The Minority of Henry the Third

by Kate Norgate

From Scotland the Legate turned to Wales. Throughout the winter of 1219–1220 he was in the west of England, negotiating with Llywelyn for the settlement of a dispute between the Welsh prince and Hugh de Mortimer about certain manors on the Welsh border.[605] On 2nd December Llywelyn was invited, or summoned, to meet the Legate at Worcester to discuss the matter on 7th January, 1220.[606] The King’s letter, however, contained a summons to answer complaints as well as to make them; and it may have been for this reason that Llywelyn was unwilling to obey it. At his request Pandulf postponed the meeting till the octave of Candlemas.[607] {1220} It seems to have had a successful result thus far, that Llywelyn was induced to refrain from open hostilities throughout the spring. On Rogation Monday, 4 May, he met the King, the Legate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Winchester, and the Justiciar, in conference at Shrewsbury,[608] and gave what was understood on the English side as a promise that he would surrender the lands in dispute between himself and Hugh de Mortimer.[609] An attempt was also made to check the perennial strife between the men of the Welsh prince and those of the English Earl in Pembroke, by a truce on the understanding that the Marshal and the other Marcher lords “should be restored to their rights” before 1st August.[610] On the strength of these promises David, Llywelyn’s eldest son by Joan, was formally taken under the King’s protection, and the subject princes of Wales were bidden in the King’s name to be loyal to both Llywelyn and David.[611]

1220

From Shrewsbury King, Legate, and council hastened to London for an important public ceremony. Early in April the Legate and the Primate had received letters from the Pope ordering that Henry “should be a second time raised to the office of king, with due solemnity, according to the custom of the realm; because his first coronation, on account of the disturbed condition of his realm, had been performed less solemnly than was right and fitting, and in another place than that which the usage of the kingdom required.” This, of course, meant that the boy was to be re-crowned at Westminster, and by the Archbishop of Canterbury. Stephen was delighted, “for he loved the King dearly on account of his innocency.” He and Pandulf agreed that the ceremony should take place on Whit-Sunday, 17th May, and all the prelates and nobles were summoned to be present.[612] On the preceding day the young King himself had another solemn function to perform. Henry came of a family who for two hundred years past had been known as “great builders”; he was a lad of refined, artistic temperament, as well as of a pious disposition; and it seems that he had already undertaken the work which was to be the great architectural glory of his reign, the rebuilding of the abbey church of Westminster. On Whitsun Eve he laid the first stone of the new Lady Chapel.[613] Next morning for the last time a king was crowned in the old church of S. Edward the Confessor. In Pandulf’s presence Henry renewed under the dictation of Archbishop Stephen the oath which he had sworn in Gualo’s presence at Gloucester—to protect the Church of God, and to preserve inviolate the peace of both clergy and people and the good laws of the realm; then the Archbishop placed in his hands the insignia of the regal office, and set upon his head “the crown of the most holy King Edward.” “And this crowning of the King was done with such great peacefulness and splendour, that the oldest men among the nobles of England who were present asserted that they never remembered any of his predecessors being crowned amid such concord and tranquillity.”[614]

1205–1208

Concord and tranquillity did indeed, to all outward seeming, reign at that moment over all the dominions of the English Crown, except the Duchy of Aquitaine. One of the most difficult of the many difficult problems with which the regency had to deal was the problem of how to retain Poitou and Gascony for Henry. The heritage of his grandmother Eleanor had descended to him almost complete. Philip Augustus had never made any attempt to conquer Gascony; he had seized Poitou, but the greater part of it had been regained by John in 1214 and left in his possession by the terms of the truce with which the war between him and Philip had ended. John’s seneschal in Gascony at that time was one of his chamberlains, Geoffrey de Neville[615]; another chamberlain—Hubert de Burgh—soon became seneschal of Poitou.[616] At the end of the year 1214 or the beginning of the next Geoffrey de Neville was succeeded by a baron of Saintonge, Reginald de Pons;[617] in June 1215 Hubert de Burgh became Justiciar of England; before that year closed, the seneschalship of Poitou was united with that of Gascony in the hands of Reginald[618]; and thenceforth the two offices were always granted together and became practically one. Reginald resigned it a few months after John’s death, and was succeeded by Archbishop William of Bordeaux.[619] A year later William gave it up likewise, and in May 1218 Geoffrey de Neville was again sent across the sea to be Seneschal of Poitou and Gascony.[620] Reginald and William had resigned ostensibly for the same reason—because they wanted to go to the Holy Land. Possibly the layman and the prelate may both of them have been glad of an excuse for ridding themselves of an extremely disagreeable office. The loyalty—such as it was—of Poitou and Gascony to the English Crown was of very recent growth; it had sprung up since the expulsion of the Angevins from their other continental dominions. The one persistent political aim of the men of the South was to escape as much as possible from all external control, no matter whence it came. Their land was full of thriving cities and towns, each with a highly developed administrative organization of its own, almost like so many miniature republics; and of high-spirited, hot-tempered barons who were perpetually quarrelling among themselves. Moreover, towns and barons were mutually jealous of one another; and all were alike jealous of any interference with their respective privileges, corporate or individual, on the part of a higher power. They were also all alike shrewd enough to see that their chances of independence were greater under the rule of a sovereign beyond the sea than under the direct rule of the King of France. But they were also, all alike, fully alive to the advantages of their position between two rival overlords; and the possibility of some turn in Aquitanian politics which might furnish a plea, an excuse, or a temptation for French intervention was a danger never absent from the minds of Henry’s counsellors in their dealings with his transmarine dominions.

