Having failed to obtain the see of Durham for his half-brother, in 1250 the king managed to intimidate the monks of St Swithun’s into electing Aymer bishop of Winchester, an office to which he seems to have been wholly unsuited by both his youth and temperament.
Despite all this, it must be said that, in these same years, the king also patronized English magnates such as Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester, and Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk. Perhaps it was a naïve hope, but Henry seems to have envisaged an international court that would match his own international outlook and ambitions. Henry’s desire for peace and harmony is also seen in his response to the death of his brother-in-law, Alexander II, in 1249. The accession of the 8-year-old Alexander III (1249–1286) presented a potential opportunity for Henry to push forward his notion of English overlordship in Scotland. This had been an intermittent source of tension throughout the reign of Alexander II, nearly leading to open warfare in 1244. Yet Henry did not intervene in Scottish affairs until 1251, and then he acted as an arbitrator with considerable support among the Scottish nobility. Moreover, at York in December 1251, Henry sought to renew the personal link between the two kingdoms when his daughter Margaret married young Alexander. Henry spared no expense on this occasion, perhaps most notably in costuming both himself and his heir in robes adorned with the three leopards of England. Although Henry received Alexander’s homage for the Scottish king’s English lands, when Alexander refused a request to perform homage for Scotland, Henry did not press the issue. He was satisfied merely to register his claim to overlordship. The same was true in September 1255 when Henry entered the Scottish kingdom for the only time in his reign, meeting his daughter and son-in-law at Roxburgh. What he sought during this visit was financial support, already approved by the pope, for his Sicilian venture, but he continued to insist that such a levy of Scottish taxes was not to set a precedent or to prejudice the Scottish king’s rights.
The Sicilian Business was not so fully ridiculous as is usually claimed when placed into the context of lordship rather than national kingship, and into the complex diplomatic matrix of the 1250s. On 6 March 1250 in Westminster Abbey, Henry III had taken the cross in an elaborate ceremony presided over by the archbishop of Canterbury. Encouraged by the prospect of a quick success in Gascony under Simon de Montfort, and further energized by the reversals recently suffered in Egypt by his brother-in-law and rival, Louis IX, Henry now proposed to go on crusade himself. His goal was to depart in 1256, toward which end he began the collection of a great war-chest, what has come to be known as his gold treasure. By 1253, the sum stood at nearly 3,000 marks of gold, equivalent to ten times that amount in sterling. A conscious effort had been made to collect a variety of fines and other payments in gold, and Matthew Paris specifically associates this with the king’s anticipated crusade ‘to the eastern parts where gold is used as money’. 14 Indeed, this is correct, as Henry’s will, drawn up in 1253 illustrates, calling for the transport of his gold to the Holy Land along with the king’s cross in the event of his death. Unfortunately, however, as we have seen, by 1253 Henry had other needs for this treasure. Henry had vacillated between two different potential responses to Louis’s crusade – joining the crusade himself or attacking France in Louis’s absence to recover the traditional Plantagenet lands – but in the end he had acted upon neither. His personal intervention in Gascony had required all of his reserve funds. And yet, with papal permission, Henry now sought to translate his Crusading vow from the Holy Land to the Hohenstaufen lands in Italy in support of Edmund’s claim to the kingdom of Sicily. Immediately upon his return from Gascony, the king set out to accumulate a second gold treasure to further this cause.
In the summer of 1257, Henry actually minted a gold coinage. William of Gloucester delivered 466 marks worth of the king’s new gold coins on 27 August and another 190 marks worth in October. These two mintages, taken together, indicate the production of a minimum of 52,480 gold pennies, of which, remarkably, only six now survive. The coins show the sword in the king’s right hand replaced by a sceptre, as had been the case on the gold pennies of Edward the Confessor. The obvious comparison between these coins and Frederick II’s magnificent augustales can hardly have been lost on contemporaries, but the intended political statement was probably undermined by economic and political reality. These coins were far too valuable to be viable in any monetary sense: in the end, Henry actually lost money on the exchange rate between silver and gold.
