CHAPTER II

EDWARD AND THE BARONS' WARS 1258-1267

THE PERSONAL GOVERNMENT OF HENRY III. had now lasted for more than five and twenty years. Year after year his weak and nerveless rule had become worse. He gave the nation neither strong government nor popular control. A feeble attempt at despotism had brought about a chronic state of anarchy. Extravagance, nepotism, incompetence had reigned supreme. Many and loud had been the protests that the wiser among the churchmen and the nobler among the baronage had raised against the weak king's misdoings. But the tyranny of Henry was not of that severe and grinding kind which invites immediate and strenuous resistance even at the expense of revolution. And the opposition was wanting in unity of policy and in leaders of capacity. Thus it was that, despite the protests of the gallant Richard Marshal, the despairing lamentations of the sainted Edmund of Abingdon, the more manly denunciations of Bishop Grosseteste, and the spirited action of Earl Richard of Cornwall, Henry was still able to go on in his evil ways. But new complications now presented themselves which at last brought about the final crisis. The return of Simon de Montfort from Gascony, thoroughly and for ever at feud with his royal brother-in-law, gave the opposition a leader of matchless ability, resourcefulness, energy, and daring. The vain attempt of Henry to procure for his second son Edmund the crown of Sicily had imposed a new and a crushing burden upon the scanty resources of the kingdom. The popes, who used Edmund as a tool to drive out the heirs of their hated enemy, Frederick of Hohenstaufen, from the Sicilian throne, pledged Henry's credit to the uttermost, and sent legates to England to demand the fulfilment of his promises. This led to the famous Parliaments of Barons of 1258. At London, in the spring, Henry was forced to accept a commission of reform. At Oxford, in the summer, a new constitution was drawn up and forced upon the reluctant monarch. By the Provisions of Oxford the whole power of the Crown was put into the hands of a committee of fifteen barons. The king's household was set in order, his alien kinsmen and favourites were driven beyond sea, and the custody of royal castles entrusted to Englishmen alone. A sweeping scheme of further reformation was drawn up for the future. A few months' vigorous action reduced the would-be despot to a position of utter powerlessness.

Edward was now in his twentieth year. It is probable that he was already dimly conscious of his father's deficiencies, but his filial affection and his pride of power alike prompted him to vigorously oppose the audacious designs of the barons. But he soon found himself swept away by the torrent. In vain he set himself against the expulsion of his familiar friends and companions, his uncles the Lusignans. The barons forced him to take part in the siege of Winchester Castle, from which his Poitevin uncles made their last unavailing resistance. After their expulsion he gave his reluctant oath to observe the Provisions of Oxford. It must have been a bitter humiliation to him to be compelled to accept the appointment of four baronial councillors, specially commissioned to reform his turbulent and disorderly household. But with all his loyalty he could not sacrifice enough to satisfy the exacting affection of his foolish father. A hot quarrel broke out between the king and his son, though it was soon ended by an affectionate reconciliation in the chapter-house at Winchester. Yet each outburst of foolish petulance on Henry's part could not but be a fresh inducement to Edward to take up a line of his own. In his passive action in 1258 he had abundant opportunity to win fresh experience. The removal of his Poitevin and Provençal kinsfolk threw him back on more English and more capable advisers. Next year he began to play an independent part.

The Provisions of Oxford had not satisfied everybody. The revolution had been carried out by a ring of great earls and barons, who thought, like the Whigs of the eighteenth century, that the transference of power to themselves had made the constitution so perfect that further improvements were not to be hoped for. This was not the view of the Earl of Leicester, but as a new man and a foreigner his influence was far inferior to that of Richard of Clare, the Earl of Gloucester, whose vast possessions and vigorous personal character made him the natural head of the English aristocracy. But new classes of the community now entered for the first time into the arena of practical politics. The country gentlemen of knightly rank, the natural leaders of the unrepresented masses of the nation, had already begun to get political experience from the new fashion of summoning knights of the shire to treat with the king in general parliaments. They now began to murmur loudly that the old grievances under which the nation had groaned so long were in no wise removed by the change of leaders. These men, "the community of the bachelorhood of England," addressed to Edward a long petition for further reform, and denounced the barons for breaking their word and working merely "for their own good and the harm of the king." Edward answered that he was ready to die for the good of the commonwealth, but that though he had sworn to the Provisions with the utmost unwillingness, he was resolved to keep his oath. He took up their cause with his usual impetuous ardour, and thus dissociated himself from the mere courtier party. One result of his energetic action was a further though small instalment of reform in the Provisions of Westminster. It is significant that while Henry simply swore to observe these Provisions, Edward added to his acceptance an oath that he would advise and aid Earl Simon against all men. Perhaps the most important immediate result of this movement was that it brought Edward into temporary relations with his uncle Montfort. It is hard to say that Edward's object was simply to divide his father's enemies and so break down the slavery to which the Crown had been subjected, though no doubt this result did follow from his action. But for a time there was a complete breach between Edward and Henry, a complete harmony of action between the king's son and Earl Simon. Queen Eleanor, who could not forgive her son's desertion of her Provençal kinsfolk, stirred up Henry against Edward. Gloucester, now Simon's declared enemy, did his best to widen the breach. Something like civil war seemed likely to break out between the followers of Gloucester and those of Edward. For five weeks and more the Londoners sought to keep the peace by closing their gates and guarding them with an armed force.

The absence of Henry in France, whither he had gone to negotiate a peace with his brother-in-law St. Louis, still further complicated matters. There Henry signed a treaty by which he formally renounced all claims on Normandy and Poitou, thus giving up those pretensions which a few years before he had so solemnly handed over to his son. Simon hotly opposed the peace. It is not likely that Edward was very favