Of all the possessions of Henry II. only Aquitaine and Gascony remained to John at the time of his death; and these remained, not because they loved the Plantagenets, for they hated them, but because they hated all government, and found that distant England was a less vigorous mistress than nearer France. So, as they had opposed Henry II., they resisted Philip and Lewis; and they continued subject to the English kings until the reign of Henry VI., but shorn of their proportions. Henry III. in his early years entertained some idea of reclaiming all. In 1225 Richard of Cornwall was sent to Bourdeaux, and re-established order in Gascony; in 1229, during the minority of Lewis IX., not only Gascons but Normans proposed to Henry the restoration of the Continental dominions of his house; and in 1230 he actually went across by Brittany and Anjou and received the homage of Poictou, whilst the Earl of Chester made an attempt on Normandy. But in the following year a truce was made, and no more is said of a French war for twelve years. In 1242, however, at the invitation of the Poictevins, over whom Lewis had set his brother Alfonso as count, Henry made a great expedition, which he managed with so little felicity that he owed his escape from captivity to the mercy of his enemy, just as he owed his continued possession of Gascony to that enemy’s good faith. After his return home in 1243 the only foreign difficulties which occurred for several years arose from the conduct of the Gascons, who, finding no pressure put upon them by Lewis, took courage to rebel on their own account, and required constant chastisement. From 1249 onwards Simon de Montfort was employed to keep them in order; and whilst his demands for money were one cause of Henry’s difficulties at home, Henry’s treatment of him laid the foundation of a lasting enmity. The complaints of the Gascons against his severe administration were readily listened to, and Simon was easily convinced that his employment in France was a mere expedient for securing his ruin. In 1253 he resigned his command, and Henry for the third time went in person to France, where he stayed for a year and a half, returning at the end of 1254 more hopelessly in debt than ever.
From this point the accumulating grievances of the nation, whether constitutional, religious, or political, blend in one mass; all the oppressed and offended make common cause. Extortion, faithlessness, improvidence, impotence at home and abroad, compel and suggest their own remedy; and every class having been insulted or oppressed, the time and the men for reform and revenge are not wanting.
CHAPTER IX.
SIMON DE MONTFORT.
Delay of the crisis—Simon de Montfort—Parliament of 1258—Provisions of Oxford—Political troubles—Award of St. Lewis—Battle of Lewes—Baronial government—Battle of Evesham—Closing years.
Why the constitutional
crisis was delayed.
Henry’s
dynastic
policy.
The long and dreary survey of the first forty years of Henry’s reign has its chief use in enabling us to trace the string of events, the accumulation of causes and motives, which produced the more striking complications of the remaining sixteen years. We have seen that on the one hand a gradually increasing spirit of resistance was being roused among all classes of the people. Through a shifty, shuffling, purposeless public policy on the king’s part, a sullen determination to reign as despotically as his father had done constantly makes itself apparent. The papal influence, too, by which his foreign policy was guided, was gradually bringing him up to a point at which the national spirit would no longer endure him. We cannot fail to perceive further that Henry’s determination to act as his own minister could have but one result—that, when the time for account came, the account would be demanded of him himself personally; he would have no agents behind whom he could screen himself, or whom he could sacrifice to justify himself. Henry’s personal character, his pliancy and want of principle, may perhaps have helped to put off the day of account, so long delayed, and it may have been his own misfortune that he lived so long to try the patience of the people. Another reason for their endurance was no doubt the want of a leader, and that was a potent reason. In the early difficulties of the reign the place of the leader of constitutional opposition was occasionally taken by the Earl of Chester, a man in whose conduct the desire of rule was stronger than the love of liberty; and after his death it was occupied with higher principles and nobler purposes by the Earl Marshall Richard. After Richard’s death no great lay baron for a long time stood out from the rest as a leader. The bishops proclaimed their grievances and the oppressions of the court, but the bishops were forbidden by their order to take up arms against the king. The great earldoms of the former age were extinct in spirit if not in title, and possibly the king may have found means to keep their modern representatives silent or inactive. The great earldom of Leicester had been split in two, and one half, which bore the name of Leicester, was, at the beginning of the reign, in the king’s hands, although claimed by the Montforts. The earldom of Chester came, on the