Symbolically striking, perhaps, Henry’s coinage is probably best seen as a golden symbol of his folly. After all, in 1258, Henry’s reserves probably stood at about 5,000 marks, a mere pittance compared to his debt to the pope, to whom he had promised 135,000 marks in order to secure Edmund’s crown.
The Christmas parliament of 1256 at Westminster had been used as a stage to gather support for the Sicilian Business. Here, it was announced that Richard of Cornwall had been chosen as King of the Romans. His election, we are told, was spontaneous and unanimous. In fact, this was not true. The votes of German nobles and prelates were costly: some 12,000 marks apiece to the count palatine of the Rhineland and the duke of Bavaria; 8,000 marks each for the archbishops of Cologne and Mainz. Nevertheless, Henry III clearly saw this as an enhancement of his overall Mediterranean strategy. Indeed, Richard’s success was an implicit riposte to the objections raised against the Sicilian Business: opposition had been easily overcome by the actual, physical presence of the claimant within his realm. That being said, the English magnates were not anxious to see Richard’s stabilizing influence removed from his brother’s court. Misreading the lack of support for the next stage in his grandiose international schemes, in March 1257 Henry presented Edmund as puer Apuliae, dressed in traditional Italian clothing to be invested as king of Sicily by the bishop of Bologna. This was a colossal error. It was to plunge England ultimately into civil war and to bring about the redefining of kingship.
The reform movement of 1258 was not a bolt from the blue. Parliamentary discontent with Henry’s government had often been voiced through the reign. The king and his officials were repeatedly criticized for unpopular policy decisions, for failure to enforce the charters, and for the king’s refusal to seek nomination or consent for the great offices of state. Parliament’s discontent was openly displayed in the repeated refusal to grant extraordinary taxation to the king in 1248, 1252, 1255 and 1257. In 1258, the call for reform was initially focused very specifically on two issues – the Lusignan influence at court, and the king’s relationship with the papacy. Interestingly, prior to 1258, Simon de Montfort is nowhere to be found in this opposition. Whatever grievances he held against the king were personal, not constitutional. And yet it was the earl of Leicester who frightened the king. Matthew Paris relates an incident in July 1258 in which Henry was caught in a storm while on the Thames and put to shore at Montfort’s temporary residence. Teased about his timidity by his brother-in-law, Henry is reputed to have blurted out: ‘I fear thunder and lightning beyond measure, but by God’s head I fear you more than all the thunder and lightning in the world. ’15 For the next 7 years, he would have every reason to do so.
The final spark that ignited a revolution was an incidence of violence that took place in Surrey on 1 April 1258. At issue was the seemingly minor matter of the advowson of a church, but in the altercation that broke out between supporters of Aymer de Lusignan and those of John FitzGeoffrey, one of FitzGeoffrey’s men was killed. At the ensuing Westminster parliament, FitzGeoffrey demanded justice but received none. Meanwhile, the king was threatened with yet another uprising in Wales, as well as excommunication by a papal envoy unless he made good his debt to the pope for Edmund’s Sicilian crown. Henry asked the assembly to grant a tax in support of these challenges, but as had been the case so many times in the past, this was refused. Indeed, on 30 April, a group of magnates – including Simon de Montfort, Peter of Savoy and the earls of Gloucester and Norfolk – marched into Westminster Hall dressed in full armour and fo
rced the king to agree to a general reform of the realm.
A group of 24 reformers was to be named, half chosen by the king and the rest by the barons. Given the split between the Lusignans and the Savoyards, Henry’s support was limited, and his dozen appointees included only one earl, John de Warenne, earl of Surrey. It did, however, contain all four of his detested Lusignan half-brothers. This group, in turn, selected a new council of 15 to guide the king, which included Simon de Montfort, as well as the earls of Gloucester and Norfolk.
