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THE LIFE OF SIMON DE MONTFORT . EARL OF LEICESTER
CHAPTER III.
PARLIAMENTARY HISTORY, 1232-49.
We left the king at the point when
he had just dismissed his old and faithful servant, the Earl of
Kent. In spite of the unpopularity of the justiciar, was an evil day for
the country when he fell. It was better to be fined by Hubert de Burgh,
than to be robbed by Peter des Roches. The bishop was now completely
master of the situation. He soon introduced numbers of Poitevins,
his fellow-countrymen, and others into England: many were placed in positions
of authority, others served him as armed dependents. The expedition
of 1230 had produced a financial crisis. The clergy had already refused
the taxes demanded. In the council of March 1232 the lay magnates declared
they were already half-ruined by the expenses of personal service in the war,
and were neither able nor in duty bound to give further aid. The clergy
evaded the question with the plea that they could not vote in the absence of
many of their members. So soon then had men come round again to the
position taken up by the framers of Magna Carta. Here were
both the great principles therein stated, the necessity for completeness in the
composition of the council, and the right of assent to an extraordinary tax,
again clearly put forward; here were the clergy and the laity again
simultaneously, though not yet jointly, opposing unlawful claims. Peter des
Roches had already made the king believe that it was his own fault if he could
get no money from his subjects. Henry now procured from the Pope a dispensation
from the oath to Magna Carta, on the ground that he had sworn in youthful
ignorance to things injurious to the welfare of his realm and to his royal
prerogative. The temper of the country was growing dangerous. The barons
refused to appear at Oxford, and backed their refusal with the threat that, if
Henry did not dismiss the bishop, they would look to choosing another king.
When at length, after a third summons, they made their appearance, it was in
arms. The Earl of Pembroke, against whom the chief efforts of Peter des Roches
were directed, and several other great barons, were outlawed, and their
properties confiscated and given to the Poitevins.
Robert Bacon, a Dominican, and a clerk in the Curia, when preaching before the
king, told him to his face that he would have no peace till the bishop and his
satellites were gone. It was no opportune time for a foreigner like Simon de
Montfort to be claiming his rights, and during all this period he was probably,
as we have seen, absent from England.
The declaration of Peter des Roches, when the bishops
tried to protect the outlaws, that there were no peers in England as in France,
and that the king could punish rebels as he pleased, seems to have brought
matters to a crisis. Collisions between the Earl Marshall and the kings troops
followed in the winter; the Welsh, at the earls instigation, entered Wiltshire,
and freed Hubert de Burgh from captivity. The Pope himself wrote to ask mercy
for the man who had worked with his legates to preserve England from a complete
rupture with the holy see. At last, in the Parliament of February 1234, Archbishop
Edmund, who had just been appointed by the Pope, took the lead of the
opposition. In full council he reminded the king of the evil done by this same
Peter des Roches in the days of his father John, and declared that he and his
had incurred the ban for their violation of the law of the land. The king
yielded to the voice of the Church. Peter des Roches was dismissed. Hubert de
Burgh was restored to favor, but not to office; the other outlaws were
pardoned. Stephen de Segrave, one of the most odious
of the king’s instruments, was also degraded from his office of justiciar; and
this important post seems to have remained unfilled, or reduced to political
insignificance, till the appointment of Hugh Bigod by
the barons in the Mad Parliament.
