURN. Character of Edward II. 1307. Peter Gaveston Earl of Cornwall 25 Jan., 1308. Marriage of Edward with Isabella of France 25 Feb. Coronation of Edward II. Power and unpopularity of Gaveston 8 May. Gaveston exiled July 1309. Return of Gaveston condoned by Parliament at Stamford 1310. Renewal of the opposition of the barons to Gaveston 16 Mar. Appointment of the lords ordainers Sept. Abortive campaign against the Scots Character and policy of Thomas, Earl of Lancaster 1311. The ordinances Nov., 1311, Jan., 1312. Gaveston's second exile and return The earls at war against Edward and Gaveston Gaveston's surrender at Scarborough 19 June, 1312. Murder of Gaveston Consequent break up of the baronial party Oct., 1313. Edward and Lancaster reconciled May. Death of Archbishop Winchelsea 1312. Fall of the Templars Walter Reynolds Archbishop of Canterbury Complaints of papal abuses Progress of Bruce's power in Scotland 1314. The siege of Stirling An army collected for its relief 24 June, Battle of Bannockburn The results of the battle CHAPTER XIII. LANCASTER, PEMBROKE, AND THE DESPENSERS. Failure of the rule of Thomas of Lancaster 1315. Revolts of Llewelyn Bren 1315. Rising of Adam Banaster. 1316. The Bristol disturbances. 1315. Edward Bruce's attack on the English in Ireland. 1317. Roger Mortimer in Ireland. 1318. Death of Edward Bruce at Dundalk. Lancaster's failure and the break up of his party. Pembroke and the middle party. 9 Aug. Treaty of Leek and the supremacy of the middle party. 1314-18. Progress of Robert Bruce. 1319. Renewed attack on Scotland. Battle of Myton. Rise of the Despensers. 1317. The partition of the Gloucester inheritance. 1320. War between the husbands of the Gloucester heiresses in South Wales. June, 1321. Conferences at Pontefract and Sherburn. July. The exile of the Despensers. Break up of the opposition after their victory. 23-31 Oct., 1321. The siege of Leeds Castle. Jan.-Feb., 1322. Edward's successful campaign in the march. 11 Feb. Recall of the Despensers. The king's march against the northern barons. 16 Mar. Battle of Boroughbridge. 22 Mar. Execution of Lancaster. 2 May. Parliament at York and repeal of the ordinances. The triumph of the Despensers. CHAPTER XIV. THE FALL OF EDWARD II. AND THE RULE OF ISABELLA AND MORTIMER. Aug. Renewed attack on the Scots. Oct. Edward II.'s narrow escape at Byland. Mar., 1323. Treason and execution of Andrew Harclay. Incapacity of the Despensers as administrators. Their quarrels with the old nobles. 1324. Their breach with Queen Isabella. Their chief helpers: Walter Stapledon and Ralph Baldock. Reaction against the Despensers. 1303-14. Relations of England and France. 1314-22. Edward's dealings with Louis X. and Philip V. 1322. Accession of Charles IV. 1324. Affair of Saint-Sardos. Renewal of war. Sequestration of Gascony. Charles of Valois' conquest of the Agenais and La Réole. Isabella's mission to Paris. Edward of Aquitaine's homage to Charles IV. 1325. Treachery of Charles IV. and second sequestration of Gascony. 1326. Relations of Mortimer and Isabella The Hainault marriage 23 Sept. Landing of Isabella and Mortimer Riots in London: murder of Stapledon 26 Oct. Execution of the elder Despenser 16 Nov. Capture of Edward and the younger Despenser Triumph of the revolution 7 Jan., 1327. Parliament's recognition of Edward of Aquitaine as king 20 Jan. Edward II.'s resignation of the crown 24 Jan. Proclamation of Edward III. 22 Sept., 1328. Murder of Edward II. 1327-30. Rule of Isabella and Mortimer 1327. Abortive Scottish campaign April, 1328. Treaty of Northampton; "the shameful peace" Character and ambition of Mortimer Oct. Mortimer Earl of the March of Wales Henry of Lancaster's opposition to him Mar., 1330. Execution of the Earl of Kent Oct. Parliament at Nottingham 19 Oct. Arrest of Mortimer 29 Nov. His execution 1330-58. Later life of Isabella CHAPTER XV. THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. Character and policy of Edward III. 1330-40. The rule of the Stratfords 1337. The new earldoms Scotland during the minority of David Bruce Edward Balliol and the Disinherited 6 Aug., 1332. The Disinherited in Scotland Battle of Dupplin Moor 6 Aug.-16 Dec. Edward Balliol's brief reign and expulsion Treaty of Roxburgh 1333. Attempt to procure his restoration Siege of Berwick 19 July. Battle of Halidon Hill Edward Balliol restored 12 June, 1334. Treaty of Newcastle, ceding to Edward south-eastern Scotland Failure of Edward Balliol 1334-36. Edward III.'s Scottish campaigns 1341. Return of David Bruce from France 1327-37. Relations of England and France 31 Mar., 1327. Treaty of Paris Edward's lands in Gascony after the treaty of Paris 1328. Accession of Philip of Valois in France Protests of the English regency 1328. The legal and political aspects of the succession question Edward III.'s claim to France 6 June, 1329. Edward's homage to Philip VI. 8 May, 1330. Convention of the Wood of Vincennes 9 Mar., 1331. Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye April. Interview of Pont-Sainte-Maxence Crusading projects of John XXII. 1336. Abandonment of the crusade by Benedict XII Strained relations between England and France 1337. Mission of the Cardinals Peter and Bertrand Edward and Robert of Artois The _Vow_ of the Heron Preparations for war Breach with Flanders and stoppage of export of wool Alliance with William I. and II. of Hainault Edward's other Netherlandish allies 1337. Breach between France and England Nov. Sir Walter Manny at Cadzand Fruitless negotiations and further hostilities July, 1338. Edward III.'s departure for Flanders 5 Sept. Interview of Edward and the Emperor Louis of Bavaria at Coblenz The Anglo-imperial alliance Further fruitless negotiations Renewal of Edward's claim to the French crown The responsibility for the war CHAPTER XVI. THE EARLY CAMPAIGNS OF THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 1339. Edward's invasion of France Oct. Campaign of the Thiérache 23 Oct. The failure at Buironfosse Alliance between Edward and the Flemish cities James van Artevelde Jan., 1340. Edward III. at Ghent His proclamation as King of France 20 Feb. His return to England 22 June. His re-embarkation for Flanders Parallel naval development of England and France The Norman navy and the projected invasion of England 24 June. Battle of Sluys Ineffective campaigns in Artois and the Tournaisis 25 Sept. Truce of Esplechin 30 Nov. Edward's return to London The ministers displaced and a special commission appointed to try them 30 Nov. Controversy between Edward and Archbishop Stratford. 23 April, 1341. Parliament at London supporting Stratford and forcing Edward to choose ministers after consulting it. 1 Oct. Edward's repudiation of his concessions. April, 1343. Repeal of the statutes of 1341. John of Montfort and Charles of Blois claim the duchy of Brittany. War of the Breton succession. June, 1342. The siege of Hennebont raised. 1343. Battle of Morlaix. 19 Jan., 1343. Edward III. in Brittany. Truce of Malestroit. Edward's financial and political troubles. End of the Flemish alliance. June, 1345. Henry of Derby in Gascony. 21 Oct. Battle of Auberoche. 1346. Siege of Aiguillon and raid in Poitou. Preparations for Edward III.'s campaign. July-Aug. The march through Normandy. 26 July. Capture of Caen. Aug. The march up the Seine valley. The retreat northwards. The passage of the Somme at the _Blanche taque_. 26 Aug. Battle of Crecy. 17 Oct. Battle of Neville's Cross. 4 Sept. Siege of Calais. 3 Aug., 1347. Capture of Calais. 20 June. Battle of La Roche Derien. 28 Sept. Truce of Calais. CHAPTER XVII. FROM THE BLACK DEATH TO THE TREATY OF CALAIS. 1347-48. Prosperity of England after the truce. 1348-50. The Black Death and its results. 1351. Statute of labourers. Social and economic unrest. Religious unrest. The Flagellants. The anti-clerical movement. 1351. First statute of provisors. 1353. First statute of _præmunire_. Richard Fitzralph and the attack on the mendicants. 1354. Ordinance Of the Staple. 1352. Statute of treasons. 1349. Foundation of the Order of the Garter. Dagworth's administration of Brittany. Hugh Calveley and Robert Knowles. 27 Mar., 1351. Battle of the Thirty. 1352. Battle of Mauron Fighting round Calais 1352. Capture of Guînes 29 Aug., 1350. Battle of the Spaniards-on-the-sea 6 April, 1354. Preliminaries of peace signed at Guînes 1355. Failure of the negotiations and renewal of the war Failure of John of Gaunt in Normandy Sept.-Nov. Black Prince's raid in Languedoc 1356. Operations of John of Gaunt in Normandy in alliance with Charles of Navarre and Geoffrey of Harcourt 9 Aug.-2 Oct. Black Prince's raid northwards to the Loire 19 Sept. Battle of Poitiers. 23 Mar., 1357. Truce of Bordeaux Oct. Treaty of Berwick 1357-71. The last years of David II. 1371. Accession of Robert II. in Scotland 1358. Preliminaries of peace signed between Edward III. and John State of France after Poitiers 24 Mar., 1359. Treaty of London The rejection of the treaty by the French Nov., 1359-April, 1360. Edward III.'s invasion of Northern France Champagne and Burgundy 11 Jan., 1360. Treaty of Guillon 7 April. Siege of Paris 8 May. Treaty of Brétigni 24 Oct. Treaty of Calais CHAPTER XVIII. THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR FROM THE TREATY OF CALAIS TO THE TRUCE OF BRUGES. Difficulties in carrying out the treaty of Calais Guerilla warfare: exploits of Calveley, Pipe, and Jowel 16 May, 1364. Battle of Cocherel 29 Sept. Battle of Auray 1365. Treaty of Guérande Exploits of the free companies: John Hawkwood 1361. The charters of renunciation not exchanged 1364. Death of King John: accession of Charles V. 1366. Expulsion of Peter the Cruel from Castile by Du Guesclin and the free companies Feb., 1367. The Black Prince's expedition to Spain 3 April. Battle of Nájera The Black Prince's rule in Aquitaine His difficulties with the great nobles Jan., 1368. The hearth tax imposed Jan., 1369. Renewal of the war. Changed military and political conditions. Relations of England and Flanders. 1371. Battle in Bourgneuf Bay. Successes of the French. Sept., 1370. Sack of the _cité_ of Limoges. 1371. The Black Prince's return to England with shattered health. 1370. Futile expeditions of Lancaster and Knowles. Treason of Sir John Minsterworth. Battle of Pontvallain. 1370-72. Exploits of Sir Owen of Wales. 23 June, 1370. Defeat of Pembroke at La Rochelle. Aug. Defeat of Thomas Percy at Soubise. 1372. Edward III.'s last military expedition. Expulsion of the English from Poitou and Brittany. July-Dec., 1373. John of Gaunt's march from Calais to Bordeaux. 1374. Ruin of the English power in France. 27 June, 1375. Truce of Bruges. CHAPTER XIX. ENGLAND DURING THE LATTER YEARS OF EDWARD III. Glories of the years succeeding the treaty of Calais. 1361-69. John Froissart in England. His picture of the life of court and people. The national spirit in English literature. Gower and Minot. Geoffrey Chaucer. The standard English language. Lowland Scottish. The national spirit in art. "Flowing decorated" and "perpendicular" architecture. Contrast between England and Scotland. The national spirit in popular English literature. William Langland. His picture of the condition of the poor. The national spirit and the universities. Early career of John Wycliffe. Spread of cultivation among the laity. The national spirit in English law. The national spirit in commerce. Edward III.'s family settlement. Marriage of the Black Prince and Joan of Kent. Marriages of Lionel of Antwerp with Elizabeth de Burgh and Violante Visconti. Lionel in Ireland. Statute of Kilkenny. 1361-69. Philippa of Clarence's marriage with the Earl of March. John of Gaunt and the Duchy of Lancaster. Continuation of ancient rivalries between houses now represented by branches of the royal family. The great prelates of the end of Edward III.'s reign. Feb., 1371. Parliament: clerical ministers superseded by laymen. Clerical and anti-clerical, constitutional and court parties. Edward III.'s dotage. Alice Perrers. Struggle of parties at court. Increasing bitterness of the opposition to the courtiers. April-July, 1376. The "Good Parliament". Fall of the courtiers. 8 June. Death of the Black Prince. John of Gaunt restored to power. Jan., 1377. Packed parliament, and the reaction against the Good Parliament. Persistence of the clerical opposition. The attack on John Wycliffe. 10 Feb. Wycliffe before Bishop Courtenay. John of Gaunt's substantial triumph. 21 June. Death of Edward III. Characteristics of his age. APPENDIX. ON AUTHORITIES. (1216-1377.) Comparative value of records and chronicles. Record sources for the period. Chancery Records:-- Patent Rolls Close Rolls Rolls of Parliament Charter Rolls Inquests Post-Mortem Fine Rolls Gascon Rolls Hundred Rolls Exchequer Records Plea Rolls and records of the common law courts Records of local courts Scotch and Irish records Ecclesiastical records Bishops' registers Monastic Cartularies Papal records Chroniclers of the period. St. Alban's Abbey as a school of history. Matthew Paris. Later St. Alban's chroniclers. Other chroniclers of Henry III. Other monastic annals. Chroniclers of Edward I. Civic chronicles. Chroniclers of Edward II. Chroniclers of Edward III. Scottish and Welsh chronicles. French chronicles illustrating English history. The three redactions of Froissart. Other French chroniclers of the Hundred Years' War. Legal literature. Literary aids to history. Modern works on the period. Maps. Bibliographies. Note on authorities for battle of Poitiers. INDEX. MAPS. (At the End of the Volume) 1. Map of Wales and the March at the end of the XIIIth century. 2. Map of Southern Scotland and Northern England in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries. 3. Map of France in the XIIIth and XIVth centuries. CHAPTER I. THE REGENCY OF WILLIAM MARSHAL. When John died, on October 19, 1216, the issue of the war between him and the barons was still doubtful. The arrival of Louis of France, eldest son of King Philip Augustus, had enabled the barons to win back much of the ground lost after John's early triumphs had forced them to call in the foreigner. Beyond the Humber the sturdy north-country barons, who had wrested the Great Charter from John, remained true to their principles, and had also the support of Alexander II., King of Scots. The magnates of the eastern counties were as staunch as the northerners, and the rich and populous southern shires were for the most part in agreement with them. In the west, the barons had the aid of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, the great Prince of North Wales. While ten earls fought for Louis, the royal cause was only upheld by six. The towns were mainly with the rebels, notably London and the Cinque Ports, and cities so distant as Winchester and Lincoln, Worcester and Carlisle. Yet the baronial cause excited little general sympathy. The mass of the population stood aloof, and was impartially maltreated by the rival armies. John's son Henry had at his back the chief military resources of the country; the two strongest of the earls, William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, and Randolph of Blundeville, Earl of Chester; the fierce lords of the Welsh March, the Mortimers, the Cantilupes, the Cliffords, the Braoses, and the Lacys; and the barons of the West Midlands, headed by Henry of Neufbourg, Earl of Warwick, and William of Ferrars, Earl of Derby. This powerful phalanx gave to the royalists a stronger hold in the west than their opponents had in any one part of the much wider territory within their sphere of influence. There was no baronial counterpart to the successful raiding of the north and east, which John had carried through in the last months of his life. A baronial centre, like Worcester, could not hold its own long in the west. Moreover, John had not entirely forfeited his hereditary advantages. The administrative families, whose chief representative was the justiciar Hubert de Burgh, held to their tradition of unswerving loyalty, and joined with the followers of the old king, of whom William Marshal was the chief survivor. All over England the royal castles were in safe hands, and so long as they remained unsubdued, no part of Louis' dominions was secure. The crown had used to the full its rights over minors and vacant fiefs. The subjection of the south-west was assured by the marriage of the mercenary leader, Falkes de Bréauté, to the mother of the infant Earl of Devon, and by the grant of Cornwall to the bastard of the last of the Dunstanville earls. Though Isabella, Countess of Gloucester, John's repudiated wife, was as zealous as her new husband, the Earl of Essex, against John's son, Falkes kept a tight hand over Glamorgan, on which the military power of the house of Gloucester largely depended. Randolph of Chester was custodian of the earldoms of Leicester and Richmond, of which the nominal earls, Simon de Montfort and Peter Mauclerc, were far away, the one ruling Toulouse, and the other Brittany. The band of foreign adventurers, the mainstay of John's power, was still unbroken. Ruffians though these hirelings were, they had experience, skill, and courage, and were the only professional soldiers in the country. The vital fact of the situation was that the immense moral and spiritual forces of the Church remained on the side of the king. Innocent III. had died some months before John, but his successor, Honorius III., continued to uphold his policy. The papal legate, the Cardinal Gualo, was the soul of the royalist cause. Louis and his adherents had been excommunicated, and not a single English bishop dared to join openly the foes of Holy Church. The most that the clerical partisans of the barons could do was to disregard the interdict and continue their ministrations to the excommunicated host. The strongest English prelate, Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, was at Rome in disgrace. Walter Grey, Archbishop of York, and Hugh of Wells, Bishop of Lincoln, were also abroad, while the Bishop of London, William of Sainte-Mère-Eglise, was incapacitated by illness. Several important sees, including Durham and Ely, were vacant. The ablest resident bishop, Peter des Roches of Winchester, was an accomplice in John's misgovernment. The chief obstacle in the way of the royalists had been the character of John, and the little Henry of Winchester could have had no share in the crimes of his father. But the dead king had lately shown such rare energy that there was a danger lest the accession of a boy of nine might not weaken the cause of monarchy. The barons were largely out of hand. The war was assuming the character of the civil war of Stephen's days, and John's mercenaries were aspiring to play the part of feudal potentates. It was significant that so many of John's principal supporters were possessors of extensive franchises, like the lords of the Welsh March, who might well desire to extend these feudal immunities to their English estates. The triumph of the crown through such help might easily have resolved the united England of Henry II. into a series of lordships under a nominal king. The situation was saved by the wisdom and moderation of the papal legate, and the loyalty of William Marshal, who forgot his interests as Earl of Pembroke in his devotion to the house of Anjou. From the moment of John's death at Newark, the cardinal and the marshal took the lead. They met at Worcester, where the tyrant was buried, and at once made preparations for the coronation of Henry of Winchester. The ceremony took place at St. Peter's Abbey, Gloucester, on October 28, from which day the new reign was reckoned as beginning. The marshal, who had forty-three years before dubbed the "young king" Henry a knight, then for a second time admitted a young king Henry to the order of chivalry. When the king had recited the coronation oath and performed homage to the pope, Gualo anointed him and placed on his head the plain gold circlet that perforce did duly for a crown.[1] Next day Henry's leading supporters performed homage, and before November 1 the marshal was made justiciar. [1] There is some conflict of evidence on this point, and Dr. Stubbs, following Wendover, iv., 2, makes Peter of Winchester crown Henry. But the official account in _Fædera, i._, 145, is confirmed by _Ann. Tewkesbury_, p. 62; _Histoire de G. le Maréchal_, lines 15329-32; _Hist. des ducs de Normandie, et des rois d'Angleterre_, p. 181, and _Ann. Winchester_, p. 83. Wykes, p. 60, and _Ann. Dunstable_, p. 48, which confirm Wendover, are suspect by reason of other errors. On November 2 a great council met at Bristol. Only four earls appeared, and one of these, William of Fors, Earl of Albemarle, was a recent convert. But the presence of eleven bishops showed that the Church had espoused the cause of the little king, and a throng of western and marcher magnates made a sufficient representation of the lay baronage. The chief business was to provide for the government during the minority. Gualo withstood the temptation to adopt the method by which Innocent III. had ruled Sicily in the name of Frederick II. The king's mother was too unpopular and incompetent to anticipate the part played by Blanche of Castile during the minority of St. Louis. After the precedents set by the Latin kingdom of Jerusalem, the barons took the matter into their own hands. Their work of selection was not an easy one. Randolph of Chester was by far the most powerful of the royalist lords, but his turbulence and purely personal policy, not less than his excessive possessions and inordinate palatine jurisdictions, made him unsuitable for the regency. Yet had he raised any sort of claim, it would have been hardly possible to resist his pretensions.[1] Luckily, Randolph stood aside, and his withdrawal gave the aged earl marshal the position for which his nomination as justiciar at Gloucester had already marked him out. The title of regent was as yet unknown, either in England or France, but the style, "ruler of king and kingdom," which the barons gave to the marshal, meant something more than the ordinary position of a justiciar. William's friends had some difficulty in persuading him to accept the office. He was over seventy years of age, and felt it would be too great a burden. Induced at last by the legate to undertake the charge, from that moment he shrank from none of its responsibilities. The personal care of the king was comprised within the marshal's duties, but he delegated that branch of his work to Peter des Roches.[2] These two, with Gualo, controlled the whole policy of the new reign. Next to them came Hubert de Burgh, John's justiciar, whom the marshal very soon restored to that office. But Hubert at once went back to the defence of Dover, and for some time took little part in general politics. [1] The fears and hopes of the marshal's friends are well depicted in _Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal_, lines 15500-15708. [2] The panegyrist of the marshal emphasises strongly the fact that Peter's charge was a delegation, _ibid._, lines 17993-18018. On November 12, the legate and the regent issued at Bristol a confirmation of the Great Charter. Some of the most important articles accepted by John in 1215 were omitted, including the "constitutional clauses" requiring the consent of the council of barons for extraordinary taxation. Other provisions, which tied the hands of the government, were postponed for further consideration in more settled times. But with all its mutilations the Bristol charter of 1216 marked a more important moment than even the charter of Runnymede. The condemnation of Innocent III. would in all probability have prevented the temporary concession of John from becoming permanent. Love of country and love of liberty were doubtless growing forces, but they were still in their infancy, while the papal authority was something ultimate against which few Christians dared appeal. Thus the adoption by the free will of the papal legate, and the deliberate choice of the marshal of the policy of the Great Charter, converted, as has well been said, "a treaty won at the point of the sword into a manifesto of peace and sound government".[1] This wise change of policy cut away the ground from under the feet of the English supporters of Louis. The friends of the young Henry could appeal to his innocence, to his sacred unction, and to his recognition by Holy Church. They offered a programme of limited monarchy, of the redress of grievances, of vested rights preserved, and of adhesion to the good old traditions that all Englishmen respected. From that moment the Charter became a new starting-point in our history. [1] Stubbs, _Const. Hist._, ii., 21. In strange contrast to this programme of reform, the aliens, who had opposed the charter of Runnymede, were among the lords by whose counsel and consent the charter of Bristol was issued. In its weakness the new government sought to stimulate the zeal both of the foreign mercenaries and of the loyal barons by grants and privileges which seriously entrenched upon the royal authority. Falkes de Bréauté was confirmed in the custody of a compact group of six midland shires, besides the earldom of Devon, and the "county of the Isle of Wight,"[1] which he guarded in the interests of his wife and stepson. Savary de Mauléon, who in despair of his old master's success had crossed over to Poitou before John's death, was made warden of the castle of Bristol. Randolph of Chester was consoled for the loss of the regency by the renewal of John's recent grant of the Honour of Lancaster which was by this time definitely recognised as a shire.[2] [1] _Histoire des ducs de Normandie_, etc., p. 181. [2] Tait, _Medieval Manchester and the Beginnings of Lancashire_, p. 180. The war assumed the character of a crusade. The royalist troops wore white crosses on their garments, and were assured by the clergy of certain salvation. The cruel and purposeless ravaging of the enemy's country, which had occupied John's last months of life, became rare, though partisans, such as Falkes de Bréauté, still outvied the French in plundering monasteries and churches. The real struggle became a war of castles. Louis endeavoured to complete his conquest of the south-east by the capture of the royal strongholds, which still limited his power to the open country. At first the French prince had some successes. In November he increased his hold on the Home counties by capturing the Tower of London, by forcing Hertford to surrender, and by pressing the siege of Berkhampsted. As Christmas approached the royalists proposed a truce. Louis agreed on the condition that Berkhampsted should be surrendered, and early in 1217 both parties held councils, the royalists at Oxford and the barons at Cambridge. There was vague talk of peace, but the war was renewed, and Louis captured Hedingham and Orford in Essex, and besieged the castles of Colchester and Norwich. Then another truce until April 26 was concluded, on the condition that the royalists should surrender these two strongholds. Both sides had need to pause. Louis, at the limit of his resources, was anxious to obtain men and money from France. He was not getting on well with his new subjects. The eastern counties grumbled at his taxes. Dissensions arose between the English and French elements in his host. The English lords resented the grants and appointments he gave to his countrymen. The French nobles professed to despise the English as traitors. When Hertford was taken, Robert FitzWalter demanded that its custody should be restored to him. Louis roughly told him that Englishmen, who had betrayed their natural lord, were not to be entrusted with such charges. It was to little purpose that he promised Robert that every man should have his rights when the war was over. The prospects of ending the war grew more remote every day. The royalists took advantage of the discouragement of their opponents. The regent was lavish in promises. There should be no inquiry into bygones, and all who submitted to the young king should be guaranteed all their existing rights. The result was that a steady stream of converts began to flow from the camp of Louis to the camp of the marshal. For the first time signs of a national movement against Louis began to be manifest. It became clear that his rule meant foreign conquest. Louis wished to return to France, but despite the truce he could only win his way to the coast by fighting. The Cinque Ports were changing their allegiance. A popular revolt had broken out in the Weald, where a warlike squire, William of Cassingham,[1] soon became a terror to the French under his nickname of Wilkin of the Weald. As Louis traversed the disaffected districts, Wilkin fell upon him near Lewes, and took prisoners two nephews of the Count of Nevers. On his further march to Winchelsea, the men of the Weald broke down the bridges behind him, while on his approach the men of Winchelsea destroyed their mills, and took to their ships as avowed partisans of King Henry. The French prince entered the empty town, and had great difficulty in keeping his army alive. "Wheat found they there," says a chronicler; "in great plenty, but they knew not how to grind it. Long time were they in such a plight that they had to crush by hand the corn of which they made their bread. They could catch no fish. Great store of nuts found they in the town; these were their finest food."[2] Louis was in fact besieged by the insurgents, and was only released by a force of knights riding down from London to help him. These troops dared not travel by the direct road through the Weald, and made their way to Romney through Canterbury. Rye was strongly held against them and the ships of the Cinque Ports dominated the sea, so that Louis was still cut off from his friends at Romney. A relieving fleet was despatched from Boulogne, but stress of weather kept it for a fortnight at Dover, while Louis was starving at Winchelsea. At last the French ships appeared off Winchelsea. Thereupon the English withdrew, and Louis finding the way open to France returned home. [1] Mr. G.J. Turner has identified Cassingham with the modern Kensham, between Rolvenden and Sandhurst, in Kent. [2] _Histoire des ducs de Normandie_, etc., p. 183. A crowd of waverers changed sides. At their head were William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, the bastard great-uncle of the little king, and William, the young marshal, the eldest son of the Earl of Pembroke. The regent wandered from town to town in Sussex, receiving the submission of the peasantry, and venturing to approach as near London as Dorking. The victorious Wilkin was made Warden of the Seven Hundreds of the Weald. The greatest of the magnates of Sussex and Surrey, William, Earl Warenne, followed the example of his tenantry, and made his peace with the king. The royalists fell upon the few castles held by the barons. While one corps captured Odiham, Farnham, Chichester, and other southern strongholds, Falkes de Bréauté overran the Isle of Ely, and Randolph of Chester besieged the Leicestershire fortress of Mount Sorrel. Enguerrand de Coucy, whom Louis had left in command, remained helpless in London. His boldest act was to send a force to Lincoln, which occupied the town, but failed to take the castle. This stronghold, under its hereditary warden, the valiant old lady, Nichola de Camville,[1] had already twice withstood a siege. [1] On Nichola de Camville or de la Hay see M. Petit-Dutaillis in _Mélanges Julien Havet_, pp. 369-80. Louis found no great encouragement in France, for Philip Augustus, too prudent to offend the Church, gave but grudging support to his excommunicated son. When, on the eve of the expiration of the truce, Louis returned to England, his reinforcements comprised only 120 knights. Among them, however, were the Count of Brittany, Peter Mauclerc, anxious to press in person his rights to the earldom of Richmond, the Counts of Perche and Guînes, and many lords of Picardy, Artois and Ponthieu. Conscious that everything depended on the speedy capture of the royal castles, Louis introduced for the first time into England the _trébuchet_, a recently invented machine that cast great missiles by means of heavy counterpoises. "Great was the talk about this, for at that time few of them had been seen in France."[1] On April 22, Louis reached Dover, where the castle was still feebly beset by the French. On his nearing the shore, Wilkin of the Weald and Oliver, a bastard of King John's, burnt the huts of the French engaged in watching the castle. Afraid to land in their presence, Louis disembarked at Sandwich. Next day he went by land to Dover, but discouraged by tidings of his losses, he gladly concluded a short truce with Hubert de Burgh. He abandoned the siege of Dover, and hurried off towards Winchester, where the two castles were being severely pressed by the royalists. But his progress was impeded by his siege train, and Farnham castle blocked his way. [1] _Histoire des ducs de Normandie, etc._, p. 188; cf. _English Hist. Review_, xviii. (1903), 263-64. Saer de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, joined Louis outside the walls of Farnham. Saer's motive was to persuade Louis to hasten to the relief of his castle of Mount Sorrel. The French prince was not in a position to resist pressure from a powerful supporter. He divided his army, and while the Earl of Winchester, along with the Count of Perche and Robert FitzWalter, made their way to Leicestershire, he completed his journey to Winchester, threw a fresh force into the castles, and, leaving the Count of Nevers in charge, hurried to London. There he learnt that Hubert de Burgh at Dover had broken the truce, and he at once set off to renew the siege of the stronghold which had so continually baulked his plans. But little good came of his efforts, and the much-talked-of _trébuchet_ proving powerless to effect a breach, Louis had to resign himself to a weary blockade. While he was besieging Dover, Saer de Quincy had relieved Mount Sorrel, whence he marched to the help of Gilbert of Ghent, the only English baron whom Louis ventured to raise to comital rank as Earl of Lincoln. Gilbert was still striving to capture Lincoln Castle, but Nichola de Camville had resisted him from February to May. With the help of the army from Mount Sorrel, the castle and its _châtelaine_ were soon reduced to great straits. The marshal saw that the time was come to take the offensive, and resolved to raise the siege. Having no field army, he stripped his castles of their garrisons, and gave rendezvous to his barons at Newark. There the royalists rested three days, and received the blessing of Gualo and the bishops. They then set out towards Lincoln, commanded by the regent in person, the Earl of Chester, and the Bishop of Winchester, whom the legate appointed as his representative. The strong water defences of the rebel city on the south made it unadvisable for them to take the direct route towards it. Their army descended the Trent to Torksey, where it rested the night of May 19. Early next day, the eve of Trinity Sunday, it marched in four "battles" to relieve Lincoln Castle. There were more than 600 knights besieging the castle and holding the town, and the relieving army only numbered 400 knights and 300 cross-bowmen. But the barons dared not risk a combat that might have involved them in the fate of Stephen in 1141. They retreated within the city and allowed the marshal to open up communications with the castle. The marshal's plan of battle was arranged by Peter des Roches, who was more at home in the field than in the church. The cross-bowmen under Falkes de Bréauté were thrown into the castle, and joined with the garrison in making a sally from its east gate into the streets of the town. While the barons were thus distracted, the marshal burst through the badly defended north gate. The barons taken in front and flank fought desperately, but with no success. Falkes' cross-bowmen shot down their horses, and the dismounted knights soon failed to hold their own in the open ground about the cathedral. The Count of Perche was slain by a sword-thrust through the eyehole of his helmet. The royalists chased the barons down the steep lanes which connect the upper with the lower town. When they reached level ground the baronial troops rallied, and once more strove to reascend the hill. But the town was assailed on every side, and its land defences yielded with little difficulty. The Earl of Chester poured his vassals through one of the eastern gates, and took the barons in flank. Once more they broke, and this time they rallied not again, but fled through the Wigford suburb seeking any means of escape. Some obstruction in the Bar-gate, the southern exit from the city, retarded their flight, and many of the leaders were captured. The remnant fled to London, thinking that "every bush was full of marshals," and suffering severely from the hostility of the peasantry. Only three persons were slain in the battle, but there was a cruel massacre of the defenceless citizens after its close. So vast was the booty won by the victors that in scorn they called the fight the Fair of Lincoln![1] [1] For a discussion of the battle, see _English Hist. Review_, xviii. (1903), 240-65. Louis' prospects were still not desperate. The victorious army scattered, each man to his own house, so that the marshal was in no position to press matters to extremities. But there was a great rush to make terms with the victor, and Louis thought it prudent to abandon the hopeless siege of Dover, and take refuge with his partisans, the Londoners. Meanwhile the marshal hovered round London, hoping eventually to shut up the enemy in the capital. On June 12, the Archbishop of Tyre and three Cistercian abbots, who had come to England to preach the Crusade, persuaded both parties to accept provisional articles of peace. Louis stipulated for a complete amnesty to all his partisans; but the legate declined to grant pardon to the rebellious clerks who had refused to obey the interdict, conspicuous among whom was the firebrand Simon Langton, brother of the archbishop. Finding no compromise possible, Louis broke off the negotiations rather than abandon his friends. Gualo urged a siege of London, but the marshal saw that his resources were not adequate for such a step. Again many of his followers went home, and the court abode first at Oxford and afterwards at Gloucester. It seemed as if the war might go on for ever. Blanche of Castile, Louis' wife, redoubled her efforts on his behalf. In response to her entreaties a hundred knights and several hundred men-at-arms took ship for England. Among the knights was the famous William des Barres, one of the heroes of Bouvines, and Theobald, Count of Blois. Eustace the Monk, a renegade clerk turned pirate, and a hero of later romance, took command of the fleet. On the eve of St. Bartholomew, August 23, Eustace sailed from Calais towards the mouth of the Thames. Kent had become royalist; the marshal and Hubert de Burgh held Sandwich, so that the long voyage up the Thames was the only way of taking succour to Louis. Next day the old earl remained on shore, but sent out Hubert with the fleet. The English let the French pass by, and then, manoeuvring for the weather gage, tacked and assailed them from behind.[1] The fight raged round the great ship of Eustace, on which the chief French knights were embarked. Laden with stores, horses, and a ponderous _trébuchet_, it was too low in the water to manoeuvre or escape. Hubert easily laid his own vessel alongside it. The English, who were better used to fighting at sea than the French, threw powdered lime into the faces of the enemy, swept the decks with their crossbow bolts and then boarded the ship, which was taken after a fierce fight. The crowd of cargo boats could offer little resistance as they beat up against the wind in their retreat to Calais; the ships containing the soldiers were more fortunate in escaping. Eustace was beheaded, and his head paraded on a pole through the streets of Canterbury. [1] This successful attempt of the English fleet to manoeuvre for the weather gage, that is to secure a position to the windward of their opponents, is the first recorded instance of what became the favourite tactics of British admirals. For the legend of Eustace see _Witasse le Moine_, ed. Förster (1891). The battle of St. Bartholomew's Day, like that of Lincoln a triumph of skill over numbers, proved decisive for the fortunes of Louis. The English won absolute control of the narrow seas, and cut off from Louis all hope of fighting his way back to France. As soon as he heard of the defeat of Eustace, he reopened negotiations with the marshal. On the 29th there was a meeting between Louis and the Earl at the gates of London. The regent had to check the ardour of his own partisans, and it was only after anxious days of deliberation that the party of moderation prevailed. On September 5 a formal conference was held on an island of the Thames near Kingston. On the 11th a definitive treaty was signed at the archbishop's house at Lambeth. The Treaty of Lambeth repeated with little alteration the terms rejected by Louis three months before. The French prince surrendered his castles, released his partisans from their oaths to him, and exhorted all his allies, including the King of Scots and the Prince of Gwynedd, to lay down their arms. In return Henry promised that no layman should lose his inheritance by reason of his adherence to Louis, and that the baronial prisoners should be released without further payment of ransom. London, despite its pertinacity in rebellion, was to retain its ancient franchises. The marshal bound himself personally to pay Louis 10,000 marks, nominally as expenses, really as a bribe to accept these terms. A few days later Louis and his French barons appeared before the legate, barefoot and in the white garb of penitents, and were reconciled to the Church. They were then escorted to Dover, whence they took ship for France. Only on the rebellious clergy did Gualo's wrath fall. The canons of St. Paul's were turned out in a body; ringleaders like Simon Langton were driven into exile, and agents of the legate traversed the country punishing clerks who had disregarded the interdict. But Honorius was more merciful than Gualo, and within a year even Simon received his pardon. The laymen of both camps forgot their differences, when Randolph of Chester and William of Ferrars fought in the crusade of Damietta, side by side with Saer of Winchester and Robert FitzWalter. The reconciliation of parties was further shown in the marriage of Hubert de Burgh to John's divorced wife, Isabella of Gloucester, a widow by the death of the Earl of Essex, and still the foremost English heiress. On November 6 the pacification was completed by the reissue of the Great Charter in what was substantially its final form. The forest clauses of the earlier issues were published in a much enlarged shape as a separate Forest Charter, which laid down the great principle that no man was to lose life or limb for hindering the king's hunting. It is tempting to regard the defeat of Louis as a triumph of English patriotism. But it is an anachronism to read the ideals of later ages into the doings of the men of the early thirteenth century. So far as there was national feeling in England, it was arrayed against Henry. To the last the most fervently English of the barons were steadfast on the French prince's side, and the triumph of the little king had largely been procured by John's foreigners. To contemporary eyes the rebels were factious assertors of class privileges and feudal immunities. Their revolt against their natural lord brought them into conflict with the sentiment of feudal duty which was still so strong in faithful minds. And against them was a stronger force than feudal loyally. From this religious standpoint the Canon of Barnwell best sums up the situation: "It was a miracle that the heir of France, who had won so large a part of the kingdom, was constrained to abandon the realm without hope of recovering it. It was because the hand of God was not with him. He came to England in spite of the prohibition of the Holy Roman Church, and he remained there regardless of its anathema." The young king never forgot that he owed his throne to the pope and his legate. "When we were bereft of our father in tender years," he declared long afterwards, "when our subjects were turned against us, it was our mother, the Holy Roman Church, that brought back our realm under our power, anointed us king, crowned us, and placed us on the throne."[1] The papacy, which had secured a new hold over England by its alliance with John, made its position permanent by its zeal for the rights of his son. By identifying the monarchy with the charters, it skilfully retraced the false step which it had taken. Under the ægis of the Roman see the national spirit grew, and the next generation was to see the temper fostered by Gualo in its turn grow impatient of the papal supremacy. It was Gualo, then, who secured the confirmation of the charters. Even Louis unconsciously worked in that direction, for, had he not gained so strong a hold on the country, there would have been no reason to adopt a policy of conciliation. We must not read the history of this generation in the light of modern times, or even with the eyes of Matthew Paris. [1] Grosseteste, _Epistolæ_, p. 339. The marshal had before him a task essentially similar to that which Henry II had undertaken after the anarchy of Stephen's reign. It was with the utmost difficulty that the sum promised to Louis could be extracted from the war-stricken and famished tillers of the soil. The exchequer was so empty that the Christmas court of the young king was celebrated at the expense of Falkes de Bréauté. Those who had fought for the king clamoured for grants and rewards, and it was necessary to humour them. For example, Randolph of Blundeville, with the earldom of Lincoln added to his Cheshire palatinate and his Lancashire Honour, had acquired a position nearly as strong as that of the Randolph of the reign of Stephen. "Adulterine castles" had grown up in such numbers that the new issue of the Charter insisted upon their destruction. Even the lawful castles were held by unauthorised custodians, who refused to yield them up to the king's officers. Though Alexander, King of Scots, purchased his reconciliation with Rome by abandoning Carlisle and performing homage to Henry, the Welsh remained recalcitrant. One chieftain, Morgan of Caerleon, waged war against the marshal in Gwent, and was dislodged with difficulty. During the war Llewelyn ap Iorwerth conquered Cardigan and Carmarthen from the marchers, and it was only after receiving assurances that he might retain these districts so long as the king's minority lasted that he condescended to do homage at Worcester in March, 1218. In the following May Stephen Langton came back from exile and threw the weight of his judgment on the regent's side. Gradually the worst difficulties were surmounted. The administrative machinery once more became effective. A new seal was cast for the king, whose documents had hitherto been stamped with the seal of the regent. Order was so far restored that Gualo returned to Italy. He was a man of high character and noble aims, caring little for personal advancement, and curbing his hot zeal against "schismatics" in his desire to restore peace to England. His memory is still commemorated in his great church of St. Andrew, at Vercelli, erected, it may be, with the proceeds of his English benefices, and still preserving the manuscript of legends of its patron saint, which its founder had sent thither from his exile. At Candlemas, 1219, the aged regent was smitten with a mortal illness. His followers bore him up the Thames from London to his manor of Caversham, where his last hours were disturbed by the intrigues of Peter of Winchester for his succession, and the importunity of selfish clerks, clamouring for grants to their churches. He died on May 14, clad in the habit of the Knights of the Temple, in whose new church in London his body was buried, and where his effigy may still be seen. The landless younger son of a poor baron, he had supported himself in his youth by the spoils of the knights he had vanquished in the tournaments, where his successes gained him fame as the model of chivalry. The favour of Henry, the "young king," gave him political importance, and his marriage with Strongbow's daughter made him a mighty man in England, Ireland, Wales, and Normandy. Strenuous and upright, simple and dignified, the young soldier of fortune bore easily the weight of office and honour which accrued to him before the death of his first patron. Limited as was his outlook, he gave himself entirely to his master-principle of loyally to the feudal lord whom he had sworn to obey. This simple conception enabled him to subordinate his interests as a marcher potentate to his duty to the English monarchy. It guided him in his difficult work of serving with unbending constancy a tyrant like John. It shone most clearly when in his old age he saved John's son from the consequences of his father's misdeeds. A happy accident has led to the discovery in our own days of the long poem, drawn up in commemoration of his career[1] at the instigation of his son. This important work has enabled us to enter into the marshal's character and spirit in much the same way as Joinville's _History of St. Louis_ has made us familiar with the motives and attributes of the great French king. They are the two men of the thirteenth century whom we know most intimately. It is well that the two characters thus portrayed at length represent to us so much of what is best in the chivalry, loyalty, statecraft, and piety of the Middle Ages. [1] _Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal_, published by P. Meyer for the Soc. de l'histoire de France. Petit-Dutaillis, _Étude sur Louis VIII._ (1894), and G.J. Turner, _Minority of Henry III._, part i, in _Transactions of the Royal Hist. Soc._, new ser., viii. (1904), 245-95, are the best modern commentaries on the history of the marshal's regency. CHAPTER II. THE RULE OF HUBERT DE BURGH. William Marshal had recognized that the regency must end with him. "There is no land," he declared, "where the people are so divided as they are in England. Were I to hand over the king to one noble, the others would be jealous. For this reason I have determined to entrust him to God and the pope. No one can blame me for this, for, if the land is not defended by the pope, I know no one who can protect it." The fortunate absence of Randolph of Chester on crusade made it easy to carry out this plan. Accordingly the king of twelve years was supposed to be capable of acting for himself. But the ultimate authority resided with the new legate Pandulf, who, without any formal designation, was the real successor of the marshal. This arrangement naturally left great power to Peter des Roches, who continued to have the custody of the king's person, and to Hubert the justiciar, who henceforth acted as Pandulf's deputy. Next to them came the Archbishop of Canterbury. Langton's share in the struggle for the charters was so conspicuous, that we do not always remember that it was as a scholar and a theologian that he acquired his chief reputation among his contemporaries. On his return from exile he found such engrossing occupation in the business of his see, that he took little part in politics for several years. His self-effacement strengthened the position of the legate. Pandulf was no stranger to England. As subdeacon of the Roman Church he received John's submission in 1213, and stood by his side during nearly all his later troubles. He had been rewarded by his election to the bishopric of Norwich, but was recalled to Rome before his consecration, and only came back to England in the higher capacity of legate on December 3, 1218, after the recall of Gualo. He had been the cause of Langton's suspension, and there was probably no love lost between him and the archbishop. It was in order to avoid troublesome questions of jurisdiction that Pandulf, at the pope's suggestion, continued to postpone his consecration as bishop, since that act would have subordinated him to the Archbishop of Canterbury. But neither he nor Langton was disposed to push matters to extremities. Just as Peter des Roches balanced Hubert de Burgh, so the archbishop acted as a makeweight to the legate. When power was thus nicely equipoised, there was a natural tendency to avoid conflicting issues. In these circumstances the truce between parties, which had marked the regency, continued for the first years after Earl William's death. In all doubtful points the will of the legate seems to have prevailed. Pandulf's correspondence shows him interfering in every matter of state. He associated himself with the justiciar in the appointment of royal officials; he invoked the papal authority to put down "adulterine castles," and to prevent any baron having more than one royal stronghold in his custody; he prolonged the truce with France, and strove to pacify the Prince of North Wales; he procured the resumption of the royal domain, and rebuked Bishop Peter and the justiciar for remissness in dealing with Jewish usurers; he filled up bishoprics at his own discretion. Nor did he neglect his own interests; his kinsfolk found preferment in his English diocese, and he appropriated certain livings for the payment of his debts, "so far as could be done without offence". But in higher matters he pursued a wise policy. In recognising that the great interest of the Church was peace, he truly expressed the policy of the mild Honorius. For more than two years he kept Englishmen from flying at each other's throats. If they paid for peace by the continuance of foreign rule, it was better to be governed by Pandulf than pillaged by Falkes. The principal events of these years were due to papal initiative.[1] Honorius looked askance on the maimed rites of the Gloucester coronation, and ordered a new hallowing to take place at the accustomed place and with the accustomed ceremonies. This supplementary rite was celebrated at Westminster on Whitsunday, May 17, 1220. Though Pandulf was present, he discreetly permitted the Archbishop of Canterbury to crown Henry with the diadem of St. Edward. "This coronation," says the Canon of Barnwell, "was celebrated with such good order and such splendour that the oldest magnates who were present declared that they had seen none of the king's predecessors crowned with so much goodwill and tranquillity." Nor was this the only great ecclesiastical function of the year. On July 7 Langton celebrated at Canterbury the translation of the relics of St. Thomas to a magnificent shrine at the back of the high altar. Again the legate gave precedence to the archbishop, and the presence of the young king, of the Archbishop of Reims, and the Primate of Hungary, gave distinction to the solemnity. It was a grand time for English saints. When Damietta was taken from the Mohammedans, the crusaders dedicated two of its churches to St. Thomas of Canterbury and St. Edmund the King. A new saint was added to the calendar, who, if not an Englishman, had done good work for the country of his adoption. In 1220 Honorius III. canonised Hugh of Avalon, the Carthusian Bishop of Lincoln, on the report of a commission presided over by Langton himself. [1]: H.R. Luard, _On the Relations between England and Rome during the Earlier Portion of the Reign of Henry III._ (1877), illustrates papal influence at this period. No real unity of principle underlay the external tranquillity. As time went on Peter des Roches bitterly resented the growing preponderance of Hubert de Burgh. Not all the self-restraint of the legate could commend him to Langton, whose obstinate insistence upon his metropolitical authority forced Pandulf to procure bulls from Rome specifically releasing him from the jurisdiction of the primate. In these circumstances it was natural for Bishop Peter and the legate to join together against the justiciar and the archbishop. Finding that the legate was too strong for him, Langton betook himself to Rome, and remained there nearly a year. Before he went home he persuaded Honorius to promise not to confer the same benefice twice by papal provision, and to send no further legate to England during his lifetime. Pandulf was at once recalled, and left England in July, 1221, a month before his rival's return. He was compensated for the slight put upon him by receiving his long-deferred consecration to Norwich at the hands of the pope. There is small reason for believing that he was exceptionally greedy or unpopular. But his withdrawal removed an influence which had done its work for good, and was becoming a national danger. Langton henceforth could act as the real head of the English Church. In 1222, he held an important provincial council at Oseney abbey, near Oxford, where he issued constitutions, famous as the first provincial canons still recognised as binding in our ecclesiastical courts. He began once more to concern himself with affairs of state, and Hubert found him a sure ally. Bishop Peter, disgusted with his declining influence, welcomed his appointment as archbishop of the crusading Church at Damietta. He took the cross, and left England with Falkes de Bréauté as his companion. Learning that the crescent had driven the cross out of his new see, he contented himself with making the pilgrimage to Compostella, and soon found his way back to England, where he sought for opportunities to regain power. Relieved of the opposition of Bishop Peter, Hubert insisted on depriving barons of doubtful loyalty of the custody of royal castles, and found his chief opponent in William Earl of Albemarle. In dignity and possessions, Albemarle was not ill-qualified to be a feudal leader. The son of William de Fors, of Oléron, a Poitevin adventurer of the type of Falkes de Bréauté, he represented, through his mother, the line of the counts of Aumâle, who had since the Conquest ruled over Holderness from their castle at Skipsea. The family acquired the status of English earls under Stephen, retaining their foreign title, expressed in English in the form of Albemarle, being the first house of comital rank abroad to hold an earldom with a French name unassociated with any English shire. During the civil war Albemarle's tergiversations, which rivalled those of the Geoffrey de Mandeville of Stephen's time, had been rewarded by large grants from the victorious party. Since 1219 he suffered slight upon slight, and in 1220 was stripped of the custody of Rockingham Castle. Late in that year Hubert resolved to enforce an order, promulgated in 1217, which directed Albemarle to restore to his former subtenant Bytham Castle, in South Kesteven, of which he was overlord, and of which he had resumed possession on account of the treason of his vassal. The earl hurried away in indignation from the king's Christmas court, and in January, 1221, threw himself into Bytham, eager to hold it by force against the king. For a brief space he ruled over the country-side after the fashion of a baron of Stephen's time. He plundered the neighbouring towns and churches, and filled the dungeons of Castle Bytham with captives. On the pretext of attending a council at Westminster he marched southwards, but his real motive was disclosed when he suddenly attacked the castle of Fotheringhay. His men crossed the moat on the ice, and, burning down the great gate, easily overpowered the scanty garrison. "As if he were the only ruler of the kingdom," says the Canon of Barnwell, "he sent letters signed with his seal to the mayors of the cities of England, granting his peace to all merchants engaged in plying their trades, and allowing them free licence of going and coming through his castles." Nothing in the annals of the time puts more clearly this revival of the old feudal custom that each baron should lord it as king over his own estates. Albemarle's power did not last long. He incurred the wrath of the Church, and both in Kesteven and in Northamptonshire set himself against the interests of Randolph of Chester. Before January was over Pandulf excommunicated him, and a great council granted a special scutage, "the scutage of Bytham," to equip an army to crush the rebel. Early in February a considerable force marched northwards against him. The Earl of Chester took part in the campaign, and both the legate and the king accompanied the army. Before the combined efforts of Church and State, Albemarle dared not hold his ground, and fled to Fountains, where he took sanctuary. His followers abandoned Fotheringhay, but stood a siege at Bytham. After six days this castle was captured on February 8. Even then secret sympathisers with Albemarle were able to exercise influence on his behalf, and Pandulf himself was willing to show mercy. The earl came out of sanctuary, and was pardoned on condition of taking the crusader's vow. No effort was made to insist on his going on crusade, and within a few months he was again in favour. "Thus," says Roger of Wendover, "the king set the worst of examples, and encouraged future rebellions." Randolph of Chester came out with the spoils of victory. He secured as the price of his ostentatious fidelity the custody of the Honour of Huntingdon, during the nonage of the earl, his nephew, John the Scot. A tumult in the capital soon taught Hubert that he had other foes to fight against besides the feudal party. At a wrestling match, held on July 25, 1222, between the city and the suburbs, the citizens won an easy victory. The tenants of the Abbot of Westminster challenged the conquerors to a fresh contest on August 1 at Westminster. But the abbot's men were more anxious for revenge than good sport, and seeing that the Londoners were likely to win, they violently broke up the match. Suspecting no evil, the citizens had come without arms, and were very severely handled by their rivals. Driven back behind their walls, the Londoners clamoured for vengeance. Serlo the mercer, their mayor, a prudent and peace-loving man, urged them to seek compensation of the abbot. But the citizens preferred the advice of Constantine FitzAthulf, who insisted upon an immediate attack on the men of Westminster. Next day the abbey precincts were invaded, and much mischief was done. The alarm was the greater because Constantine was a man of high position, who had recently been a sheriff of London, and had once been a strenuous supporter of Louis of France. It was rumoured that his followers had raised the cry, "Montjoie! Saint Denis!" The quarrels of neighbouring cities were as dangerous to sound rule as the feuds of rival barons, and Hubert took instant measures to put down the sedition. With the aid of Falkes de Bréauté's mercenaries, order was restored, and Constantine was led before the justiciar. Early next day Falkes assembled his forces, and crossed the river to Southwark. He took with him Constantine and two of his supporters, and hanged all three, without form of trial, before the city knew anything about it. Then Falkes and his soldiers rushed through the streets, capturing, mutilating, and frightening away the citizens. Constantine's houses and property were seized by the king. The weak Serlo was deposed from the mayoralty, and the city taken into the king's hands. It was the last time that Hubert and Falkes worked together, and something of the violence of the _condottiere_ captain sullied the justiciar's reputation. As the murderer of Constantine, Hubert was henceforth pursued with the undying hatred of the Londoners. During the next two years parties became clearly defined. Hubert more and more controlled the royal policy, and strove to strengthen both his master and himself by marriage alliances. Powerful husbands were sought for the king's three sisters. On June 19, 1221, Joan, Henry's second sister, was married to the young Alexander of Scotland, at York. At the same time Hubert, a widower by Isabella of Gloucester's death, wedded Alexander's elder sister, Margaret, a match which compensated the justiciar for his loss of Isabella's lands. Four years later, Isabella, the King of Scot's younger sister, was united with Roger Bigod, the young Earl of Norfolk, a grandson of the great William Marshal, whose eldest son and successor, William Marshal the younger, was in 1224 married to the king's third sister, Eleanor. The policy of intermarriage between the royal family and the baronage was defended by the example of Philip Augustus in France, and on the ground of the danger to the royal interests if so strong a magnate as the earl marshal were enticed away from his allegiance by an alliance with a house unfriendly to Henry.