Moreover, the council was to meet along with parliament three times each year and to choose the king’s chief ministers. Similarly, the chancellor was to seal no writ without the council’s approval. At the Oxford parliament in June 1258, the ‘Petition of the Barons’ further articulated the grievances against Henry and his administration, indicating that the magnate-driven coup of April had become a broader, national movement in a few short months. The Provisions of Oxford, although never put into law, outlined an overarching programme of reform, placing controls on the central government. Consultation, never Henry’s strong suit, had been imposed upon him with a vengeance.
The Lusignans, not surprisingly, refused to swear an oath to uphold the Provisions of Oxford. They fled first to Winchester, and by July to France. Simon de Montfort, now a driving force behind the reform movement with the earl of Gloucester and John FitzGeoffrey, took obvious delight in the discomfiture of William de Valence and his brothers. Matthew Paris reports Montfort telling Valence, ‘Either you will give up your castles or you will lose your head’. 16
The papacy also disapproved of the Provisions, and proved even more obdurate than the Lusignans in resisting the call for reform. Alexander IV initially refused to send a legate to England, although in December 1258 he did cancel the grant of Sicily to Edmund.
The Westminster parliament of October 1258 demonstrated conclusively that the reform movement had moved beyond the magnates. It was attended by knights from at least 15 counties and produced the Ordinance of Sheriffs, delineating the duties of that office. This was followed shortly by the appointment of 19 new sheriffs, all of them local knights. Similarities between the recent Grand Ordonnance of Louis IX and the Ordinance of Sheriffs is noteworthy.
Although it does not mean that the Ordinance was derived explicitly from this or any other source, it does indicate that government reform was in the air on both sides of the Channel, and in Simon de Montfort the barons had a leader who moved regularly between France and England. Montfort was in France again from November 1258 until February 1259, but he returned in time to attend the Candlemas parliament at Westminster. Here, the principles of reform were further extended in the Ordinance of the Magnates and the Provisions of the Barons, which sought to impose similar constraints upon the magnates as had been placed upon the king in the previous year. The earl of Gloucester, in particular, appears to have dragged his feet and slowed the progress of reform at this point. Montfort returned to France immediately after the close of parliament, remaining there until the following October, more concerned perhaps with his own affairs than the movement as a whole.
In the negotiations that would eventually result in the Treaty of Paris, Montfort played an essential, but very likely obstructionist, part. His insistence on the dower settlement owed to his wife Eleanor led him to refuse to relinquish any ancestral claims in France, and this in turn may have prompted Louis IX to delay consenting to the treaty in the summer of 1259. Montfort’s involvement with the county of Bigorre was also a continuing source of difficulty. Throughout this period, in the words of his most recent biographer, Montfort acted with ‘the same lack of scruple and self-restraint evident at other times in his career, notably in the years in Gascony.’17 Nevertheless, in November, the king and queen, accompanied by Peter of Savoy and the earl of Gloucester, sailed to France to finalize the peace.
The justiciar, Roger Bigod, was left in charge of affairs in England in preference to the Lord Edward, as Henry’s relations with his heir were strained at this time.
Henry and Eleanor were warmly welcomed by their French counterparts. On 4 December, Henry surrendered all of his lost French holdings and performed homage to Louis, receiving Gascony as a vassal of the king of France and a peer of the realm. The Treaty of Paris was widely decried on both sides of the Channel. With hindsight, it is possible to see the seeds of the Hundred Years War sown in the untenable feudal relationship between two sovereign rulers created in 1259. But the closeness both of family and personality blinded Henry and Louis to the potential problems that their heirs would later face in maintaining this pact.
Henry remained in Paris into the New Year, participating in both solemn and joyous occasions with the French royal family. He served as a pallbearer for Prince Louis on 14 January at Royaumont, following the sudden death of the heir to the French throne. A week later, at St Denis, Henry’s daughter Beatrice was married to Jean, son of the duke of Brittany with Louis IX and Queen Margaret in attendance. Despite news of another Welsh rising, Henry spent the remainder of the winter in St Omer – in part because of illness, in part by inclination. While the king was abroad, Simon de Montfort returned to England, where he once again took up the cause of reform with energy. He insisted on adherence to the Provisions of Oxford, most notably in demanding that parliament meet as scheduled in February 1260, despite the king’s absence. Montfort now formed a close relationship with the Lord Edward, who made common cause against the earl of Gloucester and other royalist councilors. When Henry finally did return home in late April, at the urging of King Louis, he was accompanied by 100 mercenaries.
