The next favorites were two other uncles of the Queen, Peter de Savoy, to whom Henry gave the honor of Richmond, and Boniface de Savoy, who, at the death of Edmund, was chosen archbishop of Canterbury. The natives renewed their complaints, and waited with impatience for the return of Richard, the King's brother, from Palestine; but that Prince was induced to espouse the cause of the foreigners, and to marry Sanchia, another of the daughters of Raymond. But now Isabella, the Queen-mother, dissatisfied that the family of Provence should monopolize the royal favor, sent over her children by her second husband, the Count de la Marche, to make their fortunes in England. Alice, her daughter, was married to the young Earl of Warenne; Guy, the eldest son, received some valuable presents and returned to France; William de Valence, with the order of knighthood, obtained an annuity and the honor of Hertford; and Aymar was sent to Oxford, preferred to several benefices, and at last made bishop of Winchester.
Associations were formed to redress the grievances of the nation: under the decent pretext of preventing the misapplication of the revenue, a demand was repeatedly made that the appointment of the officers of state should be vested in the great council; and at length the constitution was entirely overturned by the bold ambition of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester.
Simon was the younger of the two sons of the Count de Montfort, a name celebrated in the annals of religious warfare. By the resignation of Amauri, his brother, the constable of France, he had succeeded to the estates of his mother Amicia, the elder of the two sisters and coheiresses of the late Earl of Leicester: his subsequent marriage with Eleanor, the King's sister, had brought within his view the prospect of a crown; and his marked opposition to the extortions of the King and the pontiffs had secured to him, though a foreigner, the affection of the nobility, the clergy, and the people. Policy required that the King should not provoke, nor should oppress, so formidable a subject. But Henry did neither: he on some occasions employed the Earl in offices of trust and importance; on others, by a succession of petty affronts, irritated instead of subduing his spirit. Among the inhabitants of Guienne there were many whose wavering fidelity proved a subject of constant solicitude; and Simon had been appointed, by patent, governor of the province for five years, with the hope that his activity and resolution would crush the disaffected and secure the allegiance of the natives. They were to the earl years of continual exertion: his conduct necessarily begot enemies; and he was repeatedly accused to the King of peculation, tyranny, and cruelty. How far the charges were true it is impossible to determine; but his accusers were the Archbishop of Bordeaux and the chief of the Gascon nobility, who declared that, unless justice were done to their complaints, their countrymen would seek the protection of a different sovereign. When Simon appeared before his peers, he was accompanied by Richard, the King's brother, and the earls of Gloucester and Hereford, who had engaged to screen him from the royal resentment; and the King, perceiving that he could not procure the condemnation of the accused, vented his passion in intemperate language. In the course of the altercation the word "traitor" inadvertently fell from his lips. "Traitor!" exclaimed the earl; "if you were not a king, you should repent of that insult."
"I shall never repent of anything so much," replied Henry, "as that I allowed you to grow and fatten within my dominions." By the interposition of their common friends they were parted. Henry conferred the duchy and government of Guienne on his son Edward, but the earl returned to the province, nor would he yield up his patent without a considerable sum as a compensation for the remaining years of the grant. Fearing the King's enmity, he retired into France, and was afterward reconciled to him through the mediation of the Bishop of Lincoln.