[1] [1] _Royal Letters_, i., 244-46. The futility of marriage alliances in modifying policy was already made clear by the attitude of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, the husband of Henry's bastard sister Joan. This resourceful prince had already raised himself to a high position by a statecraft which lacked neither strength nor duplicity. Though fully conscious of his position as the champion of a proud nation, and, posing as the peer of the King of Scots, Llewelyn saw that it was his interest to continue the friendship with the baronial opposition which had profited him so greatly in the days of the French invasion. The pacification arranged in 1218 sat rightly upon him, and he plunged into a war with William Marshal the younger that desolated South Wales for several years. In 1219 Llewelyn devastated Pembrokeshire so cruelly that the marshal's losses were currently, though absurdly, reported to have exceeded the amount of the ransom of King Richard. There was much more fighting, but Llewelyn's progress was impeded by difficulties with his own son Griffith, and with the princes of South Wales, who bore impatiently the growing hold of the lord of Gwynedd upon the affections of southern Welshmen. There was war also in the middle march, where in 1220 a royal army was assembled against Llewelyn; but Pandulf negotiated a truce, and the only permanent result of this effort was the fortification of the castle and town at Montgomery, which had become royal demesne on the extinction of the ancient house of Bollers a few years earlier. But peace never lasted long west of the Severn, and in 1222 William Marshal drove Llewelyn out of Cardigan and Carmarthen. Again there were threats of war. Llewelyn was excommunicated, and his lands put under interdict. The marshal complained bitterly of the poor support which Henry gave him against the Welsh, but Hubert restored cordiality between him and the king. In these circumstances the policy of marrying Eleanor to the indignant marcher was a wise one. Llewelyn however could still look to the active friendship of Randolph of Chester. While the storm of war raged in South Wales, the march between Cheshire and Gwynedd enjoyed unwonted peace, and in 1223 a truce was patched up through Randolph's mediation. Earl Randolph needed the Welsh alliance the more because he definitely threw in his lot with the enemies of Hubert de Burgh. In April, 1223, a bull of Honorius III. declared Henry competent to govern in his own name, a change which resulted in a further strengthening of Hubert's power. Towards the end of the year Randolph joined with William of Albemarle, the Bishop of Winchester and Falkes de Bréauté, in an attempt to overthrow the justiciar. The discontented barons took arms and laid their grievances before the king. They wished, they said, no ill to king or kingdom, but simply desired to remove the justiciar from his counsels. Hot words passed between the indignant Hubert and Peter des Roches, and the conference broke up in confusion. The barons still remained mutinous, and, while the king held his Christmas court at Northampton, they celebrated the feast at Leicester. At last Langton persuaded both parties to come to an agreement on the basis of king's friends and barons alike surrendering their castles and wardships. This was a substantial victory for the party of order, and during the next few months much was done to transfer the castles to loyal hands. Randolph himself surrendered Shrewsbury and Bridgnorth. Comparative peace having been restored, and the judicial bench purged of feudal partisans, private persons ventured to complain of outrageous acts of "novel disseisin", or unlawful appropriation of men's lands. In the spring of 1224 the king's justices went throughout the country, hearing and deciding pleas of this sort. Sixteen acts of novel disseisin were proved against Falkes de Bréauté. Despite all the efforts of Langton and Hubert, that able adventurer, though stripped of some of his castles, fully maintained the position which he first acquired in the service of John. He was not the man to put up tamely with the piecemeal destruction of his power by legal process, and, backed up secretly by the feudal leaders, resolved to take the law into his own hands. One of the most active of the judges in hearing complaints against him was Henry of Braybrook. Falkes bade his brother, William de Bréauté fall upon the justice, who had been hearing suits at Dunstable, and take him prisoner. William faithfully fulfilled his brother's orders, and on June 17 the unlucky judge was safely shut up in a dungeon of Bedford Castle, of which William had the custody, as his brother's agent. So daring an outrage on the royal authority was worse than the action of William of Albemarle four years before. Hubert and the archbishop immediately took strong measures to enforce the sanctity of the law. While Langton excommunicated Falkes and his abettors, Hubert hastily turned against the traitor the forces which were assembling at Northampton with the object of reconquering Poitou. Braybrook was captured on Monday. On Thursday the royal troops besieged Bedford. The siege lasted from June 20 to August 14. The "noble castle of Bedford" was new, large, and fortified with an inner and outer baily, and two strong towers. Falkes trusted that it would hold out for a year, and had amply provided it with provisions and munitions of war. In effect, though William de Bréauté and his followers showed a gallant spirit, it resisted the justiciar for barely two months. When called upon to surrender the garrison answered that they would only yield at their lord's orders, and that the more as they were not bound to the king by homage or fealty. Nothing was left but a fight to the death. The royalists made strenuous efforts. A new scutage, the "scutage of Bedford," was imposed on the realm. Meanwhile Falkes fled to his accomplice, the Earl of Chester, and afterwards took refuge with Llewelyn. But the adventurer found such cold comfort from the great men who had lured him to his ruin that he perforce made his way back to England, along with a motley band of followers, English and French, Scottish and Welsh.[1] A hue and cry was raised after him, and, like William of Albemarle, he was forced to throw himself into sanctuary, while Randolph of Chester openly joined the besiegers of Bedford. In his refuge in a church at Coventry, Falkes was persuaded to surrender to the bishop of the diocese, who handed him over to Langton. [1] The names of his _familia_ taken with him are in _Patent Rolls of Henry III._, 1216-1227, pp. 461-62. During Falkes's wanderings his brother had been struggling valiantly against overwhelming odds. _Petrariae_ and mangonels threw huge stones into the castle, and effected breaches in keep and curtain. Miners undermined the walls, while over-against the stronghold two lofty structures of wood were raised, from which the crossbowmen, who manned them, were able to command the whole of the interior. At last the castle was captured in four successive assaults. In the first the barbican was taken; in the next the outer baily was stormed; in the third the interior baily was won; and in the last the keep was split asunder. The garrison then allowed the women and captives, including the wife of Falkes and the unlucky Braybrook, to make their way to the enemies' lines. Next day the defenders themselves surrendered. The only mercy shown to these gallant men was that they were allowed to make their peace with the Church before their execution. Of the eighty prisoners, three Templars alone were spared. Falkes threw himself upon the king's mercy, appealing to his former services to Henry and his father. He surrendered to the King the large sums of money which he had deposited with his bankers, the Templars of London, and ordered his castellans in Plympton and the other west-country castles of his wife to open their gates to the royal officers. In return for these concessions he was released from excommunication. His life was spared, but his property was confiscated, and he was ordered to abjure the realm. Even his wife deserted him, protesting that she had been forced to marry him against her will. On October 26 he received letters of safe conduct to go beyond sea. As he left England, he protested that he had been instigated by the English magnates in all that he had done. On landing at Fécamp he was detained by his old enemy Louis, then, by his father's death, King of France. But Louis VIII. was the last man to bear old grudges against the Norman adventurer, especially as Falkes's rising had enabled him to capture the chief towns of Poitou. Even in his exile Falkes was still able to do mischief. He obtained his release from Louis' prison about Easter, 1225, on the pretence of going on crusade. He then made his way to Rome where he strove to excite the sympathy of Honorius III., by presenting an artful memorial, which throws a flood of light upon his character, motives, and hopes. Honorius earnestly pleaded for his restitution, but Hubert and Langton stood firm against him. They urged that the pope had been misinformed, and declined to recall the exile. Honorius sent his chaplain Otto to England, but the nuncio found it impossible to modify the policy of the advisers of the king. Falkes went back from Italy to Troyes, where he waited for a year in the hope that his sentence would be reversed. At last Otto gave up his cause in despair, and devoted himself to the more profitable work of exacting money from the English clergy. Falkes died in 1226. With him disappears from our history the lawless spirit which had troubled the land since the war between John and his barons. The foreign adventurers, of whom he was the chief, either went back in disgust to their native lands, or, like Peter de Mauley, became loyal subjects and the progenitors of a harmless stock of English barons. The ten years of storm and stress were over. The administration was once more in English hands, and Hubert enjoyed a few years of well-earned power. New difficulties at once arose. The defeat of the feudalists and their Welsh allies involved heavy special taxation, and the king's honour required that an effort should be made both to wrest Poitou from Louis VIII., and to strengthen the English hold over Gascony. Besides national obligations, clergy and laity alike were still called upon to contribute towards the cost of crusading enterprises, and in 1226 the papal nuncio, Otto, demanded that a large proportion of the revenues of the English clergy should be contributed to the papal coffers. To the Englishman of that age all extraordinary taxation was a grievance quite irrespective of its necessity. The double incidence of the royal and papal demands was met by protests which showed some tendency towards the splitting up of the victorious side into parties. It was still easy for all to unite against Otto, and the papal agent was forced to go home empty handed, for councils both of clergy and barons agreed to reject his demands. Whatever other nations might offer to the pope, argued the magnates, the realms of England and Ireland at least had a right to be freed from such impositions by reason of the tribute which John had agreed to pay to Innocent III. The demand of the king's ministers for a fifteenth to prosecute the war with France was reluctantly conceded, but only on the condition of a fresh confirmation of the charters in a form intended to bring home to the king his personal obligation to observe them. Hubert de Burgh, however, was no enthusiast for the charters. His standpoint was that of the officials of the age of Henry II. To him the re-establishment of order meant the restoration of the prerogative. There he parted company with the archbishop, who was an eager upholder of the charters, for which he was so largely responsible. The struggle against the foreigner was to be succeeded by a struggle for the charters. In January, 1227, a council met at Oxford. The king, then nearly twenty years old, declared that he would govern the country himself, and renounced the tutelage of the Bishop of Winchester. Henry gave himself over completely to the justiciar, whom he rewarded for his faithful service by making him Earl of Kent. In deep disgust Bishop Peter left the court to carry out his long-deferred crusading vows. For four years he was absent in Palestine, where his military talents had ample scope as one of the leaders of Frederick II.'s army, while his diplomatic skill sought, with less result, to preserve some sort of relations between the excommunicated emperor and the new pope, Gregory IX., who in this same year succeeded Honorius. In April Gregory renewed the bull of 1223 in which his predecessor recognised Henry's competence to govern. Thus ended the first minority since the Conquest. The successful restoration of law and order when the king was a child, showed that a strong king was not absolutely necessary for good government. From the exercise of royal authority by ministers without the personal intervention of the monarch arose the ideas of limited monarchy, the responsibility of the official, and the constitutional rights of the baronial council to appoint ministers and control the administration. We also discern, almost for the first time, the action of an inner ministerial council which was ultimately to develop into the _consilium ordinarium_ of a later age. No sudden changes attended the royal majority. Those who had persuaded Henry to dismiss Bishop Peter had no policy beyond getting rid of a hated rival. The new Earl of Kent continued to hold office as justiciar for five years, and his ascendency is even more marked in the years 1227 to 1232 than it had been between 1224 and 1227. Hubert still found the task of ruling England by no means easy. With the mitigation of home troubles foreign affairs assumed greater importance, and England's difficulties with France, the efforts to establish cordial relations with the empire, the ever-increasing aggressions of Llewelyn of Wales, and the chronic troubles of Ireland, involved the country in large expenses with little compensating advantage. Not less uneasy were the results of the growing encroachments of the papacy and the increasing inability of the English clergy to face them. Papal taxation, added to the burden of national taxation, induced discontent that found a ready scapegoat in the justiciar. The old and the new baronial opposition combined to denounce Hubert as the true cause of all evils. The increasing personal influence of the young king complicated the situation. In his efforts to deal with all these problems Hubert became involved in the storm of obloquy which finally brought about his fall. At the accession of Henry III., the truce for five years concluded between his father and Philip Augustus on September 18, 1214, had still three years to run. The expedition of Louis to England might well seem to have broken it, but the prudent disavowal by Philip II. of his son's sacrilegious enterprise made it a point of policy for the French King to regard it as still in force, and neither John nor the earl marshal had a mind to face the enmity of the father as well as the invasion of the son. Accordingly the truce ran out its full time, and in 1220 Honorius III., ever zealous for peace between Christian sovereigns, procured its prolongation for four years. Before this had expired, the accession of Louis VIII. in 1223 raised the old enemy of King Henry to the throne of France. Louis still coveted the English throne, and desired to complete the conquest of Henry's French dominions in France. His accession soon involved England in a new struggle, luckily delayed until the worst of the disorders at home had been overcome. Peace was impossible because Louis, like Philip, regarded the forfeiture of John as absolute, and as involving the right to deny to Henry III. a legitimate title to any of his lands beyond sea. Henry, on the other hand, was still styled Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, Count of Poitou, and Duke of Aquitaine. Claiming all that his father had held, he refused homage to Philip or Louis for such French lands as he actually possessed. For the first time since the Conquest, an English king ruled over extensive French territories without any feudal subjection to the King of France. However, Henry's French lands, though still considerable, were but a shadow of those once ruled by his father. Philip had conquered all Normandy, save the Channel Islands, and also the whole of Anjou and Touraine. For a time he also gained possession of Poitou, but before his death nearly the whole of that region had slipped from his grasp. Poitiers, alone of its great towns, remained in French hands. For the rest, both the barons and cities of Poitou acknowledged the over-lordship of their English count. Too much importance must not be ascribed to this revival of the English power. Henry claimed very little domain in Poitou, which practically was divided between the feudal nobles and the great communes. So long as they maintained a virtual freedom, they were indifferent as to their overlord. If they easily transferred their allegiance from Philip to Henry, it was because the weakness of absentee counts was less to be dreaded than the strength of a monarch near at hand. Meanwhile the barons carried on their feuds one against the other, and all alike joined in oppressing the townsmen. During Henry's minority the crown was not strong enough to deal with the unruly Foitevins. Seneschals quickly succeeded each other; the barons expected the office to be filled by one of their own order, and the towns, jealous of hostile neighbours, demanded the appointment of an Englishman. At last, in 1221, Savary de Mauléon, one of King John's mercenaries, a poet, and a crusader against infidels and Albigenses, was made seneschal. His English estates ensured some measure of fidelity, and his energy and experience were guarantees of his competence, though, as a younger member of the great house of Thouars, he belonged by birth to the inner circle of the Poitevin nobility, whose treachery, levity, and self-seeking were proverbial. The powerful Viscounts of Thouars were constantly kept in check by their traditional enemies the Counts of La Marche, whose representative, Hugh of Lusignan, was by far the strongest of the local barons. His cousin, and sometime betrothed, Isabella, Countess of Angoulême, the widow of King John, had left England to resume the administration of her dominions. Early in 1220 she married Hugh, justifying herself to her son on the ground that it would be dangerous to his interests if the Count of La Marche should contract an alliance with the French party. But this was mere excuse. The union of La Marche and Angoulême largely increased Count Hugh's power, and he showed perfect impartiality in pursuing his own interests by holding a balance between his stepson and the King of France. Against him neither Savary nor the Poitevin communes could contend with success. The anarchy of Poitou was an irresistible temptation to Louis VII. "Know you," he wrote to the men of Limoges, "that John, king of England, was deprived by the unanimous judgment of his peers of all the lands which he held of our father Philip. We have now received in inheritance all our father's rights, and require you to perform the service that you owe us." While the English government weakly negotiated for the prolongation of the truce, and for the pope's intervention, Louis concluded treaties with the Poitevin barons, and made ready an army to conquer his inheritance. Foremost among his local partisans appeared Henry's stepfather. The French army met at Tours on June 24, 1224, and marched through Thouars to La Rochelle, the strongest of the Poitevin towns, and the most devoted to England. On the way Louis forced Savary de Mauléon to yield up Niort, and to promise to defend no other place than La Rochelle, before which city he sat down on July 15. At first Savary resisted vigorously. The siege of Bedford, however, prevented the despatch of effective help from England, and Savary was perhaps already secretly won over by Louis. Be this as it may, the town surrendered on August 3, and with it went all Aquitaine north of the Dordogne. Savary took service with the conqueror, and was made warden of La Rochelle and of the adjacent coasts, while Lusignan received the reward of his treachery in a grant of the Isle of Oléron. When Louis returned to the north, the Count of La Marche undertook the conquest of Gascony. He soon made himself master of St. Emilion, and of the whole of Périgord. The surrender of La Réole opened up the passage of the Garonne, and the capture of Bazas gave the French a foothold to the south of that river. Only the people of Bordeaux showed any spirit in resisting Hugh. But their resistance proved sufficient, and he withdrew baffled before their walls. The easiness of Louis' conquests showed their instability. "I am sure," wrote one of Henry's officers, "that you can easily recover all that you have lost, if you send speedy succour to these regions." After the capture of Bedford, Hubert undertook the recovery of Poitou and the defence of Gascony. Henry's younger brother Richard, a youth of sixteen, was appointed Earl of Cornwall and Count of Poitou, dubbed knight by his brother, and put in nominal command of the expedition despatched to Gascony in March, 1225. His experienced uncle, William Longsword, Earl of Salisbury, and Philip of Aubigny, were sent with him as his chief counsellors. Received with open arms by Bordeaux, he boasted on May 2 that he had conquered all Gascony, save La Réole, and had received the allegiance of every Gascon noble, except Elie Rudel, the lord of Bergerac. The siege of La Réole, the only serious military operation of the campaign, occupied Richard all the summer and autumn, and it was not until November 13 that the burgesses opened their gates. As soon as the French had retired, the lord of Bergerac, "after the fashion of the Poitevins," renounced Louis and professed himself the liegeman of Earl Richard. Then the worst trouble was that Savary de Mauléon's ships commanded the Bay of Biscay, and rendered communication between Bordeaux and England very difficult.[1] Once more the men of the Cinque Ports came to the king's aid, and there was severe fighting at sea, involving much plunder of merchant vessels and dislocation of trade. [1] The names of his _familia_ taken with him are in _Patent Rolls of Henry III._, 1216-1227, pp. 461-62. The English sought to supplement their military successes by diplomacy. Richard of Cornwall made an alliance with the counts of Auvergne, and the home administration negotiated with all possible enemies of the French King. A proposal to affiance Henry's sister, Isabella, to Henry, King of the Romans, the infant son of Frederick II., led to no results, for the Archbishop of Cologne, the chief upholder of the scheme in Germany, was murdered, and the young king found a bride in Austria. Yet the project counteracted the negotiations set on foot by Louis to secure Frederick II. for his own side, and induced the Emperor to take up a position of neutrality. An impostor appeared in Flanders who gave out that he was the old Count Baldwin, sometime Latin Emperor of the East, who had died in prison in Bulgaria twenty years before. Baldwin's daughter, Joan, appealed to Louis for support against the false Baldwin, whereupon Henry recognised his claims and sought his alliance. Nothing but the capture and execution of the impostor prevented Henry from effecting a powerful diversion in Flanders. Peter Mauclerc, Count of Brittany, was won over by an offer of restitution to his earldom of Richmond, and by a promise that Henry would marry his daughter Iolande. Intrigues were entered into with the discontented Norman nobles, and the pope was importuned to save Henry from French assaults at the same moment that the king made a treaty of alliance with his first cousin, the heretical Raymond VII. of Toulouse. Honorius gave his ward little save sympathy and good advice. His special wish was to induce Louis to lead a French expedition into Languedoc against the Albigensian heretics. As soon as Louis resolved on this, the pope sought to prevent Henry from entering into unholy alliance with Raymond. It was the crusade of 1226, not the good-will of the Pope or the fine-drawn English negotiations, which gave Gascony a short respite. Louis VIII. died on November 8 in the course of his expedition, and the Capetian monarchy became less dangerous during the troubles of a minority, in which his widow, Blanche, strove as regent to uphold the throne of their little son, Louis IX. The first months of Louis IX.'s reign showed how unstable was any edifice built upon the support of the treacherous lords of Poitou. Within six weeks of Louis VIII.'s death, Hugh of Lusignan, the viscount of Thouars, Savary de Mauléon, and many other Poitevin barons, concluded treaties with Richard of Cornwall, by which in return for lavish concessions they went back to the English obedience. In the spring of 1227, however, the appearance of a French army south of the Loire caused these same lords to make fresh treaties with Blanche. Peter of Brittany also became friendly with the French regent, and gave up his daughter's English marriage. With allies so shifty, further dealings seemed hopeless. Before Easter, Richard patched up a truce and went home in disgust. The Capetians lost Poitou, but Henry failed to take advantage of his rival's weakness, and the real masters of the situation were the local barons. Fifteen more years were to elapse before the definitive French conquest of Poitou. During the next three years the good understanding between the Bretons, the Poitevins, and the regent Blanche came to an end, and the progress of the feudal reaction against the rule of the young King of France once more excited hopes of improving Henry's position in south-western France. Henry III. was eager to win back his inheritance, though Hubert de Burgh had little faith in Poitevin promises, and, conscious of his king's weakness, managed to prolong the truce, until July 22, 1229. Three months before that, Blanche succeeded in forcing the unfortunate Raymond VII. to accept the humiliating treaty of Meaux, which assured the succession to his dominions to her second son Alfonse, who was to marry his daughter and heiress, Joan. The barons of the north and west were not yet defeated, and once more appealed to Henry to come to their aid. Accordingly, the English king summoned his vassals to Portsmouth on October 15 for a French campaign. When Henry went down to Portsmouth he found that there were not enough ships to convey his troops over sea. Thereupon he passionately denounced the justiciar as an "old traitor," and accused him of being bribed by the French queen. Nothing but the intervention of Randolph of Chester, Hubert's persistent enemy, put an end to the undignified scene. Count Peter of Brittany, who arrived at Portsmouth on the 9th, did homage to Henry as King of France, and received the earldom of Richmond and the title of Duke of Brittany which he had long coveted, but which the French government refused to recognise. He persuaded Henry to postpone the expedition until the following spring. When that time came Henry appointed Ralph Neville, the chancellor, and Stephen Segrave, a rising judge, as wardens of England, and on May 1, 1230, set sail from Portsmouth. It was the first time since 1213 that an English king had crossed the seas at the head of an army, and every effort was made to equip a sufficient force. Hubert the justiciar, Randolph of Chester, William the marshal, and most of the great barons personally shared in the expedition, and the ports of the Channel, the North Sea, and the Bay of Biscay were ransacked to provide adequate shipping. Many Norman vessels served as transports, apparently of their owners' free-will. On May 3 Henry landed at St. Malo, and thence proceeded to Dinan, the meeting-place assigned for his army, the greater part of which landed at Port Blanc, a little north of Tréguier. Peter Mauclerc joined him, and a plan of operations was discussed. The moment was favourable, for a great number of the French magnates were engaged in war against Theobald, the poet-count of Champagne, and the French army, which was assembled at Angers, represented but a fraction of the military strength of the land. Fulk Paynel, a Norman baron who wished to revive the independence of the duchy, urged Henry to invade Normandy. Hubert successfully withstood this rash proposal, and also Fulk's fatal suggestion that Henry should divide his army and send two hundred knights for the invasion of Normandy. Before long the English marched through Brittany to Nantes, where they wasted six weeks. At last, on the advice of Hubert, they journeyed south into Poitou. The innate Poitevin instability had again brought round the Lusignans, the house of Thouars, and their kind to the French side, and Henry found that his own mother did her best to obstruct his progress. He was too strong to make open resistance safe, and his long progress from Nantes to Bordeaux was only once checked by the need to fight his way. This opposition came from the little town and castle of Mirambeau, situated in Upper Saintonge, rather more than half-way between Saintes and Blaye.[1] From July 21 to 30 Mirambeau stoutly held out, but Henry's army was reinforced by the chivalry of Gascony, and by a siege-train borrowed from Bordeaux and the loyal lords of the Garonne. Against such appliances of warfare Mirambeau could not long resist. On its capitulation Henry pushed on to Bordeaux. [1] E. Berger, _Bibl. Ecole des Chartes_, 1893, _pp. 35-36_, shows that Mirambeau, not Mirebeau, was besieged by Henry; see also his _Blanche de Castille_ (1895). Useless as the march through Poitou had been, it was then repeated in the reverse way. With scarcely a week's rest, Henry left the Gascon capital on August 10, and on September 15 ended his inglorious campaign at Nantes. Although he was unable to assert himself against the faithless Poitevins, the barons of the province were equally impotent to make head against him. On reaching Brittany, Hubert once more stopped further military efforts. After a few days' rest at Nantes, Henry made his way by slow stages through the heart of Brittany. It was said that his army had no better occupation than teaching the local nobles to drink deep after the English fashion. The King had wasted all his treasure, and the poorer knights were compelled to sell or pawn their horses and arms to support themselves. The farce ended when the King sailed from St. Pol de Leon, and late in October landed at Portsmouth. He left a portion of his followers in Brittany, under the Earls of Chester and Pembroke. Randolph himself, as a former husband of Constance of Brittany, had claims to certain dower lands which appertained to Count Peter's mother-in-law. He was put in possession of St. James de Beuvron, and thence he raided Normandy and Anjou. By this time the coalition against the count of Champagne had broken down, and Blanche was again triumphant. It was useless to continue a struggle so expensive and disastrous, and on July 4, 1231, a truce for three years was concluded between France, Brittany, and England. Peter des Roches, then returning through France from his crusade, took an active part in negotiating the treaty. Just as the king was disposed to make the justiciar the scapegoat of his failure, Hubert's old enemy appeared once more upon the scene. The responsibility for blundering must be divided among the English magnates, and not ascribed solely to their monarch. If Hubert saved Henry from reckless adventures, he certainly deserves a large share of the blame for the Poitevin fiasco. The grave situation at home showed the folly of this untimely revival of an active foreign policy. The same years that saw the collapse of Henry's hopes in Normandy and Poitou, witnessed troubles both in Ireland and in Wales. In both these regions the house of the Marshals was a menace to the neighbouring chieftains, and Hugh de Lacy, Earl of Ulster, and Llewelyn ap Iorwerth, made common cause against it and vigorously attacked their rivals both in Leinster and in South Wales. Nor was this the only disturbance. The summons of the Norman chieftains of Ireland to Poitou gave the king of Connaught a chance of attacking the justiciar of Ireland, Geoffrey Marsh, who ultimately drove the Irish back with severe loss. Llewelyn was again as active and hostile as ever. Irritated by the growing strength of the new royal castle of Montgomery, he laid siege to it in 1228. Hubert de Burgh, then castellan of Montgomery, could only save his castle by summoning the levies of the kingdom. At their head Hubert went in person to hold the field against Llewelyn, taking the king with him. The Welsh withdrew as usual before a regular army, and Hubert and the king, late in September, marched a few miles westwards of Montgomery to the vale of Kerry, where they erected a castle. But Llewelyn soon made the English position in Kerry untenable. Many of the English lords were secretly in league with him, and the army suffered severely from lack of food. In the fighting that ensued the Welsh got the better of the English, taking prisoner William de Braose, the heir of Builth, and one of the greatest of the marcher lords. At last king and justiciar were glad to agree to demolish the new castle on receiving from Llewelyn the expenses involved in the task. The dismantled ruin was called "Hubert's folly". "And then," boasts the Welsh chronicler, "the king returned to England with shame." In 1230 Llewelyn inflicted another slight upon his overlord. William de Braose long remained the Welsh prince's captive, and only purchased his liberty by agreeing to wed his daughter to Llewelyn's son, and surrendering Builth as her marriage portion. The captive had employed his leisure in winning the love of Llewelyn's wife, Joan, Henry's half-sister. At Easter, Llewelyn took a drastic revenge on the adulterer. He seized William in his own castle at Builth, and on May 2 hanged him on a tree in open day in the presence of 900 witnesses. Finding that neither the king nor the marchers moved a finger to avenge the outrage done to sister and comrade, Llewelyn took the aggressive in regions which had hitherto been comparatively exempt from his assaults. In 1231 he laid his heavy hand on all South Wales, burning down churches full of women, as the English believed, and signalling out for special attack the marshal's lands in Gwent and Pembroke. Once more the king penetrated with his barons into Mid Wales, while the pope and archbishop excommunicated Llewelyn and put his lands under interdict. Yet neither temporal nor spiritual arms were of avail against the Welshman. Henry's only exploit in this, his second Welsh campaign, was to rebuild Maud's Castle in stone. He withdrew, and in December agreed to conclude a three years' truce, and procure Llewelyn's absolution. Hubert once more bore the blame of his master's failure. On July 9, 1228, Stephen Langton died. Despite their differences as to the execution of the charters, his removal lost the justiciar a much-needed friend. Affairs were made worse by the unteachable folly of the monks of Christ Church. Regardless of the severe warning which they had received in the storms that preceded the establishment of Langton's authority, the chapter forthwith proceeded to the election of their brother monk, Walter of Eynsham. The archbishop-elect was an ignorant old monk of weak health and doubtful antecedents, and Gregory IX. wisely refused to confirm the election. On the recommendation of the king and the bishops, Gregory himself appointed as archbishop Richard, chancellor of Lincoln, an eloquent and learned secular priest of handsome person, whose nickname of "le Grand" was due to his tall stature. The first Archbishop of Canterbury since the Conquest directly nominated by the pope--for even in Langton's case there was a form of election--Richard le Grand at once began to quarrel with the justiciar, demanding that he should surrender the custody of Tunbridge castle on the ground of some ancient claim of the see of Canterbury. Failing to obtain redress in England, Richard betook himself to Rome in the spring of 1231. There he regaled the pope's ears with the offences of Hubert, and of the worldly bishops who were his tools. In August, Richard's death in Italy left the Church of Canterbury for three years without a pastor. While Gregory IX. did more to help Henry against Louis than Honorius III., the inflexible character and lofty hierarchical ideals of this nephew of Innocent III. made his hand heavier on the English Church than that of his predecessor. Above all, Gregory's expenses in pursuing his quarrel with Frederick II. made the wealth of the English Church a sore temptation to him. With his imposition of a tax of one-tenth on all clerical property to defray the expenses of the crusade against the emperor, papal taxation in England takes a newer and severer phase. The rigour with which Master Stephen, the pope's collector, extorted the tax was bitterly resented. Not less loud was the complaint against the increasing numbers of foreign ecclesiastics forced into English benefices by papal authority, and without regard for the rights of the lawful patrons and electors. A league of aggrieved tax-payers and patrons was formed against the Roman agents. At Eastertide, 1232, bands of men, headed by a knight named Robert Twenge, who took the nickname of William Wither, despoiled the Romans of their gains, and distributed the proceeds to the poor. These doings were the more formidable from their excellent organisation, and the strong sympathy everywhere extended to them. Hubert, who hated foreign interference, did nothing to stop Twenge and his followers. His inaction further precipitated his ruin. Archbishop Richard had already poisoned the pope's mind against him, and his suspected connivance with the anti-Roman movement completed his disfavour. Bitter letters of complaint arrived in England denouncing the outrages inflicted on the friends of the apostolic see. It is hard to dissociate the pope's feeling in this matter from his rejection of the nomination of the king's chancellor, Ralph Neville, Bishop of Chichester, to the see of Canterbury, as an illiterate politician. The dislike of the taxes made necessary by the Welsh and French wars, such as the "scutage of Poitou" and the "scutage of Kerry," swelled the outcry against the justiciar. So far back as 1227 advantage had been taken of Henry's majority to exact large sums of money for the confirmation of all charters sealed during his nonage. The barons made it a grievance that his brother Richard was ill-provided for, and a rising in 1227 extorted a further provision for him from what was regarded as the niggardliness of the justiciar. Nor did Hubert, with all his rugged honesty, neglect his own interests. He secured for himself lucrative wardships, such as the custody for the second time of the great Gloucester earldom, and of several castles, including the not very profitable charge of Montgomery, and the important governorship of Dover. On the very eve of his downfall he was made justice of Ireland. His brother was bishop of Ely, and other kinsmen were promoted to high posts. He was satisfied that he spent all that he got in the King's service, in promoting the interests of the kingdom, but his enemies regarded him as unduly tenacious of wealth and office. All classes alike grew disgusted with the justiciar. The restoration of the malign influence of Peter of Winchester completed his ruin. The king greedily listened to the complaints of his old guardian against the minister who overshadowed the royal power. At last, on July 29, 1232, Henry plucked up courage to dismiss him. With Hubert's fall ends the second period of Henry's reign. William Marshal expelled the armed foreigner. Hubert restored the administration to English hands. Matthew Paris puts into the mouth of a poor smith who refused to fasten fetters on the fallen minister words which, though probably never spoken, describe with sufficient accuracy Hubert's place in history: "Is he not that most faithful Hubert who so often saved England from the devastation of the foreigners and restored England to England?" Hubert was, as has been well said, perhaps the first minister since the Conquest who made patriotism a principle of policy, though it is easy in the light of later developments to read into his doings more than he really intended. But whatever his motives, the results of his action were clear. He drove away the mercenaries, humbled the feudal lords, and set limits to the pope's interference. He renewed respect for law and obedience to the law courts. Even in the worst days of anarchy the administrative system did not break down, and the records of royal orders and judicial judgments remain almost as full in the midst of the civil war as in the more peaceful days of Hubert's rule. But it was easy enough to issue proclamations and writs. The difficulty was to get them obeyed, and the work of Hubert was to ensure that the orders of king and ministers should really be respected by his subjects. He made many mistakes. He must share the blame of the failure of the Kerry campaign, and he was largely responsible for the sorry collapse of the invasion of Poitou. He neither understood nor sympathised with Stephen Langton's zeal for the charters. A straightforward, limited, honourable man, he strove to carry out his rather old-fashioned conception of duty in the teeth of a thousand obstacles. He never had a free hand, and he never enjoyed the hearty support of any one section of his countrymen. Hated by the barons whom he kept away from power, he alienated the Londoners by his high-handed violence, and the tax-payers by his heavy exactions. The pope disliked him, the aliens plotted against him, and the king, for whom he sacrificed so much, gave him but grudging support. But the reaction which followed his retirement made many, who had rejoiced in his humiliation, bitterly regret it. Three notable enemies of Hubert went off the stage of history within a few months of his fall. The death of Richard le Grand has already been recorded. William Marshal, the brother-in-law of the king, the gallant and successful soldier, the worthy successor of his great father, came home from Brittany early in 1231. His last act was to marry his sister, Isabella, to Richard of Cornwall. Within ten days of the wedding his body was laid beside his father in the Temple Church at London. In October, 1232, died Randolph of Blundeville, the last representative of the male stock of the old line of the Earls of Chester, and long the foremost champion of the feudal aristocracy against Hubert. The contest between them had been fought with such chivalry that the last public act of the old earl was to protect the fallen justiciar from the violence of his foes. For more than fifty years Randolph had ruled like a king over his palatine earldom; had, like his master, his struggles with his own vassals, and had perforce to grant to his own barons and boroughs liberties which he strove to wrest from his overlord for himself and his fellow nobles. He was not a great statesman, and hardly even a successful warrior. Yet his popular personal qualities, his energy, his long duration of power, and his enormous possessions, give him a place in history. His memory, living on long in the minds of the people, inspired a series of ballads which vied in popularity with the cycle of Robin Hood,[1] though, unfortunately, they have not come down to us. His estates were divided among his four sisters. His nephew, John the Scot, Earl of Huntingdon, received a re-grant of the Chester earldom; his Lancashire lands had already gone to his brother-in-law, William of Ferrars, Earl of Derby; other portions of his territories went to his sister, the Countess of Arundel, and the Lincoln earldom, passing through another sister, Hawise of Quincy, to her son-in-law, John of Lacy, constable of Chester, raised the chief vassal of the palatinate to comital rank. None of these heirs of a divided inheritance were true successors to Randolph. With him died the last of the great Norman houses, tenacious beyond its fellows, and surpassing in its two centuries of unbroken male descent the usual duration of the medieval baronial family. Its collapse made easier the alien invasion which threatened to undo Hubert's work. [1] "Ich can rymes of Robyn Hode, and of Randolf erl of Chestre," _Vision of Piers Plowman_, i., 167; ii., 94. CHAPTER III. THE ALIEN INVASION. With the dismissal of Hubert on July 29, 1232, Peter des Roches resumed his authority over Henry III. Mindful of past failures, the bishop's aim was to rule through dependants, so that he could pull the wires without making himself too prominent. His chief agents in pursuing this policy were Peter of Rivaux, Stephen Segrave, and Robert Passelewe. Of these, Peter of Rivaux was a Poitevin clerk, officially described as the bishop's nephew, but generally supposed to have been his son. Stephen Segrave, the son of a small Leicestershire landholder, was a lawyer who had held many judicial and administrative posts, including the regency during the king's absence abroad in 1230. He abandoned his original clerical profession, received knighthood, married nobly, and was the founder of a baronial house in the midlands. His only political principle was obedience to the powers that were in the ascendant. Passelewe, a clerk who had acted as the agent of Randolph of Chester and Falkes of Bréauté at the Roman court, was, like Segrave, a mere tool. The Bishop of Winchester began to show his hand. Between June 26 and July 11, nineteen of the thirty-five sheriffdoms were bestowed on Peter of Rivaux for life. As Segrave was sheriff of five shires, and the bishop himself had acquired the shrievalty of Hampshire, this involved the transference of the administration of over two-thirds of the counties to the bishop's dependants. On the downfall of Hubert, Segrave became justiciar. He was not the equal of his predecessors either in personal weight or in social position, and did not aspire to act as chief minister. The appointment of a mere lawyer to the great Norman office of state marks the first stage in the decline, which before long degraded the justiciarship into a simple position of headship over the judges, the chief justiceship of the next generation. Hubert's offices and lands were divided among his supplanters. Peter of Rivaux became keeper of wards and escheats, castellan of many castles on the Welsh march, and the recipient of even more offices and wardships in Ireland than in England. The custody of the Gloucester earldom went to the Bishop of Winchester. The last steps of the ministerial revolution were completed at the king's Christmas court at Worcester. There Rivaux, who had yielded up before Michaelmas most of his shrievalties, was made treasurer, with Passelewe as his deputy. Of the old ministers only the chancellor, Ralph Neville, Bishop of Chichester, was suffered to remain in office. Finally the king's new advisers imported a large company of Poitevin and Breton mercenaries, hoping with their help to maintain their newly won position. The worst days of John seemed renewed. The Poitevin gang called upon Hubert to render complete accounts for the whole period of his justiciarship. When he pleaded that King John had given him a charter of quittance, he was told that its force had ended with the death of the grantor. He was further required to answer for the wrongs which Twenge's bands had inflicted on the servants of the pope. He was accused of poisoning William Earl of Salisbury, William Marshal, Falkes de Bréauté, and Archbishop Richard. He had prevented the king from contracting a marriage with a daughter of the Duke of Austria; he had dissuaded the king from attempting to recover Normandy; he had first seduced and then married the daughter of the King of Scots; he had stolen from the treasury a talisman which made its possessor invincible in war and had traitorously given it to Llewelyn of Wales; he had induced Llewelyn to slay William de Braose; he had won the royal favour by magic and witchcraft, and finally he had murdered Constantine FitzAthulf. Many of these accusations were so monstrous that they carried with them their own refutation. It was too often the custom in the middle ages to overwhelm an enemy with incredible charges for it to be fair to accuse the enemies of Hubert of any excessive malignity. The substantial innocence of Hubert is clear, for the only charges brought against him were either errors of judgment and policy, or incredible crimes. Nevertheless he was in such imminent danger that he took sanctuary with the canons of Merton in Surrey. Thereupon the king called upon the Londoners to march to Merton and bring their ancient foe, dead or alive, to the city. Randolph of Chester interposed between his fallen enemy and the royal vengeance. He persuaded Henry to countermand the march to Merton and to suffer the fallen justiciar to leave his refuge with some sort of safe conduct. But the king was irritated to hear that Hubert had journeyed into Essex. Again he was pursued, and once more he was forced to take sanctuary, this time in a chapel near Brentwood. From this he was dragged by some of the king's household and brought to London, where he was imprisoned in the Tower. The Bishop of London complained to the king of this violation of the rights of the Church, and Hubert was allowed to return to his chapel. However, the levies of Essex surrounded the precincts, and he was soon forced by hunger to surrender. He offered to submit himself to the king's will, and was for a second time confined in the Tower. On November 10, he was brought before a not unfriendly tribunal, in which the malice of the new justiciar was tempered by the baronial instincts of the Earls of Cornwall, Warenne, Pembroke, and Lincoln. He made no effort to defend himself, and submitted absolutely to the judgment of the king. It was finally agreed that he should be allowed to retain the lands which he had inherited from his father, and that all his chattels and the lands that he had acquired himself should be forfeited to the crown. Further, he was to be kept in prison in the castle of Devizes under the charge of the four earls who had tried him. Peter des Roches was soon in difficulties. The earls who had saved Hubert began to oppose the whole administration. Their leader was Richard, Earl of Pembroke, the second son of the great regent, and since his brother's death head of the house of Marshal. Richard was bitterly prejudiced against the king and his courtiers by an attempt to refuse him his brother's earldom. A gallant warrior, handsome and eloquent, pious, upright, and well educated, Richard, the best of the marshal's sons, stood for the rest of his short life at the head of the opposition. He incited his friends to refuse to attend a council summoned to meet at Oxford, on June 24, 1233. The king would have sought to compel their presence, had not a Dominican friar, Robert Bacon, when preaching before the court, warned him that there would be no peace in England until Bishop Peter and his son were removed from his counsels. The friar's boldness convinced him that disaffection was widespread, and he promised the magnates at a later council at London that he would, with their advice, correct whatever he found there was need to reform. Meanwhile the Poitevins brought into England fresh swarms of hirelings from their own land, and Peter des Roches urged Henry to crush rebellion in the bud. As a warning to greater offenders, Gilbert Basset was deprived of a manor which he had held since the reign of King John, and an attempt was made to lay violent hands upon his brother-in-law, Richard Siward. The two barons resisted, whereupon all their estates were transferred to Peter of Rivaux. Yet Richard Marshal still continued to hope for peace, and, after the failure of earlier councils, set off to attend another assembly fixed for August 1, at Westminster. On his way he learnt from his sister Isabella, the wife of Richard of Cornwall, that Peter des Roches was laying a trap for him. In high indignation he took horse for his Welsh estates, and prepared for rebellion. The king summoned the military tenants to appear with horses and arms at Gloucester on the 14th. There Richard Marshal was declared a traitor and an invasion of his estates was ordered. But the king had not sufficient resources to carry out his threats, and October saw the barons once more wrangling with Henry at Westminster, and claiming that the marshal should be tried by his peers. Peter of Winchester declared that there were no peers in England as there were in France, and that in consequence the king had power to condemn any disloyal subject through his justices. This daringly unconstitutional doctrine provoked a renewed outcry. The bishops joined the secular magnates, and threatened their colleague with excommunication. A formidable civil war broke out. Siward and Basset harried the lands of the Poitevins, while the marshal made a close alliance with Llewelyn of Wales. The king still had formidable forces on his side. Richard of Cornwall was persuaded by Bishop Peter to take up arms for his brother, and the two new earls, John the Scot of Chester, and John de Lacy of Lincoln, joined the royal forces. Hubert de Burgh took advantage of the increasing confusion to escape from Devizes castle to a church in the town. Dragged back with violence to his prison, he was again, as at Brentwood, restored to sanctuary through the exertions of the bishop of the diocese. There he remained, closely watched by his foes, until October 30, when Siward and Basset drove away the guard, and took him off with them to the marshal's castle of Chepstow. The tide of war flowed to the southern march of Wales. Llewelyn and Richard Marshal devastated Glamorgan, which, as a part of the Gloucester inheritance, was under the custody of the Bishop of Winchester. They took nearly all its castles, including that of Cardiff. Thence they subdued Usk, Abergavenny, and other neighbouring strongholds, while an independent army, including the marshal's Pembrokeshire vassals and the men of the princes of South Wales, wasted months in a vain attack on Carmarthen. The king's vassals were again summoned to Gloucester, whence Henry led them early in November towards Chepstow, the centre of the marshal's estates in Gwent. Earl Richard devastated his lands so effectively that the king could not support his army on them, and was compelled to move up the Wye valley towards the castles of Monmouth, Skenfrith, Whitecastle, and Grosmont, the strong quadrilateral of Upper Gwent which still remained in the hands of the king's friends. Marching to the most remote of these, Grosmont, on the upper Monnow, Henry spent several days in the castle, while his army lay around under canvas. On the night of November 11, the sleeping soldiers were suddenly set upon by the barons and their Welsh allies; they fled unarmed to the castle, or scattered in confusion. The assailants seized their horses, harness, arms and provisions, but refrained from slaying or capturing them. The royal forces never rallied. Many gladly went home, giving as their excuse that they were unable to fight since they had lost their equipment. Henry and his ministers withdrew to Gloucester. More convinced than ever of the treachery of Englishmen, the king entrusted the defence of the border castles to mercenaries from Poitou. The fighting centred round Monmouth, which Richard approached on the 25th with a small company. A sudden sortie almost overwhelmed the little band. The marshal held his own heroically against twelve, until at last Baldwin of Guînes, the warden of the castle, took him prisoner. Thereupon Baldwin fell to the ground, his armour pierced by a lucky bolt from a crossbow. His followers, smitten with panic, abandoned the marshal, and bore their leader home. By that time, however, the bulk of the marshal's forces had come upon the scene. A general engagement followed, in which the Anglo-Welsh army drove the enemy back into Monmouth and took possession of the castle. This set the marshal free to march northwards and join Llewelyn in a vigorous attack upon Shrewsbury. In January, 1234, they burnt that town and retired to their own lands loaded with booty. Meanwhile Siward devastated the estates of the Poitevins and of Richard of Cornwall. Afraid to be cut off from his retreat to England the king abandoned Gloucester, where he had kept his melancholy Christmas court, and found a surer refuge in Bishop Peter's cathedral city. Thereupon Gloucestershire suffered the fate of Shropshire. "It was a wretched sight for travellers in that region to see on the highways innumerable dead bodies lying naked and unburied, to be devoured by birds of prey, and so polluting the air that they infected healthy men with mortal sickness."