A total victory of the sovereign over so extensive a rebellion commonly produces a revolution of government, and strengthens as well as enlarges, for some time, the prerogatives of the crown: yet no sacrifices of national liberty were made on this occasion; the great charter remained still inviolate; and the king, sensible that his own barons, by whose assistance alone he had prevailed, were no less jealous of their independence than the other party, seems thenceforth to have more carefully abstained from all those exertions of power which had afforded so plausible a pretence to the rebels. The clemency of this victory is also remarkable: no blood was shed on the scaffold: no attainders, except of the Montfort family, were carried into execution: and though a Parliament, assembled at Winchester, attainted all those who had borne arms against the king, easy compositions were made with them for their lands [1]; and the highest sum levied on the most obnoxious offenders exceeded not five years' rent of their estate. Even the Earl of Derby, who again rebelled, after having been pardoned and restored to his fortune, was obliged to pay only seven years' rent, and was a second time restored. The mild disposition of the king, and the prudence of the prince, tempered the insolence of victory, and gradually restored order to the several members of the state, disjointed by so long a continuance of civil wars and commotions. [FN [l] Id. ibid.]
The city of London, which had carried farthest the rage and animosity against the king, and which seemed determined to stand upon its defence after almost all the kingdom had submitted, was, after some interval, restored to most of its liberties and privileges; and Fitz-Richard the mayor, who had been guilty of so much illegal violence, was only punished by fine and imprisonment. The Countess of Leicester, the king's sister, who had been extremely forward in all attacks on the royal family, was dismissed the kingdom with her two sons, Simon and Guy, who proved very ungrateful for this lenity. Five years afterwards, they assassinated, at Viterbo in Italy, their cousin Henry d'Allmaine, who at that very time was endeavouring to make their peace with the king; and by taking sanctuary in the church of the Franciscans, they escaped the punishment due to so great an enormity [m]. [FN [m] Rymer, vol. i. p. 879. vol. ii. p. 4, 5. Chron. T. Wykes, p. 94. W. Heming. p. 589. Trivet, p. 240.]
[MN 1267.] The merits of the Earl of Gloucester, after he returned to his allegiance, had been so great in restoring the prince to his liberty, and assisting him in his victories against the rebellious barons, that it was almost impossible to content him in his demands; and his youth and temerity, as well as his great power, tempted him, on some new disgust, to raise again the flames of rebellion in the kingdom. The mutinous populace of London, at his instigation, took to arms; and the prince was obliged to levy an army of thirty thousand men in order to suppress them. Even this second rebellion did not provoke the king to any act of cruelty; and the Earl of Gloucester himself escaped with total impunity. He was only obliged to enter into a bond of twenty thousand marks, that he should never again be guilty of rebellion: a strange method of enforcing the laws, and a proof of the dangerous independence of the barons in those ages! These potent nobles were, from the danger of the precedent, averse to the execution of the laws of forfeiture and felony against any of their fellows; though they could not, with a good grace, refuse to concur in obliging them to fulfil any voluntary contract and engagement into which they had entered.
[MN 1270.] The prince, finding the state of the kingdom tolerably composed, was seduced, by his avidity for glory and by the prejudices of the age, as well as by the earnest solicitations of the King of France, to undertake an expedition against the infidels in the Holy Land [n]; and he endeavoured previously to settle the state in such a manner as to dread no bad effects from his absence. As the formidable power and turbulent disposition of the Earl of Gloucester gave him apprehensions, he insisted on carrying him along with him, in consequence of a vow which that nobleman had made to undertake the same voyage: in the mean time, he obliged him to resign some of his castles, and to enter into a new bond not to disturb the peace of the kingdom [o]. He sailed from England with an army, and arrived in Lewis's camp before Tunis in Africa, where he found that monarch already dead from the intemperance of the climate and the fatigues of his enterprise. The great, if not only, weakness of this prince in his government, was the imprudent passion for crusades; but it was his zeal chiefly that procured him from the clergy the title of St. Lewis, by which he is known in the French history; and if that appellation had not been so extremely prostituted, as to become rather a term of reproach, he seems by his uniform probity and goodness, as well as his piety, to have fully merited the title. He was succeeded by his son Philip, denominated the Hardy; a prince of some merit, though much inferior to that of his father. [FN [n] M. Paris, p. 677. [o] Chron. T. Wykes, p. 90.]
