3). King John the Lackland (1199-1216)

Pre-reading task:How did the reign of good-for-nothing King John stimulate England to develop?

The Indomitable Eleanor of Aquitaine was 45 years old when she gave birth to her last child, John, on Christmas Eve, 1167. As the youngest son, Prince John had no share in the division of the Angevin empire, and he was given the nickname 'John Lackland' in jesting re­ference to his lack of birthrlght. Though John grew up to be a weak and unscrupulous character, whom few people trusted, he evidently possessed a certain charm, and he was Henry II's favourite son.

King Henry made several attempts to provide an inheritance for John, without success. In 1185 he sent him, aged 18, to govern Ireland, but through his own irres­ponsibility and incompetence the young man succeeded only in alienating the Irish people, and he returned crestfallen to England before the year was out. King Henry died in 1189 in the knowledge that his beloved youngest son had turned traitor and fought against him, on the side of the King of France. Thereafter, John fulfilled the com­bined roles of heir and troublemaker to his brother, Richard I, conspiring with King Philip of France again and attempting to rouse England to rebellion while Richard was far away on Crusade. Even then John Lackland's personal charm saved him; when Richard was released, and returned to England, he quickly pardoned his traitor brother, saying: 'Fear not, John. You are still a child. You have been in bad company, and it is those who have led you astray who will be punished.' John was then 27, but still an innocent youngster in King Richard's eyes.

When Richard I died in 1199 he named John as his heir, and in England and Normandy his choice was accepted. Anjou, Maine and Touraine rejected it, however, choosing instead his dead brother Geoffrey's son, Arthur of Brittany, as their lord. Fortunately for John, Arthur was only 12 years old, a vulnerable opponent: by the spring of 1200 he had ousted the boy and made himself master of all the Angevin dominions. He did not hold them long.

In the autumn of 1200, having divorced his first wife, King John took the beautiful young heiress Isabella of Angouleme as his Queen. For this child-bride he showed such passion that some said she had bewitched him, and others jeered that he was chained to the marriage-bed. The marriage cost John dear in the end. Isabella had formerly been betrothed to Hugh of Lusignan; and he chose to appeal to King Philip of France for justice over the loss of his intended bride. Sum­moned to answer the charge by King Philip, John refused, with the result that the French king declared John's continental possessions forfeit. Once again, the Kings of France and England went to war.

In the ensuing struggle, King John occa­sionally showed that he could be a daring strategist; in one exploit he marched at speed from Le Mans to Mirabeau, where his 80-year-old mother was being besieged, and not only rescued Queen Eleanor but took a number of important prisoners, among them his nephew and rival, Arthur of Brittany. Such glory as he might have gained in this venture was tarnished, however, when it was put about that young Arthur had been brutally murdered in captivity possibly by his uncle's own hand, certainly on his orders.

A king with John's reputation could inspire little confidence in his soldiers, and at the end of 1203 he left for England. The months that followed saw the break-up of the great Angevin empire, as stronghold after stronghold fell to King Philip. By the spring of 1205 Normandy and Anjou were lost, and the King of England had acquired a new nickname: the defeated John was mocked now as 'Softsword'.

For the rest of his reign King John dreamed of recovering his lost domains. He spent far more time than his predecessors in England; there he made use of the efficient admini­strative system built up by his father, to levy enormously heavy taxes to pay for his military preparations. A heavy financial burden was placed upon a people already faced with rising prices and monetary inflation. To add to his mounting un­popularity, King John proceeded to fall out with the Church, by disputing with the Papacy over the election of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Pope Innocent III wanted the scholarly Stephen Langton to be the next Archbishop; John opposed him. Eventually England was put under a Papal Interdict in 1208, whereby all religious rites, including baptism, marriage and burial, were sus­pended. When John took advantage of this situation to confiscate Church estates, he was excommunicated.

