Foundation (History of England Vol 1) (30 page)

With the death of King John, the civil war was suspended. Prince Louis was still in England, pursuing his claim to the throne, but his progress met an impediment. John’s nine-year-old son, Henry, was in the south-west. The young boy’s supporters quickly declared him to be king, and he was crowned as Henry III at Gloucester Abbey in the autumn of 1216; Westminster Abbey was not available, because Louis was in control of London. Another unfortunate circumstance was reported. Since the royal crown had been ‘lost’ in the Wash, the young king wore a circlet of gold borrowed from his mother. Henry swore an oath of allegiance to the papacy, and the pope duly extended his blessing. Prince Louis and the rebel barons were no longer opposed to a ruthless and violent king; they were the enemies of a young boy in the protection of the see of Peter. They were not liberators, but irreligious usurpers. Even the prince’s father urged him to desist. He fought on, for a time, since the instinct for power is a strong one. He held London and much of the south-east, but the sentiment of the realm was against him; he also had a fair share of misfortune, his supporters being overwhelmed at Lincoln and a French fleet sending reinforcements beaten back at Sandwich. Finally he agreed to a truce, and was given £7,000 to leave England.

The young king had been asked by his barons to confirm ‘the
liberties and free customs’ enshrined in the Magna Carta, so that even those who had remained loyal to King John realized the value of that document as a curb on sovereign power. It had already become an outline of shared principles that could unite the feuding barons. A council was held in St Paul’s Cathedral, where the Great Charter was published in slightly modified form. It had become in essence a new coronation charter. Henry III’s reign had effectively begun. It endured for fifty-six years. There was hardly a moment when he could recall not being a king. This gave him, perhaps, a certain laxity or lack of wariness. He never had to fight for his rule, or fight for land.

There had not been a boy king since the reign of Ethelred the Unready. So in this difficult situation Henry’s most prominent supporters established a regency council. Henry came under the tutelage of three men – the bishop of Winchester, the papal legate and the earl of Pembroke known as the earl marshal. As regents they effectively controlled the administration of the country. They acted quickly and effectively; within a matter of months the exchequer was open for business and the judges had been despatched on their legal peregrinations.

But the consequences of the civil war were plain. Would the barons loyal to John be allowed to retain the castles or lands they had captured from the rebels? Would the various factions within the baronage once more oppose each other? The death of the earl marshal, in 1219, proved the instability of the realm under the boy king. Certain mighty lords declined to hand over royal castles. They were also refusing to pay the taxes levied on them. Small-scale wars sprang up over disputed territory.

A new regency council had been established under the leadership of the papal legate, Pandulf. The head of the judicial system, the judiciar, was Hubert de Burgh. The king’s tutor and guardian, the bishop of Winchester, was Peter des Roches. These three men would play a major role in the vicissitudes of the early reign. They fought among themselves for primacy, and of course provoked hostility in all quarters. It cannot be said that they had any real conception of national well-being; with the possible exception of Pandulf, they were concerned to promote the interests of themselves and their families. That was what rule was all about. De
Burgh and des Roches, for example, were engaged in a violent feud. At one meeting the two men broke out in argument against one another; de Burgh accused des Roches of being the instigator of all the troubles in the realm, whereupon des Roches said that he would bring his opponent ‘to his knees’. Then he stormed out of the meeting. These were the men who were supposed to tutor the king in good government.

It is evident enough that, in the period of the king’s minority, the rule was given to the strongest party or parties; by threat or violence, for example, Hubert de Burgh eventually gained control of the administration and began to deal with recalcitrant barons as well as over-mighty subjects. An approximation to order was maintained, but on de Burgh’s terms. Henry does not seem to have been particularly restive or uneasy during de Burgh’s ascendancy, but the time came when he was obliged to assert himself. At the beginning of 1227, at the age of nineteen, he declared himself to be of the age when he should assume all the duties of sovereignty.

