The Minority of Henry the Third

by Kate Norgate

The Pope was anxious for peace between the two Kings, because he wanted Louis to devote himself to the suppression of the Albigensian disorders in the county of Toulouse and its dependencies. A legate, Cardinal Romanus, went to France to confer with Louis on these matters, and between the end of May and the middle of October three embassies were sent from England at his request to treat with Louis for peace or a truce.[1153] On the English side these negotiations seem to have been undertaken without any real desire to bring them to a successful issue; but they served the double purpose of conciliating the Pope and gaining time to prepare for a more vigorous prosecution of the war. Meanwhile Henry was seeking to form alliances which might help to weaken the power of France. At the close of the previous year it was believed in England that Louis had on foot a project for marrying his daughter to the young King of the Romans, Henry, son of the Emperor Frederic II. This the English King endeavoured to foil by despatching to Germany an embassy charged with proposals for two marriages, one between his sister Isabel and the Emperor’s heir, the other between himself and a daughter of the Duke of Austria. The negotiations dragged on for some months,[1154] but came to nothing; neither, however, did the French scheme, if such a scheme had ever really existed, for at the end of 1225 Henry of Germany wedded Margaret of Austria. Ten years later Isabel of England was to become the third wife of his father the Emperor.[1155] In the middle of August Henry of England secretly made overtures to the deadliest enemy of both France and Rome—Count Raymond of Toulouse[1156]—and a draft treaty of offensive and defensive alliance against Louis was sent from England and its terms sworn to in Henry’s name by the envoys who carried it to Raymond.[1157] With another great southern house, that of Auvergne and Clermont, whose loyalty to France was generally doubtful, Count Richard and his counsellors made a “confederation” which Henry ratified on 12th October, the same day on which he bade his brother and uncle make a truce with France, and himself despatched an embassy thither.[1158]

A month later, the surrender of La Réole completed the re-establishment of Henry’s power in Gascony.[1159] On this Earl William of Salisbury, whose health was failing, set out by his royal nephew’s desire for England. The ship in which he sailed was tossed about in the Bay of Biscay “many nights and days,” till he despaired of life and flung his jewels, money, and fine clothes into the sea, “that as he came naked into this world, so he might, stripped of all earthly honour, enter into the eternal country”; and his companions followed his example. At last they sighted the Isle of Rhé, landed there by means of their boats, and found shelter in an abbey. But two men-at-arms in the service of Savaric de Mauléon, who was keeping vigilant watch on the Poitevin coast in the interest of Louis, recognized the Earl and warned him that he would be captured unless he left the Isle at once. He gave the men twenty pounds, took to the ship again, and was in perils in the sea for three weeks longer before he reached the English coast, seemingly just after Christmas.[1160] {1225–1226} In England he had been so completely given up for lost that Hubert de Burgh had planned to secure the hand and the estates of Countess Ela for a nephew of his own, Raymond by name, and had actually persuaded the King to consent to the marriage. Henry, however, made his consent conditional on that of Ela herself; and when the Justiciar sent his nephew to her “in noble knightly array,” the wife of Longsword indignantly told him that she had lately had news from her husband stating that he was safe and well, but even if he were dead, she would in no wise accept him (the suitor) for her spouse, inasmuch as the nobility of her birth forbade such a thing. “Go,” she added, “and seek a match elsewhere; you will find by experience that you have come here in vain.”[1161] William, when he reached home and heard this story {1226}, went to the King at Marlborough and after being received by him “with great joy,” laid before him a grave complaint against the Justiciar for having sent “some low-born fellow” to insult the Countess; and he added that unless the King made the Justiciar render him full satisfaction, he would seek vengeance for such an outrage himself, in a way which would cause a grave disturbance of the realm. The Justiciar, well knowing that Earl William would have no difficulty in executing his threat, at once made a humble apology and “recovered the Earl’s favour by large gifts of valuable horses and other things.”[1162] The whole story is a curious illustration of the social relations between Hubert and the great nobles of the land; for there is no sign of any previous friction between Hubert and Longsword in political affairs; and between the Earl and his royal nephew there seems to have existed a genuine personal attachment. The meeting at Marlborough was their last; Earl William died at Salisbury on 7th March.[1163]

1226

The practical direction of affairs in Gascony and the guardianship of its nominal ruler, young Richard, thus devolved entirely upon Philip d’Aubigné. He was quite equal to his task, and was moreover well supported by the English government; for Henry and Hubert had at last learned that Gascony could not be preserved, much less Poitou recovered, without constant supplies of money, arms, and men {1225 Aug.}; and these they continued to pour into Bordeaux for Richard[1164] {1226 Feb.–May}—not without considerable difficulty and risk, for Savaric and his men were continually cruising about, on the watch to intercept English vessels, and doing their utmost to make all transit between England and Aquitaine dangerous and sometimes almost impracticable.[1165] In January, 1226, Henry for a moment at least contemplated going in person to join his brother.[1166] The King was at that moment just recovering from an illness which for a time had endangered his life;[1167] this fact, coinciding with Earl William’s return and recital of his experiences at sea, may have made Hubert and the other councillors urge the postponement of a project involving so serious a risk; for the ship which had been prepared for the King soon afterwards sailed without him.[1168] At the end of the month Louis of France took the Cross as leader of the expedition against Toulouse.[1169] Again the Legate Romanus pleaded with Henry for a truce, and on 22nd March an envoy was despatched from England to confer with him about the matter; but the terms in which this mission was announced shew plainly that the young King and his counsellors were not disposed to enter upon any negotiations with Louis.[1170] They were in fact planning to make an attempt at the recovery of Poitou as soon as Louis should be too busy with his crusade to give any help or support to his Poitevin adherents.

The French host was summoned to meet at Bourges on 17th May.[1171] The chief English seaports were bidden to send all their ships to Portsmouth so as to be there on 30th May ready to go forth “on the King’s service.”[1172] But Henry’s project met with an unexpected check. Louis had made it a condition of his Albigensian crusade that the Pope should forbid Henry, on pain of excommunication, to molest him or his realm in any way while he was thus engaged;[1173] and this, on 27th April, Honorius did.[1174] When his letter reached England, the King called his counsellors together and asked them what they advised him to do in the face of this prohibition. They were all of one mind that his cherished scheme must be deferred “till it should be seen what would become of the French King, who had undertaken such a difficult work and costly enterprise.” Henry’s anxiety about his brother was presently allayed by the arrival of letters from Richard giving a good report of his successes. “Moreover there was then among the King’s counsellors one Master William surnamed Pierepunt, skilled in astronomy, who constantly affirmed before the King that if the King of France proceeded with the expedition which he had begun, he would either never return alive, or suffer a great loss and overthrow. The King therefore, cheered by hearing these things, acquiesced in the counsel of his friends.”[1175] On 23rd June the fleet was dismissed,[1176] and so far as Poitou was concerned, fighting and negotiation were alike at a standstill for the next four months.