It was a dangerous predicament for a monarch in mediaeval Europe, and by the spring of 1213 King John could hold out no longer. Threatened by conspiracies among his own barons and invasion from Philip of France, he performed a cynical about-face. Not only did he accept Langton as his Archbishop, he made Pope Innocent England's overlord by giving him the king­dom in fief, and receiving it back from him in return for a yearly tribute. With Pope Innocent thus neatly secured as his ally and patron, John prepared to face his enemies at home and abroad.

The hardships which his rule had imposed on England during the past eight years could only have been justified by victory against the French king, but this was denied him. When news came, in 1214, that King Philip had won the decisive Battle of Bouvines, open rebellion followed in England. By the spring of 1215, the rebels had taken London, and John had no choice but to submit to their terms. Archbishop Langton did what he could to mediate; and a 'Great Treaty', the 'Magna Carta', was drawn up, setting out the discontented barons' demands. In June 1215, in a meadow at Runnymede, the document which in later centuries was to acquire the status of a guarantee of civil rights was sealed by a reluctant King John.

Even then the disputes between John and his barons were not over. The King cont­inued to disregard his subjects' interests until finally the rebels took more drastic action: they invited the future King of France, Louis, to take over the kingdom of England. In May 1216 he arrived and, without difficulty, seized London. There could have been no greater proof of failure for King John.

He was not entirely devoid of virtues; he had encouraged the growth of municipal pride, granting civic charters and even founding the port of Liverpool, and he had helped to build up the English navy. He could be charming when he chose, though increas­ing stoutness in middle age must have reduced the attractions of his 5'6" person, and he never lost his fondness for food. With a foreign anti-king holding sway in his own capital city, John lost heart, and in October 1216, while civil war rent the kingdom, he died.

(from “The Kings and Queens of Great Britain” by Josephine Ross, L. 1982)

John the Lackland, Richard the Lionheart's brother became king.

C+Monkish chroniclers have emphasized his [John’s] violence, greed, malice, treachery, and lust. But other records show that he was often judicious, always extremely capable and, on occasions, even generous. He possessed an original and inquiring mind, and at the end of his life treasured his library of books. In him, the restless energy of the Plantagenet race was raised to a furious pitch of instability. When the long tally is added, it will be seen that the British nation and the English-speaking world owed far more to the vices of John than to the labours of virtuous sovereigns; for it was through the union of many forces against him that the most famous milestone of our rights and freedom was in fact set up.

That milestone was Magna Carta, but it didn't appear until 1215. When John became King he immediately did what all heirs did in those days: he took control of the treasury. Then he rode to Rouen and his investiture as Duke of Normandy. Next, he crossed the Channel, and on Ascension Day John was crowned at Westminster, King of England. Not everyone applauded.

C+Although Richard had declared John to be King, there were two views upon the succession, Geoffrey, his elder brother, had left behind him a son, Arthur, Prince of Brittany. Queen Eleanor stood by her son against the grandson, whose mother she had never liked. John was accepted without demur in England, in the French provinces however, the opposite view prevailed. Brittany in particular adopted Arthur. When John returned to the Continent he found less support than he would have liked. Constance, the mother of the teenage Arthur, had taken sides with the French King. Arthur was now in Paris under the protection of Philip of France King John was about to marry a Portuguese princess, then changed his mind and married Isabel of Angouleme. His first marriage to Isabel, daughter of the Earl of Gloucester, had been dissolved because they couldn't have children. But she was supposed to have married Hugh the Brown of Lusignan. In territorial terms, this was a good move, but the House of Lusignan was insulted and John was too arrogant to pay them off, which was the normal way of going about diese matters in those days, and the family laid formal complaint at the court of Philip, who gleefully summoned John to court. John, through his French tides was a vassal of the French King. So under French law he should have answered the summons. But he refused to go.

C+John was accordingly sentenced to be deprived of all the lands which he held in France because of his failure of service to his overlord. Thus armed with a legal right recognized by the jurists of the period, Philip invaded Normandy in the summer of 1202, capturing many towns with practically no resistance. The French king knighted Arthur, invested him with all the fiefs of which John had been deprived, except Normandy and Guienne, and betrothed him to his daughter Mary. Arthur was now sixteen. King John then had to face Arthur of Brittany who now attempted to kidnap the King's mother, his own grandmother.