[1] [1] Wendover, iv., 291. The king swore that he would never make peace with the marshal, unless he threw himself on the royal mercy as a confessed traitor with a rope round his neck. Having, however, exhausted all his military resources, he cunningly strove to entice Richard from Wales to Ireland. The two Peters wrote to Maurice Fitzgerald, then justiciar of Ireland, and to the chief foes of the marshal, urging them to fall upon his Irish estates and capture the traitor, dead or alive. Many of the most powerful nobles of Ireland lent themselves to the conspiracy. The Lacys of Meath, his old enemies, joined with Fitzgerald, Geoffrey Marsh, and Richard de Burgh, the greatest of the Norman lords of Connaught, and the nephew of Hubert, in carrying out the plot. The confederates fell suddenly upon the marshal's estates and devastated them with fire and sword. On hearing of this attack Richard immediately left Wales, and, accompanied by only fifteen knights, took ship for Ireland. On his arrival Geoffrey Marsh, the meanest of the conspirators, received him with every profession of cordiality, and urged him to attack his enemies without delay. Geoffrey was an old man; he had long held the great post of justiciar of Ireland; and he was himself the liegeman of the marshal. Richard therefore implicitly trusted him, and forthwith took the field. The first warlike operations of Earl Richard were successful. After a short siege he obtained possession of Limerick, and his enemies were fain to demand a truce. Richard proposed a conference to be held on April 1, 1234, on the Curragh of Kildare. The conference proved abortive, for Geoffrey Marsh cunningly persuaded the marshal to refuse any offer of terms which the magnates would accept, and Richard found that he had been duped into taking up a position that he was not strong enough to maintain. Marsh withdrew from his side, on the ground that he could not fight against Lacy, whose sister he had married. The marshal foresaw the worst. "I know," he declared, "that this day I am delivered over to death, but it is better to die honourably for the cause of justice than to flee from the field and become a reproach to knighthood." The forsworn Irish knights slunk away to neighbouring places of sanctuary or went over to the enemy. When the final struggle came, later on the same April 1, Richard had few followers save the faithful fifteen knights who had crossed over with him from Wales. The little band, outnumbered by more than nine to one, struggled desperately to the end. At last the marshal, unhorsed and severely wounded, fell into the hands of his enemies. They bore him, more dead than alive, to his own castle of Kilkenny, which had just been seized by the justiciar. After a few days Richard's tough constitution began to get the better of his wounds. Then his enemies, showing him the royal warranty for their acts, induced him to admit them into his castles. An ignorant or treacherous surgeon, called in by the justiciar, cauterised his wounds so severely that his sufferings became intense. He died of fever on the 16th, and was buried, as he himself had willed, in the Franciscan church at Kilkenny. No one rejoiced at the death of the hero save the traitors who had lured him to his doom and the Poitevins who had suborned them. Their victim, the weak king, mourned for his friend as David had lamented Saul and Jonathan.[1] The treachery of his enemies brought them little profit. While Richard Marshal lay on his deathbed, a new Archbishop of Canterbury drove the Poitevins from office. [1] _Dunstable Ann._, p. 137. In the heyday of the Poitevins' power the Church sounded a feeble but clear note of alarm. The pope expostulated with Henry for his treatment of Hubert de Burgh, and Agnellus of Pisa, the first English provincial of the newly arrived Franciscan order, strove to reconcile Richard Marshal with his sovereign in the course of the South-Welsh campaign. More drastic action was necessary if vague remonstrance was to be translated into fruitful action. The three years' vacancy of the see of Canterbury, after the death of Richard le Grand, paralysed the action of the Church. After the pope's rejection of the first choice of the convent of Christ Church, the chancellor, Ralph Neville, the monks elected their own prior, and him also Gregory refused as too old and incompetent. Their third election fell upon John Blunt, a theologian high in the favour of Peter des Roches, who sent him to Rome, well provided with ready money, to secure his confirmation. Simon Langton, again restored to England, and archdeacon of Canterbury, persuaded the pope to veto Blunt's appointment on the ground of his having held two benefices without a dispensation. His rejection was the first check received by the Poitevin faction. It was promptly followed by a more crushing blow. Weary of the long delay, Gregory persuaded the Christ Church monks then present at Rome to elect Edmund Rich, treasurer of Salisbury. Edmund, a scholar who had taught theology and arts with great distinction at Paris and Oxford, was still more famous for his mystical devotion, for his asceticism and holiness of life. He was however an old man, inexperienced in affairs, and, with all his gracious gifts, somewhat wanting in the tenacity and vigour which leadership involved. Yet in sending so eminent a saint to Canterbury, Rome conferred on England a service second only to that which she had rendered when she secured the archbishopric for Stephen Langton. Before his consecration as archbishop on April 2, 1234, Edmund had already joined with his suffragans on February 2 in upholding the good fame of the marshal and in warning the king of the disastrous results of preferring the counsels of the Poitevins to those of his natural-born subjects. A week after his consecration Edmund succeeded in carrying out a radical change in the administration. On April 9 he declared that unless Henry drove away the Poitevins, he would forthwith pronounce him excommunicate. Yielding at once, Henry sent the Bishop of Winchester back to his diocese, and deprived Peter of Rivaux of all his offices. The followers of the two Peters shared their fate, and Henry, despatching Edmund to Wales to make peace with Llewelyn and the marshal, hurried to Gloucester in order to meet the archbishop on his return. His good resolutions were further strengthened by the news of Earl Richard's death. On arriving at Gloucester he held a council in which the ruin of the Poitevins was completed. A truce, negotiated by the archbishop with Llewelyn, was ratified. The partisans of the marshal were pardoned, even Richard Siward being forgiven his long career of plunder. Gilbert Marshal, the next brother of the childless Earl Richard, was invested with his earldom and office, and Henry himself dubbed him a knight. Hubert de Burgh was included in the comprehensive pardon. Indignant that his name and seal should have been used to cover his ex-ministers' treachery to Earl Richard, Henry overwhelmed them with reproaches, and strove by his violence against them to purge himself from complicity in their acts. The Poitevins lurked in sanctuary, fearing for the worst. Segrave forgot his knighthood, resumed the tonsure, and took refuge in a church in Leicester. The king's worst indignation was reserved for Peter of Rivaux. Peter protested that his orders entitled him to immunity from arrest, but it was found that he wore a mail shirt under his clerical garments, and, without a word of reproach from the archbishop, he was immured in a lay prison on the pretext that no true clerk wore armour. Of the old ministers Ralph Neville alone remained in office. With Bishop Peter's fall disappeared the last of the influences that had prevailed during the minority. The king, who felt his dignity impaired by the Poitevin domination, resolved that henceforward he would submit to no master. He soon framed a plan of government that thoroughly satisfied his jealous and exacting nature. Henceforth no magnates, either of Church or State, should stand between him and his subjects. He would be his own chief minister, holding in his own hands all the strings of policy, and acting through subordinates whose sole duly was to carry out their master's orders. Under such a system the justiciarship practically ceased to exist. The treasurership was held for short periods by royal clerks of no personal distinction. Even the chancellorship became overshadowed. Henry quarrelled with Ralph Neville in 1238, and withdrew from him the custody of the great seal, though he allowed him to retain the name and emoluments of chancellor. On Neville's death the office fell into abeyance for nearly twenty years, during which time the great seal was entrusted to seven successive keepers. Like his grandfather, Henry wished to rule in person with the help of faithful but unobtrusive subordinates. This system, which was essentially that of the French monarchy, presupposed for success the constant personal supervision of an industrious and strong-willed king. Henry III was never a strenuous worker, and his character failed in the robustness and self-reliance necessary for personal rule. The magnates, who regarded themselves as the king's natural-born counsellors, were bitterly incensed, and hated the royal clerks as fiercely as they had disliked the ministers of his minority. Opposed by the barons, distrusted by the people, liable to be thrown over by their master at each fresh change of his caprice, the royal subordinates showed more eagerness in prosecuting their own private fortunes than in consulting the interests of the State. Thus the nominal government of Henry proved extremely ineffective. Huge taxes were raised, but little good came from them. The magnates held sullenly aloof; the people grumbled; the Church lamented the evil days. Yet for five and twenty years the wretched system went on, not so much by reason of its own strength as because there was no one vigorous enough to overthrow it. The author of all this mischief was a man of some noble and many attractive qualities. Save when an occasional outburst of temper showed him a true son of John, Henry was the kindest, mildest, most amiable of men. He was the first king since William the Conqueror in whose private life the austerest critics could find nothing blameworthy. His piety stands high, even when estimated by the standards of the thirteenth century. He was well educated and had a touch of the artist's temperament, loving fair churches, beautiful sculpture, delicate goldsmith's work, and richly illuminated books. He had a horror of violence, and never wept more bitter tears than when he learned how treacherously his name had been used to lure Richard Marshal to his doom. But he was extraordinarily deficient in stability of purpose. For the moment it was easy to influence him either for good or evil, but even the ablest of his counsellors found it impossible to retain any hold over him for long. One day he lavished all his affection on Hubert de Burgh; the next he played into the hands of his enemies. In the same way he got rid of Peter des Roches, the preceptor of his infancy, the guide of his early manhood. Jealous, self-assertive, restless, and timid, he failed in just those qualities that his subjects expected to find in a king. Born and brought up in England, and never leaving it save for short and infrequent visits to the continent, he was proud of his English ancestors and devoted to English saints, more especially to royal saints such as Edward the Confessor and Edmund of East Anglia. Yet he showed less sympathy with English ways than many of his foreign-born predecessors. Educated under alien influences, delighting in the art, the refinement, the devotion, and the absolutist principles of foreigners, he seldom trusted a man of English birth. Too weak to act for himself, too suspicious to trust his natural counsellors, he found the friendship and advice for which he yearned in foreign favourites and kinsmen. Thus it was that the hopes excited by the fall of the Poitevins were disappointed. The alien invasion, checked for a few years, was renewed in a more dangerous shape. During the ten years after the collapse of Peter des Roches, swarms of foreigners came to England, and spoiled the land with the king's entire good-will. Henry's marriage brought many Provençals and Savoyards to England. The renewed troubles between pope and emperor led to a renewal of Roman interference in a more exacting form. The continued intercourse with foreign states resulted in fresh opportunities of alien influence. A new attempt on Poitou brought as its only result the importation of the king's Poitevin kinsmen. The continued close relationship between the English and the French baronage involved the frequent claim of English estates and titles by men of alien birth. Even such beneficial movements as the establishment of the mendicant orders in England, and the cosmopolitan outlook of the increasingly important academic class contributed to the spread of outlandish ideas. As wave after wave of foreigners swept over England, Englishmen involved them in a common condemnation. And all saw in the weakness of the king the very source of their power. The first great influx of foreigners followed directly from Henry's marriage. For several years active negotiations had been going on to secure him a suitable bride. There had also at various times been talk of his selecting a wife from Brittany, Austria, Bohemia, or Scotland, and in the spring of 1235 a serious negotiation for his marriage with Joan, daughter and heiress of the Count of Ponthieu, only broke down through the opposition of the French court. Henry then sought the hand of Eleanor, a girl twelve years old, and the second of the four daughters of Raymond Berengar IV., Count of Provence, and his wife Beatrice, sister of Amadeus III., Count of Savoy. The marriage contract was signed in October. Before that time Eleanor had left Provence under the escort of her mother's brother, William, bishop-elect of Valence. On her way she spent a long period with her elder sister Margaret, who had been married to Louis IX. of France in 1234. On January 14, 1236, she was married to Henry at Canterbury by Archbishop Edmund, and crowned at Westminster on the following Sunday. The new queen's kinsfolk quickly acquired an almost unbounded ascendency over her weak husband. With the exception of the reigning Count Amadeus of Savoy, her eight maternal uncles were somewhat scantily provided for. The prudence of the French government prevented them from obtaining any advantage for themselves at the court of their niece the Queen of France, and they gladly welcomed the opportunity of establishing themselves at the expense of their English nephew. Self-seeking and not over-scrupulous, able, energetic, and with the vigour and resource of high-born soldiers of fortune, several of them play honourable parts in the history of their own land, and are by no means deserving of the complete condemnation meted out to them by the English annalists.[1] The bishop-elect of Valence was an able and accomplished warrior. He stayed on in England after accomplishing his mission, and with him remained his clerk, the younger son of a house of Alpine barons, Peter of Aigueblanche, whose cunning and dexterity were as attractive to Henry as the more martial qualities of his master. Weary of standing alone, the king eagerly welcomed a trustworthy adviser who was outside the entanglements of English parties, and made Bishop William his chief counsellor. It was believed that he was associated with eleven others in a secret inner circle of royal advisers, whose advice Henry pledged himself by oath to follow. Honours and estates soon began to fall thickly on William and his friends. He made himself the mouthpiece of Henry's foreign policy. When he temporarily left England, he led a force sent by the king to help Frederick II. in his war against the cities of northern Italy. His influence with Henry did much to secure for his brother, Thomas of Savoy, the hand of the elderly countess Joan of Flanders. With Thomas as the successor of Ferdinand of Portugal, the rich Flemish county, bound to England by so many political and economic ties, seemed in safe hands, and preserved from French influence. In 1238 Thomas visited England, and received a warm welcome and rich presents from the king. [1] For Eleanor's countrymen see Mugnier, _Les Savoyards en Angleterre au XIIIe siècle, et Pierre d'Aigueblanche, évêque d'Héreford_ (1890). Despite the establishment of the Savoyards, the Poitevin influence began to revive. Peter des Roches, who had occupied himself after his fall by fighting for Gregory IX. against the revolted Romans, returned to England in broken health in 1236, and was reconciled to the king. Peter of Rivaux was restored to favour, and made keeper of the royal wardrobe. Segrave and Passelewe again became justices and ministers. England was now the hunting-ground of any well-born Frenchmen anxious for a wider career than they could obtain at home.[1] Among the foreigners attracted to England to prosecute legal claims or to seek the royal bounty came Simon of Montfort, the second son of the famous conqueror of the Albigenses. Amice, the mother of the elder Simon, was the sister and heiress of Robert of Beaumont, the last of his line to hold the earldom of Leicester. After Amice's death her son used the title and claimed the estates of that earldom. But these pretensions were but nominal, and since 1215 Randolph of Chester had administered the Leicester lands as if his complete property. However, Amaury of Montfort, the Count of Toulouse's eldest son, ceded to his portionless younger brother his claims to the Beaumont inheritance, and in 1230 Simon went to England to push his fortunes. Young, brilliant, ambitious and attractive, he not only easily won the favour of the king, but commended himself so well to Earl Randolph that in 1231 the aged earl was induced to relax his grasp on the Leicester estates. In 1239 the last formalities of investiture were accomplished. Amaury renounced his claims, and after that Simon became Earl of Leicester and steward of England. A year before that he had secured the great marriage that he had long been seeking. In January, 1238, he was wedded to the king's own sister, Eleanor, the childless widow of the younger William Marshal. Simon was for the moment high in the affection of his brother-in-law. To the English he was simply another of the foreign favourites who turned the king's heart against his born subjects. [1] This is well illustrated by Philip de Beaumanoir's well-known romance, _Jean de Dammartin et Blonde d'Oxford_ (ed. by Suchier, Soc. des anciens Textes français, and by Le Roux de Lincy, Camden Soc.). In 1238 Peter des Roches died. With all his faults the Poitevin was an excellent administrator at Winchester,[1] and left his estates in such a prosperous condition that Henry coveted the succession for the bishop-elect of Valence, though William already had the prospect of the prince-bishopric of liege. But the monks of St. Swithun's refused to obey the royal order, and Henry sought to obtain his object from the pope. Gregory gave William both Liege and Winchester, but in 1239 death ended his restless plans. William's death left more room for his kinsfolk and followers. His clerk, Peter of Aigueblanche, returned to the land of promise, and in 1240 secured his consecration as Bishop of Hereford. William's brother, Peter of Savoy, lord of Romont and Faucigny, was invited to England in the same year. In 1241 he was invested with the earldom of Richmond, which a final breach with Peter of Brittany had left in the king's hands. Peter, the ablest member of his house, thus became its chief representative in England.[2] [1] See H. Hall, _Pipe Roll of the Bishop of Winchester_, 1207-8. [2] For Peter see Wurstemberger, _Peter II., Graf von Savoyen_ (1856). With the Provençals and Savoyards came a fresh swarm of Romans. In 1237 the first papal legates _a latere_ since the recall of Pandulf landed in England. The deputy of Gregory IX. was the cardinal-deacon Otto, who in 1226 had already discharged the humbler office of nuncio in England. It was believed that the legate was sent at the special request of Henry III., and despite the remonstrances of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Those most unfriendly to the legate were won over by his irreproachable conduct. He rejected nearly all gifts. He was unwearied in preaching peace; travelled to the north to settle outstanding differences between Henry and the King of Scots, and thence hurried to the west to prolong the truce with Llewelyn. His zeal for the reformation of abuses made the canons of the national council, held under his presidency at St. Paul's on November 18, 1237, an epoch in the history of our ecclesiastical jurisprudence. Despite his efforts the legate remained unpopular. The pluralists and nepotists, who feared his severity, joined with the foes of all taxation and the enemies of all foreigners in denouncing the legate. To avoid the danger of poison, he thought it prudent to make his own brother his master cook. During the council of London it was necessary to escort him from his lodgings and back again with a military force. In the council itself the claim of high-born clerks to receive benefices in plurality found a spokesman in so respectable a prelate as Walter of Cantilupe, the son of a marcher baron, whom Otto had just enthroned in his cathedral at Worcester, and the legate, "fearing for his skin," was suspected of mitigating the severity of his principles to win over the less greedy of the friends of vested interests. His Roman followers knew and cared little about English susceptibilities, and feeling was so strong against them that any mischance might excite an explosion. Such an accident occurred on St. George's day, April 23, 1238, when the legate was staying with the Austin Canons of Oseney, near Oxford, while the king was six miles off at Abingdon. Some of the masters of the university went to Oseney to pay their respects to the cardinal, and were rudely repulsed by the Italian porter. Irritated at this discourtesy, they returned with a host of clerks, who forced their way into the abbey. Amongst them was a poor Irish chaplain, who made his way to the kitchen to beg for food. The chief cook, the legate's brother, threw a pot of scalding broth into the Irishman's face. A clerk from the march of Wales shot the cook dead with an arrow. A fierce struggle followed, in the midst of which Otto, hastily donning the garb of his hosts, took refuge in the tower of their church, where he was besieged by the infuriated clerks, until the king sent soldiers from Abingdon to release him. Otto thereupon laid Oxford under an interdict, suspended all lectures, and put thirty masters into prison. English opinion, voiced by the diocesan, Grosseteste, held that the cardinal's servants had provoked the riot, and found little to blame in the violence of the clerks. In 1239 Gregory IX. began his final conflict with Frederick II., and demanded the support of all Europe. As before, from 1227 to 1230, the pressure of the papal necessity was at once felt in England. The legate had to raise supplies at all costs. Crusaders were allowed to renounce their vows for ready money. Every visitation or conference became an excuse for procurations and fees. Presents were no longer rejected, but rather greedily solicited. On the pretence that it was necessary to reform the Scottish Church, "which does not recognise the Roman Church as its sole mother and metropolitan," Otto excited the indignation of Alexander II. by attempts to extend his jurisdiction to Scotland, hitherto unvisited by legates. In England his claims soon grew beyond all bearing. At last he demanded a fifth of all clerical goods to enable the pope to finance the anti-imperial crusade. Even this was more endurable than the order received from Rome that 300 clerks of Roman families should be "provided" to benefices in England in order that Gregory might obtain the support of their relatives against Frederick. Both as feudal suzerain and as spiritual despot, the pope lorded it over England as fully as his uncle Innocent III. Weakness, piety, and self-interest combined to make Henry III. acquiesce in the legate's exactions. "I neither wish nor dare," said he, "to oppose the lord pope in anything." The union of king and legate was irresistible. The lay opposition was slow and feeble. Gilbert Marshal, though showing no lack of spirit, was not the man to play the part which his brother Richard had filled so effectively. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who constituted himself the spokesman of the magnates, made a special grievance of the marriage of Simon of Montfort with his sister Eleanor. England, he said, was like a vineyard with a broken hedge, so that all that went by could steal the grapes. He took arms, and subscribed the first of the long series of plans of constitutional reform that the reign was to witness, according to which the king was to be guided by a chosen body of counsellors. But at the crisis of the movement he held back, having accomplished nothing. There was more vigour in the ecclesiastical opposition. Robert Grosseteste,[1] a Suffolk man of humble birth, had already won for himself a position of unique distinction at Oxford and Paris. A teacher of rare force, a scholar of unexampled range, a thinker of daring originality, and a writer who had touched upon almost every known subject, he was at the height of his fame when, in 1235, his appointment as Bishop of Lincoln gave the fullest opportunities for the employment of his great gifts in the public service. He was convinced that the preoccupation of the clergy in worldly employment and the constant aggressions of the civil upon the ecclesiastical courts lay at the root of the evils of the time. His conviction brought him into conflict with the king rather than the legate, though for the moment his absorption in the cares of his diocese distracted his attention from general questions. The bishops generally had become so hostile that Otto shrank from meeting them in another council, and strove to get money by negotiating individually with the leading churchmen. The old foe of papal usurpations, Robert Twenge, renewed his agitation on behalf of the rights of patrons, and the clergy of Berkshire drew up a remonstrance against Otto's extortions. [1] For Grosseteste, see F.S. Stevenson, _Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln_ (1899). Archbishop Edmund saw the need of opposing both legate and king; but he was hampered by his ecclesiastical and political principles, and still more, perhaps, by the magnitude of the rude task thrown upon him. He had set before himself the ideal of St. Thomas, not only in the asceticism of his private life, but in his zeal for his see and the Church. But few men were more unlike the strong-willed and bellicose martyr of Canterbury than the gentle and yielding saint of Abingdon. A plentiful crop of quarrels, however, soon showed that Edmund had, in one respect, copied only too faithfully the example of his predecessor. He was engaged in a controversy of some acerbity with the Archbishop of York, and he was involved in a long wrangle with the monks of his cathedral, which took him to Rome soon after the legate's arrival. He got little satisfaction there, and found a whole sea of troubles to overwhelm him on his return. At last came the demand of the fifth from Otto. Edmund joined in the opposition of his brethren to this exaction, but his attitude was complicated by his other difficulties. Leaning in his weakness on the pope, he found that Gregory was a taskmaster rather than a director. At last he paid his fifth, but, broken in health and spirits, he was of no mind to withstand the demands of the Roman clerks for benefices. If he could not be another St. Thomas defending the liberties of the Church, he could at least withdraw like his prototype from the strife, and find a refuge in a foreign house of religion. Seeking out St. Thomas's old haunt at Pontigny, he threw himself with ardour into the austere Cistercian life. On the advice of his physicians, he soon sought a healthier abode with the canons of Soisy, in Brie, at whose house he died on November 16, 1240. His body was buried at Pontigny in the still abiding minster which had witnessed the devotions of Becket and Langton, and miracles were soon wrought at his tomb. Within eight years of his death he was declared a saint; and Henry, who had thwarted him in life, and even opposed his canonisation, was among the first of the pilgrims who worshipped at his shrine. It needed a tougher spirit and a stronger character than Edmund's to grapple with the thorny problems of his age. The retirement of the archbishop enabled Otto to carry through his business, and withdraw from England on January 7, 1241. On August 21 Gregory IX. died, with his arch-enemy at the gates of Rome and all his plans for the time frustrated. High-minded, able and devout, he wagered the whole fortunes of the papacy on the result of his secular struggle with the emperor. In Italy as in England, the spiritual hegemony of the Roman see and the spiritual influence of the western Church were compromised by his exaltation of ecclesiastical politics over religion. The monks of Christ Church won court favour by electing as archbishop, Boniface of Savoy, Bishop-elect of Belley, one of the queen's uncles. There was no real resistance to the appointment, though a prolonged vacancy in the papacy made it impossible for him to receive formal confirmation until 1243, and it was not until 1244 that he condescended to visit his new province. Meanwhile his kinsmen were carrying everything before them. Richard of Cornwall lost his first wife, Isabella, daughter of William Marshal, in 1240, an event which broke almost the last link that bound him to the baronial opposition. He withdrew himself from the troubles of English politics by going on crusade, and with him went his former enemy, Simon of Leicester. Richard was back in England early in 1242, and on November 23, 1243, his marriage with Sanchia of Provence, the younger sister of the queens of France and England, completed his conversion to the court party. Henry III.'s cosmopolitan instincts led him to take as much part in foreign politics as his resources allowed. In 1235 he married his sister Isabella to Frederick II., and henceforth manifested a strong interest in the affairs of his imperial brother-in-law. His relations with France were still uneasy, and he hoped to find in Frederick's support a counterpoise to the steady pressure of French hostility. All England watched with interest the progress of the emperor's arms. Peter of Savoy led an English contingent to fight for Frederick against the Milanese, and Matthew Paris, the greatest of the English chroniclers, narrates the campaign of Corte Nuova with a detail exceeding that which he allows to the military enterprises of his own king. Frederick constantly corresponded with both the king and Richard of Cornwall, and it was nothing but solicitude for the safely of the heir to the throne that led the English magnates to reject the emperor's request that Richard should receive a high command under him. Even Frederick's breach with the pope in 1239 did not destroy his friendship with Henry. The situation became extremely complicated, since Innocent IV. derived large financial support for his crusade from the unwilling English clergy, while Henry still professed to be Frederick's friend. The king allowed Otto to proclaim Frederick's excommunication in England, and then urged the legate to quit the country because the emperor strongly protested against the presence of an avowed enemy at his brother-in-law's court. Neither pope nor emperor could rely upon the support of so half-hearted a prince. Renewed trouble with France explains in some measure the anxiety of Henry to remain in good relations with the emperor despite Frederick's quarrel with the pope. The position of the French monarchy was far stronger than it had been when Henry first intervened in continental politics. Blanche of Castile had broken the back of the feudal coalition, and even Peter Mauclerc had made his peace with the monarchy at the price of his English earldom. Louis IX. attained his majority in 1235, and his first care was to strengthen his power in his newly won dominions. If Poitou were still in the hands of the Count of La Marche and the Viscount of Thouars, the royal seneschals of Beaucaire and Carcassonne after 1229 ruled over a large part of the old dominions of Raymond of Toulouse. In 1237 the treaty of Meaux was further carried out by the marriage of Raymond's daughter and heiress, Joan, to Alfonse, the brother of the French king. In 1241 Alfonse came of age, and Louis at once invested him with Poitou and Auvergne. The lords of Poitou saw that the same process which had destroyed the feudal liberties of Normandy now endangered their disorderly independence. Hugh of Lusignan and his wife had been present at Alfonse's investiture, and the widow of King John had gone away highly indignant at the slights put upon her dignity.[1] She bitterly reproached her husband with the ignominy involved in his submission. Easily moved to new treasons, Hugh became the soul of a league of Poitevin barons formed at Parthenay, which received the adhesion of Henry's seneschal of Gascony, Rostand de Sollers, and even of Alfonse's father-in-law, the depressed Raymond of Toulouse. At Christmas Hugh openly showed his hand. He renounced his homage to Alfonse, declared his adhesion to his step-son, Richard of Cornwall, the titular count of Poitou, and ostentatiously withdrew from the court with his wife. The rest of the winter was taken up with preparations for the forthcoming struggle. [1] See the graphic letter of a citizen of La Rochelle to Blanche, published by M. Delisle in _Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes_, série ii., iv., 513-55 (1856). Untaught by experience, Henry III. listened to the appeals of his mother and her husband. Richard of Cornwall, who came back from his crusade in January, 1242, was persuaded that he had another chance of realising his vain title of Count of Poitou. But the king had neither men nor money and the parliament of February 2 refused to grant him sums adequate for his need, so that, despairing of dealing with his barons in a body, Henry followed the legate's example of winning men over individually. He made a strong protest against the King of France's breach of the existing truce, and his step-father assured him that Poitou and Gascony would provide him with sufficient soldiers if he brought over enough money to pay them. Thereupon, leaving the Archbishop of York as regent, Henry took ship on May 9 at Portsmouth and landed on May 13 at Royan at the mouth of the Gironde. He was accompanied by Richard of Cornwall, seven earls, and 300 knights. Meanwhile Louis IX. marshalled a vast host at Chinon, which from April to July overran the patrimony of the house of Lusignan, and forced many of the confederate barons to submit. Peter of Savoy and John Mansel, Henry's favourite clerk, then made seneschal of Gascony, assembled the Aquitanian levies, while Peter of Aigueblanche, the Savoyard Bishop of Hereford, went to Provence to negotiate the union between Earl Richard and Sanchia, and, if possible, to add Raymond Berengar to the coalition against the husband of his eldest daughter. Henry hoped to win tactical advantages by provoking Louis to break the truce, and mendaciously protested his surprise at being forced into an unexpected conflict with his brother-in-law. Towards the end of July, Louis, who had conquered all Poitou, advanced to the Charente, and occupied Taillebourg. If the Charente were once crossed, Saintonge would assuredly follow the destinies of Poitou; and the Anglo-Gascon army advanced from Saintes to dispute the passage of the river. On July 21 the two armies were in presence of each other, separated only by the Charente. Besides the stone bridge at Taillebourg, the French had erected a temporary wooden structure higher up the stream, and had collected a large number of boats to facilitate their passage. Seeing with dismay the oriflamme waving over the sea of tents which, "like a great and populous city," covered the right bank, the soldiers of Henry retreated precipitately to Saintes. There was imminent danger of their retreat being cut off, but Richard of Cornwall went to the French camp, and obtained an armistice of a few hours, which gave his brother time to reach the town. Next day Louis advanced at his ease to the capital of Saintonge. The Anglo-Gascons went out to meet him, and, despite their inferior numbers, fought bravely amidst the vineyards and hollow lanes to the west of the city. But the English king was the first to flee, and victory soon attended the arms of the French. Immediately after the battle, the lords of Poitou abandoned Richard for Alfonse. Henry fled from Saintes to Pons, from Pons to Barbezieux, and thence sought a more secure refuge at Blaye, leaving his tent, the ornaments of his chapel, and the beer provided for his English soldiers as booty for the enemy. The outbreak of an epidemic in the French army alone prevented a siege of Bordeaux, by necessitating the return of St. Louis to the healthier north. Henry lingered at Bordeaux until September, when he returned to England.[1] Meanwhile the French dictated peace to the remaining allies of Henry. On the death of Raymond of Toulouse, in 1249, Alfonse quietly succeeded to his dominions. The next twenty years saw the gradual extension of the French administrative system to Poitou, Auvergne, and the Toulousain. English Gascony was reduced to little more than the districts round Bordeaux and Bayonne. Even a show of hostility was no longer useful, and on April 7, 1243, a five years' truce between Henry and Louis was signed at Bordeaux. The marriage of Beatrice of Provence, the youngest of the daughters of Raymond Berengar, to Charles of Anjou, Louis' younger brother, removed Provence from the sphere of English influence. On his father-in-law's death in 1245, Charles of Anjou succeeded to his dominions to the prejudice of his two English brothers-in-law, and became the founder of a Capetian line of counts of Provence, which brought the great fief of the empire under the same northern French influences which Alfonse of Poitiers was diffusing over the lost inheritances of Eleanor of Aquitaine and the house of Saint-Gilles. [1] The only good modern account of this expedition is that by M. Charles Bémont, _La campagne de Poitou, 1242-3_, in _Annales du Midi_, v., 389-314 (1893). For the Lusignans see Boissonade, _Quomodo comites Engolismenses erga reges Angliæ et Franciæ se gesserint_, 1152-1328 (1893). A minor result of Louis' triumph was the well-deserved ruin of Hugh of Lusignan and Isabella of Angoulême. The proud spirit of Isabella did not long tolerate her humiliation. She retired to Fontevraud and died there in 1246. Hugh X. followed her to the tomb in 1248. Their eldest son, Hugh XI., succeeded him, but the rest of their numerous family turned for support to the inexhaustible charity of the King of England. Thus in 1247 a Poitevin invasion of the king's half-brothers and sisters recalled to his much-tried subjects the Savoyard invasion of ten years earlier. In that single year three of the king's brothers and one of his sisters accepted his invitation to make a home in England. Of these, Guy, lord of Cognac, became proprietor of many estates. William, called from the Cistercian abbey in which he was born William of Valence, secured, with the hand of Joan of Munchensi, a claim to the great inheritance that was soon to be scattered by the extinction of the male line of the house of Marshal. Aymer of Valence, a very unclerical churchman, obtained in 1250 his election as bishop of Winchester, though his youth and the hostility of his chapter delayed his consecration for ten years. Alice their sister found a husband of high rank in the young John of Warenne, Earl of Warenne or Surrey, while a daughter of Hugh XI. married Robert of Ferrars, Earl of Ferrars or Derby. Others of their kindred flocked to the land of promise. Any Poitevin was welcome, even if not a member of the house of Lusignan. Thus the noble adventurer John du Plessis, came over to England, married the heiress of the Neufbourg Earls of Warwick, and in 1247 was created Earl of Warwick. The alien invasion took a newer and more grievous shape. The expenses of the war were still to be paid; and in 1244 Henry assembled a council, declaring that, as he had gone to Gascony on the advice of his barons, they were bound to make him a liberal grant towards freeing him from the debts which he had incurred beyond sea. Prelates, earls, and barons each deliberated apart, and a joint committee, composed of four members of each order, drew up an uncompromising reply. The king had not observed the charters; previous grants had been misapplied, and the abeyance of the great offices of state made justice difficult and good administration impossible. The committee insisted that a justiciar, a chancellor, and a treasurer should forthwith be appointed. This was the last thing that the jealous king desired. Helpless against a united council, he strove to break up the solidarity between its lay and clerical elements by laying a papal order before the prelates to furnish him an adequate subsidy. The leader of the bishops was now Grosseteste, who from this time until his death in 1253 was the pillar of the opposition. "We must not," he declared, "be divided from the common counsel, for it is written that if we be divided we shall all die forthwith." At last a committee of twelve magnates was appointed to draw up a plan of reform. The unanimity of all orders was shown by the co-operation on this body of prelates such as Boniface of Savoy with patriots of the stamp of Grosseteste and Walter of Cantilupe, while among the secular lords, Richard of Cornwall and 'Simon of Leicester worked together with baronial leaders like Norfolk and Richard of Montfichet, a survivor of the twenty-five executors of Magna Carta. The obstinacy of the king may well have driven the estates into drawing up the remarkable paper constitution preserved for us by Matthew Paris.[1] By it the execution of the charters and the supervision of the administration were to be entrusted to four councillors, chosen from among the magnates, and irremovable except with their consent. It is unlikely that the scheme was ever carried out; but its conception shows an advance in the claims of the opposition, and anticipates the policy of restraining an incompetent ruler by a committee responsible to the estates, which, for the next two centuries, was the popular specific for royal maladministration. For the moment neither side gained a decided victory. Though the barons persisted in their refusal of an extraordinary grant, they agreed to pay an aid to marry the king's eldest daughter to the son of Frederick II. [1] _Chron. Maj_., iv., 366-68. Further demands arose from the quarrel between Innocent IV.' and the emperor. A new papal envoy, Master Martin, came to England to extort from the clergy money to enable Innocent to carry on his war against Frederick. The lords told Martin that if he did not quit the realm forthwith he would be torn in pieces. In terror he prayed for a safe conduct. "May the devil give you a safe conduct to hell," was the only reply that the angry Henry vouchsafed. Even his complaisance was exhausted by Master Martin. On July 26, 1245, a few weeks before Martin's expulsion, Innocent IV. opened a general council at Lyons, in which Frederick was deposed from the imperial dignity. Grosseteste, the chief English prelate to attend the gathering, was drawn in conflicting directions by his zeal for pope against emperor and by his dislike of curialist exactions. This attitude of the bishop is reflected in the remonstrance, in the name of the English people, laid before Innocent, declaring the faithfulness of England to the Holy See and the wrongs with which her fidelity had been requited. The increasing demands for money, the intrusion of aliens into English cures, and Martin's exactions were set forth at length. Innocent refused to entertain the petition, forced all the bishops at Lyons to join in the deprivation of the emperor, and required every English bishop to seal with his own seal the document by which John had pledged the nation to a yearly tribute. No one could venture to stand up against the successor of St. Peter, and so, despite futile remonstrance, Innocent still had it all his own way. In 1250 Grosseteste again met Innocent face to face at Lyons, and urged him to "put to flight the evils and purge the abominations" which the Roman see had done so much to foster. But this outspoken declaration was equally without result. Bold as were Grosseteste's words, he fully accepted the curialist theory which regarded the pope as the universal bishop, the divinely appointed source of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He could therefore do no more than protest. If the pope chose to disregard him, there was nothing to be done but wait patiently for better times. The plague of foreign ecclesiastics was still to torment the English Church for many a year. The king's difficulties were increased by fresh troubles in Scotland and Wales. The friendship between Henry and his brother-in-law, Alexander II., was weakened by the death of the Queen of Scots and by Alexander's marriage to a French lady in 1239. At last, in 1244, relations were so threatening that the English levies were mustered for a campaign at Newcastle. However, on the mediation of Richard of Cornwall, Alexander bound himself not to make alliances with England's enemies, and the trouble passed away. In Wales the difficulties were more complicated. Llewelyn ap Iorwerth died in 1240, full of years and honour. In the last years of his reign broken health and the revolts of his eldest son Griffith made the old chieftain anxious for peace with England, as the best way of securing the succession to all his dominions of David, his son by Joan of Anjou. Henry III., anxious that David as his nephew should inherit the principality, granted a temporary cessation of hostilities. After Llewelyn's death David was accepted as Prince of Snowdon, and made his way to Gloucester, where he performed homage, and was dubbed knight by his uncle. Next year, however, hostilities broke out, and Henry, disgusted with his nephew, made a treaty with the wife of Griffith, Griffith himself being David's prisoner. In 1241 Henry led an expedition from Chester into North Wales, and forced David to submit. He surrendered Griffith to his uncle's safe keeping and promised to yield his principality to Henry if he died without a son. Three years later Griffith broke his neck in an attempt to escape from the Tower. The death of his rival emboldened David to take up a stronger line against his uncle. A fresh Welsh expedition was necessary for the summer of 1245, in which the English advanced to the Conway, but were speedily forced to retire. David held his own until his death, without issue, in March, 1246, threw open the question of the Welsh succession. CHAPTER IV. POLITICAL RETROGRESSION AND NATIONAL PROGRESS. The ten years from 1248 to 1258 saw the continuance of the misgovernment, discontent, and futile opposition which have already been sufficiently illustrated. The history of those years must be sought not so much in the relations of the king and his English subjects as in Gascony, in Wales, in the crusading revival, and in the culmination of the struggle of papacy and empire. In each of these fields the course of events reacted sharply upon the domestic affairs of England, until at last the failures of Henry's foreign policy gave unity and determination to the party of opposition whose first organised success, in 1258, ushered in the Barons' War. The relations between England and France remained anomalous. Formal peace was impossible, since France would yield nothing, and the English king still claimed Normandy and Aquitaine. Yet neither Henry nor Louis had any wish for war. They had married sisters: they were personally friendly, and were both lovers of peace. In such circumstances it was not hard to arrange truces from time to time, so that from 1243 to the end of the reign there were no open hostilities. In 1248 the friendly feeling of the two courts was particularly strong. Louis was on the eve of departure for the crusade and many English nobles had taken the cross. Henry, who was himself contemplating a crusade, was of no mind to avail himself of his kinsman's absence to disturb his realm. The French could afford to pass over Henry's neglect to do homage, for Gascony seemed likely to emancipate itself from the yoke of its English dukes without any prompting from Paris. After the failure of 1243, a limited amount of territory between the Dordogne and the Pyrenees alone acknowledged Henry. This narrower Gascony was a thoroughly feudalised land: the absentee dukes had little authority, domain, or revenue: and the chief lordships were held by magnates, whose relations to their overlord were almost formal, and by municipalities almost as free as the cities of Flanders or the empire. The disastrous campaign of Taiilebourg lessened the prestige of the duke, and Henry quitted Gascony without so much as attempting to settle its affairs. In the following years weak seneschals, with insufficient powers and quickly succeeding each other, were unable to grapple with ever-increasing troubles. The feudal lords dominated the countryside, pillaged traders, waged internal war and defied the authority of the duke. In the autonomous towns factions had arisen as fierce as those of the cities of Italy. Bordeaux was torn asunder by the feuds of the Rosteins and Colons. Bayonne was the scene of a struggle between a few privileged families, which sought to monopolise municipal office, and a popular opposition based upon the seafaring class. The neighbouring princes cast greedy eyes on a land so rich, divided, and helpless. Theobald IV., the poet, Count of Champagne and King of Navarre, coveted the valley of the Adour. Gaston, Viscount of Béarn, the cousin of Queen Eleanor, plundered and destroyed the town of Dax. Ferdinand the Saint of Castile and James I. of Aragon severally claimed all Gascony. Behind all these loomed the agents of the King of France. Either Gascony must fall away altogether, or stronger measures must be taken to preserve it. In this extremity Henry made Simon of Montfort seneschal or governor of Gascony, with exceptionally full powers and an assured duration of office for seven years. Simon had taken the crusader's vow, but was persuaded by the king to abandon his intention of following Louis to Egypt. He at once threw himself into his rude task with an energy that showed him to be a true son of the Albigensian crusader. In the first three months he traversed the duchy from end to end; rallied the royal partisans; defeated rebels; kept external foes in check, and administered the law without concern for the privileges of the great. In 1249 he crushed the Rostein faction at Bordeaux. The same fate was meted out to their partisans in the country districts. Order was restored, but the seneschal utterly disregarded impartiality or justice. He sought to rule Gascony by terrorism and by backing up one faction against the other. It was the same with minor cities, like Bazas and Bayonne, and with the tyrants of the countryside. The Viscount of Fronsac saw his castle razed and his estates seized. Gaston of Béarn, tricked by the seneschal out of the succession of Bigorre, was captured, sent to England, and only allowed to return to his home, humiliated and powerless to work further evil. The lesser barons had to acknowledge Simon their master. On the death of Raymond of Toulouse in 1249, his son-in-law and successor, Alfonse of Poitiers, had all he could do to secure his inheritance, and was too closely bound by the pacific policy of his brother to give Simon much trouble. The truce with France was easily renewed by reason of St. Louis' absence on a crusade. The differences between Gascony and Theobald of Navarre were mitigated in 1248 at a personal interview between Leicester and the poet-king. Gascony for the moment was so quiet that the rebellious hordes called the _Pastoureaux_, who had desolated the royal domain, withdrew from Bordeaux in terror of Simon's threats. But the expense of maintaining order pressed heavily on the seneschal's resources, and his master showed little disposition to assist him. Moreover Gascony could not long keep quiet. There were threats of fresh insurrections, and the whole land was burning with indignation against its governor. Complaints from the Gascon estates soon flowed with great abundance into Westminster. For the moment Henry paid little attention to them. His son Edward was ten years of age, and he was thinking of providing him with an appanage, sufficient to support a separate household and so placed as to train the young prince in the duties of statecraft. Before November, 1249, he granted to Edward all Gascony, along with the profits of the government of Ireland, which were set aside to put Gascony in a good state of defence. Simon's strong hand was now more than ever necessary to keep the boy's unruly subjects under control. The King therefore continued Simon as seneschal of Gascony, though henceforth the earl acted as Edward's minister. "Complete happily," Henry wrote to the seneschal, "all our affairs in Gascony and you shall receive from us and our heirs a recompense worthy of your services." For the moment Leicester's triumph seemed complete, but the Gascons, who had hoped that Edward's establishment meant the removal of their masterful governor, were bitterly disappointed at the continuance of his rule. Profiting by Simon's momentary absence in England, they once more rose in revolt. Henry wavered for the moment. "Bravely," declared he to his brother-in-law, "hast thou fought for me, and I will not deny thee help. But complaints pour in against thee. They say that thou hast thrown into prison, and condemned to death, folk who have been summoned to thy court under pledge of thy good faith." In the end Simon was sent back to Gascony, and by May, 1251, the rebels were subdued. Next year Gaston of Béarn stirred up another revolt, and, while Simon was in England, deputies from the Aquitanian cities crossed the sea and laid new complaints before Henry. A stormy scene ensued between the king and his brother-in-law. Threatened with the loss of his office, Simon insisted that he had been appointed for seven years, and that he could not be removed without his own consent. Henry answered that he would keep no compacts with traitors. "That word is a lie," cried Simon; "were you not my king it would be an ill hour for you when you dared to utter it." The sympathy of the magnates saved Leicester from the king's wrath, and before long he returned to Gascony, still seneschal, but with authority impaired by the want of his sovereign's confidence. Though the king henceforth sided with the rebels, Simon remained strong enough to make headway against the lord of Béarn. Before long, however, Leicester unwillingly agreed to vacate his office on receiving from Henry a sum of money. In September, 1252, he laid down the seneschalship and retired into France. While shabbily treated by the king, he had certainly shown an utter absence of tact or scruple. But the tumults of Gascony raged with more violence than ever now that his strong hand was withdrawn. Those who had professed to rise against the seneschal remained in arms against the king. Once more the neighbouring princes cast greedy eyes on the defenceless duchy. In particular, Alfonso the Wise, King of Castile, who succeeded his father Ferdinand in 1252, renewed his father's claims to Gascony. The only way to save the duchy was for Henry to go there in person. Long delays ensued before the royal visit took place, and it was not until August, 1253, that Bordeaux saw her hereditary duke sail up the Gironde to her quays. The Gascon capital remained faithful, but within a few miles of her walls the rebels were everywhere triumphant. It required a long siege to reduce Bénauge to submission, and months elapsed before the towns and castles of the lower Garonne and Dordogne opened their gates. Even then La Réole, whither all the worst enemies of Montfort had fled, held out obstinately. Despairing of military success, Henry fell back upon diplomacy. The strength of the Gascon revolt did not lie in the power of the rebels themselves but in the support of the neighbouring princes and the French crown. By renewing the truce with the representatives of Louis, Henry protected himself from the danger of French intervention, and at the same time he cut off a more direct source of support to the rebels by negotiating treaties with such magnates as the lord of Albret, the Counts of Comminges and Armagnac, and the Viscount of Béarn. His master-stroke was the conclusion, in April, 1254, of a peace with Alfonso of Castile, whereby the Spanish king abandoned his Gascon allies and renounced his claims on the duchy. In return it was agreed that the lord Edward should marry Alfonso's half-sister, Eleanor, heiress of the county of Ponthieu through her mother, Joan, whom Henry had once sought for his queen. As Edward's appanage included Aquitaine, Alfonso, in renouncing his personal claims, might seem to be but transferring them to his sister. In May, 1254, Queen Eleanor joined Henry at Bordeaux. With her went her two sons, Edward and Edmund, her uncle, Archbishop Boniface, and a great crowd of magnates. In August Edward went with his mother to Alfonso's court at Burgos, where he was welcomed with all honour and dubbed to knighthood by the King of Castile, and in October he and Eleanor were married at the Cistercian monastery of Las Huelgas. His appanage included all Ireland, the earldom of Chester, the king's lands in Wales, the Channel Islands, the whole of Gascony, and whatsoever rights his father still had over the lands taken from him and King John by the Kings of France. Thus he became the ruler of all the outlying dependencies of the English crown, and the representative of all the claims on the Aquitanian inheritance of Eleanor and the Norman inheritance of William the Conqueror. The caustic St. Alban's chronicler declared that Henry left to himself such scanty possessions that he became a "mutilated kinglet".[1] But Henry was too jealous of power utterly to renounce so large a share of his dominions. His grants to his son were for purposes of revenue and support, and the government of these regions was still strictly under the royal control. Yet from this moment writs ran in Edward's name, and under his father's direction the young prince was free to buy his experience as he would. Soon after his son's return with his bride, Henry III. quitted Gascony, making his way home through France, where he visited his mother's tomb at Fontevraud and made atonement at Pontigny before the shrine of Archbishop Edmund. Of more importance was his visit to King Louis, recently returned from his Egyptian captivity. The cordial relations established by personal intercourse between the two kings prepared the way for peace two years later. [1] Matthew Paris, _Chron. Maj._, v., 450. Edward remained in Gascony about a year after his father. He checked with a stern hand the disorders of his duchy, strove to make peace between the Rosteins and Colons, and failing to do so, took in 1261 the decisive step of putting an end to the tumultuous municipal independence of the Gascon capital by depriving the jurats of the right of choosing their mayor.[1] Thenceforth Bordeaux was ruled by a mayor nominated by the duke or his lieutenant. Edward's rule in Gascony has its importance as the first experiment in government by the boy of fifteen who was later to become so great a king. Returning to London in November, 1255, he still forwarded the interests of his Gascon subjects, and an attempt to protect the Bordeaux wine-merchants from the exactions of the royal officers aroused the jealousy of Henry, who declared that the days of Henry II. had come again, when the king's sons rose in revolt against their father. Despite this characteristic wail, Edward gained his point. Yet his efforts to secure the well-being of Gascony had not produced much result. The hold of the English duke on Aquitaine was as precarious under Edward as it had been in the days of Henry's direct rule. [1] See Bémont, _Rôles Gascons_, i., supplément, pp. cxvi.