If any of the English Barons remembered
the murdered Arthur’s sister, Eleanor the fair
maid of Brittany, shut up in her convent at Bristol,
none among them spoke of her now, or maintained her
right to the Crown. The dead Usurper’s
eldest boy, HENRY by name, was taken by the Earl of
Pembroke, the Marshal of England, to the city of Gloucester,
and there crowned in great haste when he was only
ten years old. As the Crown itself had been
lost with the King’s treasure in the raging water,
and as there was no time to make another, they put
a circle of plain gold upon his head instead.
‘We have been the enemies of this child’s
father,’ said Lord Pembroke, a good and true
gentleman, to the few Lords who were present, ’and
he merited our ill-will; but the child himself is innocent,
and his youth demands our friendship and protection.’
Those Lords felt tenderly towards the little boy,
remembering their own young children; and they bowed
their heads, and said, ‘Long live King Henry
the Third!’
Next, a great council met at Bristol,
revised Magna Charta, and made Lord Pembroke Regent
or Protector of England, as the King was too young
to reign alone. The next thing to be done, was
to get rid of Prince Louis of France, and to win over
those English Barons who were still ranged under his
banner. He was strong in many parts of England,
and in London itself; and he held, among other places,
a certain Castle called the Castle of Mount Sorel,
in Leicestershire. To this fortress, after some
skirmishing and truce-making, Lord Pembroke laid siege.
Louis despatched an army of six hundred knights and
twenty thousand soldiers to relieve it. Lord
Pembroke, who was not strong enough for such a force,
retired with all his men. The army of the French
Prince, which had marched there with fire and plunder,
marched away with fire and plunder, and came, in a
boastful swaggering manner, to Lincoln. The town
submitted; but the Castle in the town, held by a brave
widow lady, named NICHOLA DE CAMVILLE (whose property
it was), made such a sturdy resistance, that the French
Count in command of the army of the French Prince found
it necessary to besiege this Castle. While he
was thus engaged, word was brought to him that Lord
Pembroke, with four hundred knights, two hundred and
fifty men with cross-bows, and a stout force both
of horse and foot, was marching towards him.
‘What care I?’ said the French Count.
’The Englishman is not so mad as to attack
me and my great army in a walled town!’ But
the Englishman did it for all that, and did it not
so madly but so wisely, that he decoyed the great
army into the narrow, ill-paved lanes and byways of
Lincoln, where its horse-soldiers could not ride in
any strong body; and there he made such havoc with
them, that the whole force surrendered themselves
prisoners, except the Count; who said that he would
never yield to any English traitor alive, and accordingly
got killed. The end of this victory, which the
English called, for a joke, the Fair of Lincoln, was
the usual one in those times the common
men were slain without any mercy, and the knights
and gentlemen paid ransom and went home.
The wife of Louis, the fair BLANCHE
OF CASTILE, dutifully equipped a fleet of eighty good
ships, and sent it over from France to her husband’s
aid. An English fleet of forty ships, some good
and some bad, gallantly met them near the mouth of
the Thames, and took or sunk sixty-five in one fight.
This great loss put an end to the French Prince’s
hopes. A treaty was made at Lambeth, in virtue
of which the English Barons who had remained attached
to his cause returned to their allegiance, and it was
engaged on both sides that the Prince and all his troops
should retire peacefully to France. It was time
to go; for war had made him so poor that he was obliged
to borrow money from the citizens of London to pay
his expenses home.
Lord Pembroke afterwards applied himself
to governing the country justly, and to healing the
quarrels and disturbances that had arisen among men
in the days of the bad King John. He caused
Magna Charta to be still more improved, and so amended
the Forest Laws that a Peasant was no longer put to
death for killing a stag in a Royal Forest, but was
only imprisoned. It would have been well for
England if it could have had so good a Protector many
years longer, but that was not to be. Within
three years after the young King’s Coronation,
Lord Pembroke died; and you may see his tomb, at this
day, in the old Temple Church in London.
The Protectorship was now divided.
