Read The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 Online
Authors: David Hume
After the expulsion of the French, the prudence and equity of the protector’s subsequent conduct, contributed to cure entirely those wounds, which had been made by intestine discord. He received the rebellious barons into favour; observed strictly the terms of peace, which he had granted them; restored them to their possessions; and endeavoured, by an equal behaviour, to bury all past animosities in perpetual oblivion. The clergy alone, who had adhered to Lewis, were sufferers in this revolution. As they had rebelled against their spiritual sovereign, by disregarding the interdict and excommunication, it was not in Pembroke’s power to make any stipulations in their favour; and Gualo, the legate, prepared to take vengeance on them
for their disobedience.p
Many of them were deposed; many suspended; some banished; and all who escaped punishment, made atonement for their offence, by paying large sums to the legate, who amassed an immense treasure by this expedient.
The earl of Pembroke did not long survive the pacification, Death of the
which had been chiefly owing to his wisdom and valour;q
and he protector.
was succeeded in the government by Peter des Roches, bishop of Winchester, and Hubert de Burgh, the justiciary. The councils of the latter were chiefly followed; and had he possessed equal authority in the kingdom with Pembroke, he seemed to be every way worthy of filling the place of that virtuous nobleman.
But the licentious and powerful barons, who had once broken the Some commotions.
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an enlargement of their liberties and independance, could ill be restrained by laws under a minority; and the people, no less than the king, suffered from their outrages and disorders. They retained by force the royal castles, which they had seized during the past convulsions, or which had been committed to their custody by the protector:
r
They usurped the king’s demesnes:
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They oppressed their vassals: They infested their weaker neighbours: They invited all disorderly people to enter in their retinue, and to live upon their lands: And they gave them protection in all their robberies and extortions.
No one was more infamous for these violent and illegal practices than the earl of Albemarle; who, though he had early returned to his duty, and had been serviceable in expelling the French, augmented to the utmost the general disorder, and committed outrages in all the counties of the North. In order to reduce him to obedience, Hubert seized an opportunity of getting possession of Rockingham castle, which Albemarle had garrisoned with his licentious retinue: But this nobleman, instead of submitting, entered into a secret confederacy with Fawkes de Breauté, Peter de Mauleon, and other barons, and both fortified the castle of Biham for his defence, and made himself master by surprize of that of Fotheringay. Pandulf, who was restored to his legateship, was active in suppressing this rebellion; and with the concurrence of eleven bishops, he pronounced the sentence of excommunication against Albemarle and his adherents:
t
An army was levied: A scutage of ten shillings a knight’s fee was imposed on all the military tenants: Albemarle’s associates gradually deserted him: And he himself was obliged at last to sue for mercy. He received a pardon, and was restored to his whole estate.
This impolitic lenity, too frequent in those times, was probably the result of a secret combination among the barons, who never could endure to see the total ruin of one of their own order: But it encouraged Fawkes de Breauté, a man whom king John had raised from a low origin, to persevere in the course of violence, to which he had owed his fortune, and to set at naught all law and justice. When thirty-five verdicts were at one time found against him, on account of his violent expulsion of so many freeholders from their possessions; he came to the court of justice with an armed force, seized the judge who had pronounced the verdicts, and imprisoned him in Bedford castle. He then levied open war against the king; but being subdued, and taken prisoner, his life was granted him: but his estate was confiscated, and he was
Justice was executed with greater severity against disorders less 1222.
premeditated, which broke out in London. A frivolous emulation in a match of wrestling, between the Londoners on the one hand, and the inhabitants of Westminster and those of the neighbouring villages on the other, occasioned this commotion. The former rose in a body, and pulled down some houses belonging to the abbot of Westminster: But this riot, which, considering the tumultuous disposition familiar to that capital, would have been little regarded, seemed to become more serious, by the symptoms which then appeared, of the former attachment of the citizens to the French interest. The populace, in the tumult, made use of the cry of war commonly employed by the French troops;
Mountjoy, mountjoy, God help us and our
lord Lewis.
The justiciary made enquiry into the disorder; and finding one PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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Constantine Fitz Arnulf to have been the ringleader, an insolent man, who justified his crime in Hubert’s presence, he proceeded against him by martial law, and ordered him immediately to be hanged, without trial or form of process. He also cut off the feet of some of Constantine’s accomplices.
w
This act of power was complained of as an infringement of the Great Charter: Yet the justiciary, in a parliament, summoned at Oxford, (for the great councils about this time began to receive that appellation) made no scruple to grant in the king’s name a renewal and confirmation of that charter. When the assembly made application to the crown for this favour; as a law in those times seemed to lose its validity, if not frequently renewed; William de Briewere, one of the council of regency, was so bold as to say openly, that those liberties were extorted by force, and ought not to be observed: But he was reprimanded by the archbishop of Canterbury, and was not countenanced by the king or his chief ministers.
x
A new confirmation was demanded and granted two years after; and an aid, amounting to a fifteenth of all moveables, was given by the parliament, in return for this indulgence. The king issued writs anew to the sheriffs, enjoining the observance of the charter; but he inserted a remarkable clause in the writs, that those, who payed not the fifteenth, should not for the future be entitled to the benefit of those liberties:
y
The low state, into which the crown was fallen, made it requisite for a good minister to be attentive to the preservation of the royal prerogatives, as well as to the security of public liberty. Hubert applied to the pope, who had always great authority in the kingdom, and was now considered as its superior lord; and desired him to issue a bull, declaring the king to be of full age, and entitled to exercise in person all the acts of
royalty.z
In consequence of this declaration, the justiciary resigned into Henry’s hands the two important fortresses of the Tower and Dover castle, which had been entrusted to his custody; and he required the other barons to imitate his example. They refused compliance: The earls of Chester and Albemarle, John Constable of Chester, John de Lacy, Brian de l’Isle, and William de Cantel, with some others, even formed a conspiracy to surprize London, and met in arms at Waltham with that intention: But finding the king prepared for defence, they desisted from their enterprize. When summoned to court, in order to answer for their conduct, they scrupled not to appear, and to confess the design: But they told the king, that they had no bad intentions against his person, but only against Hubert de Burgh, whom they were determined to remove from his office.