Thus the first important constitutional victory of the
reign was won; thus was a great maxim of State, England for the English,
successfully upheld. The dismissal of foreigners from office formed an
important stipulation in Magna Carta; there was no point perhaps which
attracted so much attention all through this period. But it was not yet
understood that such relief was only temporary; that the evils abolished were
noisome weeds, whose strength lay far beneath the surface, only to be uprooted
by the ploughshare of a radical reform. Two events soon made this fact visible
to all. The king, urged by his dynastic ambition, succeeded in 1235 in
bringing about the marriage of his sister Isabella to Frederick II; but, as if
to neutralize any good effects which that alliance might have had, he next year
united himself to Eleanor of Provence, whose sister had shortly before become
Queen of France. For both these affairs much money was wanted. Henry bound
himself to pay 30,000 marks as Isabella’s marriage-portion. His marriage with
Eleanor was celebrated with a magnificence which, for the moment, all that was
high and rich and splendid in England united in contributing to produce. But a
Nemesis was at hand. The king could not claim the regular feudal aids in either
of these cases; he had therefore to collect the money under other names. His
difficulties are shown by the fact that he had to ask the Emperor for a
respite, and did not pay the full amount of the dowry till 1237. The demand,
repeated in that year on account of the expenses of his own marriage, was
probably the main reason of the opposition which produced another confirmation
of the charters, a remedy not yet seen to be hopeless with such a king as Henry
III.
Meanwhile the old cause of discontent had appeared
again. With the queen had come over her uncles, William, bishop-elect of
Valence, Peter, Boniface, and Thomas of Savoy. It will be remembered that it
was at the king’s marriage that Simon de Montfort, himself a foreigner, made
his first public appearance. Nothing in the history of that great man is more
striking than the complete unlikeness between him and all those with whom he
was at one time classed, under the hated name of alien. The popular feeling
against foreign interference was not slow in manifesting itself. At the Great
Council which met The at Merton in 1236, shortly after the marriage, it was a
significant fact that the lay magnates, in resisting the wish of the clergy to
introduce the papal decision as to the legitimacy of children born before
marriage, appealed to the law of England, and protested against any alteration
therein. The laws passed at this council, which are regarded as the first
statutes passed by king and Parliament together, were little more than a kind
of appendix to the feudal regulations of Magna Carta; but, as such, their
tendency was to protect the unprotected, to introduce law instead of caprice,
to prevent unjust action on the part of the kings officers. Moreover, the union
of interests, so remarkable in Magna Carta, was strengthened, as in 1215,
by the extension to subtenants of the same privileges which the greater nobles
extorted from the king. The statutes were indeed not altogether satisfactory to
the barons; they had in vain attempted to diminish the centralization of power
in the king’s hands. They had more success shortly afterwards, when they
insisted on the privilege of meeting only at Westminster. This principle had
been hinted at, though not exactly laid down, in that clause of Magna Carta
which provided that the council should be summoned to meet at a certain place.
It will be seen later to what use it was put by the constitutional party. In
this same eventful year (1236) another great advance in constitutional
principles was made. The king tried to force Ralph, Bishop of Chichester, to
give up the great seal. The bishop boldly refused, saying that it had been
given him “by common counsel of the realm, and without assent of the same he
would not resign it”. This was a distinct improvement on the principle
enunciated in Magna Carta, when it was only demanded that the great officers
should be men acquainted with the law of the land, not that their appointment
should depend on the authority of the National Council.
The principle, that national assent was necessary for
taxation, received a confirmation next year (1237), when the council, according
to the precedent of twelve years before, made the grant of a thirtieth
dependent on a renewal of the charters. At the same time it was proposed that
the council should have a share in the disposal of the tax. The money was to be
put into the custody of certain of the magnates, to be spent by their
counsel for the good of king and country. The barons also strengthened their hold
upon the lower classes, by special provisions ensuring a just assessment by
four men elected for the purpose, and protecting the poorest class from
suffering from the tax. The confirmation of the charters which was the price of
this concession is the first public document to which we find the signature of
Simon de Montfort attached. But he was not ready yet; had Richard of Cornwall
taken up with a good heart the to which the popular voice called him, he might
have rendered the labors of de Montfort to a great extent unnecessary. But he
had much of his brothers fickleness and want of purpose. He was not without
insight and sympathy with the people, but& allowed himself to be led away
by dynastic ambition and the enjoyment of wealth from the performance of sterner
duties, and his temporizing character led him constantly to appear as
arbitrator and mediator when the possibility of half-measures was long past.