PETER DE ROCHES, whom King John had made Bishop of
Winchester, was entrusted with the care of the person
of the young sovereign; and the exercise of the Royal
authority was confided to EARL HUBERT DE BURGH.
These two personages had from the first no liking
for each other, and soon became enemies. When
the young King was declared of age, Peter de Roches,
finding that Hubert increased in power and favour,
retired discontentedly, and went abroad. For
nearly ten years afterwards Hubert had full sway alone.
But ten years is a long time to hold
the favour of a King. This King, too, as he
grew up, showed a strong resemblance to his father,
in feebleness, inconsistency, and irresolution.
The best that can be said of him is that he was not
cruel. De Roches coming home again, after ten
years, and being a novelty, the King began to favour
him and to look coldly on Hubert. Wanting money
besides, and having made Hubert rich, he began to
dislike Hubert. At last he was made to believe,
or pretended to believe, that Hubert had misappropriated
some of the Royal treasure; and ordered him to furnish
an account of all he had done in his administration.
Besides which, the foolish charge was brought against
Hubert that he had made himself the King’s favourite
by magic. Hubert very well knowing that he could
never defend himself against such nonsense, and that
his old enemy must be determined on his ruin, instead
of answering the charges fled to Merton Abbey.
Then the King, in a violent passion, sent for the
Mayor of London, and said to the Mayor, ’Take
twenty thousand citizens, and drag me Hubert de Burgh
out of that abbey, and bring him here.’
The Mayor posted off to do it, but the Archbishop
of Dublin (who was a friend of Hubert’s) warning
the King that an abbey was a sacred place, and that
if he committed any violence there, he must answer
for it to the Church, the King changed his mind and
called the Mayor back, and declared that Hubert should
have four months to prepare his defence, and should
be safe and free during that time.
Hubert, who relied upon the King’s
word, though I think he was old enough to have known
better, came out of Merton Abbey upon these conditions,
and journeyed away to see his wife: a Scottish
Princess who was then at St. Edmund’s-Bury.
Almost as soon as he had departed
from the Sanctuary, his enemies persuaded the weak
King to send out one SIR GODFREY DE CRANCUMB, who
commanded three hundred vagabonds called the Black
Band, with orders to seize him. They came up
with him at a little town in Essex, called Brentwood,
when he was in bed. He leaped out of bed, got
out of the house, fled to the church, ran up to the
altar, and laid his hand upon the cross. Sir
Godfrey and the Black Band, caring neither for church,
altar, nor cross, dragged him forth to the church door,
with their drawn swords flashing round his head, and
sent for a Smith to rivet a set of chains upon him.
When the Smith (I wish I knew his name!) was brought,
all dark and swarthy with the smoke of his forge, and
panting with the speed he had made; and the Black
Band, falling aside to show him the Prisoner, cried
with a loud uproar, ’Make the fetters heavy!
make them strong!’ the Smith dropped upon his
knee but not to the Black Band and
said, ’This is the brave Earl Hubert de Burgh,
who fought at Dover Castle, and destroyed the French
fleet, and has done his country much good service.
You may kill me, if you like, but I will never make
a chain for Earl Hubert de Burgh!’
The Black Band never blushed, or they
might have blushed at this. They knocked the
Smith about from one to another, and swore at him,
and tied the Earl on horseback, undressed as he was,
and carried him off to the Tower of London.
The Bishops, however, were so indignant at the violation
of the Sanctuary of the Church, that the frightened
King soon ordered the Black Band to take him back
again; at the same time commanding the Sheriff of
Essex to prevent his escaping out of Brentwood Church.
Well! the Sheriff dug a deep trench all round the
church, and erected a high fence, and watched the
church night and day; the Black Band and their Captain
watched it too, like three hundred and one black wolves.
For thirty-nine days, Hubert de Burgh remained within.
