Nave of Salisbury Cathedral Church, looking west. Date, between 1240 and 1250.
A king and labourers in the reign of Henry III.
26. General Progress of the Country.—In spite of the turmoils of Henry's reign the country made progress in many ways. Men busied themselves with replacing the old round-arched churches by large and more beautiful ones, in that Early English style of which Lincoln Cathedral was the first example on a large scale. In 1220 it was followed by Beverley Minster (see p. [189]). The nave of Salisbury Cathedral was begun in 1240 (see p. [206]), and a new Westminster Abbey grew piecemeal under Henry's own supervision during the greater part of the reign (see p. [205]). Mental activity accompanied material activity. At Oxford there were reckoned 15,000 scholars. Most remarkable was the new departure taken by Walter de Merton, Henry's Chancellor. Hitherto each scholar had shifted for himself, lived where he could, and been subjected to little or no discipline. In founding Merton College, the first college which existed in the University, Merton proposed not only to erect a building in which the lads who studied might be boarded and placed under supervision, but to train them with a view to learning for its own sake, and not to prepare them for the priesthood. The eagerness to learn things difficult was accompanied by a desire to increase popular knowledge. For the first time since the Chronicle came to an end, which was soon after the accession of Henry II., a book—Layamon's Brut—appeared in the reign of John in the English language, and one at least of the songs which witness to the interest of the people in the great struggle with Henry III. was also written in the same language. Yet the great achievement of the fifty-six years of Henry's reign was—to use the language of the smith who refused to put fetters on the limbs of Hubert de Burgh (see p. [188])—the giving of England back to the English. In 1216 it was possible for Englishmen to prefer a French-born Louis as their king to an Angevin John. In 1272 England was indeed divided by class prejudices and conflicting interests, but it was nationally one. The greatest grievance suffered from Henry III. was his preference of foreigners over his own countrymen. In resistance to foreigners Englishmen had been welded together into a nation, and in their new king Edward they found a leader who would not only prove a wise and thoughtful ruler, but who was every inch an Englishman.
Genealogy of John's Sons and Grandsons.
| John, 1199-1216 | |||||||||||||||
| Henry III. 1216-1272 | = | Eleanor of Provence | Richard, Earl of Cornwall and King of the Romans | Eleanor | = | Simon de Montfort | |||||||||
| Edward I. 1272-1307 | Edmund, titular King of Sicily[Back to Contents] | ||||||||||||||