After this second great success the constitutional
struggle seems to have experienced a slight lull. The king took advantage of it
merely to heap up materials for a fresh disturbance. William of Valence, the
queen’s uncle, remained supreme; his brothers and other foreigners were richly
endowed with lands and offices. To such an extent did this reach that in 1238
even the Pope found himself constrained to remonstrate with Henry on his
ill-judged liberality to prelates and nobles, on the ground that such conduct
was damaging to the Church, of which England was a fief. To protect the papal
interests the legate Otho had been sent to England the year before. The feeling
against him may be guessed from the riot at Osney,
the protection of the actors in which was one of the first steps by which
Bishop Grosseteste won his universal popularity. The general state of the
country was not likely to be happy under such a rule. Robbers were unusually
numerous in different parts of England. The grievances of the Church produced a
strong remonstrance from the clergy, headed by the Bishop of Lincoln, in 1240.
But it was all in vain; the legate, though appealed to, would not or could not
protect them. The clergy, it is said, as a body, refused to pay; but it is
evident that many persons, principally the higher clergy, were forced
separately to contribute. On this Church, already losing all confidence in him
as a protector, Henry had tried to force William of Valence in the place of
Peter des Roches; but before the struggle ended that prelate died. He was more
successful in obtaining the election of Boniface of Savoy to the vacant see of
Canterbury, in the place of the sainted Edmund.
During the absence of Richard of Cornwall and other
magnates on crusade there was not much chance of parliamentary opposition; but
when, soon after their return, the king resolved on the expedition to France,
financial difficulties revived it again. In the famous council of 1242, of
which some mention has been already made, followed the first instance of an
absolute refusal of aid, the confirmation of the charters having usually solved
the difficulty. So important was this refusal considered at the time, that a
special report of the proceedings was drawn up, in order that the barons’
answer might not be forgotten. They enumerated the various occasions on which
tax had been paid, and the conditions under which assent had been given. The
king had not kept his promises his confirmation of the charters was worthless.
They asked, pertinently enough, what had become of the money voted five years
before, and declared moreover that the king used judicial means to amerce his
subjects unjustly. As for the war with France, it would be time enough to
discuss that when the King of France had broken truce. In this famous protest
the right to know what had become of their money is clearly demanded, and the
report incidentally proves not only that discussion on taxation was usual, and
that a tax, instead of being merely announced, had come to be demanded, but it
shows that the barons had begun to interfere even in the executive. The
discussion of peace or war is a great step towards the actual exercise of
executive authority. The summons to this Parliament, addressed by the king to
the magnates, recognises the right, in stating that
the object of their meeting is to discuss “certain important business touching
our State and that of our kingdom”. One would much wish to know what part Simon
de Montfort took in this debate. Many barons supported the king in the field,
though they had withstood him in the council-hall, and among them, if the song
already mentioned can be relied on, was Simon de Montfort.
From May 1242 till September 1243 the king was abroad.
No sooner did he return than the constitutional difficulties began again. The
year 1243 was an important one for England. It was the year of the accession of
Innocent IV, under whom the gigantic struggle between the papacy and the empire
came to its climax, and enlisted on one side or the other all the forces of the
civilized world. The policy of the Church had a most important effect on the
internal affairs of England, and more than any other single cause contributed
to the outbreak of 1258. Innocent, immediately after his accession, made
strenuous efforts to collect funds for a renewal of the conflict with the
empire. The visit of the papal nuncio, Martin, who came armed with unusual
powers, and enforced local contributions throughout England early in the year
1244, produced an indignant remonstrance from the English Church. The clergy,
besides declaring the demand in itself unjust, in that the Emperor was not yet
condemned by the voice of Christendom, set forth the evils produced by this
constant drain on the national Church, whose funds ought to have been devoted
to other purposes, and declared that without consent of the king and magnates,
their joint patrons, they had no right to contribute at all. The spirit of the
protest is intensely national; the clergy were anxious to join with the laity
to protect their common rights. In another protest, apparently drawn up about
the same time, they appeal to the origin of the English Church and the objects
for which it was endowed, while they point out the danger of an attack from the
Emperor, which this subservience to Rome may cause. Nor were the laity backward
in the struggle. The disastrous expedition ;to France, condemned even by the
king’s partisans, had exhausted the private means of many. The inhabitants of
the Cinque Ports had defended the coast at their own expense. Individual
contributions, extortions from the Londoners, and the like had just sufficed to
keep the Court from penury while the king remained in France. But the evil day
could not be avoided; Henry appeared again as a suppliant before his
Parliament.
