A History of England, Period I. Mediæval Monarchy

by J. Franck Bright

A far greater man took the post he thus resigned. Simon de Montfort, destined to be the real national leader of England, was rising into importance. The sister and heiress of Count Robert of Leicester had married the Count of Montfort, and died in 1204. In 1215, the whole English property had been given to Ralph Earl of Chester. Simon de Montfort, the Conqueror of the Albigenses, never possessed it, but his eldest son Almaric, after the death of the Earl of Chester, in 1232, demanded the property and honours of Leicester for his younger brother Simon, who was thus acknowledged as the owner of the property. He held the bason of water as High-Steward at the Queen’s coronation, shortly after married the King’s sister, the widow of William, second Earl of Pembroke, and succeeded in getting that marriage acknowledged by Gregory IX. in 1238. Like all those who had to do with Henry, he was obliged to bear extraordinary changes of fortune from the fickle character of the King. An angry quarrel drove him abroad, and, in 1240, in company with Richard of Cornwall, he set out for the Holy Land.

Revival in the Church.

Grostête.

During their absence the government of England grew continually worse. Men began to weary of the personal government of the King. For several years the great offices of justiciary and chancellor had been left unfilled, and their duties performed by subordinate officials, upon whom the King lavished his favours. One of the chief of these was Mansell, who is said to have held no less than 700 livings, and to have been in the yearly receipt of 8000 marks. The Church was gradually driven to make common cause with the lay opposition. It was a time of spiritual revival. The great monastic orders had lapsed into the position of wealthy landowners. The work which in the early times they had so well performed, the civilization of the country districts, was over. They had become lazy and luxurious. The prelates had for the most part deserted their spiritual calling and become statesmen. The Church as a whole, as represented by the Pope, had misused its influence. Crusades had become the instruments of temporal aggrandizement, or of revenge upon the personal enemies of the Pope. A spiritual revival had been set on foot almost at the same time by St. Dominic and St. Francis d’Assisi, who had founded the two great orders of Dominicans and Franciscans, the Black and Grey Friars. The vow of poverty, evaded by the older orders, had become a reality. The establishments of the Friars had met with great success; thousands thronged to be enrolled in their orders. They had rapidly spread over Europe, and had lately arrived in England, and there begun their work of regeneration. They had laboured chiefly in the towns and among the most wretched outcasts of society, and had there called into life new religious energy, mingled with hatred towards their wealthy predecessors the old monks, and with a consciousness of personal equality in the sight of God, which tended much to strengthen the democratic feeling which supplied Simon de Montfort with his strongest support. Their teaching had not affected the lower classes alone; numbering among them many learned men, they speedily got possession of the education at Oxford, and found a friend in Grostête, the learned Bishop of Lincoln. The reforms which the Church demanded were carried out by him as far as possible in his diocese; and under his guidance, and that of Edmund Rich, the Church of England was becoming at once spiritual and national. The folly of the King, who filled the high ecclesiastical offices with foreign favourites, the exactions of the Pope, who, acting hand in hand with him, placed hundreds of benefices in the hands of Italian priests, compelled all that was best in the Church to throw itself absolutely on the side of the reformers.

Affairs of Poitou.

Loss of Poitou. 1243.

Prince Richard joins the foreign party.

Ecclesiastical and secular misgovernment went on side by side. Disastrous expeditions to France, and consequent exactions from the people, were intermingled with the visits of Papal emissaries, to wring from the wretched clergy contributions for the Papal war against the Hohenstaufen. In 1242, the King undertook to regain Poitou. Richard of Cornwall had been nominal Count of that province, when, in 1241, Louis gave his brother Alphonse the same title. The most important nobleman in the country was the Count de la Marche, who had married Henry’s mother. He at first did homage to the new Count, but afterwards, urged it is supposed by his ambitious wife, renounced his fealty, and demanded assistance from Henry. The King therefore landed in the following year in Gascony. De la Marche soon began to repent of what he had done, and Henry, never a very active warrior, was disheartened by his treachery. The armies at length met near Taillebourg, on the Charente. Afraid of being surrounded, Henry employed his brother Richard, who had gained general favour with the French by liberally ransoming prisoners in the Crusade, to secure an armistice. He took the opportunity of falling back to Saintes, where he was almost surprised by the pursuing enemy. After this he was gradually driven backwards to the Garonne, while Marche and his revolted barons again accepted their French lord. The year was wasted in fruitless negotiations with the discontented Count of Toulouse, and in collecting money and troops from England. Henry quarrelled with his own nobles, who gradually left his army; and early in 1243 returned to England, having accepted a peace, which deprived him of the whole of Poitou and of the Isle of Rhé. Gascony was now the only part of France remaining to the English. It was during this campaign that Richard of Cornwall met and married Sancha, the Queen’s sister, throwing up from this time all chance of leading the national party, and attaching himself to the foreigners.

Exactions in Church and State. 1244.

Council at Lyons.