This is the occasion, perhaps, to take a closer look at the young king. He was of modest height, and seems to have had no remarkable physical characteristic – except perhaps for his left eyelid, which was inclined to droop. He was amiable, but not perhaps docile. He tried to evict his younger brother, known as Richard of Cornwall, from some lands; the combined fury of the other barons prevented him from doing so. It was an early lesson in the limitations of power.

His personality has been variously described, no doubt because it was compounded of various parts. Some people considered him to be a simpleton, while others believed him to be a fool. He was described as
vir simplex
, an adjective that might mean without guile or without sense. He was criticized as weak and credulous, submissive and impulsive. He was very impressionable, and tended to favour the opinions of the last person to whom he had spoken. His resentments, and his affections, did not last for very long. It can safely be argued then, that he was not a strong and ruthless king in the manner of his father and grandfather. Unlike them, he had never been schooled in adversity. He had a temper and he could be sharp-tongued, but was not wantonly cruel.

He was pious, perhaps excessively so for a king who must
sometimes assert his own rights over the Church. Every day he used to hear three masses. When he journeyed to Paris he could not pass a church where Mass was being said, without participating in the sacred ceremony. When the priest raised the eucharist at the solemn moment of elevation, Henry would hold the priest’s hand and kiss it. King Louis of France once told him that he preferred to hear sermons than to attend Mass. Henry replied that he would rather see his friend than hear one speak of him.

God was his immediate lord. No one on earth was closer to Him than the king. Henry revived the cult of Edward the Confessor, and considered the old king to be his spiritual protector. He rebuilt Westminster Abbey in veneration of his memory, and he now lies buried close to the shrine of the saint. In one sense he was English. He was born in England, at least, and his nickname was ‘Henry of Winchester’; he gave his sons the names of Anglo-Saxon saints.

When a relic of the holy blood of Jesus was sent to him by the patriarch of Jerusalem and the master of the Templars, it was kept in closely guarded secrecy at the church of the Holy Sepulchre in London. The young king carried the phial in solemn procession from St Paul’s Cathedral to Westminster Abbey, his gaze fixed upon the relic at all times. He wore a simple robe of humility, but this ceremony was in part designed to re-emphasize the theory of sacred kingship. When after the service in Westminster Abbey he put on his crown and cloth of gold, he became an icon with his finger pointing upward to the heavens. Henry’s concept of kingship was one of ritual and spectacle. He crossed himself in the manner of ecclesiastics, and ensured that the words of ‘Christus Vincit’ were chanted before him on holy days. His father had spent his days on the road but Henry, less driven by his furies, preferred to settle down in comfort and splendour.

Above all he desired, and wished to be remembered for, a reign of peace. He did not like wars. He was no soldier, in any case. In one declaration he commended his reign for the absence of ‘hostility and general war’ and stated that he had never ceased to labour ‘for the peace and tranquillity of one and all’. He might even be considered a ‘good’ man, but good men rarely make good kings. No quality of greatness could be found in him. Two other shafts of
light may help to illuminate him. He liked fresh air and insisted that the windows opposite his bed should be made to open. And he liked images of smiling faces. He ordered a row of smiling angels to be sculpted on either side of a rood screen for the church of St Martin le Grand.

He was in fact the most lavish patron of religious art in the history of England. He built chapels and churches; he was the patron of monkish historians and monkish illuminators; the great development of Gothic art occurred in the course of his long reign when the stones themselves cried out ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’ Under the gaze of the king the High Gothic of Westminster Abbey emerged, to be seen at its grandest in the octagonal chapter house. Irresolute as he may sometimes have been, he was responsible for the creation of many of the architectural glories of England. In his reign 157 abbeys, priories and other religious houses were established; there was an efflorescence of Lady chapels.

It so happened that, at the beginning of his reign, the first friars came to England; the Dominicans arrived in 1221, and the Franciscans three years later. Their significance has long since been eroded, but at the time of their first presence in the country they materially affected the cultural and spiritual life of the people. They established themselves in the major towns, where they found favour with the leading merchants who had long fallen out of love with the parochial clergy; they preached, literally, in the marketplace.