[MN 1271.] Prince Edward, not discouraged by this event, continued his voyage to the Holy Land, where he signalized himself by acts of valour; revived the glory of the English name in those parts; and struck such terror into the Saracens, that they employed an assassin to murder him, who wounded him in the arm, but perished in the attempt [p]. Meanwhile, his absence from England was attended with many of those pernicious consequences which had been dreaded from it. The laws were not executed: the barons oppressed the common people with impunity [q]: they gave shelter on their estates to bands of robbers, whom they employed in committing ravages on the estates of their enemies: the populace of London returned to their usual licentiousness: and the old king, unequal to the burden of public affairs, called aloud for his gallant son to return [r], and to assist him in swaying that sceptre which was ready to drop from his feeble and irresolute hands. [MN 1272. 16th Nov. Death,] At last, overcome by the cares of government and the infirmities of age, he visibly declined, and he expired at St. Edmondsbury, in the sixty-fourth year of his age, and fifty-sixth of his reign; the longest reign that is to be met with in the English annals. His brother, the King of the Romans, (for he never attained the title of Emperor,) died about seven months before him. [FN [p] M. Paris, p. 678, 679. W. Heming. p. 520. [q] Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p. 404. [r] Rymer, vol. i. p. 869. M. Paris, p. 678.]
[MN and character of the king.] The most obvious circumstance of Henry's character is his incapacity for government, which rendered him as much a prisoner in the hands of his own ministers and favourites, and as little at his own disposal, as when detained a captive in the hands of his enemies. From this source, rather than from insincerity or treachery, arose his negligence in observing his promises; and he was too easily induced, for the sake of present convenience, to sacrifice the lasting advantages arising from the trust and confidence of his people. Hence too were derived his profusion to favourites, his attachment to strangers, the variableness of his conduct, his hasty resentments, and his sudden forgiveness and return of affection. Instead of reducing the dangerous power of his nobles, by obliging them to observe the laws towards their inferiors, and setting them the salutary example in his own government, he was seduced to imitate their conduct, and to make his arbitrary will, or rather that of his ministers, the rule of his actions. Instead of accommodating himself, by a strict frugality, to the embarrassed situation in which his revenue had been left by the military expeditions of his uncle, the dissipations of his father, and the usurpations of the barons; he was tempted to levy money by irregular exactions, which, without enriching himself, impoverished, at least disgusted, his people. Of all men, nature seemed least to have fitted him for being a tyrant; yet there are instances of oppression in his reign, which, though derived from the precedents left him by his predecessors, had been carefully guarded against by the great charter, and are inconsistent with all rules of good government. And on the whole, we may say, that greater abilities, with his good dispositions, would have prevented him from falling into his faults; or, with worse dispositions, would have enabled him to maintain and defend them.
This prince was noted for his piety and devotion, and his regular attendance on public worship; and a saying of his on that head is much celebrated by ancient writers. He was engaged in a dispute with Lewis IX. of France, concerning the preference between sermons and masses: he maintained the superiority of the latter, and affirmed that he would rather have one hour's conversation with a friend, than hear twenty of the most elaborate discourses pronounced in his praise . [FN Walsing. Edw. I. p. 43.]
Henry left two sons, Edward, his successor, and Edmond, Earl of
Lancaster; and two daughters, Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and
Beatrix, Duchess of Britany. He had five other children, who died in
their infancy.
[MN Miscellaneous transactions of the reign.] The following are the most remarkable laws enacted during this reign. There had been great disputes between the civil and ecclesiastical courts concerning bastardy. The common law had deemed all those to be bastards who were born before wedlock; by the canon law they were legitimate: and when any dispute of inheritance arose, it had formerly been usual for the civil courts to issue writs to the spiritual, directing them to inquire into the legitimacy of the person. The bishop always returned an answer agreeable to the canon law, though contrary to the municipal law of the kingdom. For this reason the civil courts had changed the terms of their writ; and instead of requiring the spiritual courts to make inquisition concerning the legitimacy of the person, they only proposed the simple question of fact, whether he were born, before or after wedlock? The prelates complained of this practice to the Parliament assembled at Merton in the twentieth of this king, and desired that the municipal law might be rendered conformable to the canon; but received from all the nobility the memorable reply, NOLUMUS LEGES ANGLIAE MUTARE! We will not change the laws of England [t]. [FN [t] Statute of Merton, chap. 9.]
After the civil wars, the Parliament, summoned at Marlebridge, gave their approbation to most of the ordinances which had been established by the reforming barons, and which, though advantageous to the security of the people, had not received the sanction of a legal authority. Among other laws, it was there enacted, that all appeals from the courts of inferior lords should be carried directly to the king's courts without passing through the courts of the lords immediately superior . It was ordained that money should bear no interest during the minority of the debtor [w]. This law was reasonable, as the estates of minors were always in the hands of their lords, and the debtors could not pay interest where they had no revenue. The charter of King John had granted this indulgence: it was omitted in that of Henry III., for what reason is not known; but it was renewed by the statute of Marlebridge. Most of the other articles of this statute are calculated to restrain the oppressions of sheriffs, and the violence and iniquities committed in distraining cattle and other goods. Cattle and the instruments of husbandry formed at that time the chief riches of the people. [FN Statute of Marleb. chap. 20. [w] Ibid. chap. 16.]