The Pope was too busy to attend to him. That council at Lyons had ended in sentence of deposition upon Frederick, and the combat raged in Italy till his death, when Innocent, claiming Sicily as a fief of the Church, offered it, if he could get it, to Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who had too much sense to accept such a crown.
It then was offered to Henry for his son Edmund, whom he arrayed in the robes of a Sicilian prince, and presented to the barons of England, asking for men and money to win the kingdom. Not a man of them, however, would march, or give a penny in aid of the cause, and therefore Innocent raised money from the Lombard merchants in the name of the King of England.
No wonder Henry could not pay. His own household had neither wages, clothes, nor food, except what they obtained by purveying—in their case only a license to rob, since no payment was ever given for the goods they carried off. His pages were gay banditti, and the merchants, farmers, and fishers fled as from an enemy when the court approached; yet, at each little transient gleam of prosperity, the King squandered all that came into his hands in feasting and splendor, then grasped at Church revenues, tormented the Jews, laid unjust fines on the Londoners, or took bribes for administering justice, and all that he did was imitated with exaggeration by his half-brothers, uncles, and favorites.
His chancellor, Mansel, held seven hundred benefices at once, and so corrupted the laws, that one of the judges pronounced the source poisoned from the fountain. Another chancellor was expelled from the court for refusing to set the great seal to a grant to one of the Queen’s uncles of four-pence on every sack of wool, and at one time Eleanor herself actually had the keeping of the seal, and when the Londoners resisted one of her unjust demands, she summarily sent the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs to the Tower.
Isabel Warenne, the King’s cousin, and widow of the Earl of Arundel, an excellent and charitable lady, still young, came to the King’s court to seek justice respecting a wardship of which she had been deprived. She spoke boldly to Henry: “My Lord, why do you turn your face from justice? Nobody can obtain right. You are placed between God and us, but you govern neither yourself nor us. Are you not ashamed thus to trample on the Church, and disquiet your nobles?”
“What do you mean, lady?” said the King. “Have the great men of England chosen you for their advocate?”
“No, sir,” said the spirited lady; “they have given me no such charter, though you have broken that which you and your father have granted and sworn to observe. Where are the liberties of England, so often granted? We appeal from you to the Judge in heaven!”
All Henry could say, was, “Did you not ask me a favor because you were my cousin?”
“You deny my right; I expect no favor,” and, so saying, Isabel left him.
After two years, Richard of Chichester was permitted to assume the temporalities of his see, and most admirably he used them, doing every kindness to the poor in his diocese, and always maintaining the right, though more gently than his friend at Lincoln. Those were evil days, and men’s sense of obedience and sense of right were often sorely divided. Richard died in the year 1253, after a short illness, in which he was attended by his friend Simon, leaving the memory of his peaceful, charitable life, much beloved in his diocese, and was shortly after canonized. “Show us the Father, and it sufficeth us,” were among his last words.