In the autumn of 1244 the magnates assembled for
the usual Council at Westminster. The king opened the
proceedings by putting forward his demand for an aid, and received the answer
that the question should be discussed. The clergy took counsel by
themselves, and, having resolved on united action, proposed to the
lay magnates that they should join their forces. The barons replied that
they would do nothing without consent of the whole body. Thereupon they
elected a committee of twelve, four from each of the three bodies into which
the council appears to have been theoretically divided. There were four
;earls: those of Cornwall, Leicester, Norfolk, and Pembroke. From the
corresponding class of the clergy there were four chosen : the Archbishop-elect
of Canterbury, and the Bishops of Winchester, Lincoln, and Worcester. Of the
baronage, lay and ecclesiastical, appeared two abbots and two lay barons. It
was resolved that what the twelve thought best should be explained to the whole
body, and that the twelve should enter into no negotiation with the protest and
king but by consent of all. A formal complaint was then drawn up, stating that
the king had not kept the promises made at the confirmation of charters in
1237, that the public money was wasted, that for want of a Chancellor unjust
privileges and exemptions were conferred. They demanded therefore that a Justiciar
and a Chancellor should be appointed, who should uphold the Commonwealth.
The king, after repeated efforts which failed to bend
or weary out the stubborn resistance of the baronage, prorogued the council
till next spring with certain vague promises, trusting that dissension would
cause a split in the enemies’ camp. Hoping to find the clergy more amenable
than the lay barons, he attempted to coerce them separately by exhibiting
letters from the Pope, bidding them contribute to the support of a king,
“of all the kings of the earth, the dearest to the
Holy See”. The clergy, unable to resist the pressure put upon
them by king and Pope, were at their wits’ end, and were beginning to yield,
when the noble bearing of Bishop Grosseteste turned the scale. Persuaded
by his words, “Let us not be divided from the common council; for it is
written, If we be divided, we shall all die” they avoided the royal
solicitations by a timely flight from London. They were however soon
assembled again to hear the demands of the nuncio Martin, who had lately
arrived, and, having been somewhat roughly repelled by the king, had made
direct application to the clergy. Placed thus, as they themselves
expressed it, like corn in the mill, they began to argue that they would have to
choose between two evils, and seeing that the king’s petition was supported by
the Pope, and that it did not do violence to their national prejudices, they
resolved to give way to the royal demand. Meanwhile the magnates
had sketched out a plan, in accordance with which the king should transact
the business of government with the aid of four Councillors or Conservators of Liberties, as they were to be called. These were to be
elected by the whole body of the baronage, and two of the number at least were to
be always in attendance on the king; the Justiciar and the Chancellor were also
to be chosen by the council, and no writ not signed by the latter and sealed
with the great seal was to be considered legal. It does not seem however that
this plan was ever presented to the king; for although the lay magnates, on
hearing of the likelihood of defection on the part of the clergy, besought them
to act only by common counsel of all, as they had agreed to do, yet, when the
council met, the king, by promises and solicitations addressed to individuals,
persuaded the members to grant him what he asked. Even so however it was given
under the name of one of the three feudal aids, that for the marriage of his
eldest daughter. This is most important, as showing that the principle of
assent was no longer restricted to the levying of extraordinary aids, but was
now extended even to those which in Magna Carta had been allowed to belong of
right to the king. At the same time a list was made and presented to the king
of ail the taxes levied during his reign, as a reminder that such a state of
things could not be suffered any longer. The nuncio however, who, thinking to
avail himself of the appearance of concession, now renewed his application to
the clergy, received so decided a rebuff that he is said by the chronicler to
have howled with rage and mortification.