C+Arthur, hearing that his grandmother Eleanor was at the castle of Mirabeau in Poitou with a scanty escort, surrounded the castle, stormed the outworks, and was about to gain custody of this important and hostile old Queen. Eleanor contrived, in the nick of time, to send word to John who was at Le Mans. Her son with ample forces covered the eighty miles between them in forty-eight hours, surprised Arthur and the besiegers at daybreak and, as he declared, 'By the favour of God’ got the lot. Arthur and all who stood with him fell at a stroke into John's power and his mother was delivered from her dangerous plight.

Arthur was imprisoned at Falaise and then at Rouen. All those barons of Brittany who were still loyal to John asked that the prince should be released, and on John's refusal went into immediate rebellion. John felt that he would never be safe so long as Arthur lived. No one knows what happened to Arthur. The officer commanding the fortress [at Rouen] gave out that upon the King's order he had delivered his prisoner at Easter, 1203, to the hands of agents sent by John to castrate him, and that Arthur had died of the shock.

The Bretons went into great revolt at the news of the murder of their duke. Philip of France watched as others withdrew their support from John. But Normandy was not ready to fall for the French King. It was rich, there were many loyal to John and reinforcements could be brought from England. But John wasn't an inspired leader. He appealed to Pope Innocent to rule against Philip of France. It came to nothing and then in December, 1203, John returned co England and by midsummer's day, 1204, all that England had left of the Duchy of Normandy were the Channel Islands.

C+The year 1205 brought a crisis The loss of Normandy was followed by the death of John's mother, Eleanor, to whose influence he had owed so much of his position on the mainland. The death of Archbishop Hubert Walter, who for the last ten years had controlled the whole machinery of administration, deprived him of the only statesman whose advice he respected and whose authority stood between the Crown and the nation.

Pope Innocent III chose Cardinal Stephen Langton as the new Archbishop of Canterbury. King John, who wished John de Gray,Bishop of Norwich, to be the new Archbishop retaliated against the decision by seizing Church lands. In 1208, the Pope responded by laying .England under an interdict. An interdict meant that the whole country had been excommunicated. For six years, the churches remained closed. People couldn't be given a Christian baptism, marriage or burial. John seized more property. The Pope excommunicated him. Philip of France was delighted: he was all ready to invade England. After all, with England outside the Church, such an adventure would be regarded as a Crusade.

C+John however was not at the end of his devices, and by a stroke of cunning choice, enough to be called political genius, be turned defeat into something very like triumph He offered to make England a fief of the Papacy and to do homage to the Pope as nis feudal lord. Innocent leapt at this addition to his worldly dignities. He forgave the penitent King. He accepted the sovereignty of England from the hands of John, and returned it to him as his vassal with his blessing.

This turned the tablet upon John's secular enemies. He was now the darling of the Church. Stephen Langton himself foresaw the unbridled exploitation by Rome of the patronage of the English Church, and the wholesale engrossment of its benefices by Italian nominees. He became almost immediately an opposing force to the Pope. King John, who had lain at Dover, quaking but calculating, may have laughed while he pulled all diese strings and threw his enemies into confusion. But the barons and magnates - the constitutional grandchildren of Henry II's reforms - now felt the time had come to make sure that arbitrary rule by one king could never again usurp the custom and law of the land and its peoples, especially if those peoples included the barons.

C+[The barons] drew together under the leadership of Stephen Langton. The war with the French king was continued, and John 's demands in money and service kept the barons' anger hot. They formed plans to restrain the rule of a despotic and defeated King, and openly threatened revolt unless their terms were accepted. But John had one final resource. Encouraged by the Pope, he took the vows of a Crusader and invoked sentence of excommunication upon his opponents. In vain did John manoeuvre to separate the clergy from the barons. Armed revolt seemed the only solution. Although in the final scene of the struggle, the Archbishop showed himself unwilling to go to the extreme of civil war, it was he who persuaded the barons to base their demands upon respect for ancient custom and law, and who gave them some principle to fight for besides their own class interests. At St Paul's, Archbishop Langton produced the Charter itself and read it aloud to the barons. The barons took up the cry and promised they would enforce the liberties contained in that document. This was the start of the fight for what would be known as the Articles of the Barons, and eventually, Magna Carta.

