place a body of twenty-five-twenty-four barons and the Mayor of London- were to guard against any attempt of the king to break his word. If he infringed upon any of the articles of the Charter the twenty-five, with the assistance of the whole community of the kingdom, had the right of distraining upon the king's lands till enough was obtained to make up the loss to the person who had suffered wrong. In other words, there was to be a permanent organisation for making war upon the king. 17. War between John and the Barons. 1215-1216.--John waited for the moment of vengeance. Not only did he refuse to send his mercenaries away, but he sent to the Continent for large reinforcements. Pope Innocent declared the barons to be wicked rebels, and released John from his oath to the Great Charter. War soon broke out. John's mercenaries were too strong for the barons, and in the beginning of 1216 almost all England with the exception of London had been overrun by them. Though the Pope laid citizens nor the barons London under an interdict, neither the paid any attention to it.. They sent to Louis, the eldest son of Philip of France, to invite him to come and be their king in John's stead. Louis was married to John's niece, and might thus be counted as a member of the English royal family. The time had not yet come when a man who spoke French was regarded as quite a foreigner amongst the English barons. On May 21, 1216, Louis landed with an army in the Isle of Thanet. 18. Conflict between Louis and John. 1216.-John, in spite of his success, found himself without sufficient money to pay his mercenaries, and he therefore retreated to Winchester. Louis entered London in triumph, and afterwards drove John out of Winchester. Innocent indeed excommunicated Louis, but no one took heed of the excommunication. Yet John was not without support. The trading towns of the East, who probably regarded Louis as a foreigner, took his part, and many of his old officials, to whom the victory of the barons seemed likely to bring back the anarchy of 1216 A BOY-KING 185 Stephen's time, clung to him. One of these, a high-spirited and strong-willed man, Hubert de Burgh, held out for John in Dover Castle. John kept the field and even won some successes. As he was crossing the Wash the tide rose rapidly and swept away his baggage. He himself escaped with difficulty. Worn out in mind and body, he was carried on a litter to Newark, where on October 19, 1216, he died. 1. Henry III. and Louis. 1216—1217.—Henry III., the eldest son of John, was but nine years old at his father's death. Never before had it been useful for England that the king should be a child. As Henry had oppressed no one and had broken no oaths, those who dared not trust the father could rally to the son. The boy had two guardians, one of whom was Gualo, the legate of Pope Honorius III., a man gentler and less ambitious than Innocent III., whom he had just succeeded; the other was William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, who had been constant to John, not because he loved his evil deeds, but because, like many of the older officials, he feared that the victory of the barons would be followed by anarchy. These two had on their side the growing feeling on behalf of English nationality; whereas, as long as John lived, his opponents had argued that it was better to have a foreign king like Louis than to have a king like John, who tyrannised over the land by the help of foreign mercenaries. Henry's followers daily increased, and in 1217 Louis was defeated by the Marshal at Lincoln. Later in the year Hubert de Burgh, the Justiciar, sent out a fleet which defeated a French fleet off Dover. Louis then submitted and left the kingdom. 2. The Renewal of the Great Charter. 1216-1217. The Effigy of Henry III.; from his tomb in Westminster Abbey. principles on which William the Marshal intended to govern were signified by the changes made in the Great Charter when it was renewed on the king's accession in 1216, and again on Louis's expulsion in 1217. Most of the clauses binding the king to avoid oppression were allowed to stand; but those which prohibited the raising of new taxation without the authority of the Great Council, and the one which established a body of twenty-five to distrain on the king's property in case of the breach of the Charter, were omitted. Probably it was thought that there was less danger from Henry than there had been from John; but the acceptance of the compromise was mainly due to the feeling that, whilst it was desirable that the king should govern with moderation, it would be a dangerous experiment to put the power to control him in the hands of the barons, who might use it for their own advantage rather than for the advantage of the nation. The whole history of England for many years was to turn on the difficulty of weakening the power of a bad king without producing anarchy. 3. Administration of Hubert de Burgh. 1219-1232.-In 1219 William the Marshal died. For some years the government was mainly in the hands of Hubert de Burgh, who strenuously maintained the authority of the king over the barons, whilst at the same time he set himself distinctly at 1219-1232 HUBERT DE BURGH 187 the head of the growing national feeling against the admission of foreigners to wealth and high position in England. As a result of the disturbances of John's reign many of the barons and of the leaders of the mercenaries had either fortified their own castles or had taken possession of those which belonged to the king. In 1220 Hubert demanded the surrender of these castles as Henry II. had done in the beginning of his reign. In 1221 the Earl of Aumale was forced to surrender his castles, and in 1224 Faukes de Breauté, one of the leaders of John's mercenaries who had received broad lands in England, was reduced to submission and was banished on his refusal to give up his great castle at Bedford. As long as Hubert ruled, England was to belong to the English. His power was endangered from the very quarter from which it ought to have received most support. In 1227 Henry declared himself of age. He was weak and untrustworthy, always ready to give his confidence to unworthy favourites. His present favourite was Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester. The bishop was a greedy and unscrupulous Poitevin, who regarded the king's favour as a means of enriching himself and his Poitevin relatives and friends. Henry was always short of money, and was persuaded by Peter that it was Effigy of William Longespée, Earl of Salis bury (died 1227); from his tomb in Salisbury Cathedral: showing armour worn from about 1225 to 1250. 4 Hubert's fault. In 1232 Hubert was charged with a whole string of crimes and dismissed from office. 4. Administration of Peter des Roches. 1232-1234.-Henry was now entirely under the power of Peter des Roches. In 1233 he ordered Hubert to be seized. Though Hubert took sanctuary in a chapel, he was dragged out, and a smith was ordered to put him in fetters. The man refused to obey. "Is not this," he said, "that most faithful and high-souled Hubert who has so often saved England from the ravages of foreigners, and has given England back to the English?" Hubert was thrown into the Tower, and was never again employed in any office of state. As long as Peter des Roches ruled the king it would be hard to keep England for the English. Poitevins and Bretons flocked over from the Continent, and were appointed to all the influential posts which fell vacant. The barons had the national feeling behind them when they raised complaints against this policy. Their leader was Earl Richard the Marshal, the son of the Earl William who had governed England after the death of John. Without even the semblance of trial Henry declared Earl Richard and his chief supporters guilty of treason. At a Great Council held at Westminster some of the barons remonstrated. Peter des Roches replied saucily that there were no peers in England as in France, meaning that in England the barons had no rights against the king. Both Henry and Peter could, however, use their tongues better than their swords. They failed miserably in an attempt to overcome the men whom they had unjustly accused, till in 1234 Peter stirred up some of the English lords in Ireland to seize on Earl Richard's possessions there. The Earl hurried over to defend his estates. Amongst Simon, Bishop of Exeter (died 1223); from his tomb at Exeter, showing rich mass-vestments. |