-cxviii. The affairs of Wales and Cheshire involved Edward in responsibilities even more pressing than those of Gascony. On the death of John the Scot without heirs in 1237, the palatinate of Randolph of Blundeville became a royal escheat. Its grant to Edward made him the natural head of the marcher barons. The Cheshire earldom became the more important since the Welsh power had been driven beyond the Conway. Since the death of David ap Llewelyn in 1246, divisions in the reigning house of Gwynedd had continued to weaken the Welsh. Llewelyn and Owen the Red, the two elder sons of the Griffith ap Llewelyn who had perished in attempting to escape from the Tower, took upon themselves the government of Gwynedd, dividing the land, by the advice of the "good men," into two equal halves. The English seneschal at Carmarthen took advantage of their weakness to seize the outlying dependencies of Gwynedd south of the Dovey. War ensued, for the brothers resisted this aggression. But in April, 1247, they were forced to do homage at Woodstock for Gwynedd and Snowdon. Henry retained not only Cardigan and Carmarthen, but the debatable lands between the eastern boundary of Cheshire and the river Clwyd, the four cantreds of the middle country or Perveddwlad, so long the scene of the fiercest warfare between the Celt and the Saxon. Thus the work of Llewelyn ap Iorwerth was completely undone, and his grandsons were confined to Snowdon and Anglesey, the ancient cradles of their house. It suited English policy that even, the barren lands of Snowdon should be divided. As time went on, other sons of Griffith ap Llewelyn began to clamour for a share of their grandfather's inheritance. Owen, the weaker of the two princes, made common cause with them, and David, another brother, succeeded in obtaining his portion of the common stock. Llewelyn showed himself so much the most resourceful and energetic of the brethren that, when open war broke out between them in 1254, he easily obtained the victory. Owen was taken prisoner, and David was deprived of his lands. Llewelyn, thus sole ruler of Gwynedd, at once aspired to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather. He overran Merioneth, and frightened the native chieftains beyond the Dovey into the English camp. His ambitions were, however, rudely checked by the grant of Cheshire and the English lands in Wales to Edward. Besides the border palatinate, Edward's Welsh lands included the four cantreds of Perveddwlad, and the districts of Cardigan and Carmarthen. Young as he was, he had competent advisers, and, while he was still in Aquitaine, designs were formed of setting up the English shire system in his Welsh lands, so as to supersede the traditional Celtic methods of government by feudal and monarchical centralisation. Efforts were made to subject the four cantreds to the shire courts at Chester; and Geoffrey of Langley, Edward's agent in the south, set up shire-moots at Cardigan and Carmarthen, from which originated the first beginnings of those counties. The bitterest indignation animated Edward's Welsh tenants, whether on the Clwyd or on the Teivi and Towy. They rose in revolt against the alien innovators, and called upon Llewelyn to champion their grievances. Llewelyn saw the chance of extending his tribal power into a national principality over all Wales by posing as the upholder of the Welsh people. He overran the four cantreds in a week, finding no resistance save before the two castles of Deganwy and Diserth. He conquered Cardigan with equal ease, and prudently granted out his acquisition to the local chieftain Meredith ap Owen. Nor were Edward's lands alone exposed to his assaults. In central Wales Roger Mortimer was stripped of his marches on the upper Wye, and Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, the lord of upper Powys, driven from the regions of the upper Severn. In the spring of 1257 the lord of Gwynedd appeared in regions untraversed by the men of Snowdon since the days of his grandfather. He devastated the lands of the marchers on the Bristol Channel and slew Edward's deputy in battle. "In those days," says Matthew Paris, "the Welsh saw that their lives were at stake, so that those of the north joined together in indissoluble alliance with those of the south. Such a union had never before been, since north and south had always been opposed." The lord of Snowdon assumed the title of Prince of Wales. Edward was forced to defend his inheritance. Henry III. paid little heed to his misfortunes, and answered his appeal for help by saying: "What have I to do with the matter? I have given you the land; you must defend it with your own resources. I have plenty of other business to do." Nevertheless, Henry accompanied his son on a Welsh campaign in August, 1257. The English army got no further than Deganwy, and therefore did not really invade Llewelyn's dominions at all. After waiting idly on the banks of the Conway for some weeks, it retired home, leaving the open country to be ruled by Llewelyn as he would, and having done nothing but revictual the castles of the four cantreds. Next year a truce was made, which left Llewelyn in possession of the disputed districts. Troubles at home were calling off both father and son from the Welsh war, and thus Llewelyn secured his virtual triumph. Though fear of the progress of the lord of Gwynedd filled every marcher with alarm, yet the dread of the power of Edward was even more nearly present before them. The marcher lords deliberately stood aside, and the result was inevitable disaster. Edward found that the territories handed over to him by his father had to be conquered before they could be administered, and Henry III.'s methods of government made it a hopeless business to find either the men or the money for the task. England still resounded with complaints of misgovernment, and demands for the execution of the charters. Before going to Bordeaux in 1253, Henry obtained from the reluctant parliament a considerable subsidy, and pledged himself as "a man, a Christian, a knight, and a crowned and anointed king," to uphold the charters. During his absence a parliament, summoned by the regents, Queen Eleanor and Richard of Cornwall, for January, 1254, showed such unwillingness to grant a supply that a fresh assembly was convened in April, to which knights of the shire, for the first time since the reign of John, and representatives of the diocesan clergy, for the first occasion on record, were summoned, as well as the baronial and clerical grandees. Nothing came of the meeting save fresh complaints. The Earl of Leicester became the spokesman of the opposition. Hurrying back from France he warned the parliament not to fall into the "mouse-traps" laid for them by the king. In default of English money, enough to meet the king's necessities was extorted from the Jews, recently handed over to the custody of Richard of Cornwall. After his return from France at the end of 1254, Henry's renewed requests for money gave coherence to the opposition. Between 1254 and 1258 the king's exactions, and an effective organisation for withstanding them, developed on parallel lines. To the old sources of discontent were added grievances proceeding from enterprises of so costly a nature that they at last brought about a crisis. The foremost grievance against the king was still his co-operation with the papacy in spoiling the Church of England. Though the death of the excommunicated Frederick II. in 1250 was a great gain for Innocent IV., the contest of the papacy against the Hohenstaufen raged as fiercely as ever. Both in Germany and in Italy Innocent had to carry on his struggle against Conrad, Frederick's son. After Conrad's death, in 1254, there was still Frederick's strenuous bastard, Manfred, to be reckoned with in Naples and Sicily. Innocent IV. died in 1254, but his successor, Alexander IV., continued his policy. A papalist King of Naples was wanted to withstand Manfred, and also a papalist successor to the pope's phantom King of the Romans, William of Holland, who died in 1256. Candidates to both crowns were sought for in England. Since 1250 Innocent IV. had been sounding Richard, Earl of Cornwall, as to his willingness to accept Sicily. The honourable scruple against hostility to his kinsman, which Richard shared with the king, prevented him from setting up his claims against Conrad. But the deaths both of Conrad and of Frederick II.'s son by Isabella of England weakened the ties between the English royal house and the Hohenstaufen, and Henry was tempted by Innocent's offer of the Sicilian throne for his younger son, Edmund, a boy of nine, along with a proposal to release him from his vow of crusade to Syria, if he would prosecute on his son's behalf a crusading campaign against the enemies of the Church in Naples. Innocent died before the negotiations were completed, but Alexander IV. renewed the offer, and in April, 1255, Peter of Aigueblanche, Bishop of Hereford, accepted the preferred kingdom in Edmund's name. Sicily was to be held by a tribute of money and service, as a fief of the holy see, and was never to be united with the empire. Henry was to do homage to the pope on his son's behalf, to go to Italy in person or send thither a competent force, and to reimburse the pope for the large sums expended by him in the prosecution of the war. In return the English and Scottish proceeds of the crusading tenth, imposed on the clergy at Lyons, were to be paid to Henry. On October 18, 1255, a cardinal invested Edmund with a ring that symbolised his appointment. Henry stood before the altar and swore by St. Edward that he would himself go to Apulia, as soon as he could safely pass through France. The treaty remained a dead letter. Henry found it quite impossible to raise either the men or the money promised, and abandoned any idea of visiting Sicily in person. Meanwhile Naples and Sicily were united in support of Manfred, and discomfited the feeble forces of the papal legates who acted against him in Edmund's name. At last the Archbishop of Messina came from the pope with an urgent request for payment of the promised sums. It was in vain that Henry led forth his son, clothed in Apulian dress, before the Lenten parliament of 1257, and begged the magnates to enable him to redeem his bond. When they heard the king's speech "the ears of all men tingled". Nothing could be got save from the clergy, so that Henry was quite unable to meet his obligations. He besought Alexander to give him time, to make terms with Manfred, to release Edmund from his debts on condition of ceding a large part of Apulia to the Church,--to do anything in short save insist upon the original contract. The pope deferred the payment, but the respite did Henry no good. Edmund's Sicilian monarchy vanished into nothing, when, early in 1258, Manfred was crowned king at Palermo. Before the end of the year, Alexander cancelled the grant of Sicily to Edmund. Yet his demands for the discharge of Henry's obligations had contributed not a little towards focussing the gathering discontent.[1] [1] For Edmund's Sicilian claims, see W.E. Rhodes' article on _Edmund, Earl of Lancaster_, in the _English Historical Review_, x. (1895), 20-27. While Henry was seeking the Sicilian crown for his son, his brother Richard was elected to the German throne. Since William of Holland's death in January, 1256, the German magnates, divided between the Hohenstaufen and the papalist parties, had hesitated for nearly a year as to the choice of his successor. As neither party was able to secure the election of its own partisan, a compromise was mooted. At last the name of Richard of Cornwall was brought definitely forward. He was of high rank and unblemished reputation; a friend of the pope yet a kinsman of the Hohenstaufen; he was moderate and conciliatory; he had enough money to bribe the electors handsomely, and he was never likely to be so deeply rooted in Germany as to stand in the way of the princes of the empire. The Archbishop of Cologne became his paid partisan, and the Count Palatine of the Rhine accepted his candidature on conditions. The French party set up as his rival Alfonso X. of Castile, who, despite his newly formed English alliance, was quite willing to stand against Richard. At last, in January, 1257, the votes of three electors, Cologne, Mainz, and the Palatine, were cast for Richard, who also obtained the support of Ottocar, King of Bohemia. However, in April, Trier, Saxony, and Brandenburg voted for Alfonso. The double election of two foreigners perpetuated the Great Interregnum for some sixteen years. Alfonso's title was only an empty show, but Richard took his appointment seriously. He made his way to Germany, and was crowned King of the Romans on May 17, 1257, at Aachen. He remained in the country nearly eighteen months, and succeeded in establishing his authority in the Rhineland, though beyond that region he never so much as showed his face.[1] The elevation of his brother to the highest dignity in Christendom was some consolation to Henry for the Sicilian failure. [1] See for Richard's career, Koch's _Richard von Cornwallis_, 1209-1257, and the article on _Richard, King of the Romans_, in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. The nation was disgusted to see maladministration grow worse and worse; the nobles were indignant at the ever-increasing sway of the foreigners; and several years of bad harvests, high prices, rain, flood, and murrain sharpened the chronic misery of the poor. The withdrawal of Earl Richard to his new kingdom deprived the king and nation of an honourable if timid counsellor, though a more capable leader was at last provided in the disgraced governor of Gascony. Simon still deeply resented the king's ingratitude for his services, and had become enough of an Englishman to sympathise with the national feelings. Since his dismissal in 1253 he had held somewhat aloof from politics. He knew so well that his interests centred in England that he declined the offer of the French regency on the death of Blanche of Castile. He prosecuted his rights over Bigorre with characteristic pertinacity, and lawsuits about his wife's jointure from her first husband exacerbated his relations with Henry. It cannot, however, be said that the two were as yet fiercely hostile. Simon went to Henry's help in Gascony in 1254, served on various missions and was nominated on others from which he withdrew. His chosen occupations during these years of self-effacement were religious rather than political; his dearest comrades were clerks rather than barons. Among Montfort's closer intimates, Bishop Grosseteste was removed by death in 1253. But others of like stamp still remained, such as Adam Marsh, the Franciscan mystic, whose election to the see of Ely was quashed by the malevolence of the court; Eudes Rigaud, the famous Archbishop of Rouen, and Walter of Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, who formed a connecting link between the aristocracy and the Church. Despite the ineffectiveness of the clerical opposition to the papacy, the spirit of independence expressed in Grosseteste's protests had not yet deserted the churchmen. Clerks had felt the pinch of the papal exactions, had been bled to the uttermost to support the Sicilian candidature, and had seen aliens and non-residents usurping their revenues and their functions. More timid and less cohesive than the barons, they had quicker brains, more ideas, deeper grievances, and better means of reaching the masses. If resentment of the Sicilian candidature was the spark that fired the train, the clerical opposition showed the barons the method of successful resistance. The rejection of Henry's demands for money in the assemblies of 1257 started the movement that spread to the baronage in the parliaments of 1258. In the two memorable gatherings of that year the discontent, which had smouldered for a generation, at last burst into flame. In the next chapter we shall see in what fashion the fire kindled. The futility of the political history of the weary middle period of the reign suggests, to those who make the history of the state the criterion of every aspect of the national fortunes, a corresponding barrenness and lack of interest in other aspects of national life. Yet a remedy for Henry's misrule was only found because the age of political retrogression was in all other fields of action an epoch of unexampled progress. The years during which the strong centralised government of the Angevin kings was breaking down under Henry's weak rule were years which, to the historian of civilisation, are among the most fruitful in our annals. In vivid contrast to the tale of misrule, the historian can turn to the revival of religious and intellectual life, the growing delight in ideas and knowledge, the consummation of the best period of art, and the spread of a nobler civilisation which make the middle portion of the thirteenth century the flowering time of English medieval life. It is part of this strange contrast that Henry, the obstacle to all political progress, was himself a chief supporter of the religious and intellectual movements which were so deeply influencing the age. Much has been said of the alien invasion, and of the strong national opposition it excited. But insularity is not a good thing in itself, and the natural English attitude to the foreigners tended to confound good and bad alike in a general condemnation. Even the Savoyards were by no means as evil as the English thought them, and Henry in welcoming his kinsmen was not merely moved by selfish and unworthy motives; he believed that he was showing his openness to ideas and his welcome to all good things from whencesoever they came. There were, in fact, two tendencies, antagonistic yet closely related, which were operative, not only in England but all over western Europe, during this period. Nations, becoming conscious and proud of their unity, dwelt, often unreasonably, on the points wherein they differed from other peoples, and strongly resented alien interference. At the same time the closer relations between states, the result of improved government, better communications, increased commercial and social intercourse, the strengthening of common ideals, and the development of cosmopolitan types of the knight, the scholar, and the priest, were deepening the union of western Christendom on common lines. Neither the political nor the military nor the ecclesiastical ideals of the early middle ages were based upon nationality, but rather on that ecumenical community of tradition which still made the rule of Rome, whether in Church or State, a living reality. In the thirteenth century the papal tradition was still at its height. The jurisdiction of the papal _curia_ implied a universal Christian commonwealth. World-wide religious orders united alien lands together by ties more spiritual than obedience to the papal lawyers. The academic ideal was another and a fresh link that connected the nations together. To the ancient reasons for union--symbolised by the living Latin speech of all clerks, of all scholars, of all engaged in serious affairs-were added the newer bonds of connexion involved in the common knightly and social ideals, in the general spread of a common art and a common vernacular language and literature. As Latin expressed the one series of ties, so did French represent the other. The France of St. Louis meant two things. It meant, of course, the French state and the French nationality, but it meant a great deal more than that. The influence of the French tongue and French ideals was wider than the political influence of the French monarchy. French was the common language of knighthood, of policy, of the literature that entertained lords and ladies, of the lighter and less technical sides of the cosmopolitan culture which had its more serious embodiments in Latin. To the Englishman of the thirteenth century the French state was the enemy; but the English baron denounced France in the French tongue, and leant a ready ear to those aspects of life which, cosmopolitan in reality, found their fullest exposition in France and among French-speaking peoples. In the age which saw hostility to Frenchmen become a passion, a Frenchman like Montfort could become the champion of English patriotism, English scholars could readily quit their native land to study at Paris, the French vernacular literature was the common property of the two peoples, and French words began to force their way into the stubborn vocabulary of the English language, which for two centuries had almost entirely rejected these alien elements. In dwelling, however briefly, on the new features which were transforming English civilisation during this memorable period, we shall constantly see how England gained by her ever-increasing intercourse with the continent, by necessarily sharing in the new movements which had extended from the continent to the island, no longer, as in the eleventh century, to be described as a world apart. Neither the coming of the friars, nor the development of university life and academic schools of philosophy, theology, and natural science, nor the triumph of gothic art, nor the spread of vernacular literature, not even the scholarly study of English law nor the course of English political development-not one of these movements could have been what it was without the close interconnexion of the various parts of the European commonwealth, which was becoming more homogeneous at the same time that its units were acquiring for themselves sped characteristics of their own. In the early days of Henry III.'s reign, a modest alien invasion anticipated the more noisy coming of the Poitevin or the Provençal. The most remarkable development of the "religious" life that the later middle age was to witness had just been worked out in Italy. St. Francis of Assisi had taught the cult of absolute poverty, and his example held up to his followers the ideal of the thorough and literal imitation of Christ's life. Thus arose the early beginnings of the Minorite or Franciscan rule. St. Dominic yielded to the fascination of the Umbrian enthusiast, and inculcated on his Order of Preachers a complete renunciation of worldly goods which made a society, originally little more than a new type of canons regular, a mendicant order like the Franciscans, bound to interpret the monastic vow of poverty with such literalness as to include corporate as well as individual renunciation of possessions, so that the order might not own lands or goods, and no member of it could live otherwise than by labour or by alms. In the second chapter of the Dominican order, at Whitsuntide, 1221, an organisation into provinces was carried out; and among the eight provinces, each with its prior, then instituted, was the province of England, where no preaching friar had hitherto set foot, and over it Gilbert of Freynet was appointed prior. Then Dominic withdrew to Bologna, where he died on August 6. Within a few days of the saint's death, Friar Gilbert with thirteen companions made his way to England. In the company of Peter des Roches the Dominican pioneers went to Canterbury, where Archbishop Langton was then residing. At the archbishop's request Gilbert preached in a Canterbury church, and Langton was so much delighted by his teaching that henceforth he had a special affection for the new order. From Canterbury the friars journeyed to London and Oxford. Mindful of the work of their leaders at Paris and Bologna, they built their first English chapel, house, and schools in the university town. Soon these proved too small for them, and they had to seek ampler quarters outside the walls. From these beginnings the Dominicans spread over England. The Franciscans quickly followed the Dominicans. On September 10, 1224, there landed at Dover a little band of four clerks and five laymen, sent by St. Francis himself to extend the new teaching into England. At their head was the Italian, Agnellus of Pisa, a deacon, formerly warden of the Parisian convent, who was appointed provincial minister in England. His three clerical companions were all Englishmen, though the five laymen were Italians or Frenchmen. Like the Dominican pioneers, the Franciscan missionaries first went to Canterbury, where the favour of Simon Langton, the archdeacon, did for them what the goodwill of his brother Stephen had done for their precursors. Leaving some of their number at Canterbury, four of the Franciscans went on to London, and thence a little later two of them set out for Oxford. Alike at London and at Oxford, they found a cordial welcome from the Dominicans, eating in their refectories, and sleeping in their dormitories, until they were able to erect modest quarters in both places. The brethren of the new order excited unbounded enthusiasm. Necessity and choice combined to compel them to interpret their vow of poverty as St. Francis would have wished. They laboured with their own hands at the construction of their humble churches. The friars at Oxford knew the pangs of debt and hunger, rejected pillows as a vain luxury, and limited the use of boots and shoes to the sick and infirm. The faithful saw the brethren singing songs as they picked their way over the frozen mud or hard snow, blood marking the track of their naked feet, without their being conscious of it. The joyous radiance of Francis himself illuminated the lives of his followers. "The friars," writes their chronicler, "were so full of fun among themselves that a deaf mute could hardly refrain from laughter at seeing them." With the same glad spirit they laboured for the salvation of souls, the cure of sickness, and the relief of distress. The emotional feeling of the age quickly responded to their zeal. Within a few years other houses had arisen at Gloucester, at Nottingham, at Stamford, at Worcester, at Northampton, at Cambridge, at Lincoln, at Shrewsbury. In a generation there was hardly a town of importance in England that had not its Franciscan convent, and over against it a rival Dominican house. The esteem felt for the followers of Francis and Dominic led to an extraordinary extension of the mendicant type. New orders of friars arose, preserving the essential attribute of absolute poverty, though differing from each other and from the two prototypes in various particulars. Some of these lesser orders found their way to England. In the same year as Agnellus, there came to England the Trinitarian friars, called also the Maturins, from the situation of their first house in Paris, an order whose special function was the redemption of captives. In 1240 returning crusaders brought back with them the first Carmelite friars, for whom safer quarters had to be found than in their original abodes in Syria. This society spread widely, and in 1287, to the disgust of the older monks, it laid aside the party-coloured habit, forced upon it in derision by the infidels, and adopted the white robe, which gave them their popular name of White Friars. Hard upon these, in 1244, came also the Crutched Friars, so called from the red cross set upon their backs or breasts; but these were never deeply rooted in England. The multiplication of orders of friars became an abuse, so that, at the Council of Lyons of 1245, Innocent IV abolished all save four. Besides Dominicans and Franciscans the pope only continued the Carmelites, and an order first seen in England a few years later, the Austin friars or the hermits of the order of St. Augustine. These made up the traditional four orders of friars of later history. Yet even the decree of a council could not stay the growth of new mendicant types. In 1257 the Friars of the Penance of Jesus Christ, popularly styled Friars of the Sack, from their coarse sackcloth garb, settled down in London, exempted by papal dispensation from the fate of suppression; and even later than this King Richard's son, Edmund of Cornwall, established a community of Bonhommes at Ashridge in Buckinghamshire. The friars were not recluses, like the older orders, but active preachers and teachers of the people. The parish clergy seldom held a strong position in medieval life. The estimation in which the monastic ideal was held limited their influence. They were, as a rule, not much raised above the people among whom they laboured. If the parish priest were a man of rank or education, he was too often a non-resident and a pluralist, bestowing little personal attention on his parishioners. Nor were the numerous parishes served by monks in much better plight. The monastery took the tithes and somehow provided for the services; but the efforts of Grosseteste to secure the establishment of permanent stipendiary vicarages in his diocese exemplify the reluctance of the religious to give their appropriations the benefit of permanent pastors, paid on an adequate scale. It was an exceptional thing for the parish clergymen to do more than discharge perfunctorily the routine duties of their office, and preaching was almost unknown among them. The friars threw themselves into pastoral work with such devotion as to compel the reluctant admiration of their natural rivals, the monks. "At first," says Matthew Paris,[1] "the Preachers and the Minorites lived a life of poverty and extreme sanctity. They busied themselves in preaching, hearing confessions, the recital of divine service, in teaching and study. They embraced voluntary poverty for God's sake, abandoning all their worldly goods and not even reserving for themselves their food for to-morrow." A special field of labour was in the crowded suburbs of the larger towns, where so often they chose to erect their first convents. The care of the sick and of lepers was their peculiar function. Their sympathy and charity carried everything before them, and they remained the chief teachers of the poor down to the Reformation. They ingratiated themselves with the rich as much as with the poor. Henry III. and Edward selected mendicants as their confessors. The strongest and holiest of the bishops, Grosseteste, became their most active friend. Simon of Montfort sought the advice and friendship of a friar like Adam Marsh. The mere fact that Stephen Langton and Peter des Roches were their first patrons in England shows how they appealed alike to the best and worst clerical types of the time. [1] _Chron. Maj._, v., 194. Men and women of all ranks, while still living in the world and fulfilling their ordinary occupations, associated themselves to the mendicant brotherhoods. Besides these _tertiaries_, as they were called, still wider circles sought the friars' direction in all spiritual matters and showed eagerness to be buried within their sanctuaries. Nor did the friars limit themselves to pastoral care. They won a unique place in the intellectual history of the time. They made themselves the spokesmen of all the movements of the age. They were eager to make peace, and Agnellus himself mediated between Henry III. and the earl marshal. They were the strenuous preachers of the crusades, whether against the infidel or against Frederick II. The Franciscans taught a new and more methodical devotion to the Virgin Mother. The friars upheld the highest papal claims, were constantly selected as papal agents and tax-gatherers, and yet even this did not deprive them of their influence over Englishmen. Their zeal for truth often made them defenders of unpopular causes, and it was much to their honour that they did not hesitate to incur the displeasure of the Londoners by their anxiety to save innocent Jews accused of the murder of Christian children. The parish clergy hated and envied them as successful rivals, and bitterly resented the privilege which they received from Alexander IV of hearing confessions throughout the world. Not less strong was the hostility of the monastic orders which is often expressed in Matthew Paris's free-spoken abuse of them. They were accused of terrorising dying men out of their possessions, of laxity in the confessional, of absolving their friends too easily, of overweening ambition and restless meddlesomeness. They were violent against heretics and enemies of the Church. They answered hate with hate. They despised the seculars as drones and the monks as lazy and corrupt. The dissensions between the various orders of friars, and particularly between the sober and intellectual Dominicans and the radical and mystic Franciscans, were soon as bitter as those between monks and friars, or monks and seculars. But when all allowances have been made, the good that they wrought far outbalanced the evil, and in England at least, the mendicant orders exhibited a nobler conception of religion, and of men's duly to their fellowmen than had as yet been set before the people. If the main result of their influence was to strengthen that cosmopolitan conception of Christendom of which the papacy was the head and the friars the agents, their zeal for righteousness often led them beyond their own rigid platform, and Englishmen honoured the wandering friar as the champion of the nation's cause. Like the religious orders, the universities were part of the world system and only indirectly represented the struggling national life. The ferment of the twelfth century revival crystallised groups of masters or doctors into guilds called universities, with a strong class tradition, rigid codes of rules, and intense corporate spirit. The schools at Oxford, whose continuous history can be traced from the days of Henry II., had acquired a considerable reputation by the time that his grandson had ascended the throne. Oxford university, with an autonomous constitution of its own since _1214_, was presided over by a chancellor who, though in a sense the representative of the distant diocesan at Lincoln, was even in the earliest times the head of the scholars, and no mere delegate of the bishop. Five years earlier the Oxford schools were sufficiently vigorous to provoke a secession, from which the first faint beginnings of a university at Cambridge arose. A generation later there were other secessions to Salisbury and Northampton, but neither of these schools succeeded in maintaining themselves. Cambridge itself had a somewhat languid existence throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, and was scarcely recognised as a _studium generale_ until the bull of John XXII. in 1318 made its future position secure. In early days the university owed nothing to endowments, buildings, social prestige, or tradition. The two essentials was the living voice of the graduate teacher and the concourse of students desirous to be taught. Hence migrations were common and stability only gradually established. When, late in Henry III.'s reign, the chancellor, Walter of Merton, desired to set up a permanent institution for the encouragement of poor students, he hesitated whether to establish it at Oxford, or Cambridge, or in his own Surrey village. Oxford, though patriots coupled it with Paris and Bologna, only gradually rose into repute. But before the end of Henry III.'s reign it had won an assured place among the great universities of western Europe, though lagging far behind that of the supreme schools of Paris. The growing fame of the university of Oxford was a matter of national importance. Down to the early years of the thirteenth century a young English clerk who was anxious to study found his only career abroad, and was too often cut off altogether from his mother country. Among the last of this type were the Paris mathematician, John of Holywood or Halifax, Robert Curzon, cardinal, legate, theologian, and crusader, and Alexander of Hales. Stephen Langton, who did important work in revising the text of the Vulgate, might well have been one of those lost to England but for the wisdom of Innocent III who restored him, in the fulness of his reputation and powers, to the service of the English Church. Not many years younger than Langton was his successor Edmund of Abingdon, but the difference was enough to make the younger primate a student of the Oxford schools in early life. Though he left Oxford for Paris, Edmund returned to an active career in England, when experience convinced him of the vanity of scholastic success. Bishop Grosseteste, another early Oxford teacher of eminence, probably studied at Paris, for so late as 1240 he held up to the Oxford masters of theology the example of their Paris brethren for their imitation. The double allegiance of Edmund and Grosseteste was typical. A long catalogue of eminent names adorned the annals of Oxford in the thirteenth century, but the most distinguished of her earlier sons were drawn away from her by the superior attractions of Paris. England furnished at least her share of the great names of thirteenth century scholasticism, but of very few of these could it be said that their main obligation was to the English university. It was at Paris that the academic organisation developed which Oxford adopted. At Paris the great intellectual conflicts of the century were fought. There the ferment seethed round that introduction of Aristotle's teaching from Moorish sources which led to the outspoken pantheism of an Amaury of Bène. There also was the reconciliation effected between the new teacher and the old faith which made Aristotle the pillar of the new scholasticism that was to justify by reason the ways of God to man. In Paris also was fought the contest between the aggressive mendicant friars and the secular doctors whom they wished to supplant in the divinity schools. There is little evidence of even a pale reflection of these struggles in contemporary Oxford. English scholars bore their full share in the fight. It was the Englishman Curzon who condemned the heresies of Amaury of Bène. Another Englishman, Alexander of Hales, issued in his _Summa Theologiæ_ the first effective reconciliation of Aristotelian metaphysic with Christian doctrine which his Paris pupils, Thomas Aquinas, the Italian, and Albert the Great, the German, were to work out in detail in the next generation. Hales was the first secular doctor in Europe who in 1222, in the full pride of his powers, abandoned his position in the university to embrace the voluntary poverty of the Franciscans and resume his teaching, not in the regular schools but in a Minorite convent. And at the same time another English doctor at Paris, John of St. Giles, notable as a physician as well as a theologian, dramatically marked his conversion to the Dominican order by assuming its habit in the midst of a sermon on the virtues of poverty. All these famous Englishmen worked and taught at Paris, and it was only a generation later that their successors could establish on the Thames the traditions so long upheld on the banks of the Seine. The establishment of the Dominicans and Franciscans at Oxford gave an immense impetus to the activity of the university. The Franciscans appointed as the first _lector_ of their Oxford convent the famous secular teacher Grosseteste, who ever after held the Minorites in the closest estimation. Grosseteste was the greatest scholar of his day, knowing Greek and Hebrew as well as the accustomed studies of the period. A clear and independent thinker, he was not, like so many of his contemporaries, overborne by the weight of authority, but appealed to observation and experience in terms which make him the precursor of Roger Bacon. Grosseteste's successor as _lector_ was himself a Minorite, Adam Marsh, whose reputation was so great that Grosseteste was afraid to leave him when sick in a French town, lest the Paris masters should persuade him to teach in their schools. Adam's loyalty to his native university withstood any such temptation, and from that time Oxford began to hold up its head against Paris. Even before this, Grosseteste persuaded John of St. Giles to transfer his teaching from Paris to Oxford, where he remained for the rest of his life. The intense intellectual activity of the thirteenth century flowed in more than one channel, and Englishmen took their full share both in building up and in destroying. Two Englishmen of the next generation mark in different ways the reaction against the moderate Aristotelianism and orthodox rationalism which their countryman Hales first brought into vogue. These were the Franciscan friars, Roger Bacon and Duns Scotus. Bacon, though he studied at Paris as well as at Oxford, is much more closely identified with England than with the Continent. His sceptical, practical intellect led him to heap scorn on Hales and his followers and to plunge into audacities of speculation which cost him long seclusions in his convent and enforced abstinence from writing and study. In his war against the Aristotelians, the intrepid friar upheld recourse to experiment and observation as superior to deference to authority, in language which stands in strange contrast to the traditions of the thirteenth century. Grosseteste, who also had preferred the teachings of experience to the appeal to the sages of the past, was the only academic leader that escaped Bacon's scathing censure. When his order kept him silent, Roger was bidden to resume his pen by Pope Clement IV. A generation still later, Duns Scotus, probably a Lowland Scot, who taught at Paris and died at Cologne in 1308, emphasised, sharply enough, but in less drastic fashion, the reaction against the teaching of Hales and Aquinas, by accepting a dualism between reason and authority that broke away from the Thomist tradition of the thirteenth century and prepared the way for the scholastic decadence of the fourteenth. After France, England took a leading part in all these movements; and even in France English scholars had a large share in making that land the special home of the _Studium_, as Italy was of the _Sacerdotium_ and Germany of the _Imperium_. This intellectual ferment had its results on practical life. Though the university was cosmopolitan, the individual members of it were not the less good citizens. A patriot like Grosseteste strove to his uttermost to keep Englishmen for Oxford or to win them back from Paris. Oxford clerks fought the battle of England against the legate Otto, and we shall see them siding with Montfort. The eminently practical temper of the academic class could not neglect the world of action for the abstract pursuit of science. Eager as men were to know, to prove, and to inquire, the age had little of the mystical temperament about it. The studies which made for worldly success, such as civil and canon law, attracted the thousands for whom philosophy or theology had little attraction. Never before was there a career so fully opened to talent. The academic teacher's fame took him from the lecture-room to the court, from the university to the episcopal throne, and so it was that the university influenced action almost as profoundly as it influenced thought, and affected all classes of society alike. The struggles of poor students like Edmund of Abingdon or Grosseteste must not make us think that the universities of this period were exclusively frequented by humble scholars. The academic career of a rich baron's son like Thomas of Cantilupe, living in his own hired house at Paris with a train of chaplains and tutors, receiving the visits of the French king, and feeding poor scholars with the remnants from his table, is as characteristic as the more common picture of the student begging his way from one seat of learning to another, and suffering the severest privations rather than desert his studies. Yet the function of the _studium_ as promoting a healthy circulation between the various orders of medieval society, must not be ignored. Partly to help on the poor, partly to encourage men to devote themselves to the pursuit of knowledge, endowments began to arise which soon enhanced the splendour of universities though they lessened their mobility and their freedom. The mendicant convents at Paris and Oxford prepared the way for secular foundations, at first small and insignificant, like that which, in the days of Henry III., John Balliol established at Oxford for the maintenance of poor scholars, but soon increasing in magnitude and distinction. The great college set up by St. Louis' confessor at Paris for the endowment of scholars, desirous of studying the unlucrative but vital subject of theology, was soon imitated by the chancellor of Henry III. Side by side with Robert of Sorbon's college of 1257, arose Walter of Merton's foundation of 1263, and twenty years later Bishop Balsham's college of Peterhouse extended the "rule of Merton" to Cambridge. The academic movement was not all clear gain. The humanism, of the twelfth century was crushed beneath the weight of the specialised science and encyclopædic learning of the thirteenth. We should seek in vain among most theologians or the philosophers of our period for any spark of literary art; and the tendency dominant in them affected for evil all works written in Latin. Even the historians show a falling away from the example of William of Malmesbury or of Roger of Hoveden. The one English chronicler of the thirteenth century who is a considerable man of letters, Matthew Paris, belongs to the early half of it, before the academic tradition was fully established, and even with him prolixity impairs the art without injuring the colour of his work. The age of Edward I., the great time of triumphant scholasticism, is recorded in chronicles so dreary that it is hard to make the dry bones live. Walter of Hemingburgh, the most attractive historian of the time, belongs to the next generation: and his excellencies are only great in comparison with his fellows. Something of this decadence may be attributed to the falling away of the elder monastic types, whose higher life withered up from want of able recruits, for the secular and mendicant careers offered opportunities so stimulating that few men of purpose, or earnest spiritual character, cared to enter a Benedictine or a Cistercian house of religion. Something more may be assigned to the growing claims of the vulgar tongue on literary aspirants. But the chief cause of the literary defects of thirteenth century writers must be set down to the doctrine that the study of "arts"--of grammar, rhetoric and the rest--was only worthy of schoolboys and novices, and was only a preliminary to the specialised faculties which left little room for artistic presentation. Science in short nearly killed literature. It was the same with the vulgar tongues as with Latin. French remained the common language of the higher classes of English society, and the history of French literature belongs to the history of the western world rather than to that of England. The share taken in it by English-born writers is less important than in the great age of romance when the contact of Celt and Norman on British soil added the Arthurian legend to the world's stock of poetic material. The practical motive, which destroyed the art of so many Latin writers, impaired the literary value of much written in the vernacular. We have technical works in French and even in English, such as Walter of Henley's treatise on _Husbandry_, composed in French for the guidance of stewards of manors, and translated, it is said by Grosseteste, into English for the benefit of a wider public. Grosseteste is also said to have drawn up in French a handbook of rules for the management of a great estate, and he certainly wrote French poetry. The legal literature, written in Latin or French, and illustrated by such names as Bracton, Britton, and "Fleta," shows that there was growing up a school of earnest students of English law who, though anxious, like Bracton, to bring their conclusions under the rules of Roman jurisprudence, began to treat their science with an independence which secured for English custom the opportunity of independent development. Of more literary interest than such technicalities were the rhyming chronicles, handed on from the previous age, of which one of the best, the recently discovered history of the great William Marshal, has already been noticed. The spontaneity of this poem proves that its language was still the natural speech of the writer, and impels its French editor to claim for it a French origin. As the century grew older there was no difficulty in deciding whether French works were written by Englishmen or Frenchmen. The Yorkshire French of Peter Langtoft's _Chronicle_, and the jargon of the _Year Books_, attest how the political separation of the two lands, and the preponderance in northern France of the dialect of Paris, placed the insular French speech in strong contrast to the language of polite society beyond the Channel. Yet barbarous as Anglo-French became, it retained the freshness of a living tongue, and gained some ground at the expense of Latin, notably in the law courts and in official documents. English was slowly making its way upwards. There was a public ready to read vernacular books, and not at home with French. For their sake a great literature of translations and adaptations was made, beginning with Layamon's English version of Wace's _Brut_, which by the end of the century made the cycle of French romance accessible to the English reader. Many works of edification and devotion were written in English; and Robert of Gloucester's rhyming history appealed to a larger public than the Yorkshire French of Langtoft. It is significant of the trend of events that the early fourteenth century saw Langtoft himself done into English by Robert Mannyng, of Bourne. While as yet no continuous works of high merit were written in English, there was no lack of experiments, of novelties, and of adaptations. Much evidence of depth of feeling, power of expression, and careful art lies hidden away in half-forgotten anonymous lyrics, satires, and romances. The language in which these works were written was steadily becoming more like our modern English. The dialectical differences become less acute; the inflections begin to drop away; the vocabulary gradually absorbs a larger romance element, and the prosody drops from the forms of the West Saxon period into measures and modes that reflect a living connexion with the contemporary poetry of France. Thus, even in the literature of a not too literary age, we find abundant tokens of that strenuous national life which was manifesting itself in so many different ways. Art rather than literature reflected the deeper currents of the thirteenth century. Architecture, the great art of the middle age, was in its perfection. The inchoate gothic which the Cistercians brought from Burgundy to the Yorkshire dales, and William of Sens transplanted from his birthplace to Canterbury, was superseded by the more developed art of St. Hugh's choir at Lincoln. In the next generation the new style, imported from northern France, struck out ways of its own, less soaring, less rigidly logical, yet of unequalled grace and picturesqueness, such as we see in Salisbury cathedral, which altogether dates from the reign of Henry III. Here also, as in literature, foreign models stood side by side with native products. Henry III.'s favourite foundation at Westminster reproduced on English soil the towering loftiness, the vaulted roofs, the short choir, and the ring of apsidal chapels, of the great French minsters. This was even more emphatically the case with the decorations, the goldsmith's and metal work, the sculpture, painting, and glass, which the best artists of France set up in honour of the English king's favourite saint. In these crafts English work would not as yet bear a comparison with foreign, and even the glories of the statuary of the façade of Wells cannot approach the sculptured porches of Amiens or Paris. As the century advanced some of the fashions of the French builders, notably as regards window tracery, were taken up in the early "Decorated" of the reign of Edward I.; and here the claims of English to essential equality with French building can perhaps be better substantiated than in the infancy of the art. But all these comparisons are misleading. The impulse to gothic art came to England from France, like the impulse to many other things. Its working out was conducted on English local lines, ever becoming more divergent from those of the prototype, though not seldom stimulated by the constant intercourse of the two lands. The new gothic art enriched the medieval town with a splendour of buildings hitherto unknown, which symbolised the growth of material prosperity as well as of a keener artistic appreciation. In the greater towns the four orders of friars erected their large and plain churches, designed as halls for preaching to great congregations. The development of domestic architecture is even more significant than the growth of ecclesiastical and military buildings. Stone houses were no longer the rare luxuries of Jews or nobles. Never were the towns more prosperous and more energetic. They were now winning for themselves both economic and administrative independence. Magnates, such as Randolph of Chester, followed the king's example by granting charters to the smaller towns. Even the lesser boroughs became not merely the abodes of agriculturists but the homes of organised trading communities. It was the time when the merchant class first began to manifest itself in politics, and the power of capital to make itself felt. Capital was almost monopolised by Jews, Lombards, or Tuscans, and the fierce English hatred of the foreigner found a fresh expression in the persecution of the Hebrew money-lenders and in the increasing dislike felt for the alien bankers and merchants who throve at Englishmen's expense. The fact that so much of English trade with the continent was still in the hands of Germans, Frenchmen, and Italians made this feeling the more intense. But there were limits even to the ill-will towards aliens. The foreigner could make himself at home in England, and the rapid naturalisation of a Montfort in the higher walks of life is paralleled by the absorption into the civic community of many a Gascon or German merchant, like that Arnold Fitz Thedmar,[1] a Bremen trader's son, who became alderman of London and probably chronicler of its history. Yet even the greatest English towns did not become strong enough to cut themselves off from the general life of the people. They were rather a new element in that rich and purposeful nation that had so long been enduring the rule of Henry of Winchester. The national energy spurned the feebleness of the court, and the time was at hand when the nation, through its natural leaders, was to overthrow the wretched system of misgovernment under which it had suffered. Political retrogression was no longer to bar national progress. [1] See for Arnold the _Chronica majorum et vicecomitum Londoniarum_ in _Liber de antiquis legibus_, and Riley's introduction to his translation of _Chronicles of the Mayors and Sheriffs of London_ (1863). CHAPTER V. THE BARONS' WAR. During the early months of 1258, the aliens ruled the king and realm, added estate to estate, and defied all attempts to dislodge them. Papal agents traversed the country, extorting money from prelates and churches. The Welsh, in secret relations with the lords of the march, threatened the borders, and made a confederacy with the Scots. The French were hostile, and the barons disunited, without leaders, and helpless. A wretched harvest made corn scarce and dear. A wild winter, followed by a long late frost, cut off the lambs and destroyed the farmers' hopes for the summer. A murrain of cattle followed, and the poor were dying of hunger and pestilence. Henry III. was in almost as bad a plight as his people. He had utterly failed to subdue Llewelyn. A papal agent threatened him with excommunication and the resumption of the grant of Sicily. He could not control his foreign kinsfolk, and the rivalry of Savoyards and Poitevins added a new element of turmoil to the distracted relations of the magnates. His son had been forced to pawn his best estates to William of Valence, and the royal exchequer was absolutely empty. Money must be had at all risks, and the only way to get it was to assemble the magnates. On April 2 the chief men of Church and State gathered together at London. For more than a month the stormy debates went on. The king's demands were contemptuously waved aside. His exceptional misdeeds, it was declared, were to be met by exceptional measures. Hot words were spoken, and William of Valence called Leicester a traitor. "No, no, William," the earl replied, "I am not a traitor, nor the son of a traitor; your father and mine were men of a different stamp," An opposition party formed itself under the Earls of Gloucester, Leicester, Hereford, and Norfolk. Even the Savoyards partially fell away from the court, and a convocation of clergy at Merton, presided over by Archbishop Boniface, drew up canons in the spirit of Grosseteste. In parliament all that Henry could get was a promise to adjourn the question of supply until a commission had drafted a programme of reform. On May 2 Henry and his son Edward announced their acceptance of this proposal; parliament was forthwith prorogued, and the barons set to work to mature their scheme. On June 11 the magnates once more assembled, this time at Oxford. A summons to fight the Welsh gave them an excuse to appear attended with their followers in arms. The royalist partisans nicknamed the gathering the Mad Parliament, but its proceedings were singularly business-like. A petition of twenty-nine articles was presented, in which the abuses of the administration were laid bare in detail. A commission of twenty-four was appointed who were to redress the grievances of the nation, and to draw up a new scheme of government. According to the compact Henry himself selected half this body. It was significant of the falling away of the mass of the ruling families from the monarchy, that six of Henry's twelve commissioners were churchmen, four were aliens, three were his brothers, one his brother-in-law, one his nephew, one his wife's uncle. The only earls that accepted his nomination were the Poitevin adventurer, John du Plessis, Earl of Warwick, and John of Warenne, who was pledged to a royalist policy by his marriage to Henry's half-sister, Alice of Lusignan. The only bishops were, the queen's uncle, Boniface of Canterbury, and Fulk Basset of London, the richest and noblest born of English prelates, who, though well meaning, was too weak in character for continued opposition. Yet these two were the most independent names on Henry's list. The rest included the three Lusignan brothers, Guy, William, and Aymer, still eight years after his election only elect of Winchester; Henry of Almaine, the young son of the King of the Romans; the pluralist official John Mansel; the chancellor, Henry Wingham; the Dominican friar John of Darlington, distinguished as a biblical critic, the king's confessor and the pope's agent; and the Abbot of Westminster, an old man pledged by long years of dependence to do the will of the second founder of his house. In strong contrast to these creatures of court favour were the twelve nominees of the barons. The only ecclesiastic was Walter of Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester, and the only alien was Earl Simon of Leicester. With him were three other earls, Richard of Clare, Earl of Gloucester, Roger Bigod, earl marshal and Earl of Norfolk, and Humphrey Bohun, Earl of Hereford. Those of baronial rank were Roger Mortimer, the strongest of the marchers, Hugh Bigod, the brother of the earl marshal, John FitzGeoffrey, Richard Grey, William Bardolf, Peter Montfort, and Hugh Despenser. The twenty-four drew up a plan of reform which left little to be desired in thoroughness. The Provisions of Oxford, as the new constitution was styled, were speedily laid before the barons and adopted. By it a standing council of fifteen was established, with whose advice and consent Henry was henceforth to exercise all his authority. Even this council was not to be without supervision. Thrice in the year another committee of twelve was to treat with the fifteen on the common affairs of the realm. This rather narrow body was created, we are told, to save the expense involved in too frequent meetings of the magnates. A third aristocratic junto of twenty-four was appointed to make grants of money to the crown. All aliens were to be expelled from office and from the custody of royal castles. New ministers, castellans, and escheators were appointed under stringent conditions and under the safeguard of new oaths. The original twenty-four were not yet