THE MISDEEDS OF THE SENESCHAL OF GASCONY (1253).
Source.—Chronicon Thomæ Wykes, pp. 104-106. (Annales Monastici, vol. iv.—Rolls Series.)
In the same year, about the Festival of the Assumption of the Blessed Mary (August 15), King Henry crossed into Gascony with a large army, having at the general desire entrusted the guardianship of his whole kingdom of England to his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, and Walter de Gray, Archbishop of York. The cause of his journey was as follows: Certain of the chief men belonging to the Duchy of Gascony had come to the King in England with fierce complaints and denunciations against Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, who had been Seneschal of Gascony, saying that he was intolerably oppressing the nobles and people of the said province by undue extortions, and had applied the revenues and proceeds which flowed into the royal treasury, not to the King's uses, but to his own. Henry, in great wrath thereat, dismissed the Earl from the administratorship of the Duchy; whereupon he, in revenge for his deposition, handed over to be held by capital enemies of the lord King three very famous and strongly-fortified castles, in which clearly lay the whole strength of the province, to wit, the castles of Fronsac, Renauges, and La Réole, with the neighbouring towns and boroughs, the city of Bordeaux alone preserving a lukewarm adherence to the King. The treacherous occupants of these castles oppressed the nobles and people more severely than ever, introduced a garrison to fortify their castles, and prepared to defend themselves by warlike means; nor would they allow any one appointed by the King to carry on the administration of the Duchy. Such being the state of affairs, the King, embarking at Portsmouth, committed himself to the deep, and, after a prosperous voyage, landed at Bordeaux; then, relying on the assistance of the people of the country and the soldiers whom he had brought with him, he laid siege to the castles so deceitfully occupied, assaulted them with engines of war, captured and held them; thereafter he quieted the whole province, appointing the lord Stephen Longsword, a man of great vigour, Seneschal of all Gascony. But the Earl of Leicester, though sorely offended, concealed the hatred which had filled him since the time of his dismissal, and awaited in the kingdom of France the opportunity of taking revenge on his deposers by some deep-laid scheme.