A Clerk of Oxford, and His Adventures in the Barons' War

by Evelyn Everett-Green

The tables shone with massive silver plate; serving-men hurried to and fro, bearing huge silver dishes containing viands of every description. Huge barons of beef were borne in between two stalwart attendants; boars' heads with gleaming white tusks, and peacocks with spreading tails, formed dishes more ornamental than edible, though some favoured them, and laughing plucked out the peacocks' plumes and stuck them in their belts. Huge pasties, both savoury and sweet, found ready custom; and as for the hogsheads of beer and wine that must have been consumed, the household roll speaks eloquently of the capacity of our ancestors in the matter of strong drink. The watchers in the gallery laughed merrily at the sight, and wondered how long the stores of Kenilworth would stand the strain.

Towards the end of the banquet the Earl of Leicester rose to his feet, flagon in hand, and in clear loud tones, which dominated the clamour of voices around him, gave the toast,—

"His Majesty the King!"

In a moment the whole company was on its feet, and the loyal toast was drunk with acclamation.

When the hubbub had subsided, the Earl motioned to his guests to be seated, and himself remaining standing, made a long and eloquent speech.

He spoke of his own affection for the King—his desire for the peace and welfare of the realm—his hatred of bloodshed and confusion. Men had said of him, he exclaimed, with a flash in his eagle eyes, that he desired himself to be monarch of the realm, and the King to be a mere tool in his hands. That charge he utterly and fiercely denied. He was the loyal servant of the King, so long as his Majesty would abide by his plighted word, and would regard the liberties of his subjects and the terms of the Great Charter. The Provisions of Oxford were in themselves nothing new; they were but the means by which the Great Charter could be upheld. The King was not the only person in the realm who had rights to be cherished and guarded. The liberties of all classes must be considered; and if a monarch, through weakness or lack of judgment, surrounded himself with false and scheming men, who persuaded him to acts of tyranny and rapacity, it then behoved his loyal subjects, who wished to do him true service, to remove from his side these false sycophants, and to furnish him instead with true and able counsellors, who could advise him for his own good and for the good of the realm.

This was in effect what the Barons' party (as it had come to be called) were doing. They would not stand by passive and idle whilst England's wealth and England's honour were being handed over to foreign powers, whilst the country was being bled to death to fill the papal coffers, and every lucrative place, as it fell vacant, was heaped upon some foreign adventurer, whose handsome face had attracted the King's admiration, or whose relationship to the Queen gave him a supposed claim upon his royal kinsman.

The Prince knew all this as well as any man in the kingdom. He had remonstrated with his feeble father times without number. He had sworn to the Provisions of Oxford, and had refused to cancel his oath even when the King repudiated his own, and had bribed the Roman Pontiff to grant him absolution therefrom. The Prince was the true friend to his country, and when he should sit upon the throne all would be well. Meantime the most true and loyal servants of the King were those who sought the true welfare of the realm, and would withhold him from spoliation at the hands of foreign hirelings.

Then holding his head very high, De Montfort spoke of the taunt sometimes levelled at himself of being a foreigner. He admitted freely his foreign birth, and pointed out how he had been the first to deliver up his castles of Kenilworth and Odiham after the Provisions of Oxford had been agreed upon. He had even retired altogether to Gascony after a stormy quarrel with the Earl of Gloucester; and were it for the good of the realm, whose welfare he had so deeply at heart, he would return thither willingly, and never again set foot on these shores. But over and over again he had discovered that he was necessary to the welfare of the party. At this moment he had been summoned across the seas to help in their deliberations. No one had the true welfare of the English nation more at heart than he; and alien though he might be by birth, he loved the land of his adoption with a changeless and passionate love, and would live for her or die for her whichever might be for her good. He had put his hand to the plough; he had pledged his honour and his reputation to save her from papal thraldom and the spoliation of self-seeking men; she should have her Great Charter, for which men had bled and died before, or he himself would leave his dead body upon a blood-stained battlefield!

Roars of applause followed this masterly speech, spoken with all that charm of manner and lofty dignity of which De Montfort was master. Not one word did the great Earl speak of the personal wrongs inflicted upon him by the capricious monarch. Every one present knew how greatly he had suffered from the injustice of Henry—how he had spent money like water in his service in Gascony, only to be reviled and abused upon his return by a master who gave greedy and credulous heed to every word spoken against one whom he ofttimes feared and hated.