discharged from office. They had still to draw up schemes for the reform of the household of king and queen, and for the amendment of the exchange of London. Moreover, "Be it remembered," ran one of the articles, "that the estate of Holy Church be amended by the twenty-four elected to reform the realm, when they shall find time and place". For the first time in our history the king was forced to stand aside from the discharge of his undoubted functions, and suffer them to be exercised by a committee of magnates. The conception of limited monarchy, which had been foreshadowed in the early struggles of Henry's long reign, was triumphantly vindicated, and, after weary years of waiting, the baronial victors demanded more than had ever been suggested by the most free interpretation of the Great Charter. The body that controlled the crown was, it is true, a narrow one. But whatever was lost by its limitation, was more than gained by the absolute freedom of the whole movement from any suspicion of the separatist tendencies of the earlier feudalism. The barons tacitly accepted the principle that England was a unity, and that it must be ruled as a single whole. The triumph of the national movement of the thirteenth century was assured when the most feudal class of the community thus frankly abandoned the ancient baronial contention that each baron should rule in isolation over his own estates, a tradition which, when carried out for a brief period under Stephen, had set up "as many kings or rather tyrants as lords of castles". The feudal period was over: the national idea was triumphant. This victory becomes specially significant when we remember how large a share the barons of the Welsh march, the only purely feudal region in the country, took in the movement against the King. The unity of the national government being recognised, it was another sign of the times that its control should be transferred from the monarch to a committee of barons. At this point the rigid conceptions of the triumphant oligarchy stood in the way of a wide national policy. Since the reign of John the custom had arisen of consulting the representatives of the shire-courts on matters of politics and finance. In 1258 there is not the least trace of a suggestion that parliament could ever include a more popular element than the barons and prelates. On the contrary, the Provisions diminished the need even for those periodical assemblies of the magnates which had been in existence since the earliest dawn of our history. For all practical purposes small baronial committees were to perform the work of magnates and people as well as of the crown. Yet it must be recognised that the barons showed self-control, as well as practical wisdom, in handing over functions discharged by the baronage as a whole to the various committees of their selection. The danger of general control by the magnates was that a large assembly, more skilled in opposition than in constructive work, was almost sure to become infected by faction. By strictly limiting and defining who the new rulers of England were to be, the barons approached a combination of aristocratic control with the stability and continuity resulting from limited numbers and defined functions. It is likely, however, that in bestowing such extensive powers on their nominees, they were influenced by the well-grounded belief that the new constitution could only be established by main force, and that, even when abandoned by the king, the aliens would make a good fight before they gave up all that they had so long held in England. The success of the new scheme largely depended upon the immediate execution of the ordinance for the expulsion of the foreigners. The first step taken to carry out the Provisions was the appointment of the new ministers. The barons insisted on the revival of the office of justiciar, and a strenuous and capable chief minister was found in Hugh Bigod. It was advisable to go cautiously, and some of the king's ministers were allowed to continue in office. An appeal to force was necessary before the new constitution could be set up in detail. The Savoyards bought their safety by accepting it; but the Poitevins, seeing that flight or resistance were the only alternatives before them, were spirited enough to prefer the bolder course. They were specially dangerous because Edward and his cousin, Henry of Almaine, the son of the King of the Romans, were much under their influence. In the Dominican convent at Oxford the baronial leaders formed a sworn confederacy not to desist from their purpose until the foreigners had been expelled. There were more hot words between Leicester and William, the most capable of the Lusignans. The Poitevins soon found that they could not maintain themselves in the face of the general hatred. On June 22 they fled from Oxford in the company of their ally, Earl Warenne. They rode straight for the coast, but failing to reach it, occupied Winchester, where they sought to maintain themselves in Aymer's castle of Wolvesey. The magnates of the parliament then turned against them the arms they professed to have prepared against the Welsh. Headed by the new justiciar, Hugh Bigod, they besieged Wolvesey. Warenne abandoned the aliens, and they gladly accepted the terms offered to them by their foes. They were allowed to retain their lands and some of their ready money, on condition of withdrawing from the realm and surrendering their castles. By the middle of July they had crossed over to France. With them disappeared the whole of the organised opposition to the new government. Edward, deprived of their support, swore to observe the Provisions. Immediately on the flight of the Lusignans the council of Fifteen was chosen after a fashion which seemed to give the king's friends an equal voice with the champions of the aristocracy. Four electors appointed it, and of these two were the nominees of the baronial section, and two of the royalist section of the original twenty-four. The result of their work showed that there was only one party left after the Wolvesey fiasco. While only three of the king's twelve had places on the permanent council, no less that nine of the fifteen were chosen from the baronial twelve. It was useless for Archbishop Boniface, John Mansel, and the Earl of Warwick to stand up against the Bishop of Worcester, the Earls of Leicester, Norfolk, Hereford, and Gloucester, against John FitzGeoffrey, Peter Montfort, Richard Grey, and Roger Mortimer. Moreover, of the three, John Mansel alone could still be regarded as a royalist partisan. There were three of the fifteen chosen from outside the twenty-four. Of these, Peter of Savoy, Earl of Richmond, might, like his brother Boniface, be regarded as an alien, though hatred of the Poitevins had by this time made Englishmen of the Savoyards. The other two, the marcher-lord James of Audley and William of Fors, Earl of Albemarle, were of baronial sympathies. It was the same with the other councils. Inquiry was made as to abuses. Gradually the royal officials were replaced by men of popular leanings. The sheriffs were changed and were strictly controlled, and four knights from each shire assembled in October to present to the king the grievances of the people against the out-going sheriffs. The custody of the castles was put into trusty and, for the most part, into English hands. Finally the king was forced to issue a proclamation, in which he commanded all true men "steadfastly to hold and to defend the statutes that be made or are to be made by our counsellors". This document was issued in English as well as in French and Latin. A copy of the English version was sent to every sheriff, with instructions to read it several times a year in the county court, so that a knowledge of its contents might be attained by every man. It is perhaps the first important proclamation issued in English since the coming of the Normans. Early in 1259 Richard, King of the Romans, set out to revisit England. He was met at Saint Omer by a deputation of magnates, who told him that he could only be allowed to land after taking an oath to observe the Provisions. Richard blustered, but soon gave in his submission. His adhesion to the reforms marks the last step in the revolution. The new constitution worked without interruption until the end of 1259. Throughout that period domestic affairs were uneventful, and the efforts of the ministry were chiefly concerned in securing peace abroad. In 1258 Wales had been in revolt, Scotland unfriendly, and France threatening. A truce, ill observed, was made with Llewelyn, who found it worth while to be cautious, seeing that his natural enemies, but sometime associates, the marchers, had a preponderant share in the government. The Scots were easier to satisfy, for there was at the time no real hostility between either kings or peoples. The chief event of this period is the conclusion of the first peace with France since the wars of John and Philip Augustus. The protracted negotiations which preceded it took the king and his chief councillors abroad, and that made it easier to carry on the new domestic system without friction. Since the friendly personal intercourse held between Henry and Louis IX. in 1254, the relations between England and France had become less cordial. The revival of the English power in Gascony, the Anglo-Castilian alliance, and the election of Richard of Cornwall to the German kingship irritated the French, to whom the persistent English claim to Normandy and Anjou, and the repudiation of the Aquitanian homage, were perpetual sources of annoyance. The French championship of Alfonso against Richard achieved the double end of checking English pretensions, and cooling the friendship between England and Castile. St. Louis, however, was always ready to treat for peace, while the revolution of 1258 made all parties in England anxious to put a speedy end to the unsettled relations between the two realms. Negotiations were begun as early as 1257, and made some progress; but the decisive step was taken immediately after the prorogation of the reforming parliament in the spring of 1258. During May a strangely constituted embassy treated for peace at Paris, where Montfort and Hugh Bigod worked side by side with two of the Lusignans and Peter of Savoy. They concluded a provisional treaty in time for the negotiators to take their part in the Mad Parliament. The unsettled state of affairs in England, however, delayed the ratification of the treaty. Arrangements had been made for its publication at Cambrai, but the fifteen dared not allow Henry to escape from their tutelage, and Louis refused to treat save with the king himself. There were difficulties as to the relation of the pope and the King of the Romans to the treaty, while Earl Simon's wife Eleanor and her children refused to waive their very remote claims to a share in the Norman and Angevin inheritances, which her brother was prepared to renounce. As ever, Montfort held to his personal rights with the utmost tenacity, and the self-seeking obstinacy of the chief negotiator of the treaty caused both bad blood and delay. At last he was bought off by the promise of a money payment, and the preliminary ratifications were exchanged in the summer of 1259. On November 14 Henry left England for Paris for the formal conclusion of the treaty. There were great festivities on the occasion of the meeting of the two kings, but once more Montfort and his wife blocked the way. Not until the very morning of the day fixed for the final ceremony were they satisfied by Henry's promise to deposit on their behalf a large sum in the hands of the French. Immediately afterwards Henry did homage to Louis for Gascony. The chief condition of the treaty of Paris was Henry's definitive renunciation of all his claims on Normandy, Anjou, Maine, Touraine, and Poitou, and his agreement to hold Gascony as a fief of the French crown. In return for this, Louis not only recognised him as Duke of Aquitaine, but added to his actual possessions there by ceding to him all that he held, whether in fief or in demesne, in the three dioceses of Limoges, Cahors, and Périgueux. Besides these immediate cessions, the French king promised to hand over to Henry certain districts then held by his brother, Alfonse of Poitiers, and his brother's wife Joan of Toulouse, in the event of their dominions escheating to the crown by their death without heirs. These regions included Agen and the Agenais, Saintonge to the south of the Charente, and in addition the whole of Quercy, if it could be proved by inquest that it had been given by Richard I. to his sister Joan, grandmother of Joan of Poitiers, as her marriage portion. Moreover the French king promised to pay to Henry the sums necessary to maintain for two years five hundred knights to be employed "for the service of God, or the Church, or the kingdom of England."[1] [1] For the treaty and its execution see M. Gavrilovitch, _Étude sur le traité de Paris de 1259_ (1899). The treaty was unpopular both in France and England. The French strongly objected to the surrender of territory, and were but little convinced of the advantage gained by making the English king once more the vassal of France. English opinion was hostile to the abandonment of large pretensions in return for so small an equivalent. On the French side it is true that Louis sacrificed something to his sense of justice and love of peace. But the territory he ceded was less in reality than in appearance. The French king's demesnes in Quercy, Périgord, and Limousin were not large, and the transference of the homage of the chief vassals meant only a nominal change of overlordship, and was further limited by a provision that certain "privileged fiefs" were still to be retained under the direct suzerainty of the French crown. As to the eventual cessions, Alfonse and his wife were still alive and likely to live many years. Even the cession of Gascony was hampered by a stipulation that the towns should take an "oath of security," by which they pledged themselves to aid France against England in the event of the English king breaking the provisions of the treaty. Perhaps the most solid advantage Henry gained by the treaty was financial, for he spent the sums granted to enable him to redeem his crusading vow in preparing for war against his own subjects. It was, however, an immense advantage for England to be able during the critical years which followed to be free from French hostility. If, therefore, the French complaints against the treaty were exaggerated, the English dissatisfaction was unreasonable. The real difficulty for the future lay in the fact that the possession of Gascony by the king of a hostile nation was incompatible with the proper development of the French monarchy. For fifty years, however, a chronic state of war had not given Gascony to the French; and Louis IX. was, perhaps, politic as well as scrupulous in abandoning the way of force and beginning a new method of gradual absorption, that in the end gained the Gascon fief for France more effectively than any conquest. The treaty of Paris was not a final settlement. It left a score of questions still open, and the problems of its gradual execution involved the two courts in constant disputes down to the beginning of the Hundred Years' War. For seventy years the whole history of the relations between the two nations is but a commentary on the treaty of Paris. During his visit to Paris Henry arranged a marriage between his daughter Beatrice and John of Brittany, the son of the reigning duke. In no hurry to get back to the tutelage of the fifteen, he prolonged his stay on the continent till the end of April, 1260. Yet, abroad as at home, he could not be said to act as a free man. It was not the king so much as Simon of Montfort who was the real author of the French treaty. Indeed, it is from the conclusion of the Peace of Paris that Simon's preponderance becomes evident. He was at all stages the chief negotiator of the peace and, save when his personal interests stood in the way, he controlled every step of the proceedings. If in 1258 he was but one of several leaders of the baronial party in England, he came back from France in 1260 assured of supremacy. During his absence abroad, events had taken place in England which called for his presence. After their triumph in 1258, the baronial leaders relaxed their efforts. Contented with their position as arbiters of the national destinies, they made little effort to carry out the reforms contemplated at Oxford. The ranks of the victors were broken up by private dissensions. Before leaving for France, Earl Simon violently quarrelled with Richard, Earl of Gloucester. It was currently believed that Gloucester had grown slack, and Simon rose in popular estimation as a thorough-going reformer who had no mind to substitute the rule of a baronial oligarchy for the tyranny of the king. His position was strengthened by his personal qualities which made him the hero of the younger generation; and his influence began to modify the policy of Edward the king's son, who, since the flight of his Poitevin kinsmen, was gradually arriving at broader views of national policy. Even before his father's journey to France, Edward took up a line of his own. In the October parliament of 1259, he listened to a petition presented to the council by the younger nobles[1] who complained that, though the king had performed all his promises, the barons had not fulfilled any of theirs. Edward thereupon stirred up the oligarchy to issue an instalment of the promised reforms in the document known as the Provisions of Westminster. During Henry's absence in France the situation became strained. The oligarchic party, headed by Gloucester, was breaking away from Montfort; and Edward was forming a liberal royalist party which was not far removed from Montfort's principles. Profiting by these discords, the Lusignans prepared to invade England. The papacy was about to declare against the reformers. When the monks of Winchester elected an Englishman as their bishop in the hope of getting rid of the queen's uncle, Alexander IV. summoned Aymer to his court and consecrated him bishop with his own hands. [1] "Communitas bacheleriae Angliae," _Burton Ann_., p. 471. _See on_ this, _Engl. Hist. Review_, xvii. (1902), 89-94. Early in 1260, Montfort went back to England and made common cause with Edward. Despite the king's order that no parliament should be held during his absence abroad, Montfort insisted that the Easter parliament should meet as usual at London. The discussions were hot. Montfort demanded the expulsion of Peter of Savoy from the council, and Edward and Gloucester almost came to blows. The Londoners closed their gates on both parties, but the mediation of the King of the Romans prevented a collision. Henry hurried home, convinced that Edward was conspiring against him. The king threw himself into the city of London, and with Gloucester's help collected an army. Meanwhile Montfort and Edward, with their armed followers, were lodged at Clerkenwell, ready for war. Again the situation became extremely critical, and again King Richard proved the best peacemaker. Henry held out against his son for a fortnight, but such estrangement was hard for him to endure. "Do not let my son appear before me," he cried, "for if I see him, I shall not be able to refrain from kissing him." A reconciliation was speedily effected, and nothing remained of the short-lived alliance of Edward with Montfort save that his feud with Gloucester continued until the earl's death. The dissensions among the barons encouraged Henry to shake off the tutelage of the fifteen. As soon as he was reconciled with his son, he charged Leicester with treason.[1] "But, thanks _be_ to God, the earl answered to all these points with such force that the king could do nothing against him." Unable to break down his enemy by direct attack, Henry followed one of the worst precedents of his father's reign by beseeching Alexander IV. to relieve him of his oath to observe the Provisions. On April 13, 1261, a bull was issued annulling the whole of the legislation of 1258 and 1259, and freeing the king from his sworn promise. [1] Bémont, _Simon de Montfort_, Appendix xxxvii., pp. 343-53. William of Valence was already back in England, and restored to his old dignities. His return was the easier because his brother, Aymer, the most hated of the Poitevins, had died soon after his consecration to Winchester. On June 14, 1261, the papal bull was read before the assembled parliament at Winchester. There Henry removed the baronial ministers and replaced them by his own friends. Chief among the sufferers was Hugh Despenser, who had succeeded Hugh Bigod as justiciar; and Bigod himself was expelled from the custody of Dover Castle. In the summer Henry issued a proclamation, declaring that the right of choosing his council and garrisoning his castles was among the inalienable attributes of the crown. England was little inclined to rebel, for the return of prosperity and good harvests made men more contented. The repudiation of the Provisions restored unity to the baronage. The defections had been serious, and it was said that only five of the twenty-four still adhered to the opposition. But the crisis forced Leicester and Gloucester to forget their recent feuds, and co-operate once more against the king. They saw that their salvation from Henry's growing strength lay in appealing to a wider public than that which they had hitherto addressed. Still posing as the heads of the government established by the Provisions, they summoned three knights from each shire to attend an assembly at St. Alban's. This appeal to the landed gentry alarmed the king so much that he issued counter-writs to the sheriffs ordering them to send the knights, not to the baronial camp at St. Alban's, but to his own court at Windsor. Neither party was as yet prepared for battle. The death of Alexander IV, soon after the publication of his bull tied the hands of the king. At the same time the renewed dissensions of Leicester and Gloucester paralysed the baronage. Before long Simon withdrew to the continent, leaving everything in Gloucester's hands. At last, on December 7, a treaty of pacification was patched up, and the king announced that he was ready to pardon those who accepted its conditions. But there was no permanence in the settlement, and the king, the chief gainer by it, was soon pressing the new pope, Urban IV., to confirm the bull of Alexander. On February 25, 1262, Urban renewed Henry's absolution from his oath in a bull which was at once promulgated in England. Montfort then came back from abroad and rallied the baronial party. In January, 1263, Henry once more confirmed the Provisions, and peace seemed restored. The death of Richard of Gloucester during 1262 increased Montfort's power. His son, the young Earl Gilbert, was Simon's devoted disciple, but he was still a minor and the custody of his lands was handed over to the Earl of Hereford. Montfort's personal charm succeeded in like fashion in winning over Henry of Almaine. The events of 1263 are as bewildering and as indecisive as those of the two previous years. Amidst the confusion of details and the violent clashing of personal and territorial interests, a few main principles can be discerned. First of all the royalist party was becoming decidedly stronger, and fresh secessions of the barons constantly strengthened its ranks. Conspicuous among these were the lords of the march of Wales, who in 1258 had been almost as one man on the side of the opposition, but who by the end of 1263 had with almost equal unanimity rallied to the crown.[1] The causes of this change of front are to be found partly in public and partly in personal reasons. In 1258 Henry III., like Charles I. in 1640, had alienated every class of his subjects, and was therefore entirely at the mercy of his enemies. By 1263 his concessions had procured for him a following, so that he now stood in the same position as Charles after his concessions to the Long Parliament made it possible for him to begin the Civil War in 1642. A new royalist party was growing up with a wider policy and greater efficiency than the old coterie of courtiers and aliens. Of this new party Edward was the soul. He had dissociated himself from Earl Simon, but he carried into his father's camp something of Simon's breadth of vision and force of will. He set to work to win over individually the remnant that adhered to Leicester. What persuasion and policy could not effect was accomplished by bribes and promises. Edward won over the Earl of Hereford, whose importance was doubled by his custody of the Gloucester lands, the ex-justiciar Roger Bigod, and above all Roger Mortimer. [1] On this, and the whole marcher and Welsh aspect of the period, 1258-1267, see my essay on Wales and _the March during the Barons' Wars_ in _Owens College Historical Essays_, pp. 76-136 (1902). The change of policy of the marchers was partly at least brought about by their constant difficulties with the Prince of Wales. During the period immediately succeeding the Provisions of Oxford, Llewelyn ceased to devastate the marches. A series of truces was arranged which, if seldom well kept, at least avoided war on a grand scale. Within Wales Llewelyn fully availed himself of the respite from English war. Triumphant over the minor chiefs, he could reckon upon the support of every Welsh tenant of a marcher lord, and at last grew strong enough to disregard the truces and wage open war against the marchers. It was in vain that Edward, the greatest of the marcher lords, persuaded David, the Welsh prince's brother, to rise in revolt against him. Llewelyn devastated the four cantreds to the gates of Chester, and at last, after long sieges, forced the war-worn defenders of Deganwy and Diserth to surrender the two strong castles through which alone Edward had retained some hold over his Welsh lands. It was the same in the middle march, where Llewelyn turned his arms against the Mortimers, and robbed them of their castles. Even in the south the lord of Gwynedd carried everything before him. "If the Welsh are not stopped," wrote a southern marcher, "they will destroy all the lands of the king as far as the Severn and the Wye, and they ask for nothing less than the whole of Gwent." Up to this point the war had been a war of Welsh against English, but Montfort sought compensation for his losses in England by establishing relations with the Welsh. The alliance between Montfort and their enemy had a large share in bringing about the secession of the marchers. Their alliance with Edward neutralised the action of Montfort, and once more enabled Henry to repudiate the Provisions. In the summer of 1263, Edward and Montfort both raised armies. Leicester made himself master of Hereford, Gloucester, and Bristol, and when Edward threw himself into Windsor Castle, he occupied Isleworth, hoping to cut his enemy off from London, where the king and queen had taken refuge in the Tower. But the hostility of the Londoners made the Tower an uneasy refuge for them. On one occasion, when the queen attempted to make her way up the Thames in the hope of joining her son at Windsor, the citizens assailed her barge so fiercely from London Bridge that she was forced to return to the Tower. The foul insults which the rabble poured upon his mother deeply incensed Edward and he became a bitter foe of the city for the rest of his life. For the moment the hostility of London was decisive against Henry. Once more the king was forced to confirm the Provisions, agree to a fresh banishment of the aliens, and restore Hugh Despenser to the justiciarship. This was the last baronial triumph. In a few weeks Edward again took up arms, and was joined by many of Montfort's associates, including his cousin, Henry of Almaine. Even the Earl of Gloucester was wavering. The barons feared the appeal to arms, and entered into negotiations. Neither side was strong enough to obtain mastery over the other, and a recourse to arbitration seemed the best way out of an impossible situation. Accordingly, on December, 1263, the two parties agreed to submit the question of the validity of the Provisions to the judgment of Louis IX. The king and his son at once crossed the channel to Amiens, where the French king was to hear both sides. A fall from his horse prevented Leicester attending the arbitration, and the barons were represented by Peter Montfort, lord of Beaudesert castle in Warwickshire, and representative of an ancient Anglo-Norman house that was not akin to the family of Earl Simon. Louis did not waste time, and on January 23, 1264, issued his decision in a document called the "Mise of Amiens," which pronounced the Provisions invalid, largely on the ground of the papal sentence. Henry was declared free to select his own wardens of castles and ministers, and Louis expressly annulled "the statute that the realm of England should henceforth be governed by native-born Englishmen". "We ordain," he added, "that the king shall have full power and free jurisdiction over his realm as in the days before the Provisions." The only consolation to the barons was that Louis declared that he did not intend to derogate from the ancient liberties of the realm, as established by charter or custom, and that he urged a general amnesty on both parties. In all essential points Louis decided in favour of Henry. Though the justest of kings, he was after all a king, and the limitation of the royal authority by a baronial committee seemed to him to be against the fundamental idea of monarchy. The pious son of the Church was biassed by the authority of two successive popes, and he was not unmoved by the indignation of his wife, the sister of Queen Eleanor. A few weeks later Urban IV. confirmed the award. The Mise of Amiens was too one-sided to be accepted. The decision to refer matters to St. Louis had been made hastily, and many enemies of the king had taken no part in it. They, at least, were free to repudiate the judgment and they included the Londoners, the Cinque Ports, and nearly the whole of the lesser folk of England. The Londoners set the example of rebellion. They elected a constable and a marshal, and joining forces with Hugh Despenser, the baronial justiciar, who still held the Tower, marched out to Isleworth, where they burnt the manor of the King of the Romans. "And this," wrote the London Chronicler, "was the beginning of trouble and the origin of the deadly war by which so many thousand men perished." The Londoners did not act alone. Leicester refused to be bound by the award, though definitely pledged to obey it. It was, he maintained, as much perjury to abandon the Provisions as to be false to the promise to accept the Mise of Amiens. After a last attempt at negotiation at a parliament at Oxford, he withdrew with his followers and prepared for resistance. "Though all men quit me," he cried, "I will remain with my four sons and fight for the good cause which I have sworn to defend--the honour of Holy Church and the good of the realm." This was no mere boast. The more his associates fell away, the more the Montfort family took the lead. While Leicester organised resistance in the south, he sent his elder sons, Simon and Henry, to head the revolt in the midlands and the west. There was already war in the march of Wales when Henry Montfort crossed the Severn and strove to make common cause with Llewelyn. But the Welsh prince held aloof from him, and Edward himself soon made his way to the march. At first all went well for young Montfort. Edward, unable to capture Gloucester and its bridge, was forced to beg for a truce. Before long he found himself strong enough to repudiate the armistice and take possession of Gloucester. Master of the chief passage over the lower Severn, Edward abandoned the western campaign and went with his marchers to join his father at Oxford, where he at once stirred up the king to activity. The masters of the university, who were strong partisans of Montfort, were chased away from the town. Then the royal army marched against Northampton, the headquarters of the younger Simon, who was resting there, and, on April 4, the king and his son burst upon the place. Their first assault was unsuccessful, but next day the walls were scaled, the town captured, and many leading barons, including young Simon, taken prisoner. The victors thereupon marched northwards, devastated Montfort's Leicestershire estates, and thence proceeded to Nottingham, which opened its gates in a panic. Leicester himself had not been idle. While his sons were courting disaster in the west and midlands, he threw himself into London, where he was rapturously welcomed. The Londoners, however, became very unruly, committed all sorts of excesses against the wealthy royalists, and cruelly plundered and murdered the Jews. Montfort himself did not disdain to share in the spoils of the Jewry, though he soon turned to nobler work. He was anxious to open up communications with his allies in the Cinque Ports. But Earl Warenne, in Rochester castle, blocked the passage of the Dover road over the Medway. Accordingly Montfort marched with a large following of Londoners to Rochester, captured the town, and assaulted the castle with such energy that it was on the verge of surrendering. The news of Warenne's peril reached Henry in the midlands. In five days the royalists made their way from Nottingham to Rochester, a distance of over 160 miles. On their approach Montfort withdrew into London. Flushed with their successes at Northampton and Rochester, the royalists marched through Kent and Sussex, plundering and devastating the lands of their enemies. Though masters of the open country, they had to encounter the resistance of the Clare castles, and the solid opposition of the Cinque Ports. Their presence on the south coast was specially necessary, for Queen Eleanor, who had gone abroad, was waiting, with an army of foreign mercenaries, on the Flemish coast, for an opportunity of sailing to her husband's succour. The royal army was hampered by want of provisions, and was only master of the ground on which it was camped. As a first fruit of the alliance with Llewelyn, Welsh soldiers lurked behind every hedge and hill, cut off stragglers, intercepted convoys, and necessitated perpetual watchfulness. At last the weary and hungry troops found secure quarters in Lewes, the centre of the estates of Earl Warenne. Montfort then marched southwards from the capital. Besides the baronial retinues, a swarm of Londoners, eager for the fray, though unaccustomed to military restraints, accompanied him. On May 13 he encamped at Fletching, a village hidden among the dense oak woods of the Weald, some nine miles north of Lewes. A last effort of diplomacy was attempted by Bishop Cantilupe of Worcester who, despite papal censures, still accompanied the baronial forces. But the royalists would not listen to the mediation of so pronounced a partisan. Nothing therefore was left but the appeal to the sword. The royal army was the more numerous, and included the greater names. Of the heroes of the struggle of 1258 the majority was in the king's camp, including most of the lords of the Welsh march, and the hardly less fierce barons of the north, whose grandfathers had wrested the Great Charter from John. The returned Poitevins with their followers mustered strongly, and the confidence of the royalists was so great that they neglected all military preparations. The poverty of Montfort's host in historic families attested the complete disintegration of the party since 1263. Its strength lay in the young enthusiasts, who were still dominated by the strong personality and generous ideals of Leicester, such as the Earl of Gloucester, or Humphrey Bohun of Brecon, whose father, the Earl of Hereford, was fighting upon the king's side. Early on the morning of May 14 Montfort arrayed his troops and marched southward in the direction of Lewes. Dawn had hardly broken when the troops were massed on the summit of the South Downs, overlooking Lewes from the north-west. Lewes is situated on the right bank of a great curve of the river Ouse, which almost encircles the town. To the south are the low-lying marshes through which the river meanders towards the sea, while to the north, east, and west are the bare slopes of the South Downs, through which the river forces its way past the gap in which the town is situated. To the north of the town lies the strong castle of the Warennes, wherein Edward had taken up his quarters, while in the southern suburb the Cluniac priory of St. Pancras, the chief foundation of the Warennes, afforded lodgings for King Henry and the King of the Romans. When Simon reached the summit of the downs, his movements were visible from the walls. But the royal army was still sleeping and its sentinels kept such bad watch that the earl was able to array his troops at his leisure. From the summit of the hills two great spurs, separated by a waterless valley, slope down towards the north and west sides of the town. The more northerly led straight to the castle, and the more southerly to the priory. Montfort's plan was to throw his main strength on the attack on the priory, while deluding the enemy into the belief that his chief object was to attack the castle. He was not yet fully recovered from his fall from his horse, and it was known that he generally travelled in a closed car or horse-litter. This vehicle he posted in a conspicuous place on the northerly spur, and planted over it his standard. In front of it were massed the London militia, mainly infantry and the least effective element in his host. Meanwhile the knights and men-at-arms were mustered on the southerly spur under the personal direction of Montfort, who held himself in the rear with the reserve, while the foremost files were commanded by the young Earl of Gloucester, whom Simon solemnly dubbed to knighthood before the assembled squadrons. Then the two divisions of the army advanced towards Lewes, hoping to find their enemies still in their beds. At the last moment the alarm was given, and before the barons approached the town, the royalists, pouring out of castle, town, and priory, hastily took up their position face to face to the enemy. All turned out as Montfort had foreseen. Edward, emerging from the castle with his cousin Henry of Almaine, his Poitevin uncles, and the warriors of the march, observed the standard of Montfort on the hill, and supposing that the earl was with his banner, dashed impetuously against the left wing of Leicester's troops. He soon found himself engaged with the Londoners, who broke and fled in confusion before his impetuous charge. Eager to revenge on the flying citizens the insults they had directed against his parents, he pursued the beaten militia for many a mile, inflicting terrible damage upon them. On his way he captured Simon's standard and horse-litter, and slew its occupants, though they were three royalist members of the city aristocracy detained there for sure keeping. When the king's son drew rein he was many miles from Lewes, whither he returned, triumphant but exhausted. The removal of Edward and the marchers from the field enabled Montfort to profit by his sacrifice of the Londoners. The followers of the two kings on the left of the royalist lines could not withstand the weight of the squadrons of Leicester and Gloucester. The King of the Romans was driven to take refuge in a mill, where he soon made an ignominious surrender. Henry himself lost his horse under him and was forced to yield himself prisoner to Gilbert of Gloucester. The mass of the army was forced back on to the town and priory, which were occupied by the victors. Scarcely was their victory assured when Edward and the marchers came back from the pursuit of the Londoners. Thereupon the battle was renewed in the streets of the town. It was, however, too late for the weary followers of the king's son to reverse the fortunes of the day. Some threw themselves into the castle, where the king's standard still floated; Edward himself took sanctuary in the church of the Franciscans; many strove to escape eastwards over the Ouse bridge or by swimming over the river. The majority of the latter perished by drowning or by the sword: but two compact bands of mail-clad horsemen managed to cut their way through to safety. One of these, a force of some two hundred, headed by Earl Warenne himself, and his brothers-in-law, Guy of Lusignan and William of Valence, secured their retreat to the spacious castle of Pevensey, of which Warenne was constable, and from which the possibility of continuing their flight by sea remained open. Of greater military consequence was the successful escape of the lords of the Welsh march, whose followers were next day the only section of the royalist army which was still a fighting force. This was the only immediate limitation to the fulness of Montfort's victory. After seven weary years, the judgment of battle secured the triumph of the "good cause," which had so long been delayed by the weakness of his confederates and the treachery of his enemies. Not the barons of 1258, but Simon and his personal following _were_ the real conquerors at Lewes. CHAPTER VI. THE RULE OF MONTFORT AND THE ROYALIST RESTORATION. On the day after the battle, Henry III. accepted the terms imposed upon him by Montfort in a treaty called the "Mise of Lewes," by which he promised to uphold the Great Charter, the Charter of the Forests, and the Provisions of Oxford. A body of arbitrators was constituted, in which the Bishop of London was the only Englishman, but which included Montfort's friend, Archbishop Eudes Rigaud of Rouen; the new papal legate, Guy Foulquois, cardinal-bishop of Sabina; and Peter the chamberlain, Louis IX.'s most trusted counsellor, with the Duke of Burgundy or Charles of Anjou, to act as umpire. These arbitrators were, however, to be sworn to choose none save English councillors, and Henry took oath to follow the advice of his native-born council in all matters of state. An amnesty was secured to Leicester and Gloucester; and Edward and Henry of Almaine surrendered as hostages for the good behaviour of the marchers, who still remained under arms. By the establishment of baronial partisans as governors of the castles, ministers, sheriffs, and conservators of the peace, the administration passed at once into the hands of the victorious party. Three weeks later writs were issued for a parliament which included four knights from every shire. In this assembly the final conditions of peace were drawn up, and arrangements made for keeping Henry under control for the rest of his life, and Edward after him, for a term of years to be determined in due course. Leicester and Gloucester were associated with Stephen Berkstead, the Bishop of Chichester, to form a body of three electors. By these three a Council of Nine was appointed, three of whom were to be in constant attendance at court; and without their advice the king was to do nothing. Hugh Despenser was continued as justiciar, while the chancery went to the Bishop of Worcester's nephew, Thomas of Cantilupe, a Paris doctor of canon law, and chancellor of the University of Oxford. Once more a baronial committee put the royal authority into commission, and ruled England through ministers of its own choice. While agreeing in this essential feature, the settlement of 1264 did not merely reproduce the constitution of 1258. It was simpler than its forerunner, since there was no longer any need of the cumbrous temporary machinery for the revision of the whole system of government, nor for the numerous committees and commissions to which previously so many functions had been assigned. The main tasks before the new rulers were not constitution-making but administration and defence. Moreover, the later constitution shows some recognition of the place due to the knights of the shire and their constituents. It is less closely oligarchical than the previous scheme. This may partly be due to the continued divisions of the greater barons, but it is probably also in large measure owing to the preponderance of Simon of Montfort. The young Earl of Gloucester and the simple and saintly Bishop of Chichester were but puppets in his hands. He was the real elector who nominated the council, and thus controlled the government. Every act of the new administration reflects the boldness and largeness of his spirit. The pacification after Lewes was more apparent than real, and there were many restless spirits that scorned to accept the settlement which Henry had so meekly adopted. The marchers were in arms in the west, and were specially formidable because they detained in their custody the numerous prisoners captured at the sack of Northampton. The fugitives from Lewes were holding their own behind the walls of Pevensey, though Earl Warenne and other leaders had made their escape to France, where they joined the army which Queen Eleanor had collected on the north coast for the purpose of invading England and restoring her husband to power. The papacy and the whole official forces of the Church were in bitter hostility to the new system. The collapse of Henry's rule had ruined the papal plans in Sicily, where Manfred easily maintained his ground against so strong a successor of the unlucky Edmund as Charles of Anjou. The papal legate, Guy Foulquois, was waiting at Boulogne for admission into England, and, far from being conciliated by his appointment as an arbitrator, was dexterously striving to make the arbitration ineffective, by summoning the bishops adhering to Montfort to appear before him, and sending them back with orders to excommunicate Earl Simon and all his supporters. The only gleam of hope was to be found in the unwillingness of the King of France to interfere actively in the domestic disputes of England. The death of Urban IV. for the moment brought relief, but, after a long vacancy, the new pope proved to be none other than the legate Guy, who in February, 1265, mounted the papal throne as Clement IV. It was to no purpose that Walter of Cantilupe assembled the patriotic bishops and appealed to a general council, or that radical friars like the author of the _Song of Lewes_ formulated the popular policy in spirited verse. The greatest forces of the time were steadily opposed to the revolutionary government, and rare strength and boldness were necessary to make head against them. Before the end of 1264 the vigour of Earl Simon triumphed over some of his immediate difficulties. In August he summoned the military forces of the realm to meet the threatened invasion. Adverse storms, however, dispersed Queen Eleanor's fleet, and her mercenaries, weary of the long delays that had exhausted her resources, went home in disgust. This left Simon free to betake himself to the west, and on December 15 he forced the marcher lords to accept a pacification called the Provisions of Worcester, by which they agreed to withdraw for a year and a day to Ireland, leaving their families and estates in the hands of the ruling faction. On the day after the signature of the treaty, Henry, who accompanied Simon to the west, issued from Worcester the writs for a parliament that sat in London from January to March in 1265. From the circumstances of the case this famous assembly could only be a meeting of the supporters of the existing government. So scanty was its following among the magnates that writs of summons were only issued to five earls and eighteen barons, though the strong muster of bishops, abbots, and priors showed that the papal anathema had done little to shake the fidelity of the clergy to Montfort's cause. The special feature of the gathering, however, was the summoning of two knights from every shire, side by side with the barons of the faithful Cinque Ports and two representatives from every city and borough, convened by writs sent, not to the sheriff, after later custom, but to the cities and boroughs directly. It was the presence of this strong popular element which long caused this parliament to be regarded as the first really representative assembly in our history, and gained for Earl Simon the fame of being the creator of the House of Commons. Modern research has shown that neither of these views can be substantiated. It was no novelty for the crown to strengthen the baronial parliaments by the representatives of the shire-moots, and there were earlier precedents for the holding meetings of the spokesmen of the cities and boroughs. What was new was the combination of these two types of representatives in a single assembly, which was convoked, not merely for a particular administrative purpose, but for a great political object. The real novelty and originality of Earl Simon's action lay in his giving a fresh proof of his disposition to fall back upon the support of the ordinary citizen against the hostility or indifference of the magnates, to whom the men of 1258 wished to limit all political deliberation. This is in itself a sufficient indication of policy to give Leicester an almost unique position among the statesmen to whom the development of our representative institutions are due. But just as his parliament was not in any sense our first representative assembly, so it did not include in any complete sense a House of Commons at all. We must still wait for a generation before the rival and disciple of Montfort, Edward, the king's son, established the popular element in our parliament on a permanent basis. Yet in the links which connect the early baronial councils with the assemblies of the three estates of the fourteenth century, not one is more important than Montfort's parliament of January, 1265. The chief business of parliament was to complete the settlement of the country. Simon won a new triumph in making terms with the king's son. Edward had witnessed the failure of his mother's attempts at invasion, the futility of the legatine anathema, and the collapse of the marchers at Worcester. He saw it was useless to hold out any longer, and unwillingly bought his freedom at the high price that Simon exacted. He transferred to his uncle the earldom of Chester, including all the lands in Wales that might still be regarded as appertaining to it. This measure put Simon in that strong position as regards Wales and the west which Edward had enjoyed since the days of his marriage. It involved a breach in the alliance between Edward and the marchers, and the subjection of the most dangerous district of the kingdom to Simon's personal authority. It was safe to set free the king's son, when his territorial position and his political alliances were thus weakened. At the moment of his apparent triumph, Montfort's authority began to decline. It was something to have the commons on his side: but the magnates were still the greatest power in England, and in pressing his own policy to the uttermost, Simon had fatally alienated the few great lords who still adhered to him. There was a fierce quarrel in parliament between Leicester and the shifty Robert Ferrars, Earl of Derby. For the moment Leicester prevailed, and Derby was stripped of his lands and was thrown into prison. But his fate was a warning to others, and the settlement between Montfort and Edward aroused the suspicions of the Earl of Gloucester. Gilbert of Clare was now old enough to think for himself, and his close personal devotion to Montfort could not blind him to the antagonism of interests between himself and his friend. He was gallant, strenuous, and high-minded, but quarrelsome, proud, and unruly, and his strong character was balanced by very ordinary ability. His outlook was limited, and his ideals were those of his class; such a man could neither understand nor sympathise with the broader vision and wider designs of Leicester. Moreover, with all Simon's greatness, there was in him a fierce masterfulness and an inordinate ambition which made co-operation with him excessively difficult for all such as were not disposed to stand to him in the relation of disciple to master. And behind the earl were his self-seeking and turbulent sons, set upon building up a family interest that stood directly in the way of the magnates' claim to control the state. Thus personal rivalries and political antagonisms combined to lead Earl Gilbert on in the same course that his father, Earl Richard, had traversed. The closest ally of Leicester became his bitterest rival. The victorious party split up in 1265, as it had split up in 1263. And the dissolution of the dominant faction once more gave Edward a better chance of regaining the upper hand than was to be hoped for from foreign mercenaries and from papal support. Gloucester was the natural leader of the lords of the Welsh march. He was not only the hereditary lord of Glamorgan, but had received the custody of William of Valence's forfeited palatinate of Pembroke. He had shown self-control in separating himself so long from the marcher policy; and his growing suspicion of the Montforts threw him back into his natural alliance with them. Even after the treaty of Worcester, the marchers remained under arms. They had obtained from the weakness of the government repeated prolongations of the period fixed for their withdrawal into Ireland. It was soon rumoured that they were sure of a refuge in Gloucester's Welsh estates, and Leicester, never afraid of making enemies, bitterly reproached Earl Gilbert with receiving the fugitives into his lands. Shortly after the breaking up of parliament, Gloucester fled to the march, and a little later William of Valence and Earl Warenne landed in Pembrokeshire with a small force of men-at-arms and crossbowmen. There was no longer any hope of carrying out the Provisions of Worcester, and once more Montfort was forced to proceed to the west to put down rebellion. By the end of April Montfort was at Gloucester, accompanied by the king and Edward, who, despite his submission, remained virtually a prisoner. Earl Gilbert was master of all South Wales, and closely watched his rival's movements from the neighbouring Forest of Dean. It was with difficulty that Earl Simon and his royal captives advanced from Gloucester to Hereford, but Earl Gilbert preferred to negotiate rather than to push matters to extremities. He went in person to Hereford and renewed his homage to the king. Arbitrators were appointed to settle the disputes between the two earls, and a proclamation was issued declaring that the rumour of dissension between them was "vain, lying, and fraudulently invented". For the next few days harmony seemed restored. Gloucester's submission lured Leicester into relaxing his precautions. His enemies took advantage of his remissness to hatch an audacious plot which soon enabled them to renew the struggle under more favourable conditions. Since his nominal release, Edward had been allowed the diversions of riding and hunting, and on May 28 he was suffered to go out for a ride under negligent or corrupt guard. Once well away from Hereford, the king's son fled from his lax custodians and joined Roger Mortimer, who was waiting for him in a neighbouring wood. On the next day he was safe behind the walls of Mortimer's castle of Wigmore, and, the day after, met Earl Gilbert at Ludlow, where he promised to uphold the charters and expel the foreigners. Valence and Warenne hurried from Pembrokeshire and made common cause with Edward and Gilbert. Edward then took the lead in the councils of the marchers, who, from that moment, obtained a unity of purpose and policy that they had hitherto lacked. He and his allies could claim to be the true champions of the Charters and the Provisions of Oxford against the grasping foreigner who strove to rule over king and barons alike. Montfort's small force was cut off from its base by the rapidity of the marchers' movements. It was in vain that all the supporters of the existing government were summoned to the assistance of the hard-pressed army at Hereford. Before the end of June, Edward completed the conquest of the Severn valley by the capture of the town and castle of Gloucester. A broad river and a strong army stood between Montfort and succour from England. Leicester then turned to Llewelyn of Wales, who took up his quarters at Pipton, near Hay. There, on June 22, a treaty was signed between the Welsh prince and the English king by which Henry was forced to make huge concessions to Llewelyn in order to secure his alliance. Llewelyn was recognised as prince of all Wales. The overlordship over all the barons of Wales was granted to him, and the numerous conquests, which he had made at the expense of the marchers, were ceded to him in full possession. Thus Llewelyn, like his grandfather in the days of the Great Charter, profited by the dissensions of the English to obtain the recognition of his claims which had invariably been refused when England was united. The Welsh prince gained a unique opportunity of making his weight felt in general English politics, but with all his ability he hardly rose to the occasion. Montfort had pressing need of his help. A few days after the treaty of Pipton, Gloucester Castle opened its gates to Edward, and the marchers advanced westwards to seek out Earl Simon at Hereford. Leicester fled in alarm before their overwhelming forces. He was driven from the Wye to the Usk, and, beaten in a sharp fight on Newport bridge, found refuge only by retreating up the Usk valley, whence he escaped northwards into the hilly region where Llewelyn ruled over the lands once dominated by the Mortimers. Before long Montfort's English followers grew weary of the hard conditions of mountain warfare. With their heavy armour and barbed horses it was difficult for them to emulate the tactics of the Welsh, and they revolted against the simple diet of milk and meat that contented their Celtic allies. They could not get on without bread, and, as bread was not to be found among the hills, they forced their leader to return to the richer regions of the east. Llewelyn did little to help them in their need, and did not accompany them in their march back to the Severn valley, though a large but disorderly force of Welsh infantry still remained with Simon as the fruit of the alliance with their prince. By the end of July, Simon was once more in the Severn valley, seeking for a passage over the river. On August 2 he found a ford over the stream some miles south of Worcester. There he crossed with all his forces and encamped for the night at Kempsey, one of Bishop Cantilupe's manors on the left bank. His skill as a general had extricated him from a position of the utmost peril. All might yet be regained if he could join forces with an army of relief which his son Simon had slowly levied in the south and midlands. But his quarrel with Gloucester and his alliance with the Welsh had done much to undermine Montfort's popularity, and the younger Simon had no appreciation of the necessity for decisive action. Summoned from the long siege of Pevensey by his father's danger, he wasted time in plundering the lands of the royalists, and only left London on July 8, whence he led his men by slow stages to Kenilworth. On July 31 young Simon's troops took up their quarters for the night in the open country round Kenilworth castle. They had no notion that the enemy was at hand and troubled neither to defend themselves nor to keep watch. Edward, warned by spies of their approach, abandoned his close guard of the Severn fords, and in the early morning of August 1 fell suddenly upon the sleeping host and scattered it with little difficulty. The younger Simon and a few of his followers took refuge in the castle. As a fighting force the army of relief ceased to exist. Leicester, knowing nothing of his son's disaster, made his way, on August 3, from Kempsey to Evesham, where he rested for the night. Next morning, after mass and breakfast, the army was about to continue its march, when scouts descried troops advancing upon the town. At first it was hoped that they were the followers of young Simon, but their near approach revealed them to be the army of the marchers. With extraordinary rapidity Edward led his troops back to Worcester as soon as he had won the fight at Kenilworth. Learning there that Simon had crossed the river in his absence, he at once turned back to meet him, seeking to elude his vigilance by a long night march by circuitous routes. The result was that for the second time he caught his enemy in a trap. Evesham, like Lewes, stands on a peninsula. It is situated on the right bank of a wide curve of the Avon, and approachable only by crossing over the river, or by way of the sort of isthmus between the two bends of the Avon a little to the north of the town. Edward occupied this isthmus with his best troops, and thus cut off all prospect of escape by land. The other means of exit from the town was over the bridge which connects it with its south-eastern suburb of Bengeworth, on the left bank of the river. Edward, however, took the precaution to detach Gloucester with a strong force to hold Bengeworth, and thus prevent Simon's escape over the bridge. The weary and war-worn host of Montfort, then, was out-generalled in such fashion that effective resistance to a superior force, flushed by recent victory, was impossible. Simon himself saw that his last hour was come; yet he could not but admire the skilful plan which had so easily discomfited him. "By the arm of St. James," he declared, "they come on cunningly. Yet they have not taught themselves that order of battle; they have learnt it from me. God have mercy upon our souls, for our bodies are theirs." Edward and Gloucester both advanced simultaneously to the attack. A storm broke at the moment of the encounter, and the battle was fought in a darkness that obscured the brightness of an August day. Leicester's Welsh infantry broke at once before the charge of the mail-clad horsemen, and took refuge behind hedges and walls, where they were hunted out and butchered after the main fight was over. But the men-at-arms struggled valiantly against Edward's superior forces, though they were soon borne down by sheer numbers. Simon fought like a hero and met a soldier's death. With him were slain his son Henry, his faithful comrade Peter Montfort, the baronial justiciar Hugh Despenser, and many other men of mark. A large number of prisoners fell into the victor's hands, and King Henry, who unwillingly followed Simon in all his wanderings, was wounded in the shoulder by his son's followers, and only escaped a worse fate by revealing his identity with the cry: "Slay me not! I am Henry of Winchester, your King." The marchers gratified their rage by massacring helpless fugitives, and by mutilating the bodies of the slain. Earl Simon's head was sent as a present to the wife of Roger Mortimer; and it was with difficulty that the mangled corpse found its last rest in the church of Evesham Abbey. His memory long lived in the hearts of his adopted countrymen, and especially among monks and friars, who despite the ban of the Church, hailed him as another St. Thomas, for he too had lain down his life for the cause of justice and religion. Miracles were worked at his tomb; liturgies composed in his honour, and an informal popular canonisation, which no papal censures could prevent, kept his memory green. His faults were forgotten in the pathos of his end. His work survived the field of Evesham and the reaction which succeeded it. His victorious nephew learnt well the lesson of his career, and the true successor of the martyred earl was the future Edward I. No thoughts of policy disturbed the fierce passion of revenge which possessed the victorious marchers. On August 7 Henry issued a proclamation announcing that he had resumed the personal exercise of the royal power. The baronial ministers and sheriffs were replaced by royalist partisans. The acts of the revolutionary government were denounced as invalid. The faithful city of London was cruelly humiliated for its zeal for Earl Simon. The exiles, headed by Queen Eleanor and Archbishop Boniface, returned from their long sojourn beyond sea. With them came to England a new legate, the Cardinal Ottobon, specially sent from the papal court to punish the bishops and clergy that had persisted in their adherence to the popular cause. Four prelates were excommunicated and suspended from their functions, including Berkstead of Chichester and Cantilupe of Worcester. But the aged Bishop of Worcester was delivered from persecution by death; "snatched away," as a kindly foe says, "lest he should see evil days". His nephew, Thomas of Cantilupe, the baronial chancellor, fled to Paris, where he forsook politics for the study of theology. The widowed Countess of Leicester was not saved by her near kindred to the king from lifelong banishment. At last a general sentence of forfeiture was pronounced against all who had fought against Edward, either at Kenilworth or Evesham. There was a greedy scramble for the spoils of victory. The greatest of these, Montfort's forfeited earldom of Leicester, went to Edmund, the king's younger son. Edward took back the earldom of Chester and all his old possessions. Roger Mortimer was rewarded by grants of land and franchises which raised the house of Wigmore to a position only surpassed by that of the strongest of the earldoms. At first the Montfort party showed an inclination to accept the defeat at Evesham as decisive. Even young Simon of Montfort, who still held out at Kenilworth, considered it prudent to restore his prisoner, the King of the Romans, to liberty. But the victors' resolve to deprive all their beaten foes of their estates, drove the vanquished into fresh risings. The first centre of the revolt of the disinherited was at Kenilworth, but before long the younger Simon abandoned the castle to join a numerous band which had found a more secure retreat in the isle of Axholme, amidst the marshes of the lower Trent. There they held their own until the winter, when they were persuaded by Edward to accept terms. A little later, Simon again revolted and joined the mariners of the Cinque Ports, whose towns still held out against the king, save Dover, which Edward had captured after a siege. Under Simon's leadership the Cinque Ports played the part of pirates on all merchants going to and from England. At last in March, 1266, Edward forced Winchelsea to open its gates to him. He next turned his arms against a valiant freebooter, Adam Gordon, who lurked with his band of outlaws in the dense beech woods of the Chilterns. With the capture of Adam Gordon, after a hand-to-hand tussle with Edward in which the king's son narrowly escaped with his life, the resistance in the south was at an end. As one centre of rebellion was pacified other disturbances arose. In the spring of 1266, Robert Ferrars, Earl of Derby, newly released from the prison into which Earl Simon had thrown him, raised a revolt in his own county. On May 15, 1266, Derby was defeated by Henry of Almaine at Chesterfield. His earldom was transferred to Edmund, the king's son, already Montfort's successor as Earl of Leicester, and in 1267 also Earl of Lancaster, a new earldom, deriving its name from the youngest of the shires.