They did not live in the cloister in the manner of Benedictine monks; they were in the world. They were mendicants, beggars, who roamed the streets seeking clothes and food. They were not, at least in the beginning, supposed to ask for money. Some of the first Franciscans in London lodged in a street known as Stinking Lane. They preached as poor men, therefore, and as a result helped to change the sentiments and perceptions of the townspeople. They told stories and jokes; they described miracles and marvels. They turned English preaching into a folk art. Before their arrival, there had been few sermons in England. It was a new experience for most of their auditors. The first pulpits were in fact not erected until the middle of the fourteenth century.

Of course the friars went the way of all flesh; they became successful and popular; they attracted patrons who endowed them
richly; they built friaries and priories that rivalled the monasteries in comfort and prosperity. They became confessors to the great. Anyone who has read the
Canterbury Tales
will know that, 150 years after their arrival, they had become a byword for worldliness and even licentiousness. Their decline is a measure of the decay of all human institutions, sacred and secular.

On 29 July 1232, Hubert de Burgh was dismissed from the court and the king’s presence. He was accused of stirring up attacks on Italian clergy and expropriating their property. The pope had been making enquiries into the baron’s third marriage, and de Burgh wanted revenge. He miscalculated the depth of the young king’s devotion to the papacy. So the king, on the advice of ‘certain men of good faith’, dismissed him. One of those men of good faith was of course, Peter des Roches; as de Burgh fell, des Roches rose. Within a short time the bishop of Winchester brought in his nephew – or perhaps it was his son, no one was quite sure – as treasurer and head of the royal household. Peter des Rivaux was, like Peter des Roches, from Poitou. This was the king’s maternal homeland. Other Poitevins joined them. A strong affinity existed between them all and it was generally believed at the time that the king preferred their company – and their abilities – over his compatriots.

Yet England was an intrinsic part of a larger European order. Henry’s sister Isabella had married Frederick, the Holy Roman Emperor, known as
stupor mundi
, or the astonishment of the world. Henry himself married Eleanor of Provence in 1236, and her relatives played a large role in the king’s court. Eleanor’s sister had married King Louis IX of France. Those happy few who had inherited royal blood married one another, so that a network of relatives controlled the fates of kingdoms. But this extended family was not necessarily a happy one, and almost by default Henry became engaged in the endless broils of France and Italy. Europe was a nest of warring principalities, none of which had the internal coherence of England. The king of France, the pope and the emperor were ever vigilant and ever suspicious, ready to take advantage of one another at any opportunity.

Henry’s relationship with France was in any case strained and uncertain. His father had effectively lost the Angevin Empire and, despite his preference for peace, he was determined to retrieve it. But he had a formidable enemy. King Louis had taken over the whole of Poitou. Another part of the erstwhile empire, Gascony, was threatened by Louis and the kings of Castile, Navarre and Avignon. An expedition under the command of the king’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, saved the duchy – if ‘saved’ is the word for precarious Angevin authority over self-assertive local lords. Very little else was achieved. Henry sailed to Normandy, hoping that it would rise in his favour. This did not happen. The king marched about a bit, but there were no battles. Then Henry sailed back. It had been a most ineffectual invasion. It was said that the commanders of the king’s forces had behaved as if they were taking part in a Christmas game.

The king returned to France twelve years later, but his army was routed; Henry was forced to retreat into Bordeaux, the administrative centre of Gascony, and arrange a truce. This second expedition is remarkable for one reason, apart from its failure. The English barons were most unwilling to trust their money, or their men, to Henry’s campaign. They considered that an English king should no longer fight for supposed ancestral lands in France. Normandy or Poitou or Gascony were no longer to be viewed as an extension of England. The island was pre-eminently an island. That is why Henry’s son, Edward I, was more intent upon the conquest of Scotland and of Wales