In Henry’s insular dominions the political storms of 1224 had been succeeded by a period of calm. The Welsh and Irish Marches were both of them in a most unusual state of tranquillity. Henry’s long promised and oft deferred conference with Llywelyn about the amends due for the Welsh raid of January, 1223, seems to have taken place at last at the end of September, 1224,[1177]1224 and—strangely enough—resulted in Llywelyn’s receiving seisin of Kinnerley.[1178] Another conference, probably for the settlement of matters in dispute between Llywelyn and the Marshal and between Llywelyn and Hugh de Mortimer, was planned and postponed several times within the next eighteen months, and seems not to have taken place till 27th August, 1226.[1179]1226 On that day, at Shrewsbury, Hugh de Mortimer “and others” again, in the King’s presence, demanded of Llywelyn the restoration of the lands which he had taken from them. Llywelyn asked the King for another day, and Henry gave him one at Whitchurch on 25th October.[1180] The result does not appear, unless it is indicated in a statement of the Dunstable annalist that “in the same year (1226) agreement was made between Llywelyn and William the Marshal and the Earl of Chester.”[1181] But from the fact that throughout the years 1225–1227 the Welsh chroniclers make no boast, and the English ones no complaint, of any infraction of the peace on the part of Llywelyn or his men, we may safely conclude that the English successes in 1223 had had something more than a merely transitory effect.[1182] The Earl Marshal had landed at Waterford as chief Justiciar in Ireland on 19th June, 12241224. At the beginning of August he sent home to the King an encouraging report of the state of affairs in the March.[1183] In October his hands were strengthened for the work which he had been specially sent to do—the subjugation of Hugh de Lacy—by the appointment of his cousin John Marshal as bailiff of Ulster.[1184] One by one Hugh’s strongholds were captured; at last, in spring, 12251225, Hugh himself surrendered, and was sent by the Earl to England as a prisoner to beg for the King’s mercy and pardon. Henry at first would have nothing to do with him; but the Marshal, coming over soon afterwards, pleaded for him, and, apparently, suggested a temporary settlement which was carried into effect[1185] in May. Two hundred marks, to be paid in instalments, beginning from the Easter last past, were granted to Hugh from the royal treasury for his support during the current year.[1186] Walter de Lacy was given seisin of “all his lands in Ireland and England which the King had seized on occasion of the war with Hugh,” the Marshal being one of his sureties for the payment of the fine.[1187] Twelve months later the custody of all Hugh’s lands in Ireland was committed to Walter to hold for three years, unless within that period Hugh should by the King’s grace obtain their restoration to himself.[1188] Six weeks after this, on Midsummer eve, at Winchester, the Earl Marshal resigned the Justiciarship of Ireland into the hands of the King, and the King at once committed it to Geoffrey de Marsh.[1189] The transfer was to be made on 1st August; Geoffrey was to receive a yearly salary of five hundred and eighty pounds at the Dublin Exchequer so long as he remained Justiciar; and his present appointment was not to be made an occasion for requiring of him any account relating to his former tenure of the same office.[1190] Since his removal from that office Geoffrey had—except about his papers—given no trouble; in August, 12241224, his loyal attitude had been warmly commended by the Marshal,[1191] and in November of the same year, when the Marshal’s presence was temporarily required in England, the responsibility for the peace of the March during his absence had been entrusted to Geoffrey;[1192] but it was probably not the Marshal’s influence that procured his re-appointment. The first letter which the King addressed to him as Justiciar in 12261226—on 30th June, when the actual transfer of the justiciarship had not yet taken place—was an order to summon the King of Connaught to surrender his land (forfeited, according to Henry’s account, by its late King’s failure to render due service to John), and in default, to take it by force and give seisin of it to Richard de Burgh,[1193] who was already seneschal of Limerick and Munster, and was brother to the chief Justiciar of England. Geoffrey, when after a visit to England he had re-entered upon his duties as Justiciar, declared that “all the King’s castles in Ireland were fortified against the King, except Limerick, which was in the custody of Richard de Burgh, who assiduously and constantly assisted him (Geoffrey) in bringing the King’s affairs to good success.”[1194] In Geoffrey’s re-appointment at this time we may surely see the hand of Richard’s brother Hubert.