[1] Reduced to the Staffordshire estate of Chartley, the house of Ferrars fell back into the minor baronage. Kenilworth was still unconquered. Its walls were impregnable except to famine, and before his flight to Axholme young Simon had procured provisions adequate for a long resistance. The garrison harried the neighbourhood with such energy that the whole levies of the realm were assembled to subdue it. After a fruitless assault, the royalists settled down to a blockade which lasted from midsummer to Christmas. The legate, Ottobon, appearing in the besiegers' camp to excommunicate the defenders, they in derision dressed up their surgeon in the red robes of a cardinal, in which disguise he answered Ottobon's curses by a travesty of the censures of the Church. [1] For Edmund's estates and whole career, see W.E. Rhodes' _Edmund, Earl of Lancaster_, in _Engl. Hist. Review_, x. (1895), 19-40 and 209-37. The blockade soon tried the patience of the barons. It was hard to keep any medieval army long together, and the lords, anxious to go back to their homes, complained of the harsh policy that compelled their long attendance. The royalist host split up into two parties, led respectively by Roger Mortimer and Earl Gilbert of Gloucester. The cruel lord of Wigmore was the type of the extreme reaction. Intent only on vengeance, booty, and ambition, Mortimer clamoured for violent measures, and was eager to reject all compromises. Gloucester, on the other hand, posed as the mediator, and urged the need of pacifying the disinherited by mitigating the sentence of forfeiture which had driven them into prolonged resistance. In the first flush of victory, Edward had been altogether on Mortimer's side, but gradually statecraft and humanity turned him from the reckless policy of the marcher. Edward's adhesion to counsels of moderation changed the situation. While Mortimer pressed the siege of Kenilworth, Edward and Gloucester met a parliament at Northampton which agreed to uphold the policy of 1258 and mitigate the hard lot of the disinherited. A document drawn up in the camp at Kenilworth received the approval of parliament and was published on October 31. The _Dictum de Kenilworth_, as it was called, was largely taken up with assertions of the authority of the crown, and denunciations of the memory of Earl Simon. More essential points were the re-enactment of the Charters and the redress of some of the grievances against which the Provisions of 1258 were directed. The vital article, however, laid down that the stern sentence of forfeiture against adherents of the fallen cause was to be remitted, and allowed rebels to redeem their estates by paying a fine, which in most cases was to be assessed at five years' value of their lands. Hard as were these terms, they were milder than those which had previously been offered to the insurgents. Yet the defenders of Kenilworth could not bring themselves to accept them until December, when disease and famine caused them to surrender. Despite their long-deferred submission, the garrison was admitted to the terms of the _Dictum_. Even then resistance was not yet over. A forlorn hope of the disinherited, headed by John d'Eyville, established themselves about Michaelmas in the isle of Ely, where they made themselves the terror of all East Anglia, plundering towns so far apart as Norwich and Cambridge, maltreating the Jews, and holding the rich citizens to ransom. Early in 1267 the north-country baron, John of Vescy, rose in Northumberland, and violently resumed possession of his forfeited castle of Alnwick. While Henry tarried at Cambridge, Edward went north and soon won over Vescy by the clemency which made the lord of Alnwick henceforth one of his most devoted servants. More formidable than the revolt of Eyville or Vescy was the ambiguous attitude of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester. Roger Mortimer was once more intriguing against him, and striving to upset the Kenilworth compromise. After a violent scene between the two enemies in the parliament at Bury, Gloucester withdrew to the march of Wales, where he waged war against Mortimer. In April, 1267, he made his way with a great following to London, professing that he wished to hold a conference with the legate. It was a critical moment. Edward was still in the north; Henry was wasting his time at Cambridge; the Londoners welcomed Earl Gilbert as a champion of the good old cause; the legate took refuge in the Tower, and the earl did not hesitate to lay siege to the stronghold. Before long Gloucester was joined by Eyville and many of the Ely fugitives. It seemed as if Gloucester was in as strong position as Montfort had ever won, and that after two years of warfare the verdict of Evesham was about to be reversed. Edward marched south and joined forces with his father, who had moved from Cambridge to Stratford, near London. Everything seemed to suggest that the eastern suburbs of London would witness a fight as stubborn as Lewes or Evesham. But Gloucester was not the man to press things to extremities, and Edward though firm was conciliatory. He delivered Ottobon from the hands of the rebels,[1] and then arranged a peace upon terms which secured Gloucester's chief object of procuring better conditions for the disinherited. Not only Earl Gilbert but Eyville and his associates were admitted to the royal favour. A few desperadoes still held out until July in the isle of Ely, and Edward devoted himself to tracking them to their lairs. He built causeways of wattles over the fens, which protected the disinherited in their last refuge. When he had clearly shown his superiority, he offered the garrison of Ely the terms of the _Dictum de Kenilworth_. With their acceptance of these conditions the English struggle ended, in July, 1267, nearly two years after the battle of Evesham. [1] _Engl. Hist. Review_, xvii. (1902), 522. Llewelyn still remained under arms. He had profited by the two years of strife to deal deadly blows against the marchers. He conquered the Mid-Welsh lands which had been granted to Mortimer, and devastated Edward's Cheshire earldom. When Gloucester grew discontented with the course of events, the old friend of Montfort became the close ally of the man who had ruined Montfort's cause. A Welsh chronicler treats Gloucester's march to London as a movement which naturally followed the alliance of Gloucester and Llewelyn. On Gloucester's submission, Llewelyn was left to his own resources. Edward had it in his power to avenge past injuries by turning all his forces against his old enemy. But the country was weary of war, and Edward preferred to end the struggle. The legate Ottobon urged both Edward and the Welsh prince to make peace, and in September, 1267, Henry and his son went down to Shrewsbury, accompanied by Ottobon, who received from the king full powers to treat with Llewelyn, and a promise that Henry would accept any terms that he thought fit to conclude. Llewelyn thereupon sent ambassadors to Shrewsbury, and the negotiations went on so smoothly that on September 25 a definite treaty of peace was signed. On Michaelmas day Henry met Llewelyn at Montgomery, received his homage, and witnessed the formal ratification of the treaty. By the treaty of Shrewsbury Llewelyn was recognised as Prince of Wales, and as overlord of all the Welsh magnates, save the representative of the old line of the princes of South Wales. The four cantreds, Edward's old patrimony, were ceded to him; and though he promised to surrender many of his conquests, he was allowed to remain in possession of great tracts of land in Mid and South Wales, in the heart of the marcher region.[1] Substantially the Welsh prince was recognised as holding the position which he claimed from Montfort in the days of the treaty of Pipton. Alone of Montfort's friends, Llewelyn came out of an unsuccessful struggle upon terms such as are seldom obtained even by victory in the field. The triumph of the Welsh prince is the more remarkable because Edward and his ally, Mortimer, were the chief sufferers by the treaty. But Edward had learnt wisdom during his apprenticeship. He recognised that the exhaustion of the country demanded peace at any price, and he dreaded the possibility of the alliance of Llewelyn and Earl Gilbert. But whatever Edward's motives may have been in concluding the treaty, it left Llewelyn in so strong a position that he was encouraged to those fresh aggressions which in the next reign proved the ruin of his power. The Welsh wars of Edward I. are the best elucidation of the importance of the treaty of Shrewsbury. The Welsh principality, which Edward as king was to destroy, was as much the creation of the Barons' War as the outcome of the fierce Celtic enthusiasm which found its bravest champion in the son of Griffith. [1] For the growth of Llewelyn's power see the maps of Wales in 1247 and 1267 in Owens College _Historical Essays_, pp. 76 and 135. It was time to redeem the promises by which the moderate party had been won over to the royalist cause. The statute of Marlborough of 1267 re-enacted in a more formal fashion the chief of the Provisions of Westminster of 1259, and thus prevented the undoing of all the progress attained during the years of struggle. Ottobon in 1268 held a famous council at London, in which important canons were enacted with a view to the reformation of the Church. A little later the Londoners received back their forfeited charters and the disinherited were restored to their estates. After these last measures of reparation, England sank into a profound repose that lasted for the rest of the reign of Henry III. A happy beginning of the years of peace was the dedication of the new abbey of Westminster, and the translation of the body of St. Edward to the new shrine, whose completion had long been the dearest object of the old king's life. At this time Louis IX. was meditating his second crusade, and in every country in Europe the friars were preaching the duty of fighting the infidel. Nowhere save in France did the Holy War win more powerful recruits than in England. In 1268 Edward himself took the cross, [1] and with him his brother Edmund of Lancaster, his cousin Henry of Almaine, and many leading lords of both factions. Financial difficulties delayed the departure of the crusaders, and it was not until 1270 that Edward and Henry were able to start. On reaching Provence, they learnt that Louis had turned his arms against Tunis, whither they followed him with all speed. On Edward's arrival off Tunis, he found that Louis was dead and that Philip III., the new French king, had concluded a truce with the misbelievers. Profoundly mortified by this treason to Christendom, Edward set forth with his little squadron to Acre, the chief town of Palestine that still remained in Christian hands. Henry of Almaine preferred to return home at once, but on his way through Italy was murdered at Viterbo by the sons of Earl Simon of Montfort, a deed of blood which revived the bitterest memories of the Barons' War. Edward remained in Palestine until August, 1272, and threw all his wonted fire and courage into the hopeless task of upholding the fast-decaying Latin kingdom. At last alarming news of his father's health brought him back to Europe. [1] For Edward's crusade see Riant's article in _Archives de l'Orient Latin_, i., 617-32 (1881). On November 16, 1272, Henry III., then in his sixty-sixth year, died at Westminster. His remains were laid at rest in the neighbouring abbey church, hard by the shrine of St. Edward. With him died the last of his generation. St. Louis' death in August, 1270, has already been recorded. The death of Clement IV. in 1268 was followed by a three years' vacancy in the papacy. This was scarcely over when Richard, King of the Romans, prostrated by the tragedy of Viterbo, preceded his brother to the tomb. Still earlier, Boniface of Canterbury had ended his tenure of the chair of St. Augustine. The new reign begins with fresh actors and fresh motives of action. CHAPTER VII. THE EARLY FOREIGN POLICY AND LEGISLATION OF EDWARD I. The Dominican chronicler, Nicholas Trivet, thus describes the personality of Edward I.: "He was of elegant build and lofty stature, exceeding the height of the ordinary man by a head and shoulders. His abundant hair was yellow in childhood, black in manhood, and snowy white in age. His brow was broad, and his features regular, save that his left eyelid drooped somewhat, like that of his father, and hid part of the pupil. He spoke with a stammer, which did not, however, detract from the persuasiveness of his eloquence. His sinewy, muscular arms were those of the consummate swordsman, and his long legs gave him a firm hold in the saddle when riding the most spirited of steeds. His chief delight was in war and tournaments, but he derived great pleasure from hawking and hunting, and had a special joy in chasing down stags on a fleet horse and slaying them with a sword instead of a hunting spear. His disposition was magnanimous, but he was intolerant of injuries, and reckless of dangers when seeking revenge, though easily won over by a humble submission."[1] The defects of his youth are well brought out by the radical friar who wrote the _Song of Lewes_. Even to the partisan of Earl Simon, Edward was "a valiant lion, quick to attack the strongest, and fearing the onslaught of none. But if a lion in pride and fierceness, he was a panther in inconstancy and mutability, changing his word and promise, cloaking himself by pleasant speech. When he is in a strait he promises whatever you wish, but as soon as he has escaped he forgets his promise. The treachery or falsehood, whereby he is advanced, he calls prudence; the way whereby he arrives whither he will, crooked though it be, he regards as straight; whatever he likes he says is lawful, and he thinks he is released from the law, as though he were greater than a king."[2] [1] _Annals_, pp. 181-82. [2] _Song_ of _Lewes_, pp. 14-15, ed. Kingsford. Hot and impulsive in disposition, easily persuaded that his own cause was right, and with a full share in the pride of caste, Edward committed many deeds of violence in his youth, and never got over his deeply rooted habit of keeping the letter of his promise while violating its spirit. Yet he learnt to curb his impetuous temper, and few medieval kings had a higher idea of justice or a more strict regard to his plighted word. "Keep troth" was inscribed upon his tomb, and his reign signally falsified the prediction of evil which the Lewes song-writer ventured to utter. A true sympathy bound him closely to his nobles and people. His unstained family life, his piety and religious zeal, his devotion to friends and kinsfolk, his keen interest in the best movements of his time, showed him a true son of Henry III. But his strength of will and seriousness of purpose stand in strong contrast to his father's weakness and levity. A hard-working, clear-headed, practical, and sober temperament made him the most capable king of all his line. He may have been wanting in originality or deep insight, yet it is impossible to dispute the verdict that has declared him to be the greatest of all the Plantagenets. The broad lines of Edward's policy during the thirty-five years of his kingship had already been laid down for him during his rude schooling. The ineffectiveness of his father's government inspired him with a love of strong rule, and this enabled him to grapple with the chronic maladministration which made even a well-ordered medieval kingdom a hot-bed of disorder. The age of Earl Simon had been fertile in new ideals and principles of government. Edward held to the best of the traditions of his youth, and his task was not one of creation so much as of selection. His age was an age of definition. The series of great laws, which he made during the earlier half of his reign, represented a long effort to appropriate what was best in the age that had gone before, and to combine it in orderly sequence. The same ideals mark the constitutional policy of his later years. The materials for the future constitution of England were already at his hand. It was a task well within Edward's capacity to strengthen the authority of the crown by associating the loyal nobles and clergy in the work of ruling the state, and to build up a body politic in which every class of the nation should have its part. Yet he never willingly surrendered the most insignificant of his prerogatives, and if he took the people into partnership with him, he did so with the firm belief that he would be a more powerful king if his subjects loved and trusted him. Though closely associated with his nobles by many ties of kinship and affection, he was the uncompromising foe of feudal separatism, and hotly resented even the constitutional control which the barons regarded as their right. In the same way the unlimited franchises of the lords of the Welsh march, the almost regal authority which the treaty of Shrewsbury gave to the Prince of Wales, the rejection of his claims as feudal overlord of Scotland, were abhorrent to his autocratic disposition. True son of the Church though he was, he was the bitter foe of ecclesiastical claims which, constantly encroaching beyond their own sphere, denied kings the fulness of their authority. Edward's policy was thoroughly comprehensive. He is not only the "English Justinian" and the creator of our later constitution; he has rightly been praised for his clear conception of the ideal of a united Britain which brought him into collision with Welsh and Scots. His foreign policy lay as near to his heart as the conquest of Wales or Scotland, or the subjection of priests and nobles. He was eager to make Gascony obey him, anxious to keep in check the French king, and to establish a sort of European balance of power, of which England, as in Wolsey's later dreams, was to be the tongue of the balance. Yet, despite his severe schooling in self-control, he undertook more than he could accomplish, and his failure was the more signal because he found the utmost difficulty in discovering trustworthy subordinates. Moreover, the limited resources of a medieval state, and the even more limited control which a medieval ruler had over these resources, were fatal obstacles in the way of too ambitious a policy. Edward had inherited his father's load of debt, and could only accomplish great things by further pledging his credit to foreign financiers, against whom his subjects raised unending complaints. Yet, if his methods of attaining his objects were sometimes mean and often violent, there was a rare nobility about his general purpose. Every precaution was taken to secure Edward's succession and the establishment of the provisional administration which was to rule until his return. Before leaving England in 1270, Edward had appointed as his agents Walter Giffard, Archbishop of York, Roger Mortimer, and Robert Burnell, his favourite clerk. The vacancy of the see of Canterbury after Boniface's death placed Giffard in a position of peculiar eminence. Appointed first lord of the council, he virtually became regent; and he associated with himself in the administration of the realm his two colleagues in the management of the new king's private affairs. Early in 1273 a parliament of magnates and representatives of shires and boroughs took oaths of allegiance to the king and continued the authority of the three regents. By the double title of Edward's personal delegation and the recognition of the estates, Giffard, Mortimer, and Burnell ruled the country for the two years which were to elapse before the sovereign's return. Their government was just, economical, and peaceful. Even Gilbert of Gloucester remained quiet, and, save for the refusal of the Prince of Wales to perform his feudal obligations, the calm of the last years of the old reign continued. It is evidence of constitutional progress that the administration was carried on with so little friction in the absence of the monarch. Roger Mortimer, the most formidable of the feudal baronage, was himself one of the agents of this salutary change. The marcher chieftain put down with promptitude an attempted revolt of north-country knights which threatened public tranquillity. Edward first heard of his father's death in Sicily, but the tidings of the maintenance of peace rendered it unnecessary for him to hasten his return, and he made his way slowly through Italy. In Sicily he was entertained by his uncle, Charles of Anjou. Thence he went to Orvieto, where the new pope, Gregory X., who, as archdeacon of Liege, had been the comrade of his crusade, was then residing. From king and pope alike Edward earnestly sought vengeance for the murder of Henry of Almaine. Proceeding northwards, he was received with great pomp by the cities of Lombardy, and made personal acquaintance with Savoy and its count, Philip, his aged great-uncle. Crossing the Mont Cenis, he was welcomed by bands of English magnates who had gone forth to meet him. He was soon at the head of a little army, and in the true spirit of a hero of romance halted to receive the challenge of the boastful Count of Chalon. The tournament between the best knights of England and Burgundy was fought out with such desperation that it became a serious battle. At last Edward unhorsed the count in a personal encounter, which added greatly to his fame. This "Little Battle of Chalon" was the last victory of his irresponsible youth. The serious business of kingcraft began when Edward met his cousin, Philip III., at Paris. The news from England was still so good that Edward resolved to remain in France with the twofold object of settling his relations with the French monarchy and of receiving the homage and regulating the affairs of Aquitaine. Despite the treaty of Paris of 1259, there were so many subjects of dispute between the English and French kings that, beneath the warm protestations of affection between the kinsmen, there was, as a French chronicler said, but a cat-and-dog love between them.[1] The treaty had not been properly executed, and the English had long complained that the French had not yielded up to England their king's rights over the three bishoprics of Limoges, Cahors, and Périgueux, which St. Louis had ceded. New complications arose after the death of Alfonse of Poitiers in the course of the Tunisian crusade. By the treaty of Paris the English king should then have entered into possession of Saintonge south of the Charente, the Agenais, and lower Quercy. But the ministers of Philip III. laid hands upon the whole of Alfonse's inheritance and refused to surrender these districts to the English. The welcome which Edward received from his cousin at Paris could not blind him to the incompatibility of their interests, nor to the impossibility of obtaining at the moment the cession of the promised lands. He did not choose to tarry at Paris while the diplomatists unravelled the tangled web of statecraft. Nor would he tender an unconditional homage to the prince who withheld from him his inheritance. Already a stickler for legal rights, even when used to his own detriment, Edward was unable to deny his subjection to the overlord of Aquitaine. He therefore performed homage, but he phrased his submission in terms which left him free to urge his claims at a more convenient season. "Lord king," he said to Philip, "I do you homage for all the lands which I ought to hold of you." The vagueness of this language suggested that, if Edward could not get Saintonge, he might revive his claim to Normandy. The king appointed a commission to continue the negotiations with the French court, and then betook himself to Aquitaine.[2] [1] "Hic amor dici potest amor cati et canis," _Chron. Limov._, in _Recueil des Hist. de la France_, xxi., 784. [2] C.V. Langlois' _Le Règne de Philippe le Hardi_ (1887), and Gavrilovitch's _Le Traité de Paris_, give the best modern accounts of Edward's early dealings with the French crown. It was nearly ten years since the presence of the monarch had restrained the turbulence of the Gascon duchy. Edward had before him the task of watching over its internal administration, and checking the subtle policy whereby the agents of the French crown were gradually undermining his authority. Two wars, the war of Béarn and the war of Limoges, desolated Gascony from the Pyrenees to the Vienne. It was Edward's first task to bring these troubles to an end. Age and experience had not diminished the ardour which had so long made Gaston of Béarn the focus of every trouble in the Pyrenean lands. He defied a sentence of the ducal court of Saint Sever, and was already at war with the seneschal, Luke of Tany, when Edward's appearance brought matters to a crisis. During the autumn and winter of 1273-74, Edward hunted out Gaston from his mountain strongholds, and at last the Béarnais, despairing of open resistance, appealed to the French king. Philip accepted the appeal, and ordered Edward to desist from molesting Gaston during its hearing. The English king, anxious not to quarrel openly with the French court, granted a truce. The suit of Gaston long occupied the parliament of Paris, but the good-will of the French lawyers could not palliate the wanton violence of the Viscount of Béarn. The French, like the English, were sticklers for formal right, and were unwilling to push matters to extremities. Edward had the reward of his forbearance, for Philip advised Gaston to go to England and make his submission. Gratified by his restoration to Béarn in 1279, Gaston remained faithful for the next few years. Edward was less successful in dealing with Limoges. There had been for many years a struggle between the commune of the castle, or _bourg_, of Limoges and Margaret the viscountess. It was to no purpose that the townsfolk had invoked the treaty of Paris, whereby, as they maintained, the French king transferred to the King of England his ancient jurisdiction over them. They were answered by a decree of the parliament of Paris that the homage of the commune of Limoges belonged not to the crown but to the viscountess, and that therefore the treaty involved no change in their allegiance. Edward threw himself with ardour on to the side of the burgesses. Guy of Lusignan, still the agent of his brother abroad, though prudently excluded from England, was sent to Limoges, where he incited the commune to resist the viscountess. In May, 1274, Edward himself took up his quarters in Limoges, and for a month ruled there as sovereign. But the French court reiterated the decree which made the commune the vassal of the viscountess. To persevere in upholding the rebels meant an open breach with the French court in circumstances more unfavourable than in the case of Gaston of Béarn. Once more Edward refused to allow his ambition to prevail over his sense of legal obligation. With rare self-restraint he renounced the fealty of Limoges, and abandoned his would-be subjects to the wrath of the viscountess. This was an act of loyalty to feudal duty worthy of St. Louis. If Edward, on later occasions, pressed his own legal claims against his vassals, he set in his own case a pattern of strict obedience to his overlord. While Edward was still abroad, his friend Gregory X. held from May to July, 1274, the second general council at Lyons, wherein there was much talk of a new crusade, and an effort was made, which came very near temporary success, towards healing the schism of the Eastern and Western Churches. At Gregory's request Edward put off his coronation, lest the celebration might call away English prelates from Lyons. When the council was over, he at last turned towards his kingdom. At Paris he was met by the mayor of London, Henry le Waleis, and other leading citizens, who set before him the grievous results of the long disputes with Flanders, which had broken off the commercial relations between the two countries, and had inflicted serious losses on English trade. Edward strove to bring the Flemings to their senses by prohibiting the export of wool from England to the weaving towns of Flanders. The looms of Ghent and Bruges were stopped by reason of the withholding of the raw material, and the distress of his subjects made Count Guy of Flanders anxious to end so costly a quarrel. On July 28 Edward met Guy at Montreuil and signed a treaty which re-established the old friendship between lands which stood in constant economic need of each other. There was no longer any occasion for further delay, and on August 2 Edward and his queen crossed over to Dover. Received with open arms by his subjects, he was crowned at Westminster on August 19 by the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Kilwardby, philosopher, theologian, and Dominican friar, whom Gregory X. had placed over the church of Canterbury, despite the vigorous efforts which Edward made to secure the primacy for Robert Burnell. He had been absent from England for four years. Edward's sojourn in France was fruitful of results which he was unable to reap for the moment. Conscious of the inveterate hostility of the French king, he strove to establish relations with foreign powers to counterbalance the preponderance of his rival. When the death of Richard of Cornwall reopened the question of the imperial succession, Charles of Anjou had been anxious to obtain the prize for his nephew, Philip III., on the specious pretext that the headship of Christendom would enable the King of France to "collect chivalry from all the world" and institute the crusade which both Gregory X. and Edward so ardently desired. But the most zealous enthusiast for the holy war could hardly be deceived by the false zeal with which the Angevin cloaked his overweening ambition. It was a veritable triumph for Edward, when Gregory X., though attracted for a moment by the prospect of a strong emperor capable of landing a crusade, accepted the choice of the German magnates who, in terror of France, elected as King of the Romans the strenuous but not overmighty Swabian count, Rudolf of Hapsburg. As Alfonso of Castile's pretensions were purely nominal, this election ended the Great Interregnum by restoring the empire on a narrower but more practical basis. Though Gregory strove to reconcile the French to Rudolf's accession, common suspicion of France bound Edward and the new King of the Romans in a common friendship. Family disputes soon destroyed the unity of policy of the Capetian house. Philip III., well meaning but weak, was drifting into complete dependence on Charles of Anjou, whom Edward distrusted, alike as the protector of the murderers of Henry of Almaine and as the supplanter of his mother in the Provençal heritage. Margaret of Provence, the widow of St. Louis, had a common grievance with Edward and his mother against Charles of Anjou. She hated him the more inasmuch as he was depriving her of all influence over her son, King Philip. It was easy in such circumstances for the two widowed queens of France and England to form grandiose schemes for ousting Charles from Provence. Rudolf lent himself to their plans by investing Margaret with the county. Edward's filial piety and political interests made him a willing partner in these designs. In 1278 he betrothed his daughter Joan of Acre to Hartmann, the son of the King of the Romans. The plan of Edward and Rudolf was to revive in some fashion the kingdom of Arles[1] in favour of the young couple. Though Rudolf was unfaithful to this policy, and abandoned the proposed English marriage in favour of a match between his daughter and the son of the King of Sicily, the two queens persisted in their plans, and new combinations against Charles and Philip for some years threatened the peace of Europe. [1] Fournier's _Le Royaume d'Arles et de Vienne_ (1891) gives the best modern account of Edward's relations to the Middle Kingdom. It is unlikely that Edward hoped for serious results from schemes so incoherent and backed with such slender resources. Besides his alliance with the emperor, he strove to injure the French king by establishing close relations with his brother-in-law, Alfonso of Castile, who since 1276 was at war with the French. Earlier than this, he made himself the champion of Blanche of Artois, the widow of Henry III. of Navarre and Champagne. He wished that Joan, their only child, should bring her father's lands to one of his own sons, and, though disappointed in this ambition, he managed to marry his younger brother, Edmund of Lancaster, to Blanche. Though the French took possession of Navarre, whereby they alike threatened Gascony and Castile, they suffered Blanche to rule in Champagne in her daughter's name, and Edmund was associated with her in the government of that county. The tenure of a great French fief by the brother of the English king was a fresh security against the aggressions of the kings of France and Sicily. It probably facilitated the conclusion of the long negotiations as to the interpretation of the treaty of Paris, and the partition of the inheritance of Alfonse of Poitiers. Edward's position against France was further strengthened in 1279 by the death of his wife's mother, Joan of Castile, the widow of Ferdinand the Saint and the stepmother of Alfonso the Wise, whereupon he took possession of Ponthieu in Eleanor's name. Scarcely had he established himself at Abbeville, the capital of the Picard county, than the negotiations at Paris were so far ripened that Philip III. went to Amiens, where Edward joined him. On May 23 both kings agreed to accept the treaty of Amiens by which the more important of the outstanding difficulties between the two nations were amicably regulated. By it Philip recognised Eleanor as Countess of Ponthieu, and handed over a portion of the inheritance of Alfonse of Poitiers to Edward. Agen and the Agenais were ceded at once, and a commission was appointed to investigate Edward's claims over lower Quercy. In return for this Edward yielded up his illusory rights over the three bishoprics of Limoges, Périgueux, and Cahors. It was a real triumph for English diplomacy. No lasting peace could arise from acts which emphasised the essential incompatibility of French and English interests by enlarging the territory of the English kings in France. The undercurrent of hostility still continued; and the proposal of Pope Nicholas III. that Edward should act as mediator between Philip III. and Alfonso of Castile led to difficulties that deeply incensed Edward, and embroiled him once more both with France and Spain. Under Angevin influence, both Philip and Alfonso rejected Edward's mediation in favour of that of the Prince of Salerno, Charles of Anjou's eldest son. Disgust at this unfriendliness made Edward again support the plans of Margaret of Provence against the Angevins. In 1281 Margaret's intrigues formed a combination of feudal magnates called the League of Macon, with the object of prosecuting her claims over Provence by force of arms. Edward and his mother, Eleanor, his Savoyard kinsfolk, and Edmund of Lancaster all entered into the league. But it was hopeless for a disorderly crowd of lesser chieftains, with the nominal support of a distant prince like Edward, to conquer Provence in the teeth of the hostility of the strongest and the ablest princes of the age. The League of Macon came to nothing, like so many other ambitious combinations of a time in which men's capacity to form plans transcended their capacity to execute them. Margaret herself soon despaired of the way of arms and was bought off by a money compensation. The league mainly served to keep alive the troubles that still separated England and France. In 1284 Philip gained a new success in winning the hand of Joan of Champagne, Count Edmund's step-daughter, for his son, the future Philip the Fair. When Joan attained her majority, Edmund lost the custody of Champagne, which went to the King of France as the natural protector of his son and his son's bride. With his brother's withdrawal from Provins to Lancaster, Edward lost one of his means of influencing the course of French politics. A compensation for these failures was found in 1282 when the Sicilian vespers rang the knell of the Angevin power in Sicily. When the revolted islanders chose Peter, King of Aragon, as their sovereign, Charles, seeking to divert him from Sicily by attacking him at home, inspired his partisan, Pope Martin IV., to preach a crusade against Aragon. It was in vain that Edward strove to mediate between the two kings. The only response made to his efforts was a fantastic proposal that they should fight out their differences in a tournament at Bordeaux with him as umpire, but Edward refused to have anything to do with the pseudo-chivalrous venture. At last, in 1285, Philip III. lent himself to his uncle's purpose so far as to lead a papalist crusade over the Pyrenees. The movement was a failure. Philip lost his army and his life in Aragon, and his son and successor, Philip IV., at once withdrew from the undertaking. In the year of the crusade of Aragon, Charles of Anjou, Peter of Aragon, and Martin IV. died. With them the struggles, which had begun with the attack on Frederick II, reached their culminating point. Their successors continued the quarrel with diminished forces and less frantic zeal, and so gave Edward his best chance to pose as the arbiter of Europe. Though Edward's continental policy lay so near his heart that it can hardly be passed over, it was fuller of vain schemes than of great results. Yet it was not altogether fruitless, since twelve years of resolute and moderate action raised England, which under Henry III. was of no account in European affairs, to a position only second to that of France, and that under conditions more nearly approaching the modern conception of a political balance and a European state system than feudalism, imperialism, and papalism had hitherto rendered possible. In domestic policy, seven years of monotonous administration had in a way prepared for vigorous reforms. Edward's return to England in 1274 was quickly followed by the dismissal of Walter of Merton, the chancellor of the years of quiescence. He was succeeded by Robert Burnell, who, though foiled in his quest of Canterbury, obtained an adequate standing by his preferment to the bishopric of Bath and Wells. For the eighteen years of life which still remained to him, Bishop Burnell held the chancery and possessed the chief place in Edward's counsels. The whole of this period was marked by a constant legislative activity which ceased so soon after Burnell's death that it is tempting to assign at least as large a part of the law-making of the reign to the minister as to the sovereign. A consummate lawyer and diplomatist, Burnell served Edward faithfully. Nor was his fidelity impaired either by the laxity which debarred him from higher ecclesiastical preferment or by his ambitious endeavours to raise the house of Shropshire squires from which he sprang into a great territorial family. Edward gave him his absolute confidence and was blind even to his defects. The first general parliament of the reign to which the king summoned the commons was held at Westminster in the spring of 1275. Its work was the statute of Westminster the First, a comprehensive measure of many articles which covered almost the whole field of legislation, and is especially noteworthy for the care which its compilers took to uphold sound administration and put down abuses. Not less important was the provision of an adequate revenue for the debt-burdened king. The same parliament made Edward a permanent grant of a custom on wool, wool-fells, and leather, which remained henceforth a chief source of the regular income of the crown. The later imposition of further duties soon caused men to describe the customs of 1275 as the "Great and Ancient Custom". It was significant of the economic condition of England that the great custom was a tax on exports, not imports, and that, with the exception of leather, it was a tax on raw materials. Granted the more willingly since the main incidence of it was upon the foreign merchants, who bought up English wool for the looms of Flanders and Brabant, the custom proved a source of revenue which could easily be manipulated, increased, and assigned in advance to the Italian financiers, willing to lend money to a necessitous king. A new step in our financial history was attained when this tax on trade steps into the place so long held by the taxes on land, from which the Normans and Angevins had derived their enormous revenue. The statute of Westminster the First had a long series of fellows. Next year came the statute of Rageman, which supplemented an earlier inquest into abuses by instituting a special inquiry in cases of trespass. In 1277 the first Welsh war interrupted the current of legislation. The break was compensated for in 1278 by the passing of the important statute of Gloucester, the consummation of a policy which Edward had adopted as soon as he set foot on English soil. The troubles of Edward's youth had made clear to him the obstacles thrown in the path of orderly government by the great territorial franchises. He had been forced to modify his policy to gratify the lord of Glamorgan, and win over the house of Mortimer by the erection of a new franchise that was a palatinate in all but name. But such great "regalities" were, after all, exceptional. Much more irritating to an orderly mind were the innumerable petty immunities which made half the hundreds in England the appendages of baronial estates, and such common privileges as "return of writs," which prevented the sheriff's officers from executing his mandates on numerous manors where the lords claimed that the execution of writs must be entrusted to their bailiffs.[1] These widespread powers in private hands were the more annoying to the king since they were commonly exercised with no better warrant than long custom, and without direct grant from him. [1] See on "return of writs" and a host of similar immunities, Pollock and Maitland's _History of English Law_, i., 558-82. Bracton had already laid down the doctrine that no prescription can avail against the rights of the crown, and it was a commonplace with the lawyers of the age that nothing less than a clear grant by royal charter could justify such delegation of the sovereign's powers into private hands. Within a few months of his landing, Edward sent out commissioners to inquire into the baronial immunities. The returns of these inquests, which were carried out hundred by hundred, are embodied in the precious documents called the Hundred Rolls. The study of these reports inspired the procedure of the statute of Gloucester, by which royal officers were empowered to traverse the land demanding by what warrant the lords of franchises exercised their powers. The demand of the crown for documentary proof of royal delegation would have destroyed more than half the existing liberties. But aristocratic opinion deserted Edward when he strove to carry out so violent a revolution. The irritation of the whole baronage is well expressed in the story of how Earl Warenne, unsheathing a rusty sword, declared to the commissioners: "Here is my warrant. My ancestors won their lands with the sword. With my sword I will defend them against all usurpers." Nor was this mere boasting. The return of the king's officers tells us that Warenne would not say of whom, or by what services, he held his Yorkshire stronghold of Conisborough, and that his bailiffs refused them entrance into his liberties and would not suffer his tenants to answer or appear before them.[1] Edward found it prudent not to press his claims. He disturbed few men in their franchises, and was content to have collected the mass of evidence embodied in the _placita de quo warranto_, and thus to have stopped the possibility of any further growth of the franchises. A few years later he accepted the compromise that continuous possession since the coronation of Richard I. was a sufficient answer to a writ of _quo warranto_. In this lies the whole essence of Edward's policy in relation to feudalism, a policy very similar to that of St. Louis. Every man is to have his own, and the king is not to inquire too curiously what a man's own was. But no extension of any private right was to be tolerated. Thus feudalism as a principle of political jurisdiction gradually withered away, because it was no longer suffered to take fresh root. The later land legislation of Edward's reign pushed the idea still further. [1] _Kirkby's Quest for Yorkshire_, pp. 3, 227, 231, Surtees Soc. In 1278 it had been the turn of the barons to suffer. Next came the turn of the Church. Though Edward was a true son of the Church, he saw as clearly as William the Conqueror and Henry II. the essential incompatibility between the royal supremacy and the pretensions of the extreme ecclesiastics. The limits of Church and State, the growth of clerical wealth and immunities, and the relations of the world-power of the pope to the local authority of the king, were problems which no strong king could afford to neglect, and perhaps were incapable of solution on medieval lines. Edward saw that the most practical way of dealing with clerical claims was for him to stand in good personal relations to the chief dispensers of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. With a pope like Gregory X. it was easy for Edward to be on friendly terms; but it was more difficult to feel any cordiality for the dogmatic canonists or the furious Guelfic partisans who too often occupied the chair of St. Peter. Yet Edward was shrewd enough to see that it was worth while making sacrifices to keep on his side the power which, alike under Innocent III. and Clement IV., had given valuable assistance to his grandfather and father in their struggle against domestic enemies. Moreover the enormous growth of the system of papal provisions had given the papacy the preponderating authority in the selection of the bishops of the English Church. It was only by yielding to the popes, whenever it was possible, that Edward could secure the nomination of his own candidates to the chief ecclesiastical posts in his own realm. In the earlier years of his reign Edward was luckier in his relations to the popes than to his own archbishops. But he found that his power at Rome broke down just where he wanted to exercise it most. He was disgusted to find how little influence he had in the selection of the Archbishops of Canterbury. Gregory X. sent to Canterbury the Dominican Robert Kilwardby, the first mendicant to hold high place in the English Church. Kilwardby was translated in 1278 to the cardinal bishopric of Porto, a post of greater dignity but less emolument and power than the English archbishopric. A cardinal bishop was bound to reside at Rome, and the real motive for this doubtful promotion was the desire to remove Kilwardby from England and to send a more active man in his place. Edward's indiscreet devotion to Bishop Burnell led him again to press his friend's claims, but, though he persuaded the monks of Christ Church to elect him, Nicholas III. quashed the appointment, and selected the Franciscan friar, John Peckham, as archbishop. Peckham, a famous theologian and physicist, had been a distinguished professor at Paris, Oxford, and Rome. He was high-minded, honourable and zealous, a saint as well as a scholar, an enthusiast for Church reform and a vigorous upholder of the extremest hierarchical pretensions. Fussy, energetic, tactless, he was the true type of the academic ecclesiastic, and alike in his personal qualities and his wonderful grasp of detail, he may be compared to Archbishop Laud. Though received by Edward with a rare magnanimity, Friar John allowed no personal considerations of gratitude to interpose between him and his duty. Reaching England in June, 1279, he presided, within six weeks of his landing, at a provincial council at Reading. In this gathering canons were passed against pluralities which frightened every benefice hunter among the clerks of the royal household. Orders were also issued for the periodical denunciation of ecclesiastical penalties against all violators of the Great Charter in a fashion that suggested that the king was an habitual offender against the fundamental laws of his realm. Edward wrathfully laid the usurpations of the new primate before parliament, and forced Peckham to withdraw all the canons dealing with secular matters, and particularly those which concerned the Great Charter. The king set up the counter-claims of the State against the pretensions of the Church, and the estates passed the statute of Mortmain of 1279 as the layman's answer to the canons of Reading. Like most of Edward's laws the statute of Mortmain was based on earlier precedents. The wealth of the Church had long inspired statesmen with alarm, and a true follower of St. Francis like Peckham was specially convinced of the need of reducing the clergy to apostolic poverty. By the new law all grants of land to ecclesiastical corporations were expressly prohibited, under the penalty of the land being forfeited to its supreme lord. The statute was not a mere political weapon of the moment. It had a wider importance as a step in the development of Edward's anti-feudal policy, and may be regarded as a counterpart of the inquest into franchises, and as a means of protecting the State as well as of disciplining the Church. A corporation never died, and never paid reliefs or wardships. Its property never escheated for want of heirs, and, as scutages were passing out of fashion, ecclesiastics were less valuable to the king in times of war than lay lords. The recent exigencies of the Welsh war had emphasised the need of strengthening the military defences of the crown, and the new statute secured this by preventing the further devolution of lands into the dead hand of the Church. But all medieval laws were rather enunciations of an ideal than measures which practical statesmen aimed at carrying out in detail. The statute of Mortmain hardly stayed the creation of fresh monasteries and colleges, or the further endowment of old ones. All that was necessary for the pious founder was to obtain a royal dispensation from the operation of the statute. There was little need to fear that the new law would stand in the way of the power of the ecclesiastical estate. A more distinct challenge to the Church was provoked by a further aggression of Peckham in 1281. In that year the primate summoned a council at Lambeth, wherein he sought to withdraw from the cognisance of the civil courts all suits concerning patronage and the disposition of the personal effects of ecclesiastics. To extend the jurisdiction of the _forum ecclesiasticum_ was the surest way of exciting the hostility of the common lawyers and the king. Once more Edward annulled the proceedings of a council, and once more the submission of Peckham saved the land from a conflict which might have assumed the proportions of Becket's struggle against Henry II. Four years later Edward pressed his advantage still further by the royal ordinance of 1285, called _Circumspecte agatis_, which, though accepting the supremacy of the Church courts within their own sphere, narrowly defined the limits of their power in matters involving a temporal element. Again Peckham was fain to acquiesce. His policy had not only irritated the king, but alienated his fellow bishops. He visited his province with pertinacity and minuteness, and he was the less able to stand up against the king as he was engaged in violent quarrels with all his own suffragans. The leader of the bishops in resisting his claims was Thomas of Cantilupe. Restored to England by the liberal policy of Edward, Montfort's chancellor after Lewes had been raised to the see of Hereford, where his sanctity and devotion won him the universal love of his flock. Involved in costly lawsuits with the litigious primate, Thomas was forced to leave his diocese to plead his cause before the papal _curia_. He died in Italy in 1282, and his relics, carried back by his followers to his own cathedral, won the reputation of working miracles. A demand arose for his canonisation, and Edward before his death had secured the appointment of the papal commission, which, a few years later, added St. Thomas of Hereford to the list of saints.