The money voted in this council went the way of all
the rest. Even the staunchest royalists must have been in despair. The king,
having undertaken an expedition against the Scotch in 1244, which was only
prevented from leading to a war by the resolute bearing of the King
of Scotland and his army, and by the mediation of certain nobles, proposed
an attack on the Welsh in the autumn of the next year. These attempts were
doubtless intended to stir up a warlike enthusiasm, and to open the purses of
the refractory nobility. But the barons were not to be duped so easily. To
Henry’s renewed demands they returned a point-blank refusal, in contempt of a
king whose self-indulgence and prodigality had reduced him to such a point that
he could hardly appear in public for the crowd of debtors waiting to
assail him. It is evident that the feeling of disgust at such a government
as this, and the cosequent resistance to the king,
were increasing rapidly.
But the popular party did not yet understand their
true interests. Against a disunited enemy the king could still make
head. Ten years more were needed before the
union became firm; the frequent use of committees
testifies to that jealousy which prevented the malcontents from joining under
one man’s
headship. At this time Bishop Grosseteste was
perhaps most capable of taking the lead; but, as we have seen, he was not
master even of his own class.
The above-mentioned council is especially interesting
to us as being that in which Simon de Montfort formally took his place in the
ranks of the opposition. He had now been for seven years a member of the royal
council. Although nearly half that time had been spent abroad, he had had
plenty of opportunities of seeing the way in which the government was carried
on. His early leaning towards the king, which was probably prompted by motives
of personal ambition, and the necessity of gaining a safe footing in the
country, had received a rude shock five years before, and the incapacity of
Henry, evinced in the French expedition and its consequences, seems finally to
have opened his eyes. The king had, as we have seen, made great efforts lately
to secure him as a partisan; and that he did not as yet throw himself heart and
soul into the opposite scale is shown by his appearance on this same occasion
as a mediator between the king and the bishops.
Still his appearance among the twelve representatives
of the community tells its own tale. It is hard to see what opportunity he can
have had of raising himself to that position, unless it were in the great
debates of 1242, in the Court at Bordeaux, or in the preliminary discussions in
the Parliament of this very year. It does not however follow that he was at
this time more decided in his opposition than Richard of Cornwall, who was also
a member of the committee.
Although the attempt at an alliance between clergy and
laity broke down in 1244, they seldom presented a more united front to the
Pope, then in council at Lyons. Frederick II had been excommunicated, and the
Pope made yet more exorbitant demands on his fief of England; but the English
proctors withstood him to the face, and, knowing well the real object for which
the money was wanted, refused to allow the pretext that it was to be applied
for the liberation of the Holy Land. The English nobility were directly injured
by the transference of patronage from them to the Curia; Italian ecclesiastics,
it had been calculated, drew a larger revenue from England than the king. This
last fact, which a commission appointed by Henry himself this year had brought
to light, seems to have restored him for a while to his senses. He too was
infected with the prevailing enthusiasm, and posed for the next two or three
years as the head of the antipapal party in England. He had already last year
forbidden the bishops to contribute from their lay fiefs. Now, when the Pope,
after deferring his answer to the English proctors for some time, wrote to the
bishops bidding them renew the oath of fealty, which involved the yearly
tribute to the Holy See, the king in a rage vowed he would protect the
liberties of England, even if the bishops would not. So strong was the
opposition that Innocent had to resort to conciliatory measures.
The nuncio Martin was however driven from the kingdom. He had taken
up his abode in the Temple, and thence sent his letters and collectors forth to
drain the rich monasteries and chapters of all their wealth. His insatiable
greed at length forced the baronage to take the law into their own hands. Fulk Fitz was sent to bid him begone, and that within three
days, or he and his would be cut to pieces. The terrified priest sought in vain
for help from Henry. To his request for a safe-conduct, “May the Devil give you
a safe-conduct to hell”, was the reply of the pious king. He was however
allowed the escort of a single groom, and lost no time in making his escape to
Dover. According to one authority, even the regular papal tribute was objected
to in the council, on the ground that it had not been voted by the national
assembly.
