The rule of William Marshall continued until his death, early in 1219. The kingdom was ostensibly at peace; but order was not easily restored after a struggle which had lasted for more than four years, and which was itself the result of a long period of misgovernment. In the general struggle for power which followed the pacification it was not always the wisest or the best men that gained the ultimate ascendency. It is clear that from the very first there were among the royal counsellors men who had neither understood nor sympathized with the policy of Langton. Hence the omission from the re-issued charters of the clauses by which the king forbade and renounced unconstitutional taxation, and prescribed the order of the national council. Many of the men who had been leaders of the baronial party at Runnymede had fallen into treasonable complicity with France or had perished in the war; so that the regent was forced to give a disproportionate share of power to the personal friends of John, foreigners and mercenaries as they were, or to men like the Earl of Chester and the Count of Aumâle, who fought really for their own feudal independence. Thus we must account for the power of such men as Falkes de Breauté, who almost caused a civil war before he would submit to the law or resign to the king the castles which he held as the king’s servant. Hence also, perhaps, the retention of Hubert de Burgh in the justiciarship; for he, great man as he afterwards proved himself, was as yet only known as a creature of John. Hence too the distinguished position retained by Peter des Roches, although he, as Bishop of Winchester, had a dignity and power of his own. Hence, further on, the jealousy with which, after the death of the Earl of Pembroke, the administration of Hubert de Burgh was viewed by the barons, and the constant risings against royal favorites and against the too strong government exercised in the name of the boy king. These troubles furnish nearly all the history of the years of Henry’s minority.
Work of
William
Marshall.
New Government.
Second
coronation.
The expulsion of the French, the restoration of order, and the securing of the validity of the Great Charter by successive and solemn confirmations, were the chief debt that England owed to William Marshall. So long as he lived he was able also to lessen the pressure of the hand of the Roman legate and to keep in order the foreign servants of John. Early in 1219 he died. Gualo, a few months before, having incurred considerable odium by his severe and avaricious conduct during an otherwise beneficial administration, resigned the legation and returned to Rome. The place of the regent was not easy to fill, and no successor was appointed with the same power and functions. Peter des Roches became guardian of the royal person; Pandulf, the envoy of 1213, became legate in Gualo’s place; and these two, with Hubert de Burgh as justiciar, formed a sort of triumvirate or supreme council of regency. Langton had now returned from exile; the Earls of Chester, Salisbury, and Ferrars had gone on Crusade, and matters seemed likely to run smoothly for some time. At Whitsuntide 1220 Henry was solemnly crowned at Westminster at the express command of the Pope, by the hands of Archbishop Langton, and with all the ceremonies which at the Gloucester coronation had been omitted. It was a very grand ceremony; all the due services of the great feudatories were regularly performed, and it was made a sort of typical exhibition of the national restoration. It had also a political intention. If Henry was now in full possession of his royal dignity, it was high time for him to take back into the royal custody the castles which through policy or necessity had been hitherto left in dangerous hands. The feudal lords must learn to submit to Henry III. as they had done to Henry II.; the foreign adventurers must be removed from the posts which although they had earned them by fidelity, they had made the strongholds of tyranny and oppression. England must be reclaimed for the English, and not even the legatine, not even the papal, influence must be allowed to retard the national progress towards internal unity and prosperity.
William of
Aumâle and
Falkes de
Breauté.
The demand for the restoration of the royal castles produced the first outbreak. Just as, at the beginning of the reign of Henry II., William of Aumâle had refused to surrender Scarborough, so now his grandson refused to surrender Rockingham. Immediately after the coronation the king was brought to the siege, but the garrison fled as he approached. The earl, undismayed, seized in 1221 the castles of Biham and Fotheringay; and although he resisted not only the strength of the government but the sentence of excommunication also, he was forced to submit. In 1222 and 1223 the struggle was renewed in more formidable dimensions. The Earl of Chester, who had at first supported the government, made himself the spokesman of the feudal party; and the foreigners, the chief of whom was Falkes de Breauté, did their best to unseat the justiciar, who was now recognised as the chief man in the administrative council. The evil was increased by the discord in the council itself. Peter des Roches was known to prompt the resistance to Hubert de Burgh and to be the patron of the foreigners; he neither understood nor loved the institutions of England, and although an able and experienced man was very ambitious and altogether unscrupulous. In 1224, however, the contest was decided. An act of violent insubordination on the part of Falkes de Breauté brought down the king and the kingdom upon him; the great conspiracy of which he held the strings was broken up, and he himself, notwithstanding the secret support of Peter des Roches and the open mediation of the Pope, was banished from the land. His fall involved the humiliation of the feudal lords who were allied with him, and the expulsion of the foreigners whom he represented and headed. Peter des Roches himself had to take a subordinate place.
Work of
Hubert de
Burgh.
Re-issue of
the Charter.
Long before this England had been relieved from the presence of the legate. In 1220 Langton had gone to Rome and obtained a promise that so long as he lived no other legate should be sent to England. Pandulf seems to have regarded the promise as implying his own recall. He was weary of his post; and having obtained his election to the see of Norwich, resigned in July 1221. Before the end of the year 1224 the able hand of Hubert de Burgh had shaken off the three dangerous influences; he had reclaimed England for the English. But he had done it at considerable cost of taxation. This the country was ill able or disposed to bear, and the alarm of war was sounding on the side of France, where Lewis succeeded his father in 1223. It was in order to obtain from the nation a grant of money to defray these expenses and to equip an army that Henry, under Hubert’s advice, for the third time confirmed the charter. But, although these were the special occasions of the re-issue, the confirmation itself is a typical act, and might be regarded as the renewed good omen of a happy reign. Most of the hereditary enemies of Henry were dead; all foreign influences were banished; the right of the nation to sound and good government was recognised by the charter itself. The general acquiescence in the policy of the administration was shown by the grant of a fifteenth of all movable property to the king, which was made conditional on the confirmation of the charter, and the national union was proved by the long list of prelates and magnates who attested it. Henry, by altering the terms in which he enacted it from the older form, “by the council” of his barons, to “by my spontaneous will,” seemed to be giving more than a mere official ratification—a personal and sincere adhesion to the great formula of the constitution.