Henry in 1227.

Two years after this Henry came of age, and then begins not only his dangerous and unbusinesslike meddling with foreign politics but the gradual revelation of the fact that he was not more willing than his father had been to act and reign as a constitutional king. From this point date the constant demands of the Pope on the one hand, and the king on the other, for money to be spent on purposes which called forth little sympathy in England, or which were opposed to the national instincts; constant difficulties with the administration, and, consequent upon those difficulties, that alienation of popular affection from the person of the young sovereign whose growth had been intently and hopefully watched—an alienation which grew from year to year, as the conviction gained ground that he was not to be trusted, any more than he could be honored or admired. But for this conviction that serious attack on his authority, which amounted in the end to an absolute superseding or deposition, could have been neither contemplated nor carried into effect. This was not the mere result of a mismanaged minority. No doubt the possession or even the anticipation of the possession of great power is a dangerous obstacle to education; and in every case of a royal minority which we have in English history we find the same miserable story of a most important charge neglected, and the most important of all possible trusts unfulfilled. It may be that Hubert de Burgh and Peter des Roches had to work on an unkindly soil. In the child of John and Isabella we should not look for much inherited goodness; yet Richard of Cornwall, Henry’s brother, was a very different man from Henry himself. Still the fault cannot be ascribed altogether to education. It would have been a sore discipline for a noble mind, but to Henry it was fatal. He learned nothing great; what was good in him was dwarfed and warped.

The history of the thirty-one years, 1227 to 1258, which form the period of his personal administration, is one long series of impolitic and unprincipled acts. These acts may, it is true, be arranged under certain distinct heads, but it is not to be forgotten that they were at the time the successive expressions of one weak, headstrong mind, and as such have a unity and a bearing upon one another, creating as they proceed a tide of hostile feeling in the nation that becomes at last overwhelming. It would be an unprofitable exercise of ingenuity and patience to detail these acts in order of time, and to point out how one led to another. They may be divided into the three heads of internal misgovernment, a mischievous foreign policy pursued under the guidance of the popes, and the unfortunate line adopted with regard to the French provinces on which the king still retained his hold.

Internal misgovernment.

Papal demands.

Foreign
affairs.

Crisis of 1258.

Under the first of these come Henry’s reluctance to observe the charters, heavy taxation for a long series of years, the revival of the hated system of foreign favoritism, the rash displacement and replacement of ministers, the attempts of the king to rule by means of mere clerks and servants without proper ministers, and the series of domestic troubles which arise from these causes. Under the second head come the heavy demands of the popes for pecuniary help, or for the preferment of Italians in English churches, and the successive attempts made by the several pontiffs to use Henry, his wealth, and influence in Europe, for the destruction of the house of Hohenstaufen, and thus for the promotion of designs which worked his final humiliation. Under the third come the several expeditions to France, the negotiations with Lewis IX., the administration of Gascony, and the part taken by Richard of Cornwall and Simon de Montfort in the administration of that province. These three lines of mischief combine to produce the great crisis of 1258, in which the leading spirit was Simon de Montfort, in which the critical and determining cause was the negotiation with the Pope for the kingdom of Sicily, and in which the form of the constitutional demands made by the opposition was determined by the character of the internal misgovernment which had been going on so long. Where the same points so frequently recur a chronological summary becomes monotonous, and a comprehensive sketch is sufficient to convey all the lessons that are of real value.

Henry of
age.

Henry’s first act was an ill-omened one. In January, 1227, in a council at Oxford, he declared himself of full age to govern, emancipated himself from the guardianship of Peter des Roches, but insisted that all charters and other grants sealed during his minority should be regarded as invalid until a confirmation of them had been purchased at a fixed rate. This declaration, founded, it would seem, on a resolution of the council agreed on in 1218, that no grants involving perpetuity should be sealed until he came of age, was heard with great alarm. The alarm spread further when it was known that the forest boundaries, which had been settled by perambulation in 1225, were to be re-arranged under royal direction. If the forest liberties were to be tampered with, the Great Charter itself would be in peril. But either the alarm was unfounded or the excitement that followed ensured its own remedy. Large sums were raised by confirming private charters; but, on a representation made by a body of the earls the forest administration was let alone and the Great Charter was not threatened. The whole project was seen to be a mere expedient for raising money.