extinction of the heirs, to the crown in 1237; Essex and Hereford were held by one family; Cornwall by the king’s brother; Salisbury by his cousin. Gloucester alone retained anything like its old importance, and the Earl of Gloucester could not stand alone. Henry was wise enough to see this, and so avoided the restoration of Chester by keeping it as a provision for one of his sons. It was probably with the like object that he connived at the marriage of his sister with Simon de Montfort, to whom the Leicester inheritance must in the end come; and when the earldom of the Marshalls escheated he gave it to his half-brother. If all the great earldoms could be comfortably distributed among his near kinsmen the baronial party would be without its natural head, and might lie at his mercy. That this was a part of his plan we may infer from his treatment of the bishoprics. He no doubt thought that he had a safe hold on the clergy when his wife’s uncle was made archbishop of Canterbury, his half-brother, Ethelmer of Lusignan, bishop of Winchester, and another important bishopric, that of Hereford, was in the hands of a Provençal kinsman. Edward III., a hundred years after him, adopted somewhat the same plan of consolidating family power by marrying his sons to the heiresses of the earldoms; and at an earlier period in the history of the empire the German duchies more than once take the form of a compact family party. Unfortunately, however, the plan has seldom answered: people can hate their relations perhaps more cordially than they can hate any one else; and in a generation or two, when personal hatred is complicated with the rights of inheritance, wars between cousins are apt to become internecine. Even in the present reign we shall come upon one or two instances of this. One effect of this statecraft on Henry’s part was to keep the constitutional party divided and headless; another was to provoke opposition amongst those in whom he might otherwise have trusted. His treatment of the Gascons was such as at one period to throw even his son Edward and his brother Richard into opposition; and as early as 1242 we have seen Earl Richard of Cornwall taking an important place in the baronial councils; but the leading and crowning instance is Simon de Montfort, the personal enemy, the leader of constitutional opposition, the national champion, whom Henry raised up for his own discomfiture as directly and as persistently as if he had had from the beginning that object in view.
Richard of
Cornwall.
The opinions of historians have differed widely in drawing the characters of the two most influential men of this period. Richard, King of the Romans, a dignity which he attained in 1257, the second son of John, must have been on any showing a man of more energy and enterprise than his brother Henry; it is attested by his early achievements in war, by his crusade, and by the adventurous way in which he attempted and really maintained his hold on Germany. He was also a better manager; for whilst Henry was always hopelessly overwhelmed with debt, Richard was always amply provided with money, and able to lend his brother large sums, which kept him afloat for a time, but did not get him out of his difficulties. Richard had also much sounder ideas of policy, acting frequently with the baronial party, resisting and remonstrating against his brother’s foolish designs, and winning throughout both France and England no small reputation for political sagacity. In opposition to these favorable points must be set a strong public opinion existing at the time, and since constantly re-echoed both in England and in Germany. The English, disliking his attempts at foreign sovereignty, represented him as a foolish, extravagant, tricky man, who for the name of Emperor sacrificed his real interests and imperilled the interests of his country; a man who would let the Germans delude him out of all his treasure and then come back to England and take the unpopular side, as he did in the barons’ war. The Germans, who always treated the English kings as rich fools to be handled from time to time for their own profit, got out of him all they could in the way of money and privileges, and showed their gratitude by mocking him. A more careful view of his career leads to the conclusion that both his abilities and his success were underrated. He was certainly not a great sovereign, but the probability is that, with the chances he had, he might have done very much worse. He was one of the very last of the kings of the Romans who thought of building up the empire as distinct from their own dynastic power; who lavished what he had upon it instead of merely using the power and dignity which it gave him to increase the wealth of his own family. In respect to his conduct as an English earl we find him always acting as a mediator and arbitrator, never urging the king to his despotic and deceitful courses. If when the country was actually at war he threw in his lot with his brother, rather than with Simon de Montfort, whom he did not understand, but suspected and reasonably disliked, he can hardly be visited with severe blame. He was the wisest and most moderate, it would seem, of Henry’s advisers; but Henry was not fond of being advised.