But, under this seeming firmness, weakness and
vacillation were already apparent. Orders having been given to prevent papal
legates or letters entering England without permission, a papal bull had been
seized at Dover; but the king was frightened by Martin into ordering its
delivery. From this and similar proofs the nature of the opposition was soon
seen. The bishops, utterly distrustful of the king’s protection, and knowing
his character as well as did the Pope, thought it hopeless to resist and less
ruinous to conciliate. Under this idea they had agreed to the papal demands at
the Council of Lyons, in the hope that the Pope would be satisfied. The
Bishop of Lincoln went so far as to send round the letters authorizing the
appropriation of the revenues of vacant benefices. This was a distinct invasion
of the way to royal privilege, in accordance with which the revenues of at any
rate the more important benefices when vacant belonged to the Crown. ;On the
publication of these letters the king was at first much enraged, but, thinking
discretion the better part of valor, he soon gave way, and the Pope at once
increased his demands. This abortive ebullition of wrath on the part of the
king was repeated several times this year. The list of papal exactions is too
long to relate. Henry resisted for some time, but the Pope knew with whom he
had to deal. “This petty king is recalcitrant” said he, “and must be
chastised”. With that he instructed the Bishop of Worcester, in case of further
resistance, to lay the kingdom under an interdict. The king yielded and England
was given over to papal avarice. It must be acknowledged as some excuse for the
king that the bishops at this time, actuated a good deal by schemes of their
own, neglected the paramount duty of resisting these unlawful aggressions, and
even threw their weight into the opposite scale; but it was Henry’s own fault
that they had lost all confidence in him.
Encouraged by this victory, the Pope seemed bent upon
trying how much the patience of the English Church would bear. He put
forward the almost incredible demand of one-third from all beneficed clergy,
one-half from all non-residents, and one-twentieth from certain
exempted persons. The collection of this enormous tax was for the time
postponed by the royal prohibition, which the bishops were glad enough to obey.
But meanwhile the papal exactions, added to the expenses of a Welsh war, resultless as usual, had produced in the Lent Parliament of
1246 a summing-up of all the grievances which the English Church and nation
suffered at the hands of the Pope. The Parliament was summoned expressly to
discuss the state of the realm, at this time “tottering and in urgent need”.
The remonstrance was sent by the magnates, the barons of the sea-ports, the
clergy, and the whole people. Simon de Montfort signed his name on this famous
document next after the Earl of Cornwall. In this letter, the last protest addressed
by the representatives of the nation to their oppressor—for the letter sent in
the spring of next year did not emanate apparently from the “universitas”—the
barons declared the discontent of the nation to have risen to such a height
that, spite of the affection they bore to the Church, they would soon have to
take active measures, and would help the Church and people of England to the
best of their power. The danger both to Church and king was great, and only to
be avoided by timely concession. They proceeded to state the results of the
papal policy in England, and remonstrated humbly but firmly with the Pope on
the injustice of his claims. The letter was supported by one from the
clergy, confirming the justice of the barons’ complaints, and introduced by one
of similar tenor from the king. The only answer vouchsafed by the Pope was an
increase in his demands as stated above. The objections of the clergy,
carefully drawn up, and their appeal to the general council, were equally
ineffectual. One more despairing appeal from the clergy and people of the
province of Canterbury was sent next year, but the tone is that of a crushed
and broken people, humbly praying the tyrant to leave them enough to support
life.