The Marshal appears to have resigned of his own accord, giving as a reason that he had vowed a pilgrimage to S. Andrew’s; and it was with the declared intention of fulfilling his vow immediately that he parted from the King at Winchester at Midsummer. He had, however, got no further north than Coventry when he heard that his pilgrimage was being represented to the King as a cloak for some evil design; whereupon he at once wrote to Henry that he had given up his project and resolved to go straight back to Ireland. Henry, on 10th July, warmly protested that he had no suspicions of his brother-in-law, but looked upon him as a trusty and loyal counsellor and friend. “But,” he added, “if you really intend to give up your journey and cross over to Ireland, we bid you first come to us and surrender our castles of Caermarthen and Cardigan; or, if you cannot possibly come, send us a man of yours with power to do so. We are going towards York on business, and propose thence to return to the marches of Wales.”[1195] This surrender was duly made before 18th August, when the King committed Caermarthen and Cardigan to Henry of Audley, by a letter-patent in which he expressly declared that the Marshal was to be quit for the whole of the time during which these two castles had been in his keeping and in that of his father before him.[1196] Probably the brothers-in-law had at their midsummer meeting agreed upon this transfer, and also upon another arrangement which was put into legal form a few days later. On 22nd August the castle of Caerleon, “of which the King demanded seisin,”[1197] was committed to him by the Earl Marshal “saving his own right and his inheritance” therein; and on the 26th the King “committed the castle to the Marshal, to hold for four years from the ensuing Michaelmas day.” At the end of the four years the Marshal was to deliver the castle to the King, “saving his own right”; and the King, within a month after he had received it, was to “cause the Earl to have judgement of his peers of such right and seisin as he had on the day when this convention was made at Hereford, and of any other right which he might be able in the meanwhile to search out”; such right not to be prejudiced by the present convention. If the Earl’s peers should adjudge seisin to him, he was to have it without delay, “saving the rights of each party”; and the judgement was not to be delayed beyond the appointed term. Finally, “through this convention the King’s anger—if he had any—against the Earl and his men shall be left behind.”[1198] On the day after this convention was made public, it was announced that the Marshal “had set out for Ireland in the King’s service.”[1199] This was shortly after Geoffrey de Marsh had been complaining that when he called upon the barons of the March to renew their homage to the King, those of Leinster failed to respond, and one of them, Theobald Butler, flatly refused to recognize the new Justiciar’s authority without instructions from the Earl Marshal.[1200] We can scarcely help suspecting that all these things were connected; that the Marshal’s successes in Wales and Ireland, and his marriage with the King’s sister, had aroused the jealousy of the De Burghs, and that Geoffrey was an instrument in their hands. If so, they were playing a game which might have proved dangerous both to themselves and to their sovereign, had it not been for the dignified moderation and stedfast loyalty of the Earl. However this may be, Geoffrey de Marsh remained Justiciar in Ireland till he resigned the office of his own accord in February, 1228.

1225

In England itself the only problem which seems to have given serious trouble to the government during these years was the everlasting problem of finance. Gascony had to be supplied, and to supply Gascony the English treasury had to be drained till there was nothing left for the needs of the English State and of the Crown itself. Five days after the re-issue of the Charters in 1225—on 16th February—orders were given for their publication throughout the realm;[1201] the writs concerning the fifteenth had been issued on the previous day. Half of the tax was to be paid into the treasury at Trinity, the other half at Michaelmas. Detailed instructions were given as to the mode of assessment, the incidence of the tax, the manner of collection;[1202] nevertheless, before the end of March the commissioners employed about the matter in one county at least found themselves involved in unexpected difficulties. From the wording of the royal order it appeared (at any rate to them) that the free tenants of bishops and abbots were to be assessed like those of lay lords; but in Kent the Archbishop forbade the assessment of any such tenants except those holding by military service. On 29th March the King sanctioned this limitation. Complaints had also reached him that the commissioners were “compelling poor women who had only a small quantity of thread, or a brooch worth two or three pence, to give a fifteenth”; this practice they were bidden to stop at once, lest the curses of the poor should fall upon the head of the King. On the other hand, he bade them “diligently and efficaciously induce all crusaders” (who as such were legally exempt) “to contribute to this fifteenth, which is appointed for the peace and safety of our land and the common weal and defence of all; and tell them plainly and openly they are to know that as many of them as shall hold back from giving us this fifteenth, they and their heirs will never have any part in the liberties which we have granted to our loyal subjects by our Charters.”[1203] This method of persuasion, however tyrannical it may sound, was perfectly logical. The Charters had avowedly been renewed for a consideration; those who withheld their share of that consideration, although able to pay it, were not entitled to a share in the benefit of the Charters. The irretrievable blunder which the Great Council had committed at Christmas, 1224, in making a bargain with the Crown for a renewal of the Charters, was already bringing forth its fruit.

