By this victory the royal authority was laid prostrate at the feet of Leicester. The scheme of arbitration was merely a blind to deceive the vulgar: his past conduct had proved how little he was to be bound by such decisions; and the referees themselves, aware of the probable result, refused to accept the office. The great object of his policy was the preservation of the ascendency which he had acquired. To Henry, who was now the convenient tool of his ambition, he paid every exterior demonstration of respect, but never suffered him to depart out of his custody; and, without consulting him, affixed his seal to every order which was issued for the degradation of the royal authority. The King of the Romans, a more resolute and dangerous enemy, instead of being restored to liberty, was closely confined in the castle of Wallingford, and afterward in that of Kenilworth; and the two princes were confided to the custody of the new governor of Dover, with instructions to allow of no indulgence which might facilitate their escape. Instead of removing the sheriffs, a creature of Leicester was sent to each county with the title of conservator of the peace. This officer was empowered to arrest all persons who should carry arms without the King's special license; to prevent all breaches of the peace; to employ the posse comitatus to apprehend offenders; and to cause four knights to be chosen as the representatives of the county in the next parliament.
In that assembly a new form of government was established, to last, unless it were dissolved by mutual consent, till the compromise of Lewes had been carried into full execution, not only in the reign of Henry, but also of Edward, the heir-apparent. This form had been devised by the heads of the faction to conceal their real views from the people; and was so contrived that they retained in their own hands the sovereign authority, while to the superficial observer they seemed to have resigned it to the King and his council. It was enacted that Henry should delegate the power of choosing his counsellors to a committee of three persons, whose proceedings should be valid, provided they were attested by the signatures of two of the number. The King immediately issued a writ to the Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Gloucester, and the Bishop of Chichester, authorizing them to appoint in his name a council of nine members; nor were they slow in selecting for that purpose the most devoted of their adherents.
The powers given to this council were most extensive, and to be exercised without control whenever the parliament was not sitting. Besides the usual authority it possessed the appointment of all the officers of state, of all the officers of the household, and of all the governors of the royal castles. Three were ordered to be in constant attendance on the King's person; all were to be summoned on matters of great importance; and a majority of two-thirds was required to give a sanction to their decisions. Hitherto the original committee seemed to have been forgotten; but it was contrived that when the council was so divided that the consent of two-thirds could not be obtained, the question should be reserved for the determination of the three electors, an artifice by which, under the modest pretence of providing against dissension, they invested themselves with the sovereign authority. By additional enactments it was provided that no foreigner, though he might go or come, or reside peaceably, should be employed under the government; that past offences should be mutually forgiven; that the two charters, the provisions made the last year, in consequence of the Statutes of Oxford, and all the ancient and laudable customs of the realm, should be inviolably observed; and that three prelates should be appointed to reform the state of the Church, and to procure for the clergy, with the aid of the civil power if necessary, full compensation for their losses during the late troubles.
The earl was now in reality possessed of more extensive authority than Henry had ever enjoyed; but he soon discovered that to retain the object of his ambition would require the exertion of all his powers. The cause of the captive monarch was ardently espoused by foreign nations and by the sovereign pontiff. Adventurers from every province of France crowded to the royal standard which Queen Eleanor had erected at Damme in Flanders; and a numerous fleet assembled in the harbor to transport to England the thousands who had sworn to humble the pride of a disloyal and aspiring subject. To oppose them Leicester had summoned to the camp on Barham downs, not only the King's military tenants, but the whole force of the nation,[63] and, taking on himself the command of the fleet, cruised in the narrow seas to intercept the invaders. But the winds seemed to be leagued with the earl; the Queen's army was detained for several weeks in the vicinity of Damme; and the mercenaries gradually disbanded themselves, when the short period for which they had contracted to serve was expired. At the same time the Pontiff had commissioned Guido, Cardinal Bishop of Sabina, to proceed to England, and take Henry under the papal protection; but, deterred by the hint of a conspiracy against his life from crossing the sea, he excommunicated the barons unless before the 1st of September they should restore the King to all his rights, and at the same time summoned four of the English prelates to appear before him at Boulogne. After much tergiversation these obeyed, but appealed from his jurisdiction to the equity of the Pope or a general council; and though they consented to bring back a sentence of excommunication against the King's enemies, they willingly suffered it to be taken from them by the officers at Dover. Their appeal was approved by the convocation of the clergy, and Guido, after publishing the excommunication himself at Hesdin, returned to Rome, where he was elevated to the chair of St. Peter by the name of Clement IV.