The king and his heir, however, were soon reconciled, Richard of Cornwall once again serving as the mediator along with the archbishop of Canterbury, leaving Montfort politically isolated. Indeed, the earl of Leicester was put on trial in Westminster in May, but the proceedings were quickly abandoned – in part, because of Louis IX’s support for Montfort and, in part, because of continuing conflict in Wales. Although the work of reform went on throughout 1260, when Montfort returned to France in December, much of the momentum for reform was lost.
Motivated perhaps by the sudden death abroad of his exiled half-brother Aymer de Lusignan on 4 December 1260, Henry used patronage where possible to detach his opponents, while he appealed to Pope Alexander IV to be released from his oath to uphold the provisions. The pope absolved Henry from his oath in June 1261 and, almost overnight, Henry recovered his kingship. He moved with unwonted decisiveness to seize Dover Castle and the Cinque Ports, following which he appointed his own chancellor and justiciar, as well as sheriffs and castellans, and he launched a general eyre to take stock of his circumstances.
Henry had overplayed his hand, and there was widespread resistance both to the eyre and the replacement of the sheriffs. Montfort, now back in England, moved to exploit this opposition, but while the country gentry were ready to take up arms in support of reform, the magnates shrank at the prospect of civil war. The result was a negotiated settlement, the treaty of Kingston of November 1261, in which Henry promised to undertake reform. Montfort, frustrated, returned to France.
Restored to regal authority, Henry sought to vindicate himself against Montfort, drawing up a lengthy indictment of the earl. In July 1262, the king crossed the Channel to deliver this indictment to Louis IX in person, but the latter refused to be drawn into this personal confrontation. Meanwhile, Henry – or, more likely, Queen Eleanor, in reaction to her son’s earlier support for, first, the Lusignans and then Montfort at the expense of her Savoyard relatives – effected a purge of the retinue of the Lord Edward between May and July 1262. This was a crucial error. These young aristocrats, many of them marcher lords, would soon make common cause with Simon de Montfort, although their natural allegiance was to the crown. In October 1262, Montfort briefly returned to England, appearing before parliament with a papal bull confirming the provisions.
Henry himself returned from France in December 1262 to face yet another Welsh upr
ising and renewed calls for adherence to the Provisions of Oxford. On 22 January 1263, he reissued the provisions, but this proved to be a case of too little, too late. The Lord Edward returned to England in February with a new entourage of French supporters, further alienating his own dispossessed retainers and renewing anti-foreign sentiment. Indeed, his former retainers Roger de Leyburn and Roger de Clifford very likely invited Simon de Montfort to return to England and take charge of the opposition to the crown. This Montfort did, arriving back in England late in April. A small but influential group of magnates, including the new earl of Gloucester, Gilbert de Clare, and Richard of Cornwall’s son Henry of Almain, met with him in Oxford to plan a course of action.
The summer of 1263 saw a violent series of attacks on the opponents of the provisions, most notably the Savoyards. The lands of Pierre of Aigueblanche, bishop of Hereford, were targeted, and he himself was taken prisoner in his own cathedral on 7 June. It was likely Montfort himself who identified Aigueblanche as the man most closely linked to the Sicilian Business. In July, the lands of Boniface of Savoy, archbishop of Canterbury, were similarly devastated. Central to the baronial policy of 1263 was not only the exclusion of aliens from office as the provisions had sought in 1258, but their deportation with no prospect of return. Montfort’s support in 1263 came especially from the bishops and the Londoners. To further legitimize his program of reform, by December 1263, Montfort had begun to use the title Steward of England. After the battle of Lewes in May 1264, this title would appear regularly in government documents, but it was a novel usage in 1263.
The Plantagenets: History of a Dynasty Page 6