Though Richard had frequently joined the barons in opposing his brother, he could never be induced to invade the just rights of the crown. He was as much distinguished by his economy as Henry was by his profusion; and the care with which he husbanded his income gave him the reputation of being the most opulent prince of Europe. Yet he allowed himself to be dazzled with the splendor of royalty, and incautiously sacrificed his fortune to his ambition. In the beginning of the year 1256 the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz, with the Elector Palatine, chose him at Frankfort king of the Romans; and a few weeks later the Archbishop of Triers, the King of Bohemia, the Duke of Saxony, and the Marquis of Brandenburg, the other four electors, gave their suffrages in favor of Alphonso, King of Castile. It was, however, in an evil hour for Henry that Richard departed for Germany. The discontented barons, no longer awed by his presence, associated to reform the State, under the guidance of the Earl of Leicester, high steward, the Earl of Hereford, high constable, the Earl Marshal, and the Earl of Gloucester. The circumstances of the times were favorable to their views. An unproductive harvest had been followed by a general scarcity, and the people were willing to attribute their misery, not to the inclemency of the seasons, but to the incapacity of their governors. Henry called a great council at Westminster, and on the third day the barons assembled in the hall in complete armor. When the King entered, they put aside their swords; but Henry, alarmed at their unusual appearance, exclaimed, "Am I then your prisoner?" "No, sire," replied Roger Bigod, "but by your partiality to foreigners, and your own prodigality, the realm is involved in misery. Wherefore we demand that the powers of government be delegated to a committee of barons and prelates, who may correct abuses and enact salutary laws." Some altercation ensued, and high words passed between the Earl of Leicester and William de Valence, one of the King's brothers. Henry, however, found it necessary to submit; and it was finally agreed that he should solicit the Pope to send a legate to England and modify the terms on which he had accepted the kingdom of Sicily; that he should give a commission to reform the State to twenty-four prelates and barons, of whom one-half had been already selected from his council, the other half should be named by the barons themselves in a parliament to be held at Oxford; and that, if he faithfully observed these conditions, measures should be taken to pay his debts, and to prosecute the claim of Edmund to the crown of the two Sicilies.
At the appointed day the great council, distinguished in our annals by the appellation of the "Mad Parliament," assembled at Oxford. The barons, to intimidate their opponents, were attended by their military tenants, and took an oath to stand faithfully by each other, and to treat as "a mortal enemy" every man who should abandon their cause. The committee of reform was appointed. Among the twelve selected by Henry were his nephew the son of Richard, two of his half-brothers, and the great officers of state; the leaders of the faction were included in the twelve named by the barons. Every member was sworn to reform the state of the realm, to the honor of God, the service of the King, and the benefit of the people; and to allow no consideration, "neither of gift nor promise, profit nor loss, love nor hatred nor fear," to influence him in the discharge of his duty. Each twelve then selected two of their opponents; and to the four thus selected was intrusted the charge of appointing fifteen persons to form the council of state. Having obtained the royal permission, they proceeded to make the choice with apparent impartiality. Both parties furnished an equal number; and at their head was placed Boniface, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who, if he were connected with the court from his relationship to the Queen, was also known to lean to the popular faction, through his jealousy of the superior influence of the King's half-brothers. In reality, however, these elections proved the declining influence of the Crown; for, while the chiefs of the reformers were named, Henry's principal friends, his nephew and his brothers, had been carefully excluded. In a short time the triumph of Leicester was complete. The justiciary, the chancellor, the treasurer, all the sheriffs, and the governors of the principal castles belonging to the King, twenty in number, were removed, and their places were supplied by the chiefs of the reformers, or the most devoted of their adherents. The new justiciary took an oath to administer justice to all persons, according to the ordinances of the committee; the chancellor not to put the great seal to any writ which had not the approbation of the King and the privy council, nor to any grant without the consent of the great council, nor to any instrument whatever which was not in conformity with the regulations of the committee; the governors of the castles to keep them faithfully for the use of the King, and to restore them to him or his heirs, and no others, on the receipt of an order from the council; and at the expiration of twelve years to surrender them loyally on the demand of the King. Having thus secured to themselves the sovereign authority, and divested Henry of the power of resistance, the committee began the work of reform by ordaining: 1. That four knights should be chosen by the freeholders of each county to ascertain and lay before the parliament the trespasses, excesses, and injuries committed within the county under the royal administration; 2. That a new high sheriff should be annually appointed for each county by the votes of the freeholders; 3. That all sheriffs, and the treasurer, chancellor, and justiciary should annually give in their accounts; 4. And that parliaments should meet thrice in the year, in the beginning of the months of February, June, and October. They were, however, careful that these assemblies should consist entirely of their own partisans. Under the pretext of exonerating the other members from the trouble and expense of such frequent journeys, twelve persons were appointed as representatives of the commonalty, that is, the whole body of earls, barons, and tenants of the Crown; and it was enacted that whatever these twelve should determine, in conjunction with the council of state, should be considered as the act of the whole body.
