A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

Earl of Pembroke upholds Hubert.

Once in command of the government, Peter des Roches pushed headlong to the attainment of his objects. The friends of De Burgh were swept from the Court. The offices were filled with foreigners. Henry was persuaded to bring over 2000 troops from France. But Hubert was not the only Englishman among the nobility. Richard Marshall of Pembroke, the second son of the great Regent, and now his representative, raised the voice of patriotism, and declared to the King that as long as foreigners were ruling none of his English counsellors would appear at Court. Des Roches answered insolently that the King and his foreigners would soon bring rebels to reason. At assemblies at Oxford and at Westminster the same sort of language was used. By Peter’s advice, the King began to proceed against his discontented subjects. He deprived Gilbert Basset of his property, and ordered the apprehension of his brother-in-law Siward; they fled to the Earl Marshall, their property fell to Rivaux. In August, a day was appointed for the delivery of hostages by the suspected nobles. Pembroke, the Marshall, hearing that there was a plot against his life, retired to his Welsh possessions. The King summoned troops to meet him at Gloucester. The Marshall and his friends were outlawed without trial; fresh foreign troops came thronging over, and civil war began. The King’s army did not fare well, and the clergy began to take up the cause of the Marshall. They protested against the confiscation of a peer’s property without trial. “There are no peers in England,” said Des Roches, “as in France; the King may sentence whom he will, and drive them from the country.” The clergy could not hear such absolute principles unmoved. They threatened Des Roches and his favourites with excommunication; and when the King demanded their censure upon the Marshall for an attack upon Gloucester, they said the city was his, and they found no grounds for censure.

Edmund of Canterbury causes Des Roches’ fall. 1234.

Henry becomes his own minister.

Meanwhile, afraid for his life, De Burgh had escaped from Devizes and again taken sanctuary. Again he was illegally torn from it, again the Church remonstrated, and he was again restored. A sudden inroad into Wiltshire under the Marshall’s friend Siward set him at liberty, and he immediately joined the Marshall at Strigul. Again and again the royal troops were worsted; and at length, in 1234, at a meeting of the clergy at Westminster, Archbishop Edmund took the matter up, explained to the King the wretched effects of trusting to his foreign counsellors, warned him that excommunication would most likely fall upon him too, and induced him at length to order the Bishop of Winchester to retire and attend to his spiritual work in his diocese. For a month longer the war went on, or rather attacks continued to be made upon the followers of Peter. But in May, news arrived that Richard Marshall had been treacherously killed in Ireland at the instigation of Des Roches. This was more than the King himself could bear, and the Archbishop received orders to restore to favour all those whom Des Roches had outlawed. Gilbert Marshall received the property and office of his late brother, and Hubert was allowed to retain the earldom of Kent and his own property. This change was followed by the removal of Peter’s creatures. After some years of absence, he himself returned to England, was received into favour, and died in his diocese in 1239.

The fall of Des Roches was not productive of such advantageous changes in the government as might have been expected. Segrave held for a few years the office of Justiciary. On his death the office was not renewed till after the Parliament at Oxford. Ralph Neville continued in more or less favour as Chancellor till 1244, when that office also fell into abeyance. The King practically became his own minister, and unfortunately his views of government had more in common with those of Des Roches than with those of De Burgh. It is true that the growing power of the Great Council, which was gradually gaining the name of Parliament, prevented any great infractions of the Charter, and compelled the King again and again to renew that document, though always in exchange for an aid. The frequency of renewal, however, seems to show repeated efforts on the part of the King to free himself from it; nor was the state of his treasury such as to enable him to do without legitimate sources of revenue. The real faults of his reign were not illegal extensions of the royal power, but the readiness with which he allowed and even joined in the exactions of the Papal See, and the total absence of national objects which distinguish his rule, which may be traced to his culpable partiality to foreigners. From the year 1236 till the Parliament of Oxford, these errors were continually on the increase.

Henry’s marriage.

Influence of the Queen’s uncles.

The first great influx of foreigners was caused by his marriage. In 1236, he married Eleanor, the second daughter of Count Raymond Berenger of Provence, and sister of the Queen of France. From that moment, the Court was in the hands of the Queen’s relatives. It was especially the Queen’s uncles into whose hands patronage fell. William, Bishop of Valence, was the first. To him was given the vast property of Richmond in Yorkshire, which had previously belonged to the Counts of Brittany, and the King had almost succeeded in securing for him the Bishopric of Winchester when news of his death was brought. He was succeeded by another uncle, Peter of Savoy. Richmond was handed on to him; Pevensey and Hastings were intrusted to him, and the wardship of the Earl of Warrenne, which completed his power in the south-east corner of England. To increase his influence, he brought over numbers of young foreign ladies, and married them to some of the great Earls of England. The death of Edmund Rich, Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1240, allowed the King to secure that See, after an interval of five years, for another of his uncles, Boniface, whose violence and warlike bearing, as well as his youth, made him a strange contrast to his predecessor. Peter de Aigue Blanche, another Savoyard, was made Bishop of Hereford, and afterwards became Henry’s disreputable agent in the business of the Sicilian monarchy. This lavish support of foreigners naturally caused great discontent in England, and was repeatedly the subject of complaints in the Great Council. Thus, in 1236 and 1237, there were three stormy councils, nor was the money the King required granted till the sanctions of the Magna Charta were again renewed. The arrival of the Cardinal Otho as Papal Legate did not mend matters; his efforts at reconciliation were useless, and he soon tuned his attention to collecting money for the Church. At this time, for a very short period, it seemed as if Richard Earl of Cornwall, the King’s brother, might have assumed the post of leader of the English party; but his patriotic efforts were short-lived. A few years after he married the Queen’s sister, and threw his influence upon the side of the foreigners.

Formation of a national party under Simon de Montfort.