The struggle seems for the time to have been given up
as hopeless. Still this letter produced some effect, for the Curia, fearing to
drive their petitioners into a desperate resistance, yielded so far as to
commute their various demands for a lump sum of 11,000 marks, and gave up the
claim on the personal property of ecclesiastics dying intestate, which the Pope
had made the previous year. This seemed to the heads of the Church so
advantageous an offer that they closed with it at once. The policy of the
bishops had however produced disunion in the Church, and they became the object
of so much suspicion and ill-feeling that they absented themselves from
Parliament, knowing that “the hearts of men were sore”. On the other hand, the
exemptions of several orders—the Templars, Cistercians, and others—the special
exemptions given to various branches of the regular clergy, and the somewhat
subservient proselytism of the Franciscans and Dominicans, who were looked on
by the older foundations as the Popes jackals, must have produced a sense of
unfairness, and sown the seeds of distrust and discord among the leaders of the
English Church. Truly, as Ranke says, “England appeared no longer a free
country; all her riches went to serve the Pope of Rome, and the Crown itself
became the tool of the hierarchy”. And with the soreness from these exactions
came the bitter feeling that English contributions produced not gratitude but
contempt; the Curia laughed at those whom they robbed, the Pope called Henry a
partisan of the Emperor, and seemed to threaten him with a similar fate.
The affection of all classes towards the Church began
to grow cold. The disappointment of all hope of help from the king, and his
want of faith in particular instances, caused a suspicion that his resistance
was merely pretended, that he was in reality doing his best for the Pope. This,
like the still vaguer suspicion of collusion between the Pope and the Emperor,
which must have been dissipated ere this, shows the universal distrust, and
partly accounts for the lack of effort which prevailed, and which would have
resulted in complete despair had not the people found someone in whom they
could confide. At this time even the news of a combination of French nobles to
resist the papal exactions in that country failed to rouse the English baronage
to a similar effort. Crime of course abounded. Money had deteriorated so much
in value in consequence of mutilation that it was resolved to issue a new
coinage; the die was altered by the prolongation of the cross to the margin,
the object being to make it no longer possible to clip the coin. The mint was
handed over to Richard of Cornwall as compensation for the debt of £20,000
which his brother owed him. The change of coinage was managed so badly as to
produce great distress in the land. In 1249 a terrible system of robbery and
collusion therewith was discovered at Winchester. Several of the culprits
belonged to the king’s household, and pleaded that they had been driven to
crime by the non-payment of their wages. But while the king omitted to pay his
lacqueys, he enriched his relations and favorites. The plague of aliens had
broken out afresh. The king took pity on his half-brothers, who were now
orphans, their mother having died in 1246. They came to England next year, and
with them a swarm of hungry Poitevins. Noble English
youths were married perforce to penniless and, as report said, ill-born and
ill-favored foreign maidens; William of Valence received a rich heiress; his
brother Aylmer was raised to the bishopric of Winchester, though he died soon
after consecration without having enjoyed the see. Even Baldwin, the
banished Emperor of Constantinople, came to England as if to the world’s
poor-house. No wonder that English were despised and robbed by other
nations; that the whole world acted on the new version given by the Pope of the
saying, that of those who have much, much shall be required. The Emperor
called the English weak as women, and even the opponents of papal
arrogance likened this country to Balaams ass,
spurred and beaten till she at length found a voice. And soon the king, not to
be behindhand in the race, began to give up all resistance, and joined eagerly
with the spoilers in wasting the land committed to his charge. The English
are indeed a long-suffering race, but the miseries they endured during this
time leave only a feeling of amazement that the revolt of 1258 did not break
out ten years sooner.