During the summer Leicester had been harassed with repeated solicitations for the release of the two princes, Edward and Henry. In the winter he pretended to acquiesce, and convoked a parliament to meet after Christmas for the avowed purpose of giving the sanction of the legislature to so important a measure. But the extraordinary manner in which this assembly was constituted provoked a suspicion that his real object was to consolidate and perpetuate his own power. Only those prelates and barons were summoned who were known to be attached to his party; and the deficiency was supplied by representatives from the counties, cities, and boroughs who, as they had been chosen through his influence, proved the obsequious ministers of his will. Several weeks were consumed in private negotiation with Henry and his son. Leicester was aware of the untamable spirit of Edward, nor would he consent that the Prince should exchange his confinement for the company of his father on any other terms than that he should still remain under the inspection of his keepers, and evince his gratitude for the indulgence by ceding to the earl and his heirs the county of Chester, the castle of Pec, and the town of Newcastle-under-Lyne; in exchange for which he should receive other lands of the same annual value. At length the terms were settled, and confirmed by the parliament, with every additional security which the jealousy of the faction could devise. It was enacted "by common consent of the King, his son Edward, the prelates, earls, barons, and commonalty of the realm," that the charters and the ordinances should be inviolably observed; that neither the King nor the Prince should aggrieve the earl or his associates for their past conduct; that if they did, their vassals and subjects should be released from the obligation of fealty till full redress were obtained, and their abettors should be punished with exile and forfeiture; that the barons, whom the King had defied before the battle of Lewes, should renew their homage and fealty; but on the express condition that such homage and fealty should be no longer binding if he violated his promise; that the command of the royal castles should be taken from suspected persons and intrusted to officers of approved loyalty; that the Prince should not leave the realm for three years, under pain of disherison; that he should not choose his advisers and companions himself, but receive them from the council of state; that with his father's consent he should put into the hands of the barons for five years, five royal castles, as securities for his behavior, and should deliver to Leicester the town and castle of Bristol in pledge till a full and legal transfer should be made of Chester, Pec, and Newcastle; that both Henry and Edward should swear to observe all these articles, and not to solicit any absolution from their oath, nor make any use of such absolution, if it were to be pronounced by the Pope; and lastly, that they should cause the present agreement "To be confirmed in the best manner that might be devised, in Ireland, in Gascony, by the King of Scotland, and in all lands subject to the King of England."
These were terms which nothing but necessity could have extorted; and to add to their stability, they were for the most part embodied in the form of a writ, signed by the King, and sent to the sheriffs, with orders to publish them in the full court of each county twice every year.
It is generally supposed that the project of summoning to parliament the representatives of the counties, cities, and boroughs grew out of that system of policy which the earl had long pursued, of flattering the prejudices, and attaching to himself the affections, of the people. Nor had his efforts proved unsuccessful. Men in the higher ranks of life might penetrate behind the veil, with which he sought to conceal his ambition; but by the nation at large he was considered as the reformer of abuses, the protector of the oppressed, and the savior of his country. Even some of the clergy, and several religious bodies, soured by papal and regal exactions, gave him credit for the truth of his pretensions, and preachers were found who, though he had been excommunicated by the legate, made his virtues the theme of their sermons, and exhorted their hearers to stand by the patron of the poor and the avenger of the Church.[64] Within the kingdom no man dared to dispute his authority; it was only at the extremities that a faint show of resistance was maintained. The distant disobedience of a few chiefs on the Scottish borders he despised or dissembled; and the open hostilities of the lords in the Welsh marches were crushed in their birth by his promptitude and decision. He compelled Roger de Mortimer and his associates to throw down their arms, surrender their castles, and abide the judgment of their peers, by whom they were condemned to expatriate themselves, some for twelve months, others for three years, and to reside during their exile in Ireland. They pretended to submit, but lingered on the sea-coast, and amid the mountains of Wales, in the hope that some new event might recall them to draw the sword and fight again in the cause of their sovereign.