Archbishop Stephen’s prohibition to the commissioners in Kent was probably dictated by caution; certainly not by unwillingness to help in supplying the needs of the Crown. The Pope, on 3rd February, wrote to the English prelates and clergy exhorting them to make collections in their several dioceses for the King, but to take care that the proceeds went “for useful and necessary purposes,” not in “superfluous and vain expenses,” and that this collection should not be made a precedent.[1204] When this letter reached England Stephen bade his suffragans urge their clergy to obey it by contributing an aid out of such of their property as was exempt from the fifteenth, and also to pay up their share of that tax, but to take care that whatever money they gave was kept safe till further orders.[1205] Their compliance with these exhortations was made none the easier by the arrival, just before Christmas, of a papal messenger, Master Otto, and his presence in England during the next four months. The expenses which fell upon persons who went on business to the Roman Court were a subject of general complaint; Honorius proposed that this should be remedied by the reservation of a prebend in every cathedral and collegiate church, and a certain proportion of the revenue of every bishop and every religious house in all the realms of Latin Christendom, for the Apostolic See, so that the Pope and the officers of his court might have sufficient means to dispense with the need of charging such heavy fees.[1206] A council assembled at Bourges on S. Andrew’s day[1207] opposed this project so strongly that Cardinal Romanus decided to urge it no further in France till it should be accepted in the Empire, England, and Spain.[1208] In England, whither the Pope’s demand was carried by Otto, the need of consulting all the estates of the realm, and the King’s illness in January, 12261226, served as reasons or excuses for deferring a decision till the middle of April. Then, according to one account, the King and the prelates followed the cautious example of their French brethren, saying they would wait to see how other countries would deal with the question; or, according to another authority, they answered that in any case England ought to be free from such an exaction, by reason of her annual tribute to the Pope.[1209] But that tribute was heavily in arrear, and obviously it was not to be expected that either Otto or Honorius would be satisfied till the arrears were paid up. This, therefore, had to be done, and a sum of over fifteen hundred marks went with Otto back to Rome.[1210] All this while Otto’s long stay had been adding to the financial burdens of the English clergy, for a papal envoy was entitled to claim from every cathedral and collegiate church procurations to the amount of forty shillings; although Otto seems to have contented himself with a smaller sum.[1211] In October {13 Oct.} the clergy made their grant to the Crown; it consisted of a sixteenth of the annual income of their benefices.[1212] Meanwhile Henry was chafing under the Papal command to refrain from war in France while Louis was on crusade. Again he sought to form alliances among the neighbours and the disaffected feudatories of the French King; in April he was negotiating with the Duke of Lorraine,[1213] in October he was making plans—which however came to nothing—to marry the daughter of the Duke of Britanny.[1214] Suddenly the political situation in France changed. On 8th November Master William Pierepunt’s forecast came true; Louis of France died at Montpensier in Auvergne.[1215] His successor was a boy ten years old. Neither the late King nor his father, Philip Augustus, had been liked by the barons, and many of these seized the occasion to assail the Queen-mother, Blanche of Castille, with demands for the restitution of sundry liberties of which, they said, Louis VIII and Philip had deprived them.[1216] The coronation, on 30th November, was almost if not quite as scantily attended as the first crowning of Henry had been.[1217] Henry at once despatched the Archbishop of York, Philip d’Aubigné, and some other envoys, to the chief nobles of Normandy, Anjou, and Poitou, and to the Duke of Britanny—all lands which, from his point of view, ought rightfully to be subject to himself—announcing his intention of going over sea, and calling upon them to receive him loyally.[1218] On 18th December elaborate schemes of concessions to Hugh and Isabel, and also to Hugh of Thouars[1219] and William Larchevêque, were drawn up, witnessed, and sealed ready for despatch, but they were never sent.[1220] Perhaps they were deemed needless owing to a piece of news which may have arrived from Aquitaine: Savaric de Mauléon had on the death of Louis VIII reverted to his old allegiance, and opened the gates of La Rochelle to Richard.[1221] Henry, however, was not ready for immediate action on a great scale; and at Mid-Lent (18th March), 12271227, a truce was made between Richard of Poitou on the one part, and Louis IX, Blanche, Hugh of Lusignan, and their adherents on the other, to last till a fortnight after Midsummer.[1222]