At length, upon the fortieth day, cold and hunger
were too much for him, and he gave himself up to the
Black Band, who carried him off, for the second time,
to the Tower. When his trial came on, he refused
to plead; but at last it was arranged that he should
give up all the royal lands which had been bestowed
upon him, and should be kept at the Castle of Devizes,
in what was called ‘free prison,’ in charge
of four knights appointed by four lords. There,
he remained almost a year, until, learning that a
follower of his old enemy the Bishop was made Keeper
of the Castle, and fearing that he might be killed
by treachery, he climbed the ramparts one dark night,
dropped from the top of the high Castle wall into the
moat, and coming safely to the ground, took refuge
in another church. From this place he was delivered
by a party of horse despatched to his help by some
nobles, who were by this time in revolt against the
King, and assembled in Wales. He was finally
pardoned and restored to his estates, but he lived
privately, and never more aspired to a high post in
the realm, or to a high place in the King’s
favour. And thus end more happily
than the stories of many favourites of Kings the
adventures of Earl Hubert de Burgh.
The nobles, who had risen in revolt,
were stirred up to rebellion by the overbearing conduct
of the Bishop of Winchester, who, finding that the
King secretly hated the Great Charter which had been
forced from his father, did his utmost to confirm
him in that dislike, and in the preference he showed
to foreigners over the English. Of this, and
of his even publicly declaring that the Barons of
England were inferior to those of France, the English
Lords complained with such bitterness, that the King,
finding them well supported by the clergy, became frightened
for his throne, and sent away the Bishop and all his
foreign associates. On his marriage, however,
with ELEANOR, a French lady, the daughter of the Count
of Provence, he openly favoured the foreigners again;
and so many of his wife’s relations came over,
and made such an immense family-party at court, and
got so many good things, and pocketed so much money,
and were so high with the English whose money they
pocketed, that the bolder English Barons murmured
openly about a clause there was in the Great Charter,
which provided for the banishment of unreasonable favourites.
But, the foreigners only laughed disdainfully, and
said, ’What are your English laws to us?’
King Philip of France had died, and
had been succeeded by Prince Louis, who had also died
after a short reign of three years, and had been succeeded
by his son of the same name so moderate
and just a man that he was not the least in the world
like a King, as Kings went. ISABELLA, King Henry’s
mother, wished very much (for a certain spite she had)
that England should make war against this King; and,
as King Henry was a mere puppet in anybody’s
hands who knew how to manage his feebleness, she easily
carried her point with him. But, the Parliament
were determined to give him no money for such a war.
So, to defy the Parliament, he packed up thirty large
casks of silver I don’t know how he
got so much; I dare say he screwed it out of the miserable
Jews and put them aboard ship, and went
away himself to carry war into France: accompanied
by his mother and his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall,
who was rich and clever. But he only got well
beaten, and came home.
The good-humour of the Parliament
was not restored by this. They reproached the
King with wasting the public money to make greedy
foreigners rich, and were so stern with him, and so
determined not to let him have more of it to waste
if they could help it, that he was at his wit’s
end for some, and tried so shamelessly to get all he
could from his subjects, by excuses or by force, that
the people used to say the King was the sturdiest
beggar in England. He took the Cross, thinking
to get some money by that means; but, as it was very
well known that he never meant to go on a crusade,
he got none. In all this contention, the Londoners
were particularly keen against the King, and the King
hated them warmly in return. Hating or loving,
however, made no difference; he continued in the same
condition for nine or ten years, when at last the
Barons said that if he would solemnly confirm their
liberties afresh, the Parliament would vote him a
large sum.
As he readily consented, there was
a great meeting held in Westminster Hall, one pleasant
day in May, when all the clergy, dressed in their
robes and holding every one of them a burning candle
in his hand, stood up (the Barons being also there)
while the Archbishop of Canterbury read the sentence
of excommunication against any man, and all men, who
should henceforth, in any way, infringe the Great
Charter of the Kingdom. When he had done, they
all put out their burning candles with a curse upon
the soul of any one, and every one, who should merit
that sentence. The King concluded with an oath
to keep the Charter, ’As I am a man, as I am
a Christian, as I am a Knight, as I am a King!’