[1] Thus the chancellor of Montfort obtained the honour of sanctity through the action of the victor of Evesham. [1] The _processus canonisationis_ of Cantilupe, printed in the Bollandist _Acta Sanctorum_, Oct. 1, 539-705, illustrates many aspects of this period. The second Welsh war interrupted both the conflict between Edward and the archbishop, and the course of domestic legislation. Yet even in the midst of his campaigns Edward issued the statute of Acton Burnell of 1283, which provided a better way of recovering merchants' debts, and the statute of Rhuddlan of 1284 for the regulation of the king's exchequer. The king's full activity as a lawgiver was renewed after the settlement of his conquest by the statute of Wales of 1284, and the legislation of his early years culminated in the two great acts of 1285, the statute of Westminster the Second, and the statute of Winchester. That year, which also witnessed the passing of the _Circumspecte agatis_, stands out as the most fruitful in lawmaking in the whole of Edward's reign. The second statute of Westminster, passed in the spring parliament, partook of the comprehensive character of the first statute of that name. There were clauses by which, as the Canon of Oseney puts it, "Edward revived the ancient laws which had slumbered through the disturbance of the realm: some corrupted by abuse he restored to their proper form: some less evident and apparent he declared: some new ones, useful and honourable, he added". Among the more conspicuous innovations of the second statute of Westminster was the famous clause De _donis conditionalibus_, which forms a landmark in the law of real property. It facilitated the creation of entailed estates by providing that the rights of an heir of an estate, granted upon conditions, were not to be barred on account of the alienation of such an estate by its previous tenant. Thus arose those estates for life, which in later ages became a special feature of the English land system, and which, by restricting the control of the actual possessor of a property over his land, did much to perpetuate the worst features of medieval land-holding. It is a modern error to regard the legitimation of estates in tail as a triumph of reactionary feudalism over the will of Edward. Apart from the fact that there is not a tittle of contemporary evidence to justify such a view, it is manifest that the interest of the king was in this case exactly the same as that of each individual lord of a manor. The greater prospect of reversion to the donor, and the other features of the system of entails, which commended them to the petty baron, were still more attractive to the king, the greatest proprietor as well as the ultimate landlord of all the realm. Other articles of the Westminster statute were only less important than the clause _De donis_, notable among them being the institution of justices of _nisi prius_, appointed to travel through the shires three times a year to hear civil causes. This was part of the simplification and concentration of judicial machinery, whereby Edward made tolerable the circuit system which under Henry III. had been a prolific source of grievances. While in the statute of Westminster Edward prepared for the future, the companion statute of Winchester, the work of the autumn parliament, revived the jurisdiction of the local courts; reformed the ancient system of watch and ward, and brought the ancient system of popular courts into harmony with the jurisdiction emanating from the crown, which had gone so far towards superseding it. This measure marks the culmination of Edward's activity as a lawgiver. During the five next years there were no more important statutes. CHAPTER VIII. THE CONQUEST OF NORTH WALES. The treaty of Shrewsbury of 1267 had not brought enduring peace to Wales and the march. The pacification was in essentials a simple recognition of accomplished facts, but, so far as it involved promises of restitution and future good behaviour, its provisions were barely carried out, even in the scanty measure in which any medieval treaty was executed. Moreover, the treaty by no means covered the whole ground of variance between the English and the Welsh. like the treaty of Paris of 1259, it was as much the starting-point of new difficulties as the solution of old ones. Many troublesome questions of detail had been postponed for later settlement, and no serious effort was made to grapple with them. Even during the life of the old king, there had been war in the south between the Earl of Gloucester and Llewelyn. However, the Welsh prince paid, with fair regularity, the instalments of the indemnity to which he had been bound, and there was no disposition on the part of the English authorities to question the basis of the settlement. Even the marchers maintained an unwonted tranquillity. They had lost so much during the recent war that they had no great desire to take up arms again. Llewelyn himself was the chief obstacle to peace. The brilliant success of his arms and diplomacy seems somewhat to have turned his brain. Visions of a wider authority constantly floated before him. His bards prophesied the expulsion of the Saxon, and he had done such great deeds in the first twenty years of his reign, that a man of more practical temperament might have been forgiven for indulging in dreams of future success. Three obstacles stood in the way of the development of his power. These were his vassalage to the English crown, the hostility of the marcher barons, and the impatience with which the minor Welsh chieftains submitted to his authority. For five years he impatiently endured these restraints. He then took advantage of the absence of the new king to rid himself of them. Five days after the accession of Edward I., the lieutenants of the king received the last payment of the indemnity which Llewelyn condescended to make. Their demand that the Welsh prince should take an oath of fealty to his new sovereign was answered by evasive delays. Arrears of the indemnity accumulated, and the state of the march became more disturbed. The regents showed moderation, though one of them, Roger Mortimer, had himself been the greatest sufferer from the treaty of Shrewsbury. In the south, Humphrey Bohun, grandson of the old Earl of Hereford and earl himself in 1275 by his grandfather's death, was engaged in private war with Llewelyn. In direct defiance of the terms of 1267, Humphrey strove to maintain himself in the march of Brecon, which had been definitely ceded to Llewelyn. It was to the credit of the regents that they refused to countenance this glaring violation of the treaty. Meanwhile Llewelyn busied himself with erecting a new stronghold on the upper Severn, which was a menace alike to the royal castle of Montgomery and to his own vassal, Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, the tributary lord of Powys. Yet the regents were content to remonstrate, and to urge on all parties the need of strict adherence to the terms of the treaty. The Earl of Warwick was appointed in the spring of 1274 as head of a commission, empowered to do justice on all transgressions of the peace, and Llewelyn was ordered to meet him at Montgomery Ford. But Llewelyn was busy at home, where his brother David had joined hands with Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn in a plot against him. Llewelyn easily crushed the conspiracy; David, after a feeble attempt to maintain himself in his own patrimony, took flight to England, and Griffith of Powys, driven from his dominions, was also obliged to seek the protection of Edward. Henceforth Llewelyn ruled directly over Powys as well as Gwynedd. His success encouraged him to persevere in defying his overlord. Rash as he was, Llewelyn recognised that he was not strong enough to stand up single-handed against England. Former experience, however, suggested that it was an easy matter to make a party with the barons against the crown. But times had changed since the Great Charter and the Barons' War; and a policy, which could obtain concessions from John or Henry III., was powerless against a king who commanded the allegiance of all his subjects. Yet there was enough friction between the new king and his feudatories to make the attempt seem feasible, and Llewelyn revived the Montfort tradition, by claiming the hand of Eleanor, Earl Simon's daughter, which had been promised to him since 1265. The alarm created by this shows that Edward perceived the danger that it might involve. But his policy of conciliation had now restored to their estates the last of the "disinherited," and, since the murder of Henry of Almaine, the name of Montfort was no longer one to conjure with. The exiled sons of Earl Simon welcomed Llewelyn's advances, and, in 1275, Eleanor was despatched from France to Wales under the escort of her clerical brother Amaury. On their way, Eleanor and Amaury were captured by English sailors. Edward detained the lady at the queen's court, and gave some scandal to the stricter clergy by shutting up Amaury in Corfe castle. He had foiled the Welsh prince's game, but he had given him a new grievance. During these transactions negotiations had been proceeding between the English court and Llewelyn. In November, 1274, Edward went to Shrewsbury in the hope of receiving the prince, but he was delayed by illness, and Llewelyn made this an excuse for non-appearance. Next year the king journeyed to Chester with the same object, but his mission was equally fruitless. Summons after summons was despatched to the recalcitrant vassal. Llewelyn heeded them no more than requests to pay up the arrears which he owed the English crown. After two years of hesitation Edward lost all patience. Irritated to the quick by Llewelyn's offer to perform homage in a border town on conditions altogether impossible of acceptance, the king summoned a council of magnates for November 12, 1276, and laid the whole case before them. It was agreed that the king should go against Llewelyn as a rebel and disturber of the peace; and the feudal levies were summoned to meet at Worcester on June 24, 1277. As a preliminary to the great effort, Warwick was sent to Chester, Roger Mortimer to Montgomery, and Payne of Chaworth to Carmarthen. All the available marcher forces and every trooper of the royal household were despatched to enable them to operate during the winter and spring. Their movements were brilliantly successful. On the reappearance of its ancient lord, the middle march threw off the yoke of Llewelyn and went back to its obedience to Mortimer. Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn was restored to upper Powys; the sons of Griffith of Bromfield cast off their allegiance to Llewelyn and were received back as direct vassals of the king. A Tony was once more ruling in Elvael, a Gifford in Llandovery, and a Bohun in Brecon. Rhys ap Meredith yielded up Dynevor, and was content to be recognised as lord of the humbler stronghold of Drysllwyn. Chaworth's bands conquered all Cardiganshire. Thus the wider "principality" of Llewelyn was shattered at the first assault, and when the decisive moment came, Llewelyn was thrown back upon his hereditary clansmen of Gwynedd. Of all the acquisitions of the treaty of Shrewsbury, the four cantreds alone still held for their prince.[1] [1] On the whole subject of this chapter Mr. J.E. Morris's _Welsh Wars of Edward I._ throws a flood of new light, especially on the military history, the organisation of the Edwardian army, and the political condition of the march. When the baronial levies mustered at Worcester, the work was already half accomplished. Of the thousand lances that there assembled, small forces were detached to help Mortimer in mid Wales and to reinforce the marcher army in west Wales, which was now commanded by Edmund of Lancaster, the king's brother. The mass of the troops followed Edward to Chester, whence the main attack was to be made. Edward's plan of operations was simplicity itself. He knew that the Welsh desired no pitched battle, and he was indisposed to lose his soldiers in unnecessary conflict. Swarms of workmen cleared a wide road through the dense forests of the four cantreds. The route chosen was as near as possible to the coast, where a strong fleet, mainly from the Cinque Ports, kept up communications with the land forces. The advance was cautious and slow, with long halts at Flint and at Rhuddlan, where hastily erected forts secured the king's base and safe-guarded a possible retreat. By the end of August the king was at Deganwy, and the four cantreds were conquered. During all this time fresh forces were hurried up. Some 15,000 infantry, largely drawn from southern and central Wales, swelled the king's host. Llewelyn was closely shut up in the Snowdon country. His position was safe enough from a direct assault, and his only fear was want of provisions. He trusted, however, that supplies would come in from Anglesea, whose rich cornfields were yellowing for the harvest. But the fleet of the Cinque Ports cut off communications between Anglesea and the mainland, and ferried over a strong detachment of Edward's troops, which occupied the island. English harvest-men gathered for Edward the crops of Welsh corn, and left Llewelyn to face the beginnings of a mountain-winter without the means of feeding his followers. By September the real fight was over. Edward withdrew to Rhuddlan and dismissed the greater part of his followers. Enough were left to block the approaches to Snowdon, and Llewelyn, seeing no gain in further delay, made his submission on November 9. The treaty of Aberconway, which Edward dictated, reduced Llewelyn to the position of a petty North Welsh chieftain, which he had held thirty years before. He gave up the homage of the greater Welsh magnates, and resigned all his former conquests. The four cantreds thus passed away from his power, and even Anglesea was only allowed to him for life and subject to a yearly tribute. He was compelled to do homage, and ordered to pay a crushing indemnity, twice as much as the expenses of the war. But Edward was in a generous mood. After Llewelyn's personal submission at Rhuddlan, the king remitted the indemnity and the rent for Anglesea. It was a boon to Llewelyn that the treacherous David received his reward not' in Gwynedd itself but in Duffryn Clwyd and Rhuvoniog, two of the four cantreds of the Perveddwlad. Llewelyn's humiliation was completed by his enforced attendance at Edward's Christmas court at Westminster. Next year, however, he received a further sign of royal favour. He was allowed to marry Eleanor Montfort, and Edward himself was present at their wedding. But on the morning of the ceremony, Llewelyn was forced to make a promise not to entertain the king's fugitives and outlaws. The treaty of Aberconway left Edward free to revive in the rest of Wales the policy which, when originally begun in 1254,[1] had, like a rising flood, floated Llewelyn into his wider principality. The lords marchers resumed their ancient limits. Princes like Griffith of Powys and Rhys of Drysllwyn sank into a position which is indistinguishable from that of their Anglo-Norman neighbours. David, in the vale of Clwyd had no better prospects. The heirs of lower Powys were put under the guardianship of Roger Mortimer's younger son, another Roger, who, on the death of his wards by drowning, received possession of their lands, and henceforth, as Roger Mortimer of Chirk, became a new marcher baron. Meanwhile Edward busied himself with schemes for establishing settled government in the conquered territories. To a man of his training and temperament, this meant the establishment of English law and administration. He could see no merits in the archaic Welsh customs which regarded all crimes as capable of atonement by a money payment, treated a wrecked ship as the lawful perquisite of the local proprietor, and hardly distinguished legitimate from illegitimate children in determining the descent of property. He convinced himself that the land laws of Wales were already those of Anglo-Norman feudalism. He subjected the cantreds of Rhos and Englefield to the Cheshire county court, and breathed a new life into the decayed shire organisation of Cardiganshire and Carmarthenshire. Flint and Rhuddlan dominated the two former, Aberystwyth and Carmarthen the latter. Round the king's castles grew up petty boroughs of English traders, who would, it was believed, teach the Welsh to love commerce and peaceful ways. [1] See page 76. For five years all seemed to go well, though underneath the apparent calm a storm was gradually gathering. The Welsh of the ceded districts bitterly resented the imposition of a strange yoke and complained that the king had broken his promise to respect their laws. "Are the Welsh worse than Jews?" was their cry, "and yet the king allows the Jews to follow their own laws in England." But Edward coldly answered that, though it would be a breach of his coronation oath to maintain customs of Howel the Good, which were contrary to the Decalogue, he was willing to listen to specific complaints. It was, however, a very difficult matter to persuade Edward's bailiffs and agents to carry out his commands, and many acts of oppression were wrought for which there was no redress. Nobles like David and Rhys found their franchises threatened by the encroachments of the neighbouring shire-courts. Lesser Welshmen were liable to be robbed and insulted by the workmen who were building Edward's castles, or by the soldiers who were garrisoning them. At last even the Welsh who had helped Edward to put down Llewelyn saw that they had been preparing their own ruin, and turned to their former enemy for the redress refused them at Westminster. David himself made common cause with his brother, and the spirit of resistance spread among the half-hearted Cymry of the south. Edward's oppression did more than Llewelyn's triumphs to weld together the Welsh clans into a single people. A rising was planned in the strictest secrecy; and on the eve of Palm Sunday, March 21, 1282, David swooped down on Hawarden, a weak castle in private hands, and captured it. Llewelyn promptly crossed the Conway and turned his arms against the royal strongholds of Flint and Rhuddlan, which withstood him, though he devastated the countryside in every direction. Meanwhile David hurried south and found the local lords in Cardigan and the vale of Towy already in arms. With their help he captured the castles of the upper Towy, but lower down the river Rhys remained staunch to the king, whereupon David hurried over the hills to Cardiganshire and took Aberystwyth. North and south were in full revolt. Edward, taken unawares, prepared to reassert his authority. Certain faithful barons were "affectionately requested" to serve the king for pay, and a fairly large army was gathered together, though the scattered character of the rebellion necessitated its acting in small bands. Meanwhile the military tenants and the Cinque Ports were summoned to join in an attack on Llewelyn on the lines of the campaign of 1277. Edward's task was more difficult than on the previous occasion. Though Rhuddlan, not Chester as in 1277, had become his starting-point against Gwynedd, he dared not advance so long as David threatened his left flank from Denbigh, and the rising in the south was far more formidable than that of five years before. A considerable part of the levies had to be despatched to the help of Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, who was charged with the reconquest of the vale of Towy. On June 17 as the earl's soldiers were returning, laden with plunder, to their headquarters at Dynevor, they were suddenly attacked by the Welsh at Llandilo, and were driven back on their base. Gloucester hastily retreated to Carmarthen. He was superseded by William of Valence, whose activity against the Welsh had been quickened by the loss of his son at Llandilo. Llewelyn then came south, and pressed the English so hard that for several weeks nothing of moment was accomplished. The advance against Gwynedd was delayed until the late summer. Edward still tarried at Rhuddlan, with a host constantly varying in numbers, for his soldiers had long overpassed the period of feudal service. Every effort was made to bring fresh troops to the field, and Luke de Tany, seneschal of Gascony, came upon the scene with a small levy of the chivalry of Aquitaine. To Tany was assigned the task of conquering Anglesey, but it was not until September that he was able to occupy the island. In the same month a strenuous effort was made to dislodge the hostile Welsh in the vale of Clwyd; the Earl of Lincoln at last took Denbigh from David; Reginald Grey, justice of Chester, captured Ruthin, higher up the valley, and Earl Warenne seized Bromfield and Yale. Each noble fought for his own hand, and Edward was forced to reward their services by immediately granting to them their conquests, and thus created a new marcher interest which, later on, stood in the way of an effective settlement. But things were getting desperate, and it was well for Edward that the security of his left flank at last enabled him to advance to the Conway. Thereupon Llewelyn returned to Snowdon, where he was joined by the homeless David. Meanwhile Tany, then master of Anglesey, opened up communications with the coast of Arvon by a bridge of boats over the Menai Straits. Winter was already at hand when Llewelyn and his brother were at last shut up amidst the fastnesses of Snowdon. Late in October Archbishop Peckham appeared on the scene. He had excommunicated Llewelyn at the beginning of the war, but was still anxious to negotiate a peace. Edward did his best to put him off, but Peckham's importunity extorted from him a short truce, during which the primate visited Snowdon, taking with him an offer of an ample estate in England if the prince would surrender his patrimony. Llewelyn furnished Peckham with long catalogues of grievances. He was quite willing to gain time by discussing his wrongs. Edward's army shared his irritation at Peckham's interference, and, while the archbishop was still in Snowdon, a breach of the truce destroyed any hopes of peace. On November 6 Tany led his troops over the bridge of boats at low water and marched inland. But his operations were ill-planned, and the Welsh came down from the hills and easily put him to flight. Meanwhile the tide had risen and the flood cut off access to the bridge over the Menai. In their panic the soldiers rushed into the water rather than face the enemy. Many leading men were drowned, including Tany himself, the author of the treachery. Flushed with this success Llewelyn rejected Peckham's terms. In great disgust the archbishop went back to England, bitterly denouncing the Welsh. But defeat only strengthened the iron resolution of Edward. He issued fresh summonses for men and money. Contrary to all precedent, he determined to continue the campaign through the winter. Llewelyn was probably ignorant of the perilous plight into which the king had fallen. With the approach of bad weather he became afraid that he would be starved out in Snowdon. Any risk was better than being caught like a rat in a trap, and, fearing lest a cordon should be drawn round the mountains, he made his way southwards, leaving David in command. His enemy, Roger Mortimer, was just dead, and Mortimer's eldest son Edmund, a youth brought up for the clerical profession, was not likely to hold the middle marches with the same strong grasp as his father. Thither accordingly Llewelyn made his way, hoping that on his approach the tribesmen of the upper Wye, over whom he had ruled so long, would abandon their English lord for their Cymric chieftain. A force gathered round him, and he occupied a strong position on a hill overlooking the river Yrvon, which flows into the right bank of the Wye, just above Builth. The right bank of the Yrvon was held by the English of Builth. But the only way over the stream was by Orewyn bridge, which was held by a detachment of the Welsh. Their position seemed so secure that, on December 11, Llewelyn left his troops to confer with some of the local chieftains. The English were, however, shown a ford over the river; a band crossed in safety, and, taking the defenders of Orewyn bridge in the rear, opened up the passage over it to their comrades. The English ascended the hill, their mail-clad squadrons interlaced with archers, in order that the Welsh infantry might be assailed by missiles before they were exposed to the shock of a cavalry charge. In the absence of their leader, the Welsh were a helpless mass of sheep, and were easily put to flight. Meanwhile Llewelyn, hearing the din of battle, hurried back to direct his followers. On the way he was slain by Stephen of Frankton, a Shropshire veteran of the Barons' War, who fought under the banner of Roger l'Estrange. The discovery of important papers on the body first told the conquerors the rank of their victim. Thus perished the able and strenuous chief, who had struggled so long to win for himself in Wales a position similar to that occupied by the King of Scots in the north. His death did not end, but it much simplified, the struggle. The south and midland districts were entirely subdued, and the interest of the war again shifted to the mountains of Snowdon, where David strove to maintain himself as Prince of Wales. His best chance lay in the exhaustion of his enemy, but Edward stuck grimly to his task. His coffers were exhausted, and his army for the most part went home. Yet Edward tarried at Rhuddlan for over six months, dividing his energy between watching the Welsh and replenishing his treasure and troops. His treasurer, John Kirkby, wandered from shire to shire soliciting voluntary contributions. Then in January, 1283, an anomalous parliament was summoned, consisting mainly of ecclesiastics, knights of the shire, and burgesses, and meeting in two divisions, at York and at Northampton, according as the members came from the northern or southern ecclesiastical provinces. The grant of a thirtieth so little satisfied the king that he laid violent hands on the crusading-tenth, which was deposited in the Temple. Meanwhile the chivalry of Gascony and Ponthieu were tempted by high wages to supply the void left by the retirement of the English. Early in 1283 a gallant force from beyond sea, among which figured the Counts of Armagnac and Bigorre, reached Rhuddlan. After their arrival the king took the offensive, crossed the Conway and transferred his headquarters to the Cistercian abbey of Aberconway. Fearful once more of being enclosed in the mountains, David sought a new hiding-place among the heights of Cader Idris. He shifted his quarters to the castle of Bere, hidden away in a remote valley sloping down from the mountain to the sea. The unwearied Edward once more issued summonses for a fresh campaign. David was at the extremity of his resources. Before the new arrivals enabled Edward to move, William of Valence marched up from the south, and in April forced Bere to surrender. David fled before the siege began; but he was a fugitive without an army, and the campaign was reduced to a weary tracking out of the last little bands that still scorned to surrender. In June David was betrayed by men of his own tongue, and Edward summoned for Michaelmas at Shrewsbury a parliament whose chief business was the trial of David. On October 3 the last Cymric Prince of Wales suffered the ignominious doom of a traitor, a murderer, and a blasphemer. The magnates then adjourned to the chancellor's neighbouring seat of Acton Burnell, where the rejoicings incident to the king's visit to his friend's new mansion were combined with passing the statute of Merchants. Edward's love of thoroughness made him linger in Wales to settle the government of the newly won lands. His first care was to hold Snowdon with the ring of fortresses which, in their ruin, still bear abiding witness to the solidity of the conqueror's work. Round each castle arose a new town, created as artificially as were the _bastides_ of Aquitaine, within whose walls English traders and settlers were tempted by high privileges to take up their abodes, and whose strictly military character was emphasised by the general provision that the constable of the castle was to be _ex officio_ the mayor of the municipality. Chief among these was Aberconway, whose strategic importance Edward understood so fully that he forced the Cistercian monks to take up new quarters at Maenan, higher up the valley, in order that there might be room for the castle and town which were henceforth to guard the entrance to Snowdon. Equally important was the future capital of Gwynedd, Carnarvon, where on April 25, 1284, a son was born to Edward and Eleanor, who seventeen years later was to become the first English Prince of Wales. Elsewhere fortresses of Welsh origin were rebuilt and enlarged to complete the stone circuit round the mountains. Such were Criccieth, the key of Lleyn; Dolwyddelen, which dominated the upper Conway; and Harlech and Bere, the two strongholds that curbed the mountaineers of Merioneth. In the south the same policy was carried out. Alike in Gwynedd and in the vale of Towy, both in his castle building and in his town foundations, Edward was simply carrying on the traditions of earlier ages, and applying to his new lands those principles of government which, since the Norman Conquest, had become the tradition of the marcher lords. Even in his architectural schemes there was nothing novel in Edward's policy. Gilbert of Gloucester at Caerphilly, and Payne of Chaworth at Kidwelly, had already worked out the pattern of "concentric" defences that were to find their fullest expression in the new castles of the principality. In each of these strongholds an adequate garrison of highly trained and well-paid troops kept the Welsh in check. The civil government of the Edwardian conquests was provided for by the statute of Wales, issued on Mid-Lent Sunday, 1284, at Rhuddlan, Edward's usual headquarters. It declared that the land of Wales, heretofore subject to the crown in feudal right, was entirely transferred to the king's dominion. To the whole of the annexed districts the English system of shire government was extended, though such local customs as appealed to Edward's sense of justice were suffered to be continued. Gwynedd and its appurtenances were divided into the three shires of Anglesey, Carnarvon, and Merioneth, and were collectively put under the justice of Snowdon, whose seat was to be at Carnarvon, where courts of chancery and exchequer for north Wales were set up. The shires of Cardigan and Carmarthen were re-organised so as to include the southern districts which had been subject to Llewelyn, or to the Welsh lords who had fallen with him. These were put under the justice of west Wales, whose chancery and exchequer were established at Carmarthen. It is significant that Edward prepared the way for making these districts into shires by persuading his brother Edmund, to whom they had been granted, to abandon his claims over them in return for ample compensation elsewhere. Without this step the new shires would only have been palatinates of the Glamorgan or Pembroke type, and the creation of such franchises was directly contrary to Edward's policy. It was different in the vale of Clwyd, where it would have been natural for Edward to have extended the shire system to the four cantreds. Military exigences had, however, already erected most of these lands into new marcher lordships, and Edward was perforce content with the union of some fragments of Rhos to the shire of Carnarvon, and with joining together Englefield and some adjoining districts in the new county of Flint. This arrangement secured the strongholds of Flint and Rhuddlan for the king. But the district was too small to make it worth while to set up a separate organisation for it, and Flintshire was put under the justice and courts of Chester, so that it became a dependency of the neighbouring palatinate.[1] [1] For the shires of Walessee my paper on _The Welsh Shires_ in _Y Cymmrodor_, ix. (1888), 201-26. The lordships of the march were not directly influenced by this legislation. They continued to hold their position as franchises until the reign of Henry VIII., and under Edward III. were declared by statute to be no part of the principality but directly subject to the English crown. Yet the removal of the pressure of a native principality profoundly affected these districts. The policy of definition made its mark even here. The liberties of each marcher were defined and circumscribed, and, while scrupulously respected, were incapable of further extension. The vague jurisdictions of the sheriffs of the border shires were cleared up, and if this process involved some limitation of the royal authority in districts like Clun and Oswestry, which virtually ceased to be parts of Shropshire, there was a compensating advantage in the increased clearness with which the border line was drawn and the royal authority consolidated. Gradually the marcher lordships passed by lapse into the royal hands, and even from the beginning there were regions, such as Montgomery and Builth, which knew no lord but the king. All this was, however, an indirect result of the Edwardian conquest. Strictly speaking it was no conquest of all Wales but merely of the principality, the ancient dominions of Llewelyn, to which most of the crown lands in Wales were joined. Ecclesiastical settlement followed the political reorganisation. Peckham was as zealous as Edward in compelling the conquered to follow the law-abiding traditions of the king's ancient inheritance. He laboured strenuously for the rebuilding of churches, the preservation and extension of ecclesiastical property, the education of the clergy, and the extirpation of clerical matrimony and simony. Despite his unsympathetic attitude, he did good work for the Welsh Church by his manful resistance to all attempts of Edward and his subordinates to encroach upon her liberties. He quaintly thought it would promote the civilisation of Wales if the people were forced to "learn civility" by living in towns and sending their children to school in England. His assiduous visitation of the Welsh dioceses in 1284 did something to kindle zeal, and win the Welsh clergy from the idleness wherein, he believed, lay the root of all their shortcomings. In the autumn of 1284 Edward went on an extended progress in Wales. He passed through the four cantreds into Gwynedd, and thence worked his way southwards through Cardigan and Carmarthen, ending his tour by visits to the marcher lords of the south. He crossed over from Glamorgan, where he had been entertained by Gilbert of Clare, to Bristol, where he held his Christmas court. Wales was to see no more of its new ruler for seven years. During that time the principality gave Edward little trouble, though the marchers, as will be seen, were a constant anxiety to him. In 1287, while Edward was in Gascony, the regent, Edmund of Cornwall, was called upon to deal with a revolt of Rhys, son of Meredith, the loyalist lord of the vale of Towy, who resented the authority of the justice of Carmarthen over his patrimony. His grievances were those of a marcher rather than those of a Welshman. Yet his rising in 1287 was formidable enough to require the raising of a great army for its suppression. The Welsh chieftain could not long hold out against the odds brought against him, and the confiscation of his lands swelled the district directly depending on the sheriff of Carmarthen. The support of the countryside enabled Rhys to evade his pursuers for nearly three years. At last he was captured, and with the execution of the last of the lords of Dynevor, the triumph of Edward became complete. CHAPTER IX. THE SICILIAN AND THE SCOTTISH ARBITRATIONS. Edward I. had now attained the height of his fame. He had conquered Llewelyn; he had reformed the administration; he had put himself as a lawmaker in the same rank as St. Louis or Frederick II.; and he had restored England to a leading position in the councils of Europe. Moreover, he had won a character for justice and fairness which did him even greater service, since the several deaths of prominent sovereigns during 1285 left him almost alone of his generation among princes of a lesser stature. Of the chief rulers of Europe in the early years of Edward's reign, Rudolf of Hapsburg alone survived; and the King of the Romans had little weight outside Germany many. Edward had outlived his brother-in-law Alfonso of Castile, his cousin Philip the Bold, his uncle Charles of Anjou, and Peter of Aragon. But the conflicts, in which these kings had been engaged, were continued by their successors. Above all, the contest for Sicily still raged. The successors of Martin IV., though deprived of the active support of France, would not abandon the claims of the captive Charles of Salerno; and James of Aragon, Peter's second son, maintained himself in Sicily, despite papal censures and despite the virtual desertion of his cause by his elder brother, Alfonso III., the new king of Aragon. Each side was at a standstill, though each side struggled on. The personal hatreds, which made it impossible to reconcile the older generation, were dying out, and the chief obstacle in the way of a settlement was the stubbornness of the papacy. If any one could reconcile the quarrel, it was the King of England; and to him Charles' sons and the nobles of his dominions appealed to procure his release. Edward was anxious to proffer his services as a peacemaker, dream of a Europe, united for the liberation of the holy places, had not been expelled from his mind by his schemes for the advancement of his kingdom. If he could inspire his neighbour kings with something of his spirit, the crusade might still be possible. Other matters also called Edward's attention to the continent. He had to do homage to the new French king; he had to press for the execution of the treaty of Amiens, and his presence was again necessary in Gascony. His realm was in such profound peace that he could safely leave it. Accordingly in May, 1286, he took ship for France. With him went his wife Eleanor of Castile, his chancellor Bishop Burnell, and a large number of his nobles. He entrusted the regency to his cousin, Edmund, Earl of Cornwall, the son and successor of Earl Richard; and England saw him no more until August, 1289. Edward first made his way to Amiens, where he met the new King of France, Philip the Fair. The two kings went together to Paris, where Edward spent two months. There he performed homage for Gascony, and made a new agreement as to the execution of the treaty of Amiens, by which he renounced his claims over Quercy for a money payment, and was put in possession of Saintonge, south of the Charente. The settlement was the easier as for the moment neither king had his supreme interest in Gascony. Edward's real business was to make peace between Anjou and Aragon, and Philip IV. showed every desire to help him. Before Edward left Paris, he had negotiated a truce between the Kings of France and Aragon. Soon afterwards he went to Bordeaux. He made Gascony his headquarters for three years, and strove with all his might to convert the truce into a peace. Grave obstacles arose, chief among which was the determination of the papacy to make no terms with the King of Aragon so long as his brother still reigned over Sicily. Honorius IV., in approving Edward's preliminary action, and exhorting him to obtain the liberation of the Prince of Salerno, carefully guarded himself against recognising the schismatic Aragonese. Edward himself was no partisan of either side. He was heartily anxious for peace and desirous to free his kinsman from the rigours of his long imprisonment. His wish for a close alliance between England and Aragon was unacceptable to the partisanship both of Honorius IV. and his successor Nicholas IV. Papal coldness, however, did not turn Edward from his course. In the summer of 1287 he met Alfonso at Oloron in Béarn, where a treaty was drawn up by which the Aragonese king agreed to release Charles of Salerno on condition that he would either, within three years, procure from the pope the recognition of James in Sicily, or return to captivity and forfeit Provence. Besides this, an alliance between England and Aragon was to be cemented by the marriage of one of Edward's daughters to Alfonso. Delighted with the success of his undertaking, Edward, on his return to Bordeaux, again took the cross and prepared to embark on the crusade. Nicholas IV. interposed between Edward and his vows by denouncing the treaty of Oloron.[1] Though well-meaning, he was not strong enough to shake himself free from partisan traditions, and though honestly anxious to bring about a crusade, he could not see that he made the holy war impossible by interposing obstacles in the way of the one prince who seriously intended to take the cross. While denouncing Edward's treaty, Nicholas encouraged his crusading zeal by granting him a new ecclesiastical tenth for six years, a tax made memorable by the fact that it occasioned the stringent valuation of benefices, called the taxation of Pope Nicholas, which was the standard clerical rate-book until the reign of Henry VIII. Despite the pope, Edward still persevered in his mediation, and in October, 1288, a new treaty for Charles' liberation was signed at Canfranc, in Aragon, which only varied in details from the agreement of 1287. Charles was released, but he straightway made his way to Rome, where Nicholas absolved him from his oath and crowned him King of Sicily. Edward was bitterly disappointed. He tarried in the south until July, 1289, usefully employed in promoting the prosperity of his duchy, crushing conspiracies, furthering the commerce of Bordeaux, and founding new _bastides_. At last tidings of disorder at home called him back to his kingdom before the purpose of his continental sojourn had been accomplished. But he still pressed on his thankless task, and in 1291 peace was made at Tarascon, between Aragon and the Roman see, on the hard condition of Alfonso abandoning his brother's cause. On Alfonso's death soon afterwards the war was renewed, for James then united the Sicilian and Aragonese thrones and would not yield up either. It was not until 1295 that Boniface VIII., a stronger pope than Nicholas, ended the struggle on terms which left the stubborn Aragonese masters of Sicily. [1] For his policy, see O. Schiff, _Studien zur Geschichte P. Nikolaus IV._ (1897). Things had not gone well in England during Edward's absence. Edmund of Cornwall had shown vigour in putting down the revolt of Rhys, but he was not strong enough to control either the greater barons or the officers of the crown. Grave troubles were already brewing in Scotland. A fierce quarrel between the Earls of Gloucester and Hereford broke out with regard to the boundaries of Glamorgan and Brecon, and the private war between the two marchers proved more formidable to the peace of the realm than the revolt of the Welsh prince. Even more disastrous to the country was the scandalous conduct of the judges and royal officials, who profited by the king's absence to pile up fortunes at the expense of his subjects. The highest judges of the land forged charters, condoned homicides, sold judgments, and practised extortion and violence. A great cry arose for the king's return. In the Candlemas parliament of 1289 Earl Gilbert of Gloucester met a request for a general aid by urging that nothing should be granted until Englishmen once more saw the king's face. Alarmed at this threat, Edward returned, and landed at Dover on August 12, 1289. The whole situation was changed by the king's arrival. Edward met the innumerable complaints against his subordinates by dismissing nearly all the judges from office, and appointing a special commission to investigate the charges brought against royal officials of every rank. Thomas Weyland, chief justice of the common pleas, anticipated inquiry by taking sanctuary with the Franciscan friars of Bury St. Edmunds. A knight and a married man, he had taken subdeacon's orders in early life and sought to little purpose to be protected by his clergy. His refuge was watched by the local sheriffs; finally, he was starved into surrender, and suffered to abjure the realm.[1] He fled to France, whence he never returned. For some years the commission investigated the offences of the ministers of the crown. Though much that was irregular was proved against them, many charges broke down under inquiry, and, as time went on, the official class saw that their interest lay in condoning rather than in punishing scandals. Some of the worst offenders, such as the greedy and corrupt Adam of Stratton, were never restored to office;[2] but Hengham, the chief justice of the King's Bench, was soon reinstated. There were not enough good lawyers in England to make it prudent for Edward to dispense with the services of such a man. A rigorous maintenance of a high standard of official morality meant getting rid of nearly all the king's ministers, and any successors would have been inferior in experience and not superior in honesty. Edward had to work with such material as he had, and on the whole he made the best of it. Scandalous as were the proceedings of his agents, their iniquities are but trifles as compared with the offences of the counsellors of Philip the Fair. [1] For the _abjuratio regni_ see A. Réville in the _Revue Historique_, 1. (1892), 1-42. [2] For Adam of Stratton see Hall, _Red Book of the Exchequer_, iii., cccxv.-cccxxxi. Extracts from the Assize rolls recording the proceedings of the special commission will soon be published by the Royal Historical Society. Fear of Edward drove nobles into obedience as well as ministers into honesty. Gloucester desisted unwillingly from his attacks on Brecon, and was constrained to divorce his wife and marry the king's daughter, Joan of Acre. In becoming the king's son-in-law, he was forced to surrender his estates to the crown, receiving them back entailed on the heirs of the marriage or, in their default, on the heirs of Joan. Thus the system of entails made possible by the statute _De donis_ was used by Edward to strengthen his hold over the most powerful of his feudatories and increase the prospect of his estates escheating to the crown. Considered in this light, Gilbert's marriage with the king's daughter seems less a reward of loyalty than a punishment for lawlessness. In the same year as this marriage, Edward passed another law directed against the baronage. This was the statute of Westminster the Third, called from its opening words, _Quia emptores_. It enacted that, when part of an estate was alienated by its lord, the grantee should not be permitted to become the subtenant of the grantor, but should stand to the ultimate lord of the fief in the same feudal relation as the grantor himself. This prohibition of further subinfeudation stopped the creation of new manors and prevented the rivetting of new links in the feudal chain, which were the necessary condition of its strength. Though passed at the request of the barons, it was a measure much more helpful to the king than to his vassals. It stood to the barons as the statute of Mortmain stood to the Church. Edward was bent on showing that he was master, and his new son-in-law and the Earl of Hereford became the victims of his policy. He forced the reluctant Gloucester to admit that the pretensions of the lord of Glamorgan to be the overlord of the bishop of LLandaff and the guardian of the temporalities of the see during a vacancy were usurpations. Seeing that his marcher prerogatives were thus rapidly becoming undermined, Gloucester put the most cherished marcher right to the test by renewing the private war with the Earl of Hereford which had disturbed the realm during Edward's absence. The king issued peremptory orders for the immediate cessation of hostilities. These mandates Hereford obeyed, but Gloucester did not. Resolved that law not force was henceforth to settle disputes in the march, Edward summoned a novel court at Ystradvellte, in Brecon, wherein a jury from the neighbouring shires and liberties was to decide the case between the two earls in the presence of the chief marchers. Gloucester refused to appear, and the marchers declined to take part in the trial, pleading that it was against their liberties. The case was adjourned to give the recalcitrants every chance, and after a preliminary report by the judges, Edward resolved to hear the suit in person. In October, 1291, he presided at Abergavenny over the court before which the earls were arraigned. They were condemned to imprisonment and forfeiture. Content with humbling their pride and annihilating their privileges, Edward suffered them to redeem themselves from captivity by the payment of heavy fines, and before long gave them back their lands. The king's victory was so complete that neither of the earls could forgive it. In 1295, Gloucester died, without opportunity of revenge; but Hereford lived on, brooding over his wrongs, and in later years signally avenged the trial at Abergavenny. Meanwhile the conqueror of the principality had shown unmistakably that the liberties of the march were an anachronism, since the marchers had no longer the work of defending English interests against the Welsh nation.[1] [1] Mr. J.E. Morris in chap. vi. of his _Welsh Wars of Edward I._ has admirably summarised this suit. See also G.T. Clark's _Land of Morgan_. Another measure that followed Edward's home-coming was the expulsion of the Jews. Despite constant odium and intermittent persecution, the Jewish financiers who had settled in England after the Norman conquest steadily improved their position down to the reign of Henry III. The personal dependants of the crown, they were well able to afford to share their gains from usury with their protectors. They lived in luxury, built stone houses, set up an organisation of their own, and even purchased lands. Henry III.'s financial embarrassments forced him to rely upon them, and the alliance of the Jews and the crown stimulated the religious bigotry of the popular party to ill-treat the Jews during the Barons' War. Stories of Jews murdering Christian children were eagerly believed; and the cult of St. Hugh of Lincoln and St. William of Norwich,[1] two pretended victims of Hebrew cruelty, testified to the hatred which Englishmen bore to the race. [1] See for this saint, Thomas of Monmouth, _Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich_, ed. Jessopp and James (1896). Under Edward I. the condition of the Jews became more precarious. The king hated them alike on religious and economical grounds. He rigorously insisted that they should wear a distinctive dress, and at last altogether prohibited usury. Driven from their chief means of earning their living, the Jews had recourse to clipping and sweating the coin. Indiscriminate severities did little to abate these evils. Meanwhile active missionary efforts were made to win over the Jews to the Christian faith. They were compelled to listen to long sermons from mendicant friars, and their obstinacy in adhering to their own creed was denounced as a deliberate offence against the light. Peckham shut up their synagogues, and Eleanor of Provence, who had entered a convent, joined with the archbishop in urging her son to take severe measures against them. There was a similar movement in France, and Edward, during his long stay abroad, had expelled the Jews from Aquitaine. In 1290 he applied the same policy to England, and their exile was so popular an act that parliament made him a special grant as a thankoffering. But though Edward thus drove the Jews to seek new homes beyond sea, he allowed them to carry their property with them, and punished the mariners who took advantage of the helplessness of their passengers to rob and murder them. Though individual Jews were found from time to time in England during the later middle ages, their official re-establishment was only allowed in the seventeenth century.[1] [1] For the Jews see J. Jacobs, _Jews in Angevin England_; Tovey, _Anglia Judaica_; J.M. Rigg, _Select Pleas of the Jewish Exchequer_; and for their exile B.L. Abrahams, _Expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290_. Two generations at least before their expulsion, the Jews had been outrivalled in their financial operations by societies of Italian bankers, whose admirable organisation and developed system of credit enabled them to undertake banking operations of a magnitude quite beyond the means of the Hebrews. First brought into England as papal agents for remitting to Rome the spoils of the Church, they found means of evading the canonical prohibitions of usury, and became the loanmongers of prince and subject alike. To the crown the Italians were more useful than the Jews had been. The value of the Jews to the monarch had been in the special facilities enjoyed by him in taxing them. The utility of the Italian societies was in their power of advancing sums of money that enabled the king to embark on enterprises hitherto beyond the limited resources of the medieval state. The Italians financed all Edward's enterprises from the crusade of 1270 to his Welsh and Scottish campaigns. From them Edward and his son borrowed at various times sums amounting to almost half a million of the money of the time. In return the Italians, chief among whom was the Florentine Society of the Frescobaldi, obtained privileges which made them as deeply hated as ever the Hebrews had been.[1] [1] See on this subject E.A. Bond's article in _Archæologia_, vol. xxviii., pp. 207-326; W.E. Rhodes, _Italian Bankers in England under Edward I. and II._ in _Owens Coll. Historical Essays_, pp. 137-68; and R.J. Whitwell, _Italian Bankers and the English Crown_ in _Transactions of Royal Hist. Soc._, N.S., xvii. (1903), pp. 175-234. Among the troubles which had called Edward back from Gascony was the condition of Scotland, where a long period of prosperity had ended with the death of Edward's brother-in-law, Alexander III., in 1286. Alexander III. attended his brother-in-law's coronation in 1274, and the irritation excited by his limiting his homage to his English lordships of Tynedale and Penrith did not cause any great amount of friction. But the homage question was only postponed, and at Michaelmas, 1278, Alexander was constrained to perform unconditionally this unwelcome act. "I, Alexander King of Scotland," were his words, "become the liege man of the lord Edward, King of England, against all men." But by carefully refraining from specifying for what he became Edward's vassal, Alexander still suggested that it was for his English lordships. Edward with equal caution declared that he received the homage, "saving his right and claim to the homage of Scotland when he may wish to speak concerning it". Both parties were content with mutual protestations. Edward was so friendly to Alexander that he allowed him to appoint Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, his proxy in professing fealty, so as to minimise the king's feeling of humiliation. The King of Scots went home loaded with presents, and for the rest of his life his relations with Edward remained cordial. The closing years of Alexander's reign were overshadowed by domestic misfortunes and the prospects of difficulties about the succession. His wife, Margaret of England, had died in 1275, and was followed to the tomb by their two sons, Alexander and David. A delicate girl, Margaret, then alone represented the direct line of the descendants of William the Lion. Margaret was married, when still young, to Eric, King of Norway, and died in 1283 in giving birth to her only child, a daughter named Margaret. No children were born of Alexander's second marriage; and in March, 1286, the king broke his neck, when riding by night along the cliffs of the coast of Fife. Before his death, however, he persuaded the magnates of Scotland to recognise his granddaughter as his successor. The Maid of Norway, as Margaret was called, was proclaimed queen, and the administration was put into the hands of six guardians, who from 1286 to 1289 carried on the government with fair success. As time went on, the baronage got out of hand and a feud between the rival south-western houses of Balliol and Bruce foreshadowed worse troubles. William Eraser, Bishop of St. Andrews, the chief of the regents, visited Edward in Gascony and urged the necessity of action. The best solution of all problems was that the young Queen of Scots should be married to Edward of Carnarvon, a boy a few months her junior. But both the Scots nobles and the King of Norway were jealous and suspicious, and any attempt to hurry forward such a proposal would have been fatal to its accomplishment. However, negotiations were entered into between England, Scotland, and Norway. In 1289 the guardians of Scotland agreed to nominate representatives to treat on the matter. Edward took up his quarters at Clarendon, while his agents, conspicuous among whom was Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, negotiated with the envoys of Norway and Scotland. On November 6 the three powers concluded the treaty of Salisbury, by which they agreed that Margaret should be sent to England or Scotland before All Saints' Day, 1290, "free and quit of all contract of marriage or espousals". Edward promised that if Margaret came into his custody he would, as soon as Scotland was tranquil, hand her over to the Scots as "free and quit" as when she came to him; and the "good folk of Scotland" engaged that, if they received their queen thus free, they would not marry her "save with the ordinance, will, and counsel of Edward and with the agreement of the King of Norway". In March, 1290, a parliament of Scots magnates met at Brigham, near Kelso, and ratified the treaty. Fresh negotiations were begun for the marriage of Edward of Carnarvon and the Queen of Scots, resulting in the treaty of Brigham of July 18, which Edward confirmed a month later at Northampton. By this Edward agreed that, in the event of the marriage taking place, the laws and customs of Scotland should be perpetually maintained. Should Margaret die without issue, Scotland was to go to its natural heir, and in any case was to remain "separate and divided from the realm of England". The treaty of Brigham was as wise a scheme as could have been devised for bringing about the unity of Britain. In the care taken to meet the natural scruples of the smaller nation we are reminded of the treaty of Union of 1707. But a nearer parallel is to be found in the conditions under which the union between France and Brittany was gradually accomplished after the marriage of Anne of Brittany. In both cases alike, in France and in England, the stronger party was content with securing the personal union of the two crowns, and strove to reconcile the weaker party by providing safeguards against violent or over-rapid amalgamation. It was left for the future to decide whether the habit of co-operation, continued for generations, might not ultimately involve a more organic union. Unluckily for this island, the policy which ultimately made the stubborn Celts of Brittany content with union with France, never had a chance of being carried out here. Edward made every preparation for bringing over the Maid of Norway to her kingdom and her husband, and neither the Scots nor the Norwegians grudged his leading share in accomplishing their common wishes. But the child's health gave way before the hardships of the journey. Before All Saints' day had come round, she died in one of the Orkneys, where the ship which conveyed her had put in. The death of the queen threatened Scotland with revolution. The regents' commission became of doubtful legality, and a swarm of claimants for the vacant throne arose, whose resources, if not their rights, were sufficiently evenly balanced to make civil strife inevitable. Since southern Scotland had become a wholly feudal, largely Norman, and partly English state, there had been no grave difficulties with regard to the succession. Now that they arose, there was doubt as to the principles on which claims to the throne should be settled. There was no legitimate representative left of the stock of William the Lion. The male line of his brother David, Earl of Huntingdon, had died out with John the Scot, the last independent Earl of Chester. The nearest claimants to the succession were therefore to be found in the descendants of David's three daughters. But there was no certainty that any rights could be transmitted through the female line. Moreover there was a doubt whether, allowing that a woman could transmit the right to rule, the succession should proceed according to primogeniture or in accordance with the nearness of the claimant to the source of his claim. If the former view were held then John of Balliol, lord of Barnard castle in Durham and of Galloway in Scotland, had the best right as the grandson of Earl David's eldest daughter. Yet less than a century before, the passing over of Arthur of Brittany in favour of his uncle John, had recalled to men's mind the ancient doctrine that a younger son is nearer to the parent stock than a grandson sprung from his elder brother; and if the view, then expressed in the _History of William the Marshal_,[1] was still to hold good, Robert Bruce, lord of Skelton in Yorkshire, and of Annandale in the northern kingdom, was the nearest in blood to David of Huntingdon as the son of his second daughter. Beyond this there was the further question of the divisibility of the kingdom. So fully was southern Scotland feudalised that it seemed arguable that the monarchy, or at least its demesne lands, might be divided among all the representatives of the coheiresses, after the fashion in which the Huntingdon estates had been allotted to all the representatives of Earl David. In that case John of Hastings, lord of Abergavenny, put in a claim as the grandson of Earl David's youngest daughter. [1] _Hist. de Guillaume le Maréchal_, ii., _64_, II. 11899-902. Oil, sire, quer c'est raison Quer plus près est sanz achaison Le filz de la terre son père Que le niês: dreiz est qu'il i père. When so much was uncertain, every noble who boasted any connexion with the royal house safeguarded his interests, or advertised his pedigree, by enrolling himself among the claimants. Five or six of the competitors had no better ground of right than descent from bastards of the royal house, especially from the numerous illegitimate offspring of William the Lion. The others went back to more remote ancestors. A foreign prince, Florence, Count of Holland, demanded the succession as a descendant of a sister of Earl David, declaring that David had forfeited his rights by rebellion. John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, brought forward his descent from Donaldbane, brother of Malcolm Canmore. One claim reads like a fairy tale, with stories of an unknown king dying, leaving a son to