a
They appeared too formidable to be chastised; and they were so little discouraged by the failure of their first enterprize, that they again met in arms at Leicester, in order to seize the king, who then resided at Northampton: But Henry, informed of their purpose, took care to be so well armed and attended, that the barons found it dangerous to make the attempt; and they sat down and kept Christmas in his
neighbourhood.b
The archbishop and the prelates, finding every thing tend towards a civil war, interposed with their authority, and threatened the barons with the sentence of excommunication, if they persisted in detaining the king’s castles. This menace at last prevailed: Most of the fortresses were surrendered; though the barons complained, that Hubert’s castles were soon after restored to him, while the king still kept theirs in his own custody. There are said to have been 1115 castles at that time in England.
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It must be acknowledged, that the influence of the prelates and the clergy was often of great service to the public. Though the religion of that age can merit no better name than that of superstition, it served to unite together a body of men who had great sway over the people, and who kept the community from falling to pieces, by the factions and independant power of the nobles. And what was of great importance; it threw a mighty authority into the hands of men, who by their profession were averse to arms and violence; who tempered by their mediation the general disposition towards military enterprizes; and who still maintained, even amidst the shock of arms, those secret links, without which it is impossible for human society to subsist.
Notwithstanding these intestine commotions in England, and the precarious authority of the crown, Henry was obliged to carry on war in France; and he employed to that purpose the fifteenth which had been granted him by parliament. Lewis VIII. who had succeeded to his father Philip, instead of complying with Henry’s claim, who demanded the restitution of Normandy and the other provinces wrested from England,
made an irruption into Poictou, took Rochelled
after a long siege, and seemed determined to expel the English from the few provinces which still remained to them.
Henry sent over his uncle, the earl of Salisbury; together with his brother prince Richard, to whom he had granted the earldom of Cornwal, which had escheated to the crown. Salisbury stopped the progress of Lewis’s arms, and retained the Poictevin and Gascon vassals in their allegiance: But no military action of any moment was performed on either side. The earl of Cornwal, after two years’ stay in Guienne, returned to England.
This prince was nowise turbulent or factious in his disposition: 1227.
His ruling passion was to amass money, in which he succeeded so well as to become the richest subject in Christendom: Yet his attention to gain threw him sometimes into acts of violence, and gave disturbance to the government.
There was a manor, which had formerly belonged to the earldom of Cornwal, but had been granted to Waleran de Ties, before Richard had been invested with that dignity, and while the earldom remained in the crown. Richard claimed this manor, and expelled the proprietor by force: Waleran complained: The king ordered his brother to do justice to the man, and restore him to his rights: The earl said, that he would not submit to these orders, till the cause should be decided against him by the judgment of his peers: Henry replied, that it was first necessary to re-instate Waleran in possession, before the cause could be tried; and he re-iterated his orders to the earl.
e
We may judge of the state of the government, when this affair had nearly produced a civil war. The earl of Cornwal, finding Henry peremptory in his commands, associated himself with the young earl of Pembroke, who had married his sister, and who was displeased on account of the king’s requiring him to deliver up some royal castles which were in his custody. These two malcontents took into the confederacy the earls of Chester, Warenne, Glocester, Hereford, Warwic, and Ferrers, who were all disgusted on a like account.
f
They assembled an army, which the king had not the power or courage to resist; and he was obliged to give his brother satisfaction, by grants of much greater importance than the manor, which had been the first ground of the quarrel.
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The character of the king, as he grew to man’s estate, became every day better known; and he was found in every respect unqualified for maintaining a proper sway among those turbulent barons, whom the feudal constitution subjected to his authority.
Gentle, humane, and merciful even to a fault, he seems to have been steady in no other circumstance of his character; but to have received every impression from those who surrounded him, and whom he loved, for the time, with the most imprudent and most unreserved affection. Without activity or vigour, he was unfit to conduct war; without policy or art, he was ill-fitted to maintain peace; His resentments, though hasty and violent, were not dreaded, while he was found to drop them with such facility; his friendships were little valued, because they were neither derived from choice, nor maintained with constancy. A proper pageant of state in a regular monarchy, where his ministers could have conducted all affairs in his name and by his authority; but too feeble in those disorderly times to sway a scepter, whose weight depended entirely on the firmness and dexterity of the hand which held it.
The ablest and most virtuous minister that Henry ever possessed, Hubert de Burgh
was Hubert de Burgh;h
a man who had been steady to the crown displaced.
in the most difficult and dangerous times, and who yet shewed no disposition, in the height of his power, to enslave or oppress the people. The only exceptionable part of his conduct is that which is mentioned by Matthew Paris,
i
if the fact be really true, and proceeded from Hubert’s advice, namely, the recalling publicly and the annulling of the charter of forests, a concession so reasonable in itself, and so passionately claimed both by the nobility and people: But it must be confessed, that this measure is so unlikely, both from the circumstances of the times and character of the minister, that there is reason to doubt of its reality, especially as it is mentioned by no other historian. Hubert, while he enjoyed his authority, had an entire ascendant over Henry, and was loaded with honours and favours beyond any other subject.