It was easy to make oaths, and easy
to break them; and the King did both, as his father
had done before him. He took to his old courses
again when he was supplied with money, and soon cured
of their weakness the few who had ever really trusted
him. When his money was gone, and he was once
more borrowing and begging everywhere with a meanness
worthy of his nature, he got into a difficulty with
the Pope respecting the Crown of Sicily, which the
Pope said he had a right to give away, and which he
offered to King Henry for his second son, PRINCE EDMUND.
But, if you or I give away what we have not got,
and what belongs to somebody else, it is likely that
the person to whom we give it, will have some trouble
in taking it. It was exactly so in this case.
It was necessary to conquer the Sicilian Crown before
it could be put upon young Edmund’s head.
It could not be conquered without money. The
Pope ordered the clergy to raise money. The
clergy, however, were not so obedient to him as usual;
they had been disputing with him for some time about
his unjust preference of Italian Priests in England;
and they had begun to doubt whether the King’s
chaplain, whom he allowed to be paid for preaching
in seven hundred churches, could possibly be, even
by the Pope’s favour, in seven hundred places
at once. ‘The Pope and the King together,’
said the Bishop of London, ’may take the mitre
off my head; but, if they do, they will find that
I shall put on a soldier’s helmet. I pay
nothing.’ The Bishop of Worcester was
as bold as the Bishop of London, and would pay nothing
either. Such sums as the more timid or more helpless
of the clergy did raise were squandered away, without
doing any good to the King, or bringing the Sicilian
Crown an inch nearer to Prince Edmund’s head.
The end of the business was, that the Pope gave the
Crown to the brother of the King of France (who conquered
it for himself), and sent the King of England in,
a bill of one hundred thousand pounds for the expenses
of not having won it.
The King was now so much distressed
that we might almost pity him, if it were possible
to pity a King so shabby and ridiculous. His
clever brother, Richard, had bought the title of King
of the Romans from the German people, and was no longer
near him, to help him with advice. The clergy,
resisting the very Pope, were in alliance with the
Barons. The Barons were headed by SIMON DE MONTFORT,
Earl of Leicester, married to King Henry’s sister,
and, though a foreigner himself, the most popular
man in England against the foreign favourites.
When the King next met his Parliament, the Barons,
led by this Earl, came before him, armed from head
to foot, and cased in armour. When the Parliament
again assembled, in a month’s time, at Oxford,
this Earl was at their head, and the King was obliged
to consent, on oath, to what was called a Committee
of Government: consisting of twenty-four members:
twelve chosen by the Barons, and twelve chosen by
himself.
But, at a good time for him, his brother
Richard came back. Richard’s first act
(the Barons would not admit him into England on other
terms) was to swear to be faithful to the Committee
of Government which he immediately began
to oppose with all his might. Then, the Barons
began to quarrel among themselves; especially the
proud Earl of Gloucester with the Earl of Leicester,
who went abroad in disgust. Then, the people
began to be dissatisfied with the Barons, because they
did not do enough for them. The King’s
chances seemed so good again at length, that he took
heart enough or caught it from his brother to
tell the Committee of Government that he abolished
them as to his oath, never mind that, the
Pope said! and to seize all the money in
the Mint, and to shut himself up in the Tower of London.
Here he was joined by his eldest son, Prince Edward;
and, from the Tower, he made public a letter of the
Pope’s to the world in general, informing all
men that he had been an excellent and just King for
five-and-forty years.
As everybody knew he had been nothing
of the sort, nobody cared much for this document.
It so chanced that the proud Earl of Gloucester dying,
was succeeded by his son; and that his son, instead
of being the enemy of the Earl of Leicester, was (for
the time) his friend. It fell out, therefore,
that these two Earls joined their forces, took several
of the Royal Castles in the country, and advanced
as hard as they could on London. The London
people, always opposed to the King, declared for them
with great joy. The King himself remained shut
up, not at all gloriously, in the Tower. Prince
Edward made the best of his way to Windsor Castle.