be murdered by a wicked uncle, and a daughter to escape to obscurity in Ireland, where she married and transmitted her rights to her children. There was no authority in Scotland strong enough to decide these claims. Once more Robert Bruce raised the standard of disorder, and the appeal of Bishop Fraser to Edward to undertake the settlement of the question showed that the English king's mediation was the readiest way of restoring order. In 1291 Edward summoned the magnates of both realms, along with certain popular representatives, to meet at Norham, Bishop Bek's border castle on the Tweed. Trained civilians and canonists also attended, while abbeys and churches contributed extracts from chronicles, carefully compiled by royal order, with a view of illustrating the king's claims. On May 10 Edward met the assembly in Norham parish church. Roger Brabazon, the chief justice, declared in the French tongue that Edward was prepared to do justice to the claimants as "superior and direct lord of Scotland". Before, however, he could act, his master required that his overlordship should be recognised by the Scots. It is likely that this demand was not unexpected. Even in the treaty of Brigham Edward had been careful not to withdraw his claim of superiority, and his action with relation to Alexander III.'s homage was well known. But the sensitiveness which their late king had shown in the face of Edward's earlier claims was shared by the Scots lords, and shrinking from recognising facts which they ought to have faced before they solicited his intervention, they begged for delay and drew up remonstrances. Edward granted them, a respite for three weeks, though he swore by St. Edward that he would rather die than diminish the rights due to the Confessor's crown. He had already summoned the northern levies, and was prepared to enforce his claim by force. His uncompromising attitude put the Scots in an awkward position. But they had gone to Norham to get his help, and they were not prepared to run the risk of an English invasion as well as civil war. Most of the claimants had as many interests in England as in Scotland, and a breach with Edward would involve the forfeiture of their southern lands as well as the loss of a possible kingdom in the north. When the magnates reassembled, the competitors set the example of acknowledging Edward as overlord. Fresh demands followed their submission, and were at once conceded. Edward was to have seisin of Scotland and its royal castles, though he pledged himself to return both land and fortresses to him who should be chosen king. Edward then undertook the examination of the suit. He delegated the hearing of the claims to a commission, of whom the great majority, eighty, were Scotsmen, nominated in equal numbers by Bruce and Balliol, the two senior competitors, while the remaining twenty-four consisted of Englishmen, and included many of Edward's wisest counsellors. In deference to Scottish feeling, Edward ordered the court to meet on Scottish territory, at Berwick, and appointed August 2 for the opening day. Meanwhile the full consequences of the Scottish submission were carried out. On Edward's taking seisin of Scotland, the regency came to an end. The nomination of the provisional government resting with Edward, he reappointed the former regents, and allowed the Scots barons to elect their chancellor. But with the regents Edward associated a northern baron, Brian Fitzalan of Bedale, and the Scottish bishop, who was appointed chancellor, had to act jointly with one of Edward's clerks. Edward then made a short progress, reaching as far as Stirling and St. Andrews. He was back at Berwick for the meeting of the commissioners on August 2. The first session of the court was a brief one. The twelve competitors put in their claims, and Bruce and Balliol supported theirs by argument. However, on August 12, the trial was adjourned for nearly a year, until June 2, 1292. On its resumption in Edward's presence, the more difficult issues were carefully worked out. A new and fantastic claim, sent in by Eric of Norway, as the nearest of kin to his daughter, did not delay matters. The judges were instructed to settle in the first instance the relative claims of Bruce and Balliol, and also to decide by what law these should be determined. On October 14, they declared their first judgment. They rejected Bruce's plea that the decision should follow the "natural law by which kings rule," and accepted Balliol's contention that they should follow the laws of England and Scotland. They further laid down that the law of succession to the throne was that of other earldoms and dignities. They pronounced in favour of primogeniture as against proximity of blood. These decisions practically settled the case, but a further adjournment was resolved upon, and upon the reassembling of the court on November 6 the only question still open, that of whether the kingdom could be divided, was taken up. John of Hastings came on the scene with the contention that the monarchy should be divided among the representatives of Earl David's daughters. Bruce had the effrontery to associate himself with Hastings' demand. A short adjournment was arranged to settle this issue, and on November 17 the final scene took place in the hall of Berwick castle. Besides the commissioners, the king was there in full parliament, and eleven claimants, who still persevered, were present or represented by proxy. Nine of these were severally told that they would obtain nothing by their petitions. Bruce was informed that his claim to the whole was incompatible with his present claim for a third. It was laid down that the kingdom of Scotland was indivisible, and that the right of Balliol had been established. The seal of the regency was broken: Edward handed over the seisin of Scotland to John Balliol, who three days later took the oath of fealty as King of Scots, promising that he would perform all the service due to Edward from his kingdom, Balliol hurried to his kingdom, and was crowned at Scone on St. Andrew's day. He then returned to England, and kept Christmas with his overlord at Newcastle, where, on December 26, he did homage to Edward in the castle hall. But within a few days a difficulty arose. John resented Edward's retaining the jurisdiction over a law-suit in which a Berwick merchant, a Scotsman, was a party. He was reassured by Edward that he only did so, because the case had arisen during the vacancy, when Edward was admittedly ruling Scotland. But Edward significantly added a reservation of his right of hearing appeals, even in England; and when the King of Scots went back to his realm, early in January, he must have already foreseen that there was trouble to come. Edward never lost sight of his own interests, and it is clear that he took full advantage of the needs of the Scots to establish a close supremacy over the northern kingdom. Making allowance for this sinister element, his general policy in dealing with the great suit had been singularly prudent and correct. He was anxious to ascertain the right heir; he gave the Scots a preponderating voice in the tribunal; he rejected the temptation which Bruce and Hastings dangled before him of splitting up the realm into three parts, and he restored the land and its castles as soon as the suit was settled. There is nothing to show that up to this point his action had produced any resentment in Scotland, and little evidence that there was any strong national feeling involved. Scottish chroniclers, who wrote after the war of independence, have given a colour to Edward's policy which contemporary evidence does not justify. From the point of his generation, his action was just and legal. He had, in fact, performed a signal service to Scotland in vindicating its unity; and by maintaining the rigid doctrines of Anglo-Norman jurisprudence, he rescued it from the vague philosophy which Bruce called natural law, and the recrudescence of Celtic custom that gave even bastards a hope of the succession. The real temptation came when, after his triumph, Edward sought to extract from the submission of the Scots consequences which had no warranty in custom, and made Scottish resistance inevitable. The expulsion of the Jews, the reform of the administration, the statute _Quia emptores_, the treaty of Tarascon, the humiliation of Gloucester, and the successful issue of the Scottish arbitration, mark the culminating point in the reign of Edward I. The king had ruled twenty years with almost uniform success, and his only serious disappointment had been the failure of the crusade. The last hope of the Latin East faded when, in 1291, Acre, so long the bulwark of the crusaders against the Turks, opened its gates to the infidel. With the fall of Acre went the last chance of the holy war. Before long the peace of Europe, which Edward thought that he had established, was once more rudely disturbed. Difficulties soon arose with Scotland, with France, with the Church, and with the barons. These troubles bore the more severely on the king because this period saw also the removal of nearly all of those in whom he had placed special trust. The gracious Eleanor of Castile died in 1290, at Harby, in Nottinghamshire, near Lincoln,[1] and the devotion of the king to the partner of his youth found a striking expression in the sculptured crosses, which marked the successive resting-places of her corpse on its last journey from Harby to Westminster Abbey. A few months later Edward's mother, Eleanor of Castile, ended her long life in the convent of Amesbury, in Wiltshire. The ministers of Edward's early reign were also removed by death. Bishop Kirkby, the treasurer, died in 1290, and Burnell, the chancellor, in 1292, soon after he had performed his last public act in the declaration of the king's judgment as to the Scottish succession. Archbishop Peckham died in the same year. New domestic ties were formed, and fresh ministers were found, but the ageing king became more and more lonely, as he was compelled to rely upon a younger and a less faithful generation. Of his old comrades the chief remaining was Henry Lacy, Earl of Lincoln, while the removal of Burnell brought forward to the first rank prelates whose position had hitherto been somewhat obscured by his predominance. Prominent among these were the brothers Thomas Bek, Bishop of St. David's, and Anthony Bek, Bishop of Durham, members of a conspicuous Lincolnshire baronial family. Both of these for a time strikingly combined devotion to the royal service with loyalty to those clerical and aristocratic traditions which, strictly interpreted, were almost incompatible with faithful service to a secular monarch. Even more important henceforth was the king's treasurer, Walter Langton, Bishop of Lichfield, the most trusted minister of Edward's later life, a faithful but not too scrupulous prelate of the ministerial type, who stood to the second half of the reign in almost the same close relation as that in which Burnell stood to the years which we have now traversed. [1] See for this W.H. Stevenson, _Death of Eleanor of Castile_, in _English Hist. Review_, iii. (1888), pp. 315-318. CHAPTER X. THE FRENCH AND SCOTTISH WARS AND THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS. Troubles arose between France and England soon after Edward had settled the Scottish succession. Neither Edward nor Philip the Fair sought a conflict. Edward was satisfied with his diplomatic successes, and Philip's designs upon Gascony were better pursued by chicane than by warfare. But questions arose of a different kind from the disputes as to feudal right, which had been hitherto the principal matters in debate between the two crowns. There had long been keen commercial rivalry between the Cinque Ports and the traders of Normandy. The sailors of Bayonne and other Gascon harbours had associated themselves with the English against the Normans, and both sides loudly complained to their respective rulers of the piracies and homicides committed by their enemies. Edward and Philip did what they could to smooth over matters, but were alike unable to prevent their subjects flying at each other's throats. The story spread that a Norman ship was to be seen in the Channel with' English sailors and dogs hanging suspended from her yard-arms: "And so," says Hemingburgh, "they sailed over the sea, making no difference between a dog and an Englishman". Indignation at this outrage drove the English to act together in large organised squadrons. The French adopted the same tactics, and a collision soon ensued. On May 15, 1293, an Anglo-Gascon merchant fleet encountered a Norman fleet off Saint Mahe in Brittany. A pitched battle, probably prearranged, at once ensued. It ended in a complete victory for the less numerous English squadron, which immediately returned to Portsmouth, laden with booty. Even after this, Edward strove to keep the peace, and endeavoured to exact compensation from his subjects. They answered with a highly coloured narrative of the dispute which threw the whole blame upon the Normans. Philip, changing his policy, took up his subjects' cause, and summoned Edward to answer in January, 1294, before the Parliament of Paris for the piracy exercised by his mariners, the misdeeds of his Gascon subjects, and the violent measures taken by his officers against any who appealed to the court of Paris. Edward sent his brother, Edmund, to reply for him. As Count of Champagne and the step-father of Philip's wife, Joan, Edmund seemed a peculiarly acceptable negotiator. After long debates, the personal intervention of the French queen, and Philip's step-mother, Mary of Brabant, resulted in an agreement being arranged. The overlord's grievances could not be denied, and it was urged that the formal surrender of part of Gascony might be made by way of recognising them. French garrisons were therefore to be admitted into six Gascon strongholds; twenty Gascon hostages were to be delivered over to Philip, while the seisin of the duchy was also to be transferred to the French king, who pledged himself not to change the officials nor to occupy the land in force. The whole business was in fact to be as formal as the delivery of the seisin of Scotland to Edward during the suit for the succession. Meanwhile, Edward and Philip were to arrange a meeting at Amiens to settle the conditions of a permanent peace, by which Edward was to take Philip's sister, Margaret, as his second wife, and the Gascon duchy was to be settled upon the offspring of the union. That Edward or Edmund should ever have contemplated such terms is a strong proof of their zeal for peace. It soon became clear that Edmund had been outrageously duped, and that the whole negotiation was a trick to secure for Philip the permanent possession of Gascony. The constable of France appeared on the Aquitanian frontier. The English seneschal surrendered the six castles and the seisin of the land. Gradually the French king began to take actual possession of the government. Moreover, after three months, the proceedings against Edward in the parliament of Paris were resumed; Edward was declared contumacious on the ground of his non-appearance, and sentence of forfeiture was passed. Philip's treachery was thus manifest? and in great disgust Edmund withdrew from France. Edward was deeply indignant. In a parliament, held in June, 1294, which was attended by the King of Scots, war was resolved upon. The feudal tenants were summoned to assemble at Portsmouth on September 1; and Edward appealed for help to his Gascon subjects, beseeching their pardon for having negotiated the fatal treaty, and promising a speedy effort to restore them to his obedience. He sent them his nephew, John of Brittany, as his lieutenant and captain-general, under whom John of St. John was to act as seneschal of Gascony. Ambassadors were despatched to all neighbouring courts to build up a coalition against the French. Strenuous efforts were made to get together men and money, and the clergy were forced to make a grant of a half of their spiritual income. Edward overbore their opposition amidst a scene of excitement in which the Dean of St. Paul's fell dead at the king's feet. The shires were mulcted of a tenth and the boroughs of a sixth. And besides these constitutional exactions, the king laid violent hands on all the coined money deposited in the treasuries of the churches, and appropriated the wool of the merchants, which he only restored on the payment of a heavy pecuniary redemption. Meanwhile, about Michaelmas the lieutenant and the seneschal sailed with a fairly strong force. Further levies were summoned to assemble at Portsmouth at later dates. Besides the ordinary tenants of the crown, writs were sent to the chief magnates of Ireland and Scotland; and Wales and its march were called upon to furnish all the men that could be mustered. The Earls of Cornwall and Lincoln were appointed to the command, and Edward himself proposed to follow them to Gascony as soon as he could. At the moment of the departure of John of Brittany a sudden insurrection in Wales frustrated Edward's plans. All Wales was ripe for revolt. In the principality the Cymry resented English rule, and the sulky marchers stood aloof in sullen discontent, while their native tenants, seeing in the recent humiliation of Gloucester and Hereford the degradation of all their lords, lost respect for such powerless masters. Both in the principality and in the marches, Edward's demand for compulsory service in Gascony was universally regarded as a new aggression. The intensity of the resistance to his demand can be measured by the general nature of the insurrection, and by the admirable way in which it was organised. As by a common signal all Wales rose at Michaelmas, 1294. One Madog, probably a bastard son of Llewelyn, son of Griffith, raised all Gwynedd, took possession of Carnarvon castle, and closely besieged the other royal strongholds. In west Wales a chieftain named Maelgwn was equally successful in Carmarthen and Cardigan. The marches were in arms equally with the principality. In the north, Lincoln's tenants in Rhos and Rhuvoniog besieged Denbigh, and threatened the king's fortresses in Flint. Maelgwn's sphere of operations included the earldom of Pembroke, while Brecon rose against Hereford, and Glamorgan against Gilbert of Gloucester. Morgan, the leader of the Glamorganshire rebels, loudly declared that he did not rebel against the king but against the Earl of Gloucester. With the beginning of winter the state of Wales was more critical than in the worst times of the winter of 1282. Edward postponed his attack on Philip in order to throw all his energies into the reduction of Wales. The levies assembled at Portsmouth for the Gascon expedition were hurried beyond the Severn. The king held another parliament and exacted a fresh supply. Criminals were offered pardon and good wages, if they would serve, first in Wales and then in Gascony. Before Christmas about a thousand men-at-arms were mustered at various border centres under the royal standards, while every marcher lord was busily engaged in putting down his own rebels. Before so great a force the Welsh could do but little, and the spring saw the extinction of the rebellion. But there was hard fighting both in the south and in the north. Edward himself undertook the reconquest of Gwynedd. He was at Conway before the end of the year, and in his haste he threw himself into the town while the mass of his army remained on the right bank of the river. High tides and winter floods made the crossing of the stream impossible, and for a short time the king was actually besieged by the rebels. Conway was unprepared for resistance and almost destitute of supplies. The garrison thought it a terrible hardship that they had to live on salt meat and bread, and to drink water mixed with honey. They were encouraged by Edward refusing to taste better fare than his troopers, and declining to partake of the one small measure of wine reserved for his use. William Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, conveyed his troops across the estuary and raised the siege. Yet the insurgents were still able to fight a pitched battle. About January 22, 1295, Warwick found the Welsh established in a strong position in a plain between two woods. They had fixed the butts of their lances into the ground, hoping thus to resist the shock of a cavalry charge. Improving on the tactics of Orewyn bridge, the earl stationed between his squadrons of knights, archers and crossbowmen, whose missiles inflicted such loss on the Welsh lines that the cavalry soon found it safe to charge. The Welsh were utterly broken, and never in a single day did they suffer such enormous losses. Even more important than its results in breaking the back of Madog's insurrection, this battle of Maes Madog--or Madog's field, as the Welsh called the place of their defeat--is of the highest importance in the development of infantry tactics. The order of the victorious force strikingly anticipates the great battles in Scotland and France of a later generation. In obscure fights, like Orewyn bridge and Maes Madog, the English learnt the famous battle array which was to overwhelm the Scots in the later years of Edward's reign and prepare the way for the triumphs of Crecy and Poitiers. Madog still held out, and with the advent of spring, 1295, Edward began to hunt him from his lairs. Gwynedd was cleared of the enemy and Anglesey was reconquered. Carnarvon castle arose from its ruins in the stately form that we still know, while on the Anglesey side of the Menai the new stronghold of Beaumaris arose, to ensure the subjection of the granary of Gwynedd. In May Edward felt strong enough to undertake a progress in South Wales. After receiving the submissions of the rebels of Cardigan and Carmarthen, he won back for the lords of Brecon and Glamorgan the lands which, without his help, they had been unable to conquer. The Welsh chieftains were leniently treated. While Madog was imprisoned in the Tower, Morgan was at once set at liberty. By July Edward was able to leave Wales. Yet his triumph had taxed all his resources, and left him, overwhelmed with debt, to face the irritation of subjects unaccustomed to such demands upon their loyalty and patriotism. But nothing broke his dauntless spirit, and once more he busied himself in obtaining revenge on the false King of France. It was inevitable that the Welsh war should have reduced to slender proportions the expedition of John of Brittany and John of St. John for the recovery of Gascony. After a tedious voyage the English expedition sailed up the Gironde late in October, 1294. Their forces, strong enough to capture Bourg and Blaye, were not sufficient to attack Bordeaux. Leaving the capital in the hands of its conquerors, the English sailed past Bordeaux to Rioms, where they disembarked. The small towns of the neighbourhood were taken and garrisoned, and the Gascon lords began to flock to the camp of their duke. Before long the army was large enough to be divided. John of Brittany remained at Rioms, while John of St. John marched overland to Bayonne. The French garrison was unable to overpower the enthusiasm of the Bayonnais for Edward, and the capture of the second town of Gascony was the greatest success attained by the invaders. With the spring of 1295, however, Charles of Valois, brother of the King of France, was sent to operate against John of Brittany. The English and Gascons found themselves unable to make head against him. There was ill-feeling between the two nations that made up the army, and also between the nobly-born knights and men-at-arms and the foot soldiers. The infantry mutinied, and John of Brittany fled by night down the river from Rioms, leaving many of his knights and all his horses and armour in the town. Next day Rioms opened its gates to Charles of Valois, who gained immense spoils and many distinguished prisoners. Save for the capture of Bayonne, the expedition had been a disastrous failure. Edward failed even more signally in his efforts to defeat Philip by diplomacy. He had left no effort unspared to build up a great coalition against the French king. He "sent a great quantity of sterling money beyond the sea," and made alliances with all the princes and barons that he could find.[1] At first it seemed that he had succeeded. Adolf of Nassau, the poor and dull, but strenuous and hard-fighting King of the Romans, concluded a treaty with England, and did not think it beneath the dignity of the lord of the world to take the pay of the English monarch. Many vassals of the empire, especially in the Netherlands, the Rhineland, and Burgundy followed Adolf's example. Edward strengthened his party further by marrying three of his daughters to the Duke of Brabant, the son of the Count of Holland, and the Count of Bar as the price of their adherence to the coalition. He made closer his ancient friendship with Guy of Dampierre, the old Count of Flanders, by betrothing Edward of Carnarvon to his daughter Philippine. At the same time he sought the friendship of the lords of the Pyrenees, such as the Count of Foix, and of the kings of the Spanish peninsula. But nothing came of the hopes thus excited, save fair promises and useless expenditure. Before long Philip of France was able to build up a French party in appearance as formidable-in reality as useless as Edward's attempted confederation. Edward's most important ally, Guy of Flanders, was forced to renounce his daughter's marriage to the heir of England and hand her over to Philip's custody. The time was not yet come for effective European coalitions; the real fighting had to be done by the parties directly interested in the quarrel. [1] See a contemporary notice printed by F. Funck-Brentano in _Revue Historique_, xxxix. (1889), pp. 329-30. The command of the sea continued to be a vital question. The Norman sailors were eager to avenge their former defeats, and Philip saw that the best way to preserve his hold over Gascony was to be master of the Channel and the Bay of Biscay. Edward prepared to meet attack by establishing an organisation of the English navy which marks an epoch in the history of our admiralty. He divided the vessels told off to guard the sea into three classes, and set over each a separate admiral. John of Botecourt was made admiral of the Yarmouth and eastern fleet; William of Leyburn was set over the navy at Portsmouth; and the western and Irish squadron was put under a valiant knight of Irish origin. Meanwhile the French planned an invasion of England, and promised James of Aragon that, when England was conquered, its king should be considered his personal prize. Galleys were hired at Marseilles and Genoa for service in the Channel, and Sir Thomas Turberville, a Glamorganshire knight captured at Rioms, turned traitor and was restored to England in the hope that he might obtain the custody of some seaport and betray it to the enemy. Turberville strove in vain to induce Morgan to head another revolt in Glamorgan, and urged upon Philip the need of an alliance with the Scots. At last the invasion was attempted, and the French admiral, Matthew of Montmorenci, sacked and burnt the town of Dover. Luckily, however, Turberville's treason was discovered, and the Yarmouth fleet soon avenged the attack on Dover by burning Cherbourg. In the face of such resistance, Philip IV. abandoned his plan of invasion and tried to establish a sort of "continental blockade" of English ports in which a modern writer has seen an anticipation of the famous dream of Napoleon.[1] Though nothing came of these grandiose schemes, yet the efforts made to organise invasion had their permanent importance as resulting in the beginnings of the French royal navy. As late as 1297 a Genoese was appointed admiral of France in the Channel, and strongly urged the invasion of England and its devastation by fire and flame. But the immediate result of Philip's efforts to cut off England from the continent was that his Flemish allies found in his policy a new reason for abandoning his service. On January 7, 1297, a fresh treaty of alliance between Edward and Guy, Count of Flanders, was concluded. [1] See for this Jourdain, _Mémoire sur les Commencements de la Marine française sous Philippe le Bel_ (1880), and C. de la Roncière, _Le Blocus continental de l'Angleterre sous Philippe le Bel_ in _Revue des Questions historiques_, lx. (1896), 401-41. More effective than Philip's efforts to combine the Continent against the English were his endeavours to stir up opposition to Edward in Britain. The Welsh rising of 1294 had taken place independently of him, but it was not Philip's fault that Morgan did not once more excite Glamorgan to rebellion. A better opening for intrigue was found in Scotland. Ever since the accession of John Balliol, there had been appeals from the Scottish courts to those of Edward. Certain suits begun under the regency, which had acted in Edward's name from 1290 to 1292, gave the overlord an opportunity of inserting the thin end of the wedge; and it looked as if, after a few years, appeals from Edinburgh to London would be as common as appeals from Bordeaux to Paris. But whatever were the ancient relations of England and Scotland, it is clear that the custom of appeals to the English king had never previously been established. It was no wonder then that what seemed to Edward an inevitable result of King John's submission, appeared to the Scots an unwarrantable restriction of their independence. The weakness and simplicity of King John left matters to take their course for a time, but the king, who was not strong enough to stand up against Edward, was not the man to resist the pressure of his own subjects. On his return from the London parliament of June, 1294, the Scots barons virtually deposed him. A committee was set up by parliament consisting of four bishops, four earls, and four barons which, though established professedly on the model of the twelve peers of France, had a nearer prototype in the fifteen appointed under the Provisions of Oxford. To this body the whole power of the Scottish monarchy was transferred, so that John became a mere puppet, unable to act without the consent of his twelve masters. Under this new government the relations of England and Scotland soon became critical. The Scots denied all right of appeal to the English courts, and expelled from their country the nobles whose possessions in England gave them a greater interest in the southern than in the northern kingdom. Among the dispossessed barons was Robert Bruce, son of the claimant, by marriage already Earl of Carrick, and now by his father's recent death lord of Annandale. In defiance of Edward's prohibition the Scots received French ships, and subjected English traders at Berwick to many outrages. At last, on July 5, 1295, an alliance was signed between Scotland and France, by which Edward Balliol, the eldest son of King John, was betrothed to Joan, the eldest daughter of Charles of Valois, the brother of the French king. On this, Edward demanded the surrender of three border castles, and on the refusal of the Scots, cited John to appear at Berwick on March 1, 1296. Thus, by a process similar to that which had embroiled Edward with his French overlord, the King of Scots also was forced to face the alternative of certain war or humiliating surrender. To Edward a breach with Scotland was unwelcome. In 1294 the Welsh had prevented him using all his power against France, and in 1295 the Scots troubles further postponed his prospects of revenge. But no suggestion of compromise or delay came from him. On his return to London early in August, 1295, he busied himself with preparing to resist the enemies that were gathering around him on every side. It was the moment of the raid on Dover, and the French question was still the more pressing. In a parliament of magnates at London, Edmund of Lancaster told the story of his Paris embassy with such effect that two cardinal-legates, whom the new pope, Boniface VIII., had sent in the hope of making peace, were put off politely, on the ground that Edward could make no treaty without the consent of his ally, the King of the Romans. Edmund was appointed commander of a new expedition to Gascony, though his weak health delayed his departure. Meanwhile Edward called upon every class of his subjects to co-operate with him in his defence of the national honour. He was statesman enough to see that he could only cope with the situation, if England as a whole rallied round him. His best answer to the Scots and the French was the convention of the "model parliament" of November, 1295. The deep political purpose with which this parliament was assembled is reflected even in the formal language of the writs. "Inasmuch as a most righteous law of the emperors," wrote Edward, "ordains that what touches all should be approved by all, so it evidently appears that common dangers should be met by remedies agreed upon in common. You know well how the King of France has cheated me out of Gascony, and how he still wickedly retains it. But now he has beset my realm with a great fleet and a great multitude of warriors, and proposes, if his power equal his unrighteous design, to blot out the English tongue from the face of the earth." To avert this peril, Edward summoned not only a full and representative gathering of magnates, but also two knights from every shire and two burgesses from every borough. Moreover, the lower clergy were also required to take part in the assembly, the archdeacons and deans in person, the clergy of every cathedral church by one proctor, the beneficed clerks of each diocese by two proctors. Thus the assembly became so systematic a representation of the three estates' that after ages have regarded it as the type upon which subsequent popular parliaments were to be modelled. This gathering marks the end of the parliamentary experiments of the earlier part of the reign. It met on November 27, and each estate, deliberating separately, contributed its quota to the national defence. The barons and knights offered an eleventh, and the boroughs a seventh. It was a bitter disappointment to Edward that the clergy could not be induced to make a larger grant than a tenth. Enough, however, was obtained to equip the two armies which, in the spring of 1296, were to operate against the French and the Scots. The Gascon expedition was the first to start. Early in March, 1296, Edmund of Lancaster, accompanied by the Earl of Lincoln, landed at Bourg and Blaye. John of St. John was still maintaining himself in that district as well as at Bayonne. On the appearance of the reinforcements the Gascon lords began to flock to the English camp, and a large force was at once able to take the field. On March 28 an attempt was made to capture Bordeaux by a sudden assault. On its failure Edmund, who did not possess the equipment necessary for a formal siege, sailed up the river to Saint-Macaire and occupied the town. But the castle held out gallantly, and after a three weeks' siege Edmund retired to his original position on the lower Gironde. Even there he found difficulty in holding his own, and before long shifted his quarters to Bayonne. He had exhausted his resources, and found that his army could not be kept together without pay. "Thereupon," writes Hemingburgh, "his face fell and he sickened about Whitsuntide. So with want of money came want of breath too, and after a few days he went the way of all flesh." Lincoln, his successor, managed still to stand his ground against Robert of Artois. At last Artois made a successful night attack upon the English, captured St. John, and destroyed all his war-train and baggage. The darkness of the night and the shelter of the neighbouring woods alone saved the English army from total destruction. "After this," boasted William of Nangis, "no Englishman or Gascon dared to go out to battle against the Count of Artois and the French." At Easter, 1297, a truce was concluded which left nearly all Gascony in French hands. Soon after the departure of his brother for Gascony, Edward went to war against the Scots, regarding the non-appearance of King John on March 1 at Berwick as a declaration of hostility. The lord of Wark offered to betray his castle to the Scots, and Edward's successful effort to save it first brought him to the Tweed. Meanwhile the men of Annandale under their new lord, the Earl of Buchan, engaged in a raid on Carlisle, but failed to capture the city, and speedily returned home. On March 28, the day on which his brother attacked Bordeaux, Edward crossed the Tweed at Coldstream, and marched down its left bank towards Berwick. On March 30 Berwick was captured. The townsmen fought badly, and the heroes of the resistance were thirty Flemish merchants, who held their factory, called the Red Hall, until the building was fired, and the defenders perished in the flames. The garrison of the castle, commanded by Sir William Douglas, laid down their arms at once. Edward spent a month in Berwick, strengthening the fortifications of the town, and preparing for an invasion of Scotland. Early in April, King John renounced his homage and, immediately afterwards, the Scots lords who had attacked Carlisle devastated Tynedale and Redesdale, penetrating as far as Hexham. Edward's command of the sea made it impossible for the raiders to cut off his communications with his base, and they quickly returned to their own land, where they threw themselves into Dunbar. Though the lord of Dunbar, Patrick, Earl of March, was serving with the English king, his countess, who was at Dunbar, invited them into the fortress. Dunbar blocked the road into Scotland, and Edward sent forward Earl Warenne with a portion of the army in the hope of recapturing the position. Warenne laid siege to Dunbar, but on the third day, April 27, the main Scots army came to its relief. Leaving some of the young nobles to continue the siege, Warenne drew up his army in battle array. The Scots thought that the English were preparing for flight, and rushed upon them with loud cries and blowing of horns. Discovering too late that the enemy was ready for battle, they fell back in confusion as far as Selkirk Forest. Next day Edward came up from Berwick and received the surrender of Dunbar. Henceforth his advance was but a military promenade. Edward turned back from Dunbar to receive the submission of the Steward of Scotland at Roxburgh, and to welcome a large force of Welsh infantry, whose arrival enabled him to dismiss the English foot, fatigued with the slight effort of a month's easy campaigning. Thence he made his way to Edinburgh, which yielded after an eight days' siege. Stirling castle, the next barrier to his progress, was abandoned by its garrison, and there Edward was reinforced by some Irish contingents. He then advanced to Perth, keeping St. John's feast on June 24 in St. John's own town. On July 10 Balliol surrendered to the Bishop of Durham at Brechin, acknowledging that he had forfeited his throne by his rebellion. Edward continued his triumphal progress, preceded at every stage by Bishop Bek at the head of the warriors of the palatinate of St. Cuthbert. He made his way through Montrose up the east coast to Aberdeen, and thence up the Don and over the hills to Banff and Elgin, the farthest limit of his advance. He returned by a different route, bringing back with him from Scone the stone on which the Scots kings had been wont to sit at their coronation. This he presented as a trophy of victory to the monks of Westminster, where it was set up as a chair for the priest celebrating mass at the altar over against the shrine of St. Edward, though soon used as the coronation seat of English kings. In less than five months Edward had conquered a kingdom. On August 22 he was back at Berwick, whither he had summoned a parliament of the nobles and prelates of both kingdoms, in order that the work of organising the future government of Scotland might be completed. Meanwhile a crowd of Scots of every class flocked to the victor's court and took oaths of fealty to him. Their names, along with those of the persons who made similar recognitions of his sovereignly during his Scottish progress, were recorded with notarial precision in one of those formal documents with which Edward delighted to mark the stages in the accomplishment of his task. This record, popularly styled the Ragman Roll, containing the names of about two thousand freeholders and men of substance in Scotland, is of extreme value to the Scottish genealogist and antiquary.[1] The last entries are dated August 28, the day on which Edward met his parliament at Berwick. The administration of Scotland was provided for. John, Earl Warenne, became the king's lieutenant, Hugh Cressingham, treasurer, and William Ormesby, justiciar. When the land was subdued Edward showed a strong desire to treat the people well. The only precaution taken by him against the renewal of disturbances was an order that the former King of Scots, John Comyn of Buchan, John Comyn of Badenoch, and other magnates of the patriotic party were to dwell in England, south of the Trent, until the conclusion of the war with France. As soon as his business was accomplished at Berwick, Edward turned his steps southwards. At last he seemed free to lead a great army against Philip the Fair; and, in order to prepare for the French expedition, he summoned another parliament to meet at Bury St. Edmunds on the morrow of All Souls' day, November 3. At Bury the barons, knights, and burgesses made liberal offerings for the war. But a new difficulty arose in the absolute refusal of the clergy to vote any supplies. Once more the cup of hope was dashed from Edward's lips, and he found himself forced to enter into another weary conflict, this time with his English liegemen. [1] It is printed by the Bannatyne Club, and summarised in _Cal. Doc. Scot._, ii., 193-214. So long as Peckham had lived, there had always been a danger of a conflict between Church and State. Friar John had ended his restless career in 1292, and Edward showed natural anxiety to secure as his successor a prelate more amenable to the secular authority and more national in his sentiments. The papacy remained vacant after the death of Nicholas IV. in 1292, so that there was no danger of Rome taking the appointment into its own hands, and the happy accident, which had given the monks of Christchurch a statesmanlike prior in Henry of Eastry, minimised the chances of a futile conflict between the king and the canonical electors. Eastry took care that the archbishop-elect should be a person acceptable to the sovereign. Robert Winchelsea, the new primate, was an Englishman and a secular clerk, who had taught with distinction at Paris and Oxford, but had received no higher ecclesiastical promotion than the archdeaconry of Essex and a canonry of St. Paul's, and was mainly conspicuous for the sanctity of his life, his ability as a preacher, and his zeal for making the cathedral of London a centre of theological instruction. The vacancy in, the papacy forced upon the archbishop-elect a wearisome delay of eighteen months in Italy; but at last in September, 1294, he received consecration and the _pallium_ from the newly elected hermit-pope, Celestine V. Winchelsea on his return strove to show that a secular archbishop could be as austere in life, and as zealous for the rights of Holy Church, as his mendicant predecessors. His desire to walk in the steps of Peckham soon brought him into conflict with the king, and in this conflict he showed an appreciation of the political situation, and a power of interpreting English opinion, which made him the most formidable of Edward's domestic opponents. He gained his first victory in the parliament of 1295 by preventing the clergy from making a larger grant than a tenth. But this triumph sank into insignificance as compared with the refusal of all aid by the parliament of Bury. A change in the papacy immensely strengthened Winchelsea's position against Edward. In December, 1294, Celestine, overpowered with the burden of an office too heavy for his strength, made his great renunciation and sought to resume his hermit life. The Cardinal Benedict Gaetano was at once elected his successor and took the style of Boniface VIII. The son of a noble house of the neighbourhood of Anagni, a canonist, a politician, and a zealot, the new pope had made personal acquaintance with Edward and England from having attended Cardinal Ottobon on his English legation, and was eager to appease discord between Christian princes in order to forward the crusade. He hated war the more because it was largely waged with the money drawn from the clergy, and was indignant that the custom of taxing the Church, which was begun under the guise of crusading tenths, had become so frequent that both Philip and Edward applied it in order to raise revenue from ecclesiastics for frankly secular warfare. Within a few weeks of his accession he despatched two cardinals to mediate peace between the Kings of France and England, and was disgusted at the long delays with which both kings had sought to frustrate his intervention. On February 29, 1296, Boniface issued his famous bull _Clericis laicos_, in which he declared it unlawful for any lay authority to exact supplies from the clergy without the express authority of the apostolic see. Princes imposing, and clerics submitting to such exactions were declared _ipso_ facto excommunicate. Boniface's contention had been urged by his predecessors, and it is improbable that he sought to do more than assert the ancient law of the Church and save the clergy all over the Latin world from exactions which were fast becoming intolerable. His object was quite general, though a pointed reference to the extortions of Edward in 1294 showed that he had the case of England before his mind. He had no wish to throw down the gauntlet to the princes of Christendom, or to quarrel with Edward and Philip, between whom he was still conducting negotiations. It was his misfortune that he was constantly forced to face fresh conditions which rendered it almost possible to apply the ancient doctrines. Strong national kings, like Edward and Philip, had already shown impatience with such traditions of the Church as limited their temporal authority. The pope's untimely restatement of the theories of the twelfth century at once involved him in his first fierce difference with Philip the Fair, and put him into a position in which he could only win peace by explaining away the doctrine of _Clericis laicos_. While on the continent the conflict of Church and State took the form of a dispute between the French king and the papacy, in England it assumed the shape of a struggle between Edward and the Archbishop of Canterbury. In November, 1296, at Bury, Winchelsea admitted the justice of the French war, but pleaded the pope's decretal as an absolute bar to any grant from the clerical estate. No decision was arrived at, and the problem was discussed again in the convocation of Canterbury in January, 1297. "We have two lords over us," declared the archbishop to his clergy, "the king and the pope; and, although we owe obedience to both of these, we owe greater obedience to our spiritual than to our temporal lord." All that they could do was to entreat the pope's permission to allow them to pay Cæsar that which Cæsar by himself had no right to demand. Edward burst into a fury on hearing of this new pretext for delay. He declared that the clergy must pay a fifth, under penalty of his withdrawing his protection from a body which strove to stand outside the commonwealth. The clergy remained firm, and separated without making any grant. Thereupon, on January 30, the chief justice, John of Metingham, sitting in Westminster Hall, pronounced the clergy to be outlays. "Henceforth," he declared, "there shall be no justice meted out to a clerk in the court of the lord king, however atrocious be the injury from which he may have suffered. But sentence against a clerk shall be given at the instance of all who have a complaint against him." Winchelsea retaliated by publishing the sentence of excommunication against violators of the papal bull. Two days later the king ordered the sheriffs to take possession of the lay fees held by clerks in the province of Canterbury. A few ecclesiastics, who privately made an offering of a fifth, were alone exempted from this command. Edward's conflict with the Church was followed within a month by a dispute of almost equal gravity with a section of the barons. He summoned a baronial parliament to assemble on February 24 at Salisbury, and went down in person to explain his plan of campaign. One force was to help his new ally, Guy of Flanders, while another was to act in Gascony. Edward himself was to accompany the army to Flanders. He requested some of the earls, including Norfolk and Hereford, to fight for him in Gascony. The deaths of Edmund of Lancaster, Gilbert of Gloucester, and William of Pembroke had robbed the baronage of its natural leaders. Earl Warenne was fully engaged in the north, and Lincoln was devoted to the king's side. The removal of other possible spokesmen made Norfolk and Hereford the champions of the party of opposition. For years the friends of aristocratic authority had been smarting under the growing influence of the crown. The time was ripe for a revival of the baronial opposition which a generation earlier had won the Provisions of Oxford. Moreover both the earls had personal slights to avenge. Hereford bitterly resented the punishment meted out to him for waging private war against Earl Gilbert in the march. Norfolk was angry because, during the last Welsh campaign, Edward had suspended him from the exercise of the marshalship. The form of Edward's request at Salisbury gave them a technical advantage which they were not slow to seize. Ignoring the broader issues which lay between them and the king, they took their stand on their traditional rights as constable and marshal to attend the king in person. "Freely," declared the earl marshal, "will I go with thee, O king, and march before thee in the first line of thy army, as my hereditary duty requires." Edward answered: "Thou shalt go without me along with the rest to Gascony". The marshal replied: "I am not bound to go save with thee, nor will I go". Edward flew into a passion: "By God, sir earl, thou shalt either go or hang". Norfolk replied with equal spirit: "By that same oath, sir king, I will neither go nor hang". The parliament broke up in disorder. Before long a force of 1,500 men-at-arms gathered together under the leadership of the constable and marshal. During these stormy times Edward had been straining every nerve to equip an adequate army for foreign service. Once more he laid violent hands upon the wool and hides of the merchants, while a huge male--tolt, varying from forty shillings a sack for raw wool to sixty-six shillings and eightpence a sack for carded wool, was exacted for such wool as the king's officers suffered to remain in the owner's possession. Moreover, vast stores of wheat, barley, and oats, salt pork and salt beef were requisitioned all over the land. Men said that the king's tyranny could no longer be borne, and that the rights decreed to all Englishmen by the Great Charter were in imminent danger. The movement, which had begun as a defence of feudal right, became a popular revolt in favour of national liberty. The commons joined the barons and clergy in the general opposition to the headstrong king. Edward saw that he must divide his enemies if he wished to effect his purpose. The clergy were the easiest to deal with. Boniface VIII. was already yielding in his struggle against Philip the Fair. In the bull _Romana mater_ of February 2, 1297, he had authorised voluntary contributions of the French clergy in the case of pressing necessity, without previous recourse to the permission of the apostolic see. The same attitude had already been taken up by the royalist clergy in England, who redeemed their outlawry by offering to the king the fifth of their revenues. In March Edward made things easier for the recalcitrants by suspending the edict confiscating the lay fees of the Church. Even Winchelsea saw the wisdom of abandoning his too heroic attitude. In a convocation, held on March 24, he practically applied the doctrine of _Romana mater_ to the English situation. "Let each man," he declared, "save his own soul and follow his own conscience. But my conscience does not allow me to offer money for the king's protection or on any other pretext." In the event nearly all the clergy bought off the king's wrath by the voluntary payment of a fifth. Winchelsea was obdurate. His estates remained for five months in the king's hands, and he was forced, like another St. Francis, to depend on the charity of the faithful. But even Winchelsea did not hold out indefinitely. On July 14 he was publicly reconciled with the king outside Westminster Hall, and a few days later his goods were restored. On July 31 Boniface entirely receded from the doctrine of _Cleritis laicos_ in the bull _Etsi de statu_. Before this could be known in England, Winchelsea told his clergy that the king had agreed to confirm the Great Charter, if they would but make a grant to carry on the French war. A little later Edward of his own authority exacted a third from all clerical revenues. This persistence in his highhanded policy made any real reconciliation between Edward and Winchelsea impossible. The king never forgave the archbishop, whose action demonstrated to all England the divided allegiance of his clergy between their two masters. Winchelsea still retained his profound distrust of the king, who had set at naught the liberties of Church and realm. The baronial opposition was broken up by devices not dissimilar to those which neutralised the antagonism of the clergy. By strenuous efforts Edward obtained a fair sum of money for his expenses. He let it be understood that, if he took his subjects' wool, the talleys given in exchange would be redeemed when better times had arrived, and he scrupulously paid for the corn and meat that his officers had requisitioned. Meanwhile he summoned all possible fighting men from England, Wales, and Ireland to meet at London on July 7. The prospect of subjects of the crown being forced, whatsoever their feudal obligations might be, to wage war beyond sea, threatened to provoke a fresh crisis. But after many long altercations, Edward announced that neither the feudal tenants nor the twenty-pound freeholders had any legal obligation to go with him to Flanders, and offered pay to all who were willing to hearken to his "affectionate request" for their services. Under these conditions a considerable force of stipendiaries was levied without much difficulty. Hereford and Norfolk abandoned active in favour of passive hostility. They refused to serve as constable and marshal, and Edward appointed barons of less dignity and greater loyalty to act in their place. While all England was busy with the equipment of troops and the provision of supplies, they sullenly held aloof. At last, when all was ready, Edward issued an appeal to his subjects, protesting the purity of his motives, and emphasising the inexorable necessity under which he was forced to play the tyrant in the interests of the whole realm. By the beginning of August such barons as were willing to go to Flanders began to assemble in arms at London. The young Edward of Carnarvon was appointed regent during his father's absence, and among the councillors who were to act in his name was the Archbishop of Canterbury. At last the king set off to embark at Winchelsea. While there, the earls presented to him a belated list of grievances. He refused to deal with their demand for the confirmation of the charters. "My full council," he declared to the envoys of the earls, "is not with me, and without it I cannot reply to your requests. Tell those who have sent you that, if they will come with me to Flanders, they will please me greatly. If they will not come, I trust they will do no harm to me, or at any rate to my kingdom." On August 24 he took ship for Flanders, and a few days later he and his troops safely landed at Sluys, whence they made their way to Ghent. Nearly a thousand men-at-arms and a great force of infantry, largely Welsh and Irish, swelled the expedition to considerable proportions. After all his troubles, Edward found that the loyalty of his subjects enabled him to carry out the ideal which he had formulated two years before. King and nation were to meet common dangers by action undertaken in common. Everything else was ruthlessly sacrificed in order that the king might take an army to Flanders. The Gascon expedition was quietly dropped. But the gravest difficulty arose not from Gascony but Scotland. Edward's choice of agents to carry out his Scottish policy had been singularly unhappy. Warenne, the governor, was a dull and lethargic nobleman more than sixty-six years of age. He complained of the bad climate of Scotland, and passed most of his time on his Yorkshire estates. In his absence Cressingham, the treasurer, and Ormesby, the justiciar, became the real representatives of the English power. Cressingham was a pompous ecclesiastic, who appropriated to his own uses the money set aside for the fortification of Berwick, and was odious to the Scots for his rapacity and incompetence. Ormesby was a pedantic lawyer, rigid in carrying out the king's orders but stiff and unsympathetic in dealing with the Scots. Under such rulers Scotland was neither subdued nor conciliated. No real effort was made to track to their hiding-places in the hills the numerous outlaws, who had abandoned their estates rather than take an oath of fealty to Edward. When the English governors took action, they were cruel and indiscriminating; and often too were lax and careless. Matters soon became serious. William Wallace of Elderslie slew an English official in Clydesdale, and threw in his lot with the outlaws. He was joined by Sir William Douglas, the former defender of Berwick. By May, 1297, Scotland was in full revolt. In the north, Andrew of Moray headed a rising in Strathspey. In central Scotland the justiciar barely escaped capture, while holding his court at Scone. The south-west, the home both of Wallace and Douglas, proved the most dangerous district. There the barons, imitating Bohun and Bigod, based their opposition to Edward on his claim upon their compulsory service in the French wars. Before long the son of the lord of Annandale, Robert Bruce, now called Earl of Carrick, Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, and other magnates were in arms, and in close association with Douglas and Wallace. Edward made light of this rebellion. Resolved to go to Flanders at all costs, he contented himself with calling upon the levies of the shires north of the Trent to protect his interests in Scotland. Early in July, Henry Percy, Warenne's grandson, rode through south-western Scotland, at the head of the Cumberland musters, and on July 7, the local insurgent leaders, with the exception of Wallace, made their submission to him at Irvine. Moreover, Edward released the two Comyns from their veiled imprisonment, and sent them back to Scotland to help in suppressing the insurrection. Henry Percy boasted that the Scots south of the Forth had been reduced to subjection. But a few days later Wallace was found to be strongly established in Ettrick forest and was threatening Roxburgh. At last Edward stirred up Warenne to return to his government. The king took the precaution of leaving some of his best warriors in England in case their services were needed against the recalcitrant barons or the Scots. Then, as has been said, on August 24 he crossed over to Flanders. The constable and marshal were still in arms, and Winchelsea, who, in spite of his reconciliation with Edward, was in close communication with them, declined to take an active part on the council of regency. Two days before Edward took ship, Hereford and Norfolk appeared in arms at the exchequer at Westminster, and forbade the officials to continue the collection of supplies, until the Great Charter and the Charter of the Forest had been confirmed. They strove to win the support of the Londoners, who had long had a grievance against Edward for depriving them of their right to elect their own mayor, and for subjecting the city to the arbitrary rule of a warden nominated by the crown. They forbade their followers to commit acts of violence, but they made it clear that there could be no peace until the charters were confirmed. In August, Warenne grappled with the Scottish rising, but his own incompetence, and the half-heartedness of the Scottish magnates, on whom he relied, made his task very difficult. Wallace retreated beyond the Forth