Besides Poitou and Gascony, the Duchy of Aquitaine included four counties whose rulers owed homage and obedience to the Duke as their suzerain: Angoulême, La Marche, Limoges, and Périgord. Two of these stood, during the early years of the thirteenth century, in relations to each other and to their common overlord which gave them a special importance in the politics of the Duchy. The county of Angoulême was the heritage of Queen Isabel, John’s wife and Henry’s mother. La Marche belonged to Hugh of Lusignan, to whose eldest son Isabel had been betrothed in her infancy, under whose care she had been brought up, and from whose house her own father had literally stolen her, a child scarce twelve years old, {1200} to marry her to the King of England. Between the houses of Lusignan and of Anjou there was already, even at that date, a smouldering feud of some years’ standing, which this outrage, of course, aggravated, but which was allayed for a time in 12141214 by John’s promise of little Joan, his eldest daughter by Isabel of Angoulême, as wife to the younger Hugh in her mother’s stead. Joan was then four years old. Her bridegroom—known simply as “Hugh of Lusignan,” his father being Hugh, Count of La Marche—was a young man in the prime of life,[621] gifted with an ample share of the stirring, ambitious, acquisitive spirit which characterized his race. That race was famous alike in legend and in history, and had reached the height of its greatness within the lifetime of the reigning count of La Marche, two of whose brothers had been crowned and anointed Kings.[622] Another brother, Ralf, was in right of his wife count of Eu in Normandy and owner of some lands in England. In 12181218 the elder Hugh went to the Crusade; and thus when Geoffrey de Neville took up the government of Poitou and Gascony, the younger Hugh was for practical purposes count of La Marche, and the most important personage in northern Aquitaine. He and Joan were still only betrothed, not married; but she was in his custody, and he was officially treated as “brother” to King Henry; he had claims against the English Crown respecting certain lands which John had promised to him at his betrothal;[623] and when his uncle Ralf of Eu died childless in the spring of 12191219, he seems to have also—no doubt on behalf of his father—laid claim to Ralf’s estates, and taken a high-handed method of enforcing his demand, by picking a quarrel with the King’s town of Niort. Geoffrey de Neville tried to mediate, and promised to procure him satisfaction for any complaint that he might have against the town, “but,” writes Geoffrey to the King, “he answered that he would not cease from infesting your land for us or for anybody else.” Geoffrey had now been seneschal for a year, and was confessedly at his wit’s end and eager to be rid of an office in which he foresaw nothing but failure and disgrace. “He”—that is, Hugh—“and others can see how poor we are both in men and money.” “We greatly fear that unless speedy and effectual counsel be taken for the defence of your land, the said Hugh and the magnates will usurp it, and it will pass to the rule of a stranger. And we do you to wit that unless you take strong measures for its defence, we (Geoffrey) intend to set out for Holy Land on Midsummer day, for we will on no account stay here to your and our own damage and disgrace; because the said Hugh has let us know that he will not cease from molesting you until you give up the English lands of the count of Eu. For the love of God, write back quickly what you wish us to do.”[624] Apparently the answer to this letter was an order to remain at his post; and he did so, though complaining bitterly of the impossibility of the task laid upon him. “We have already urged you,” he writes again, “to take some counsel for the defence of your land of Poitou and Gascony, not so much against the King of France as against your own barons, who ravage your land and capture and put to ransom your townsfolk, and behave themselves towards your men in such fashion that it appears, and we believe, they are not well affected to your service. We, by reason of our poverty, cannot defend the land, nor subdue them; and they make no more account of me than if I were a foot-boy. Wherefore we do you to wit that unless you take other counsel without delay, you will soon see us in England. And do not say that the King’s land is lost through us; you are casting it away yourselves for lack of counsel.”[625]