It had cost Leicester some years and much labor to climb to the summit of his greatness; his descent was rapid beyond the calculation of the most sanguine among his enemies. He had hitherto enjoyed the coöperation of the powerful earls of Derby and Gloucester; but, if he was too ambitious to admit of an equal, they were too proud to bow to a fellow-subject. Frequent altercations betrayed their secret jealousies; and the sudden arrest and imprisonment of Derby, on a charge of corresponding with the royalists, warned Gloucester of his own danger. He would have shared the captivity of his friends had he assisted at the great tournament at Northampton; but by his absence he disconcerted the plans of his enemy, and, recalling Mortimer and the exiles, unfurled the royal standard in the midst of his tenantry. Leicester immediately hastened to Hereford with the King, the Prince, and a numerous body of knights. To prevent the effusion of blood their common friends intervened; a reconciliation was effected, and four umpires undertook the task of reconciling their differences. But under this appearance of friendship all was hollow and insincere. Leicester sought to circumvent his adversary; Gloucester waited the result of a plan for the liberation of Edward, which had been concerted through the means of Thomas de Clare, brother to the Earl, and companion to the Prince.
One day after dinner Edward obtained permission to take the air without the walls of Hereford, attended by his keepers. They rode to Widmarsh. A proposal was made to try the speed of their horses; several matches were made and run; and the afternoon was passed in a succession of amusements. A little before sunset there appeared on Tulington hill a person riding on a gray charger and waving his bonnet. The Prince, who knew the signal, bidding adieu to the company, instantly galloped off with his friend, another knight, and four esquires. The keepers followed; but in a short time Mortimer, with a band of armed men, issued from a wood, received Edward with acclamations of joy, and conducted him to his castle of Wigmore. The next day the Prince met the Earl of Gloucester at Ludlow. They mutually pledged themselves to forget all former injuries, and to unite their efforts for the liberation of the King, on condition that he should govern according to the laws, and should exclude foreigners from his councils.
When Leicester received the news of Edward's escape, he conceived that the prince was gone to join the Earl Warenne, and William de Valence, who a few days before had landed with one hundred and twenty knights on the coast of Pembrokeshire. Ignorant, however, of his real motions, he dared not pursue him; but issued writs in the King's name, ordering the military tenants of the Crown to assemble at first in Worcester, and afterward in Gloucester. To these he added circular letters to the bishops, accusing Edward of rebellion, and requesting a sentence of excommunication against all disturbers of the peace "from the highest to the lowest." The royalists had wisely determined to cut off his communication with the rest of the kingdom by securing to themselves the command of the Severn. Worcester readily opened its gates; Gloucester was taken by storm; and the castle, after a siege of two weeks, was surrendered on condition that the garrison should not serve again during the next forty days. Every bridge was now broken down; the small craft on the river was sunk or destroyed; and the fords were either deepened or watched by powerful detachments. Leicester, caught as it were in the toils, remained inactive at Hereford; but he awaited the arrival of the troops whom he had summoned, and concluded with Llewellyn of Wales a treaty of alliance, by which, for the pretended payment of thirty thousand marks, Henry was made to resign all the advantages which he and his predecessors had wrested from the princes of that country. At last, reinforced by a party of Welshmen, the Earl marched to the south, took and destroyed the castle of Monmouth, and fixed his head-quarters at Newport. Here he expected a fleet of transports to convey him to Bristol; but the galleys of the Earl of Gloucester blockaded the mouth of the Avon; and Edward, with the bravest of his knights, made an attempt on the town of Newport itself. The part which lay on the left bank of the Usk was carried; but the destruction of the bridge arrested the progress of the victors, and Leicester, with his dispirited followers, escaped into Wales.