The parliamentary history of this period is little
more than a wearisome repetition of demands for principles, money, and
resistance generally made in vain. Since 1244 no new ideas made their
appearance. It was the time during which the papal claims usurped every ones
attention. Just at the close indeed a new turn was given to affairs by the
king’s desertion of the national policy he had, however feebly, pretended to
take up. His renewed extravagance and favoritism caused the tide of opposition
to begin to flow against him rather than against Rome. His demands
for money at the Lent Parliament of 1248 met with a stubborn refusal. “How
was it” the barons asked, “ that he did not blush to make such a request, in
despite of all his promises?” A long list of complaints was brought forward,
accusing him of extravagance and manifold injustice, and showing the fatal
consequences of his acts; the old demand for the appointment of the high
officers of State by the council was renewed. The king prorogued Parliament, but
without effect. Finding the barons still refractory, he at last refused
outright to allow the principle for which they strove, and argued that he was
only claiming a privilege allowed to every free man in acting without
counselors and as he would. The barons therefore unanimously declared their
resolution not to submit to further spoliation, and the council broke up,
neither party having gained its object, in mutual anger and disgust. The king
seems however to have yielded at least in word, for Parliament met at Easter
1249 to carry out what he had promised as to the election of officers of State;
but owing to the absence of Richard of Cornwall, who was still looked up to as
the head of the opposition, nothing was done.
It had been discovered by this time that the only
means of checking the judicial abuses which prevailed, and the enormous power
conferred upon the king by his command of the administration, lay in getting
possession of the great offices under which the different branches of
government were organized. The system established by Henry II was, as has been
often said, a great bureaucracy. To keep such a machine in order it was
necessary that a man of business like its founder should be at its head. It was
encompassed by many dangers, both to king and people, though a blessing to the
latter under an able monarch. To the former the chief danger was that the great
offices should become hereditary in certain great families, or that the
baronage should get the appointment to them into their own hands. A centralized
government, though immensely powerful when the centre is strong, is more open to assault when the centre is
weak. The barons were right in directing their efforts on the citadel; the king
tried to hide his weakness by leaving the chief posts unfilled, and ruling
through subordinates.
It seems hardly doubtful that Simon de Montfort took a
leading part in the struggle which I have attempted to sketch. Whenever any
names are mentioned as taking the lead, though this, it is true, is seldom enough,
his is amongst them. He was present at the Parliament of 1248. How much is
owing to him it is impossible to say. But we have seen the opposition growing
stronger and stronger, and the character of the last debate, the boldness of
the accusations brought against the king, the emphatic refusal of his demands,
seem to point to the rapid approach of a crisis. It is difficult not to connect
in some way the absence of Simon de Montfort on the Continent with the sudden
lull in the internal politics of England after his departure. If the
opposition flagged, it was not because the evils under which
the country labored were less. They were gradually accumulating,
till the thought of them became a fixed resolve that such a state of things
must have an end. Meanwhile the man who was to give that thought expression had
another work to do; and while the way in which he performed his task is quite
sufficient to justify the choice, the tendencies he had already shown,
and the obvious dislike and jealousy with which the king
regarded him while he was in Gascony, make it hard to avoid the suspicion that
Henry was glad to see him out of the country, and perceived in him already his
most determined opponent.
Of Simon’s private life during the period we know but
little. A young family was growing up around him in his home at Kenilworth. We
hear of his visiting the monastery of Waverley in the spring of 1245, in
company with the countess and two of their sons; an event recorded with much
satisfaction by the chronicler. In the year 1247 he and his wife took the
cross, but the expedition to Palestine, if such was contemplated, was postponed
indefinitely by his appointment in Gascony. He lived in intimate friendship
with the Bishop of Lincoln, in whose house his children were for some time
brought up; with the Franciscan Adam Marsh, one of the most learned men of the
day, who seems almost to have filled the post of confessor to him and his wife;
and with John of Basingstoke, Archdeacon of Leicester, a man who had studied at
Athens, and was deeply versed in the literature of Greece and Rome. He
studied Grossetestes political pamphlets, and
interchanged with him letters on the chief topics of the day. At the same time
he doubtless watched with careful eyes the feelings of the less influential
classes around him, as he did those of the baronage in the council hall at
Westminster. Knowing as we do his character and after-life, it is hard to
believe that he remained idle all this time, or that he emerged from obscurity
into the daylight of public life when he took upon himself the task of saving
Gascony for the English Crown.
CHAPTER IV.
SIMON DE MONTFORT IN GASCONY. |
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