C+In place of the King's arbitrary despotism they proposed a system of checks and balances which would accord the monarchy its necessary strength, but would prevent its perversion by a tyrant or a fool. Government must henceforward mean something more than the arbitrary rule of any man, and custom and the law must stand even above the King, It was this idea, perhaps only half understood, that gave unity and force to the barons' opposition and made the Charter, which they now demanded, imperishable.

On a Monday morning in June, between Staines and Windsor, the barons and churchmen the King, the Papal Legate, the Archbishop of Canterbury, and several bishops [met at Runnymede]. Someone, probably the Archbishop, stated briefly the terms that were suggested. The King declared at once that he agreed. He said the details should be arranged immediately in his chancery.

The short document that was drawn up after the meeting at Runnymede is perhaps the most momentous single document in the history of diese islands. Without it, there would have been no Magna Carta, no Great Charter. And we have it still, the very parchment that was at Runnymede: there are two copies in the British Museum, one in Salisbury Cathedral and one in Lincoln Cathedral. The parchment of forty-nine Articles begins with the simple statement: 'Diese are the articles which the Barons ask for and the Lord King grants.' Here are a few of the Articles.

Article one: After the death of their predecessors, heirs who are of full age shall have their inheritance on the payment of the old relief, which is to be stated in the Charter

Article six: The King shall not grant any baron the right to take an aid from his free men, except for ransoming his person, for making his eldest son a knight and for once marrying his eldest daughter, and this he shall do by a reasonable aid.

Article twelve: That the measure for wine, corn and widths of cloth and other things be improved; and so with weights.

Article twenty-one :That neither the King nor his bailiff shall take another man's timber for castles or other works of his, except with the agreement of him whose timber it is.

Article thirty-four: If anyone who has borrowed from the jews any sum, great or small, dies before it is repaid, the debt shall bear no interest as long as the heir is under age, and if the debt falls into the hand of the King, the King shall not take anything except the principal.

Article forty-two: That the King make justices, constables, sheriffs and bailiffs of such as know the law of the land and mean to observe it well.

And the final article, Article forty-nine, is prefaced with these twenty famous words:

Article forty-nine : This is the form of security for the observance of the peace and liberties between the King and the kingdom.

From this, the Charter was produced; it reflects feudal law and feudal custom. The taxes (aids and scrutage) are feudal, so too are the ways of raising and paying debts. The assizes were to be held more often: the liberty of the Church was to be respected. Perhaps the most important clause was numbered as thirty-nine in the original.

Article thirty-nine: No free man shall be arrested or imprisoned or disseised [legally dispossessed of one's land] or outlawed or exiled or victimised in any other way, neither will we attack him or send anyone to attack him, except by the lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land. On this Article alone rests much of the fame of Magna Carta. From it came what the moderate barons probably wanted most of all, and the long lasting concent that any man shall be entitled to trial by the due process of the law.

C+…there is no mention in Magna Carta of Parliament or representation of any but the baronial class. The great watchwords of the future here find no place.

(from “This Sceptred Isle” by Christopher Lee, L. 1990)

Part 3. THE PLANTAGENETS

Pre-Reading Task

1. What can you say about the development of relations between the Crown, Church and nobility in the 13^th century?

2. Describe the origin of Parliament in England.

3. Describe the relations of England with Scotland and Wales in the 13^th century.

1). Henry III (1216-72)

Pre-reading task:

1. How did the vices of the king help to further develop the British society?

2. What is remarkable about the languages in which The Provisions of Oxford were written?

Henry III was only nine years old when he succeeded to the Plantagenet throne in 1216. King John had left him an unenviable inheritance - a kingdom divided and disordered, with rebel­lious barons controlling much of the north, and London and the south-east in the hands of a foreign invader, the future Louis VIII of France. But fortunately for Henry he had the loyal support of two great men, William Marshall and Hubert de Burgh, and through their efforts the barons were subdued and Louis of France forced to depart.

For much of Henry III's minority Hubert de Burgh effectively ruled England, and by 1227, when the young king was 19 years old and declared to be of age, a semblance of order had been restored to the realm. It was dependant upon skilful government, how­ever; and this King Henry III could not provide.

As a private individual Henry had many virtues. He was a cultured man, and his keen interest in the arts led to the rebuilding of the magnificent Gothic abbey of Westminster, intended as a shrine for St Edward the Confessor. He was also a good husband and father, and his marriage to Eleanor of Provence, which took place in 1236, was to prove a long and happy one. But as a King Henry III had major failings: he was weak, unreliable, extravagant and dangerously insensitive to the feelings of his subjects.

At a time when England had recently lost her possessions across the Channel and nationalism was rising, while French in­fluence declined, Henry III showed a seem­ingly unpatriotic liking for all things French. He relied heavily on a Poitevin, Peter des Roches, for advice, and he filled his court with foreigners, advancing them to high positions in Church and state, thereby arousing great resentment among many of his English subjects. In 1234, faced with mounting hostility from the great barons, Henry was obliged to dismiss his Poitevin favourites, including Peter des Roches. But he had yet to find out how far his powers could be limited by his subjects.

Henry lacked authority over his barons. His generous patronage of foreigners infuriated them, and he had none of the ability for glorious warfare which would have rallied them to his service. Such military ventures as Henry III did undertake, in the hope of regaining the Continental possessions lost by his father, were unsuccessful, and by the Treaty of Paris, in 1259, he finally gave up all claim to Normandy, Maine and Anjou, keeping Gascony only in fief, with the French king as his overlord. A planned Crusade, by which he might have earned some glory, never materialised; and a project of obtaining the kingdom of Sicily for his younger son, Edmund, ended in expensive failure. By the late 1250 Henry's weakness, mismanagement and appalling extravagance were becoming intolerable to the barons, and they decided to take matters into their own hands, demanding a programme of reforms.

Reluctantly King Henry agreed to his critics' demands for a new council, made up of members appointed by the barons as well as by himself, and he accepted that the assemblies of Church, state and legal digni­taries, which were becoming known as Parliaments, should meet regularly, three times a year. But these proved to be largely empty words: as soon as he could, Henry sought absolution from his promises, with the backing of the Papacy and the King of France.

As the conflict between the King and the barons developed, a national leader emerged who was to become more famous then Henry himself - Simon de Montfort. A man of ambition and great abilities, de Montfort had come to England from France, in his 20s to make his fortune like so many others at Henry's court. He successfully laid claim to the Earldom of Leicester and eventually married Henry III's sister, Eleanor, in secret. His close relationship with the king, and his foreign origins, did not initially endear him to the barons, despite his obvious abilities; but when Simon de Montfort finally fell out with King Henry, he won overwhelming popular support as the leader of national opposition. At the Battle of Lewes, in June 1264, Simon de Montfort set the seal on his power by defeating and capturing the king. He was now effectively master of England.

Later in that year, de Montfort's new regime demonstrated its political beliefs by holding an assembly to which not only knights but ordinary burgesses were sum­moned, from selected shires and boroughs throughout the kingdom. It was the first time the Commons had received Parliamentary representation.

But Simon de Montfort's success did not last. Henry's supporters made full use of the fact that the man representing English nationalism was himself a foreigner; and a rival popular leader emerged in the form of Henry's eldest son, the future Edward I, who also promised reform. Royalist support grew rapidly, and in the Battle of Evesham, on 4 August 1265, at which Henry, surrounded by his captors, was unwillingly present, Simon de Montfort was defeated and killed.

Henry III was king again, though the dominating force in the land was now Edward, his heir who had fought valiantly at Evesham. The ageing king was able to devote much of his time to his true interests, art and building, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the remains of St Edward the Confes­sor interred in the splendid setting of Westminster Abbey. Three years later, on 16 November 1272, Henry III died, aged 66. The ever-acid contemporary chronicler, Matthew Paris, described him as a king with a heart of wax; but the glorious Gothic Abbey bears witness to Henry's greater qualities.

(from “The Kings and Queens of Great Britain” by Josephine Ross, L. 1982)

Henry III was king for fifty-six years. For the first ten of them he was too young to rule. England was ruled by a Regency and was in need of firm government. When the nine-year-old Henry became King in 1216, England was still engaged in the Barons' War. After Louis's defeat (cushioned by 10,000 silver marks) all the King's men started to put Henry's house in order. Three of diese were William the Marshal, Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canter­bury, and Hubert de Burgh. However they didn't always support the Crown unquestioninghy.

C+ Stephen Langton, the great Archbishop, was the indomitable, unwearying builder of the rights of Englishmen against royal, baronial, and even ecclesiastical pretensions. He stood against King John; he stood against the Pope. The second personality which emerges from the restless scene is Hubert de Burgh. Here is a soldier and a politician, armed with the practical wisdom which familiarity with courts and camps may infuse into a man's conduct, and even nature. Under (William) the Marshal Hubert was an outstanding leader of resistance to the rebellion against the monarchy. At the same time, above the warring factions, he was a solid champion of the rights of England. So we have the young king, formidably protected by Church, state, treasury and sword. At first, William the Marshal and Guala, the Papal Legate, managed the task. But within two years of Henry's coronation Guala left England. The following year, William the Marshal died. And so it was that Hubert de Burgh became the justiciar, the chief officer of the realm. Hubert de Burgh had the full support and counsel of the Archbishop, Stephen Langton. And both led the young King to the point, in 1227, when he could confidently declare himself of age and rule his kingdom.

C+[Hubert] stood for doing the least possible to recover the King's French domains. He hampered the preparation for fresh war; he stood firm against the incursions of foreign favourites and adventurers. He resisted the Papacy in its efforts to draw money at all costs out of England for its large European schemes. He maintained order and, as the King grew up, he restrained the Court Party which was forming about him from making inroads upon the Charter. But ... in 1232, he [Hubert] was driven from power by a small palace clique.

De Burgh's conduct had been far from blameless, but his fall had been deliberately engineered by men whose object was not to reform adminis­tration but to gain power. The leader of this intrigue was his former rival, Peter des Roches, the Bishop of Winchester. De Burgh was the last of the great Justiciars who had wielded plenary and, at times, almost sovereign power. Henceforward the Household offices, like the Wardrobe, largely dependent on the royal will and favour, began to overshadow the great 'national' offices like the Justiciarship, filled by the baronial magnates. As they came to be occupied increasingly by foreign intruders, Poitevins, Savoyards. Provencals, the national feeling of the baronage became vio­lently hostile. Under the leadership of Richard the Marshal, a second son of the faithful William, the barons began to growl against the foreigners. Des Roches retorted that the King had need of foreigners to protect him. against the treachery of his natural subjects, and large numbers of Poitevin and Breton mercenaries were brought over to sustain this view. But the struggle was short. In alliance with Prince Llewellyn, the young Marshal drove the King among the Welsh Marches, sacked Shrewsbury, and harried des Roches's lands. In the spring of 1234, Henry was forced to accept terms. The Poitevin officials were dismissed, des Roches found it convenient to go on ajourney to Italy, and de Burgh was honourably restored to his lands and possessions.

Henry III rebuilt Westminster in the name of Edward the Confessor: he wished to be seen as a devout King. But the next twenty-four years were uneasy years. The relationship between the young King and the barons was rarely anything but uneasy. When he was a child, Henry's Regency had to consult the barons. Once he became King, Henry, naturally, ruled in his own style and through the hand-picked servants of the Crown. The barons preferred the old way. Also, Henry had married Eleanor of Provence. The barons believed that her relations encouraged the King to think too much about his French claims. That meant spending money. It meant taxes and loans. And many of the barons no longer had direct interests in France They also knew that Magna Carta, no matter how many times it was revised and re-issued (it wasn't a one-off document, more like a modern Act of Parliament which may be amended), wasn't enough to control the King and force him to consult them on important matters, not even through the Great Council.

In theory the Great Council was a sort of Privy Council. But because the King could call anyone he liked to it, and therefore not call anyone he didn't like, it didn't have much power. So neither did the barons. In 1258 there was a constitutional confrontation, and it went on for seven years. The immediate result was the Provisions of Oxford.

The Provisions of Oxford were reforms rather than rules. They were issued by a Committee appointed by the Oxford Parliament in 1258. They were not contained in a single document. Neither were they a new Magna Carta. Power instead of being in the hands of the monarch, was (in theory) invested in a Council of Fifteen and in the King. The key figure was the new justiciar, Hugh Bigod.

And it was also in 1258 that the word Parliament entered the language. The word comes from the Norman French. It was a gathering to talk about important matters, to parley. It was a direct development of the curia regis, the royal court of the Norman kings.

The first Parliaments did not have a Speaker, a government party, an opposition front bench nor chief whips. The thirteenth-century Parliaments were the more important sessions of the Great Council. The Provisions of Oxford contain a series of oaths which illustrate something of the importance of the new Council of Fifteen and its Parliaments. For example:

*There are to be three Parliaments a year. The first on the octave of Michaelmas. The second, the morrow of Candelmas [sic]. The third, the first [Holy] day of June, that is to say, three weeks before St John's day.

And the Provisions of Oxford began its conclusion with the fact that the Council, the Fifteen, shall be chosen, not by the King, but by the Earl Marshal, Hugh Bigod, John Mansel and the Earl of Warwick. And then:

*And they are to have authority to advise the King in good faith on the government of the kingdom and all things pertaining to the King or to the kingdom, and authority to amend and redress all the things they see need to be redressed and amended. And authority over the chief Justiciar, and over all other people. And if they cannot all be present, what the majority does shall be firm and established.

The Provisions of Oxford were written in French, Latin and in English. There may seem little remarkable in that, but, for 100 years, English had not been used as an official language. So perhaps this tells us how important were the Provisions of Oxford: it must have the widest possible readership. In 1259 the Provisions of Oxford were reinforced by the Provisions of Westminster.

One of the names which appears in diese Provisions, as representing the views of the earls and barons, was the Lord Simon, Earl of Leicester, more popularly remembered as Simon de Montfort.

C+Simon had married the King's sister and had inherited the Earldom of Leicester. He had been governor of the English lands in Gascony for four years. Strong and energetic, he had aroused the jealousy and opposition of the King's favourites; and as a result of their intrigues had been brougnt to trial in 1252. The commission acquitted him; but in return for a sum of money from the King he unwillingly agreed to vacate his office. Friendship between him and the King was at an end; on the one side was contempt, on the other suspicion. In this way, from an unexpected quarter, appeared the leader whom the baronial and national opposition had long lacked. [He] was to become the brain and driving force of the English aristocracy. Behind him gradually ranged themselves most of the greater feudal chiefs, the whole strength of London as a corporate entity, all the lower clergy, and the goodwill of the nation. Simon de Monfort has been called a man of great self-confidence, a man of clear imagination, a skilled soldier and an arrogant man. He was also foreign born without a partisan notion of what was going on in England. He didn't want to get rid of the throne; equally he was quite willing to lock up the King in order to achieve his aims. And, once he had achieved the limited success of the Provisions of Oxford and Westminster, he was not afraid to turn his attentions to the barons.

Simon de Montfort became increasingly powerful. He even struck up an understanding with ihc King's son, Edward, who was emerging as one of the first political princes in English history. Young men rallied to Edward. They knew that he'd be king one day and they believed him to be more trustworthy than his father. But the difference between Simon de Montfort and the young Edward was this: Simon believed that through the Council - the Parliament - the King could be controlled. Edward saw the Council as a group of advisers, nothing more.

King Henry became suspicious of the alliance between his son and de Monfort, even though their differences were obvious. Henry sent Edward into exile, but wasn’t a good enough king and leader to keep control of his kingdom as it headed for civil war. The death of Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, in July 1262 was a blow for Henry. Gloucester did subscribe to de Montfort’s belief that the King could be over-ruled. But Gloucester, one of the King's closest supporters and the finest of Henry's generals in the Welsh Marches, was gone.

C+. .the baronial party rallied to de Montfort's drastic policy. Civil war broke out and Simon and his sons, a moiety of barons, the middle-class, so far as it had emerged, and powerful allies in Wales, together faced in redoubtable array the cnallenge of the Crown.[But] by September 1263 a reaction against him [de Montfort] had become visible: he had succeeded only too well. Edward played upon the discontent among the barons appealed to their feudal and selfish interest, fomented their jealousy of de Montfort, and so built up a strong royalist party. At the end of the year de Montfort had to agree to arbitration by Louis IX, the French king. The decision went against him. Already however, the rival parties had taken up arms. [At Lewes] in Sussex a fierce battle was fought [May 1264]. [Edward] conquered all before him, pursued incontinently, and returned to the battlefield only to find that all was lost. Simon had, with much craft and experience of war, laid a trap to which the peculiar conditions of the ground lent themselves, whereby when his centre had been pierced, his two wings of armoured cavalry fell upon the royal main body from both flanks and crushed all resistance.

This Battle of Lewes was the start of the Second Barons' War and the King and Edward were captured. De Montfort was, in effect, ruler of England. But he had no ambitions to replace Henry, nor Edward. With the Bishop of Chichester and Gilbert de Clare, the new Earl of Gloucester, Simon de Montfort governed England in the name of the King. But the alliance was short-lived because the new Earl of Gloucester had the same instincts as his father: he was a royalist. Throughout 1265 Simon de Montfort's position weakened. Gloucester's doubts were made more public, and in May, Prince Edward escaped from de Montfort. Gloucester went with him and Edward, singing the praises of Magna Carta, not the Oxford Provisions, raised an army in the Welsh Marches.

C+By promising to uphold the Charters, to remedy grievances and to expel the foreigners, Edward succeeded in uniting the baronial party and in cutting away the ground from under de Montfort's feet. The Earl now appeared as no more than the leader of a personal faction. Out-manoeuvred politically by Edward, he had also placed himself at a serious military disadvantage. De Montfort was penned in, his retreat to the east cut off; and his forces driven back into south Wales. At the beginning of August he made another attempt to cross the river and to join the forces which his son, Simon, was bringing up from the South-East. He succeeded in passing by a ford in Worcester, but his son's forces were trapped by Edward near Kenilworth and routed. Unaware of this disaster, the Earl was caught in turn at Evesham; and here on August 4, the final battle took place. It was fought in the rain and half-darkness of a sudden storm. The Welsh broke before Edward's heavy horse, and the small group around de Montfort were left to fight desperately until sheer weight of numbers overwhelmed them. De Montfort died a hero in the field.

After the Battle of Evesham in 1265, Simon de Montfort's followers were stripped of their properties and a guerrilla campaign began in England. Supporters of the dead de Montfort became known as the Disinherited. They became outlaws. They hid in hills and in forests including the great forest of Sherwood. Eventually, in 1267, the Statute of Marlborough was drawn up. The King could once again choose his own advisers, councillors and servants. Magna Carta was invoked. (Note how often this happened in English history: Magna Carta was the only authority for reform.) Regular Parliaments were to be held.

The great test of the new administrations came five years later. When Henry died, Edward was abroad on the Crusade. It took him nearly two years to return to England. Yet while he was away, the smooth governing of England continued, because although the reforms had led to civil war, they were nevertheless well-founded and well-respected.

And here is an irony. Simon de Montfort's reforms, or his ideas for them, would not the with him. And the person responsible for his death, the new King, Edward I, continued to implement them.

(from “This Sceptred Isle” by Christopher Lee, L. 1990)