His mother, the Queen, attempted to follow him by
water; but, the people seeing her barge rowing up
the river, and hating her with all their hearts, ran
to London Bridge, got together a quantity of stones
and mud, and pelted the barge as it came through, crying
furiously, ‘Drown the Witch! Drown her!’
They were so near doing it, that the Mayor took the
old lady under his protection, and shut her up in St.
Paul’s until the danger was past.
It would require a great deal of writing
on my part, and a great deal of reading on yours,
to follow the King through his disputes with the Barons,
and to follow the Barons through their disputes with
one another so I will make short work of
it for both of us, and only relate the chief events
that arose out of these quarrels. The good King
of France was asked to decide between them.
He gave it as his opinion that the King must maintain
the Great Charter, and that the Barons must give up
the Committee of Government, and all the rest that
had been done by the Parliament at Oxford: which
the Royalists, or King’s party, scornfully called
the Mad Parliament. The Barons declared that
these were not fair terms, and they would not accept
them. Then they caused the great bell of St.
Paul’s to be tolled, for the purpose of rousing
up the London people, who armed themselves at the
dismal sound and formed quite an army in the streets.
I am sorry to say, however, that instead of falling
upon the King’s party with whom their quarrel
was, they fell upon the miserable Jews, and killed
at least five hundred of them. They pretended
that some of these Jews were on the King’s side,
and that they kept hidden in their houses, for the
destruction of the people, a certain terrible composition
called Greek Fire, which could not be put out with
water, but only burnt the fiercer for it. What
they really did keep in their houses was money; and
this their cruel enemies wanted, and this their cruel
enemies took, like robbers and murderers.
The Earl of Leicester put himself
at the head of these Londoners and other forces, and
followed the King to Lewes in Sussex, where he lay
encamped with his army. Before giving the King’s
forces battle here, the Earl addressed his soldiers,
and said that King Henry the Third had broken so many
oaths, that he had become the enemy of God, and therefore
they would wear white crosses on their breasts, as
if they were arrayed, not against a fellow-Christian,
but against a Turk. White-crossed accordingly,
they rushed into the fight. They would have lost
the day the King having on his side all
the foreigners in England: and, from Scotland,
JOHN COMYN, JOHN BALIOL, and ROBERT BRUCE, with all
their men but for the impatience of PRINCE
EDWARD, who, in his hot desire to have vengeance on
the people of London, threw the whole of his father’s
army into confusion. He was taken Prisoner; so
was the King; so was the King’s brother the
King of the Romans; and five thousand Englishmen were
left dead upon the bloody grass.
For this success, the Pope excommunicated
the Earl of Leicester: which neither the Earl
nor the people cared at all about. The people
loved him and supported him, and he became the real
King; having all the power of the government in his
own hands, though he was outwardly respectful to King
Henry the Third, whom he took with him wherever he
went, like a poor old limp court-card. He summoned
a Parliament (in the year one thousand two hundred
and sixty-five) which was the first Parliament in England
that the people had any real share in electing; and
he grew more and more in favour with the people every
day, and they stood by him in whatever he did.
Many of the other Barons, and particularly
the Earl of Gloucester, who had become by this time
as proud as his father, grew jealous of this powerful
and popular Earl, who was proud too, and began to conspire
against him. Since the battle of Lewes, Prince
Edward had been kept as a hostage, and, though he
was otherwise treated like a Prince, had never been
allowed to go out without attendants appointed by the
Earl of Leicester, who watched him. The conspiring
Lords found means to propose to him, in secret, that
they should assist him to escape, and should make
him their leader; to which he very heartily consented.
So, on a day that was agreed upon,
he said to his attendants after dinner (being then
at Hereford), ’I should like to ride on horseback,
this fine afternoon, a little way into the country.’
As they, too, thought it would be very pleasant to
have a canter in the sunshine, they all rode out of
the town together in a gay little troop. When
they came to a fine level piece of turf, the Prince
fell to comparing their horses one with another, and
offering bets that one was faster than another; and
the attendants, suspecting no harm, rode galloping
matches until their horses were quite tired.
