After their triumph in 1258, the baronial leaders relaxed their efforts. Contented with their position as arbiters of the national destinies, they made little effort to carry out the reforms contemplated at Oxford. The ranks of the victors were broken up by private dissensions. Before leaving for France, Earl Simon violently quarrelled with Richard, Earl of Gloucester. It was currently believed that Gloucester had grown slack, and Simon rose in popular estimation as a thorough-going reformer who had no mind to substitute the rule of a baronial oligarchy for the tyranny of the king. His position was strengthened by his personal qualities which made him the hero of the younger generation; and his influence began to modify the policy of Edward the king's son, who, since the flight of his Poitevin kinsmen, was gradually arriving at broader views of national policy. Even before his father's journey to France, Edward took up a line of his own. In the October parliament of 1259, he listened to a petition presented to the council by the younger nobles[1] who complained that, though the king had performed all his promises, the barons had not fulfilled any of theirs. Edward thereupon stirred up the oligarchy to issue an instalment of the promised reforms in the document known as the Provisions of Westminster. During Henry's absence in France the situation became strained. The oligarchic party, headed by Gloucester, was breaking away from Montfort; and Edward was forming a liberal royalist party which was not far removed from Montfort's principles. Profiting by these discords, the Lusignans prepared to invade England. The papacy was about to declare against the reformers. When the monks of Winchester elected an Englishman as their bishop in the hope of getting rid of the queen's uncle, Alexander IV. summoned Aymer to his court and consecrated him bishop with his own hands.
[1] "Communitas bacheleriae Angliæ," Burton Ann., p. 471. See on this, Engl. Hist. Review, xvii. (1902), 89-94.
Early in 1260, Montfort went back to England and made common cause with Edward. Despite the king's order that no parliament should be held during his absence abroad, Montfort insisted that the Easter parliament should meet as usual at London. The discussions were hot. Montfort demanded the expulsion of Peter of Savoy from the council, and Edward and Gloucester almost came to blows. The Londoners closed their gates on both parties, but the mediation of the King of the Romans prevented a collision. Henry hurried home, convinced that Edward was conspiring against him. The king threw himself into the city of London, and with Gloucester's help collected an army. Meanwhile Montfort and Edward, with their armed followers, were lodged at Clerkenwell, ready for war. Again the situation became extremely critical, and again King Richard proved the best peacemaker. Henry held out against his son for a fortnight, but such estrangement was hard for him to endure. "Do not let my son appear before me," he cried, "for if I see him, I shall not be able to refrain from kissing him." A reconciliation was speedily effected, and nothing remained of the short-lived alliance of Edward with Montfort save that his feud with Gloucester continued until the earl's death.
The dissensions among the barons encouraged Henry to shake off the tutelage of the fifteen. As soon as he was reconciled with his son, he charged Leicester with treason.[1] "But, thanks be to God, the earl answered to all these points with such force that the king could do nothing against him." Unable to break down his enemy by direct attack, Henry followed one of the worst precedents of his father's reign by beseeching Alexander IV. to relieve him of his oath to observe the Provisions. On April 13, 1261, a bull was issued annulling the whole of the legislation of 1258 and 1259, and freeing the king from his sworn promise.
[1] Bémont, Simon de Montfort, Appendix xxxvii., pp. 343-53.
William of Valence was already back in England, and restored to his old dignities. His return was the easier because his brother, Aymer, the most hated of the Poitevins, had died soon after his consecration to Winchester. On June 14, 1261, the papal bull was read before the assembled parliament at Winchester. There Henry removed the baronial ministers and replaced them by his own friends. Chief among the sufferers was Hugh Despenser, who had succeeded Hugh Bigod as justiciar; and Bigod himself was expelled from the custody of Dover Castle. In the summer Henry issued a proclamation, declaring that the right of choosing his council and garrisoning his castles was among the inalienable attributes of the crown. England was little inclined to rebel, for the return of prosperity and good harvests made men more contented.