These innovations did not, however, pass without opposition. Henry, the son of the King of the Romans, Aymar, Guy and William, half-brothers to the King, and the Earl of Warenne, members of the committee, though they were unable to prevent, considerably retarded, the measures of the reformers, and nourished in the friends of the monarch a spirit of resistance which might ultimately prove fatal to the projects of Leicester and his associates. It was resolved to silence them by intimidation. They were required to swear obedience to the ordinances of the majority of the members; proposals were made to resume all grants of the crown, from which the three brothers derived their support; and several charges of extortion and trespass were made in the king's courts not only against them, but also against the fourth brother, Geoffrey de Valence. Fearing for their liberty or lives, they all retired secretly from Oxford, and fled to Wolvesham, a castle belonging to Aymar, as bishop-elect of Winchester. They were pursued and surrounded by the barons: their offer to take the oath of submission was now refused; and of the conditions proposed to them the four brothers accepted as the most eligible, to leave the kingdom, taking with them six thousand marks, and trusting the remainder of their treasures and the rents of their lands to the honor of their adversaries.
Their departure broke the spirit of the dissidents. John de Warenne and Prince Henry successively took the oath: even Edward, the King's eldest son, reluctantly followed their example, and was compelled to recall the grants which he had made to his uncles of revenues in Guienne, and to admit of four reformers as his council for the administration of that duchy. To secure their triumph a royal order was published that all the lieges should swear to observe the ordinances of the council; and a letter was written to the Pope in the name of the parliament, complaining of the King's brothers, soliciting the deposition of the Bishop of Winchester, and requesting the aid of a legate to coöperate with them in the important task of reforming the state of the kingdom.
In a short time Leicester was alarmed by the approach of a dangerous visitor, Richard, King of the Romans. That Prince had squandered away an immense mass of treasure in Germany, and was returning to replenish his coffers by raising money on his English estates. At St. Omer, to his surprise, he received a prohibition to land before he had taken an oath to observe the provisions of reform, and not to bring the King's brothers in his suite. His pride deemed the message an insult; but his necessities required the prosecution of his journey, and he gave a reluctant promise to comply as soon as he should receive the King's permission. At Canterbury Henry signified his commands, and Richard took the oath.
Henry had been for two years the mere shadow of a king. The acts of government, indeed, ran in his name; but the sovereign authority was exercised without control by the lords of the council; and obedience to the royal orders—when the King ventured to issue any orders—was severely punished as a crime against the safety of the State. But if he were a silent, he was not an inattentive, observer of the passing events. The discontent of the people did not escape his notice; and he saw with pleasure the intestine dissensions which daily undermined the power of the faction. The earls of Leicester and Gloucester pursued opposite interests and formed two opposite parties. Leicester, unwilling to behold the ascendency of his rival, retired into France; and Gloucester discovered an inclination to be reconciled to his sovereign. But to balance this advantage Prince Edward, who had formerly displayed so much spirit in vindicating the rights of the crown, joined the Earl of Leicester, their most dangerous enemy; and this unexpected connection awakened in the King's mind the suspicion of a design to depose him and place his son on the throne. In these dispositions of enmity, jealousy, and distrust the barons assembled in London to meet Henry in parliament. But each member was attended by a military guard; his lodgings were fortified to prevent a surprise; the apprehension of hostilities confined the citizens within their houses; and the concerns of trade with the usual intercourse of society were totally suspended. After many attempts, the good offices of the King of the Romans effected a specious but treacherous pacification; and the different leaders left the parliament friends in open show, but with the same feelings of animosity rankling in their breasts, and with the same projects for their own aggrandizement and the depression of their opponents.