The Prince rode no matches himself, but looked on
from his saddle, and staked his money. Thus
they passed the whole merry afternoon. Now,
the sun was setting, and they were all going slowly
up a hill, the Prince’s horse very fresh and
all the other horses very weary, when a strange rider
mounted on a grey steed appeared at the top of the
hill, and waved his hat. ‘What does the
fellow mean?’ said the attendants one to another.
The Prince answered on the instant by setting spurs
to his horse, dashing away at his utmost speed, joining
the man, riding into the midst of a little crowd of
horsemen who were then seen waiting under some trees,
and who closed around him; and so he departed in a
cloud of dust, leaving the road empty of all but the
baffled attendants, who sat looking at one another,
while their horses drooped their ears and panted.
The Prince joined the Earl of Gloucester
at Ludlow. The Earl of Leicester, with a part
of the army and the stupid old King, was at Hereford.
One of the Earl of Leicester’s sons, Simon de
Montfort, with another part of the army, was in Sussex.
To prevent these two parts from uniting was the Prince’s
first object. He attacked Simon de Montfort by
night, defeated him, seized his banners and treasure,
and forced him into Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire,
which belonged to his family.
His father, the Earl of Leicester,
in the meanwhile, not knowing what had happened, marched
out of Hereford, with his part of the army and the
King, to meet him. He came, on a bright morning
in August, to Evesham, which is watered by the pleasant
river Avon. Looking rather anxiously across
the prospect towards Kenilworth, he saw his own banners
advancing; and his face brightened with joy.
But, it clouded darkly when he presently perceived
that the banners were captured, and in the enemy’s
hands; and he said, ’It is over. The Lord
have mercy on our souls, for our bodies are Prince
Edward’s!’
He fought like a true Knight, nevertheless.
When his horse was killed under him, he fought on
foot. It was a fierce battle, and the dead lay
in heaps everywhere. The old King, stuck up in
a suit of armour on a big war-horse, which didn’t
mind him at all, and which carried him into all sorts
of places where he didn’t want to go, got into
everybody’s way, and very nearly got knocked
on the head by one of his son’s men. But
he managed to pipe out, ‘I am Harry of Winchester!’
and the Prince, who heard him, seized his bridle,
and took him out of peril. The Earl of Leicester
still fought bravely, until his best son Henry was
killed, and the bodies of his best friends choked
his path; and then he fell, still fighting, sword
in hand. They mangled his body, and sent it as
a present to a noble lady but a very unpleasant
lady, I should think who was the wife of
his worst enemy. They could not mangle his memory
in the minds of the faithful people, though.
Many years afterwards, they loved him more than ever,
and regarded him as a Saint, and always spoke of him
as ‘Sir Simon the Righteous.’
And even though he was dead, the cause
for which he had fought still lived, and was strong,
and forced itself upon the King in the very hour of
victory. Henry found himself obliged to respect
the Great Charter, however much he hated it, and to
make laws similar to the laws of the Great Earl of
Leicester, and to be moderate and forgiving towards
the people at last even towards the people
of London, who had so long opposed him. There
were more risings before all this was done, but they
were set at rest by these means, and Prince Edward
did his best in all things to restore peace.
One Sir Adam de Gourdon was the last dissatisfied
knight in arms; but, the Prince vanquished him in single
combat, in a wood, and nobly gave him his life, and
became his friend, instead of slaying him. Sir
Adam was not ungrateful. He ever afterwards
remained devoted to his generous conqueror.
When the troubles of the Kingdom were
thus calmed, Prince Edward and his cousin Henry took
the Cross, and went away to the Holy Land, with many
English Lords and Knights. Four years afterwards
the King of the Romans died, and, next year (one thousand
two hundred and seventy-two), his brother the weak
King of England died. He was sixty-eight years
old then, and had reigned fifty-six years. He
was as much of a King in death, as he had ever been
in life. He was the mere pale shadow of a King
at all times.