The repudiation of the Provisions restored unity to the baronage. The defections had been serious, and it was said that only five of the twenty-four still adhered to the opposition. But the crisis forced Leicester and Gloucester to forget their recent feuds, and co-operate once more against the king. They saw that their salvation from Henry's growing strength lay in appealing to a wider public than that which they had hitherto addressed. Still posing as the heads of the government established by the Provisions, they summoned three knights from each shire to attend an assembly at St. Alban's. This appeal to the landed gentry alarmed the king so much that he issued counter-writs to the sheriffs ordering them to send the knights, not to the baronial camp at St. Alban's, but to his own court at Windsor. Neither party was as yet prepared for battle. The death of Alexander IV, soon after the publication of his bull tied the hands of the king. At the same time the renewed dissensions of Leicester and Gloucester paralysed the baronage. Before long Simon withdrew to the continent, leaving everything in Gloucester's hands. At last, on December 7, a treaty of pacification was patched up, and the king announced that he was ready to pardon those who accepted its conditions. But there was no permanence in the settlement, and the king, the chief gainer by it, was soon pressing the new pope, Urban IV., to confirm the bull of Alexander. On February 25, 1262, Urban renewed Henry's absolution from his oath in a bull which was at once promulgated in England. Montfort then came back from abroad and rallied the baronial party. In January, 1263, Henry once more confirmed the Provisions, and peace seemed restored. The death of Richard of Gloucester during 1262 increased Montfort's power. His son, the young Earl Gilbert, was Simon's devoted disciple, but he was still a minor and the custody of his lands was handed over to the Earl of Hereford. Montfort's personal charm succeeded in like fashion in winning over Henry of Almaine.
The events of 1263 are as bewildering and as indecisive as those of the two previous years. Amidst the confusion of details and the violent clashing of personal and territorial interests, a few main principles can be discerned. First of all the royalist party was becoming decidedly stronger, and fresh secessions of the barons constantly strengthened its ranks. Conspicuous among these were the lords of the march of Wales, who in 1258 had been almost as one man on the side of the opposition, but who by the end of 1263 had with almost equal unanimity rallied to the crown.[1] The causes of this change of front are to be found partly in public and partly in personal reasons. In 1258 Henry III., like Charles I. in 1640, had alienated every class of his subjects, and was therefore entirely at the mercy of his enemies. By 1263 his concessions had procured for him a following, so that he now stood in the same position as Charles after his concessions to the Long Parliament made it possible for him to begin the Civil War in 1642. A new royalist party was growing up with a wider policy and greater efficiency than the old coterie of courtiers and aliens. Of this new party Edward was the soul. He had dissociated himself from Earl Simon, but he carried into his father's camp something of Simon's breadth of vision and force of will. He set to work to win over individually the remnant that adhered to Leicester. What persuasion and policy could not effect was accomplished by bribes and promises. Edward won over the Earl of Hereford, whose importance was doubled by his custody of the Gloucester lands, the ex-justiciar Roger Bigod, and above all Roger Mortimer.
[1] On this, and the whole marcher and Welsh aspect of the period, 1258-1267, see my essay on Wales and the March during the Barons' Wars in Owens College Historical Essays, pp. 76-136 (1902).
The change of policy of the marchers was partly at least brought about by their constant difficulties with the Prince of Wales. During the period immediately succeeding the Provisions of Oxford, Llewelyn ceased to devastate the marches. A series of truces was arranged which, if seldom well kept, at least avoided war on a grand scale. Within Wales Llewelyn fully availed himself of the respite from English war. Triumphant over the minor chiefs, he could reckon upon the support of every Welsh tenant of a marcher lord, and at last grew strong enough to disregard the truces and wage open war against the marchers. It was in vain that Edward, the greatest of the marcher lords, persuaded David, the Welsh prince's brother, to rise in revolt against him. Llewelyn devastated the four cantreds to the gates of Chester, and at last, after long sieges, forced the war-worn defenders of Deganwy and Diserth to surrender the two strong castles through which alone Edward had retained some hold over his Welsh lands. It was the same in the middle march, where Llewelyn turned his arms against the Mortimers, and robbed them of their castles. Even in the south the lord of Gwynedd carried everything before him. "If the Welsh are not stopped," wrote a southern marcher, "they will destroy all the lands of the king as far as the Severn and the Wye, and they ask for nothing less than the whole of Gwent." Up to this point the war had been a war of Welsh against English, but Montfort sought compensation for his losses in England by establishing relations with the Welsh. The alliance between Montfort and their enemy had a large share in bringing about the secession of the marchers. Their alliance with Edward neutralised the action of Montfort, and once more enabled Henry to repudiate the Provisions.