1218–1219

At this juncture a new complication arose. Queen Isabel had in 1218 returned to her own county of Angoulême, received in its capital city the homage of its barons, and taken its government into her own hands.[626] She had some trouble at the outset with Reginald of Pons, the ex-seneschal of Poitou, who seems to have owned some castles in the Angoumois, and for some unexplained reason held them against her, but was soon overcome by her superior forces.[627] A matter of more consequence was her quarrel with Bartholomew of Puy. In the early part of John’s reign Bartholomew had been provost, or mayor, of the city of Angoulême;[628] from July, 1214,[629] if not earlier, he was seneschal of the county for John, and after John’s death for Henry. Isabel was minded to govern for herself; rightly or wrongly, she asserted that Bartholomew was plotting mischief against her with some of the Poitevin barons, especially Ralf de Lusignan the count of Eu, and also with the King of France; she therefore deprived him of his office and all his possessions, and made him give her his two sons as hostages. Bartholomew, apparently, appealed to the English government and the new seneschal of Aquitaine, and fled for shelter to Hugh de Lusignan.[630] Just then {1219} Hugh and the seneschal had suddenly become friends. Geoffrey wanted to go to England, but he was so absolutely penniless that on reaching La Rochelle he found it impossible to proceed any further, or even to leave the city,[631] till a loan of a hundred and sixty marks from some local merchants was negotiated for him by Hugh de Lusignan, who offered himself as surety for its repayment by the English government. This simple but timely stroke of policy made Hugh master of the situation in Aquitaine. The letters in which he and Geoffrey notified the transaction to King and Council were carried to England by Bartholomew of Puy. Geoffrey excused his acceptance of Hugh’s help on the plea that “the trouble in your land is so great that ruin would have followed if I had withdrawn”; Hugh modestly remarked that “your land of Poitou was greatly disturbed, but by God’s grace we have put it into a better state.” Both requested that the money should be given to Bartholomew in the presence of Ralf of Saint-Samson, who accompanied him, and who “knew that these things were true”; and Geoffrey added a warning—“If it be not paid, and if Sir Hugh should be compelled to pay it for me, you will never again find anybody who will make any loan to your order or to you.”[632]

1219

The Council perceived that the only thing to do with Sir Hugh was to make a friend of him, if possible, by enlisting him as a sort of unofficial colleague to the luckless seneschal. In July Bartholomew of Puy came back, in the character of “the King’s messenger.”[633] He seems to have brought letters from the King and Council to Isabel, directing her to reinstate him in his property. Almost at the same time negotiations were set on foot in the King’s name for a loan of a thousand marks from the mayor and citizens of La Rochelle, and another thousand from those of Bordeaux, “to be used and expended by the hands of our very dear brother, Hugh of Lusignan, in defence of our land, if it should be needful.”[634] The possible danger against which it was thought that defence might be needed was an attack from Louis of France. He had been for some months past in the county of Toulouse, fighting against the Albigensians, and some of Henry’s subjects in Aquitaine feared that the French host, when its work at Toulouse was done, might be used against their sovereign and themselves.[635] These suspicions of Louis were, however, without justification. There is not the least indication that Louis ever thought of using, or allowing his followers to use, the opportunity which certainly lay within his reach for intervening at this time in the troubles of Poitou and Gascony. The truce between France and England, however, was now within nine months of its term;[636] and Pandulf was growing very anxious to secure its prolongation. In September a month’s safe-conduct was given to some envoys from the King of France to come over and discuss this matter.[637] In January, 12201220, the Legate wrote urgently from the west of England, where he was detained by his negotiations with Llywelyn, to the Bishop of Winchester and the Justiciar, begging them to send some trusty messenger, “secretly, privately, and without delay,” to ask Philip for a renewal of the truce; he himself drafted for them a letter such as he deemed advisable for the envoy to convey; and he impressed upon his colleagues the importance of taking the matter in hand at once and insisting upon a decisive answer from the French King.[638] Three envoys were accordingly despatched on 26th January;[639] and on 3rd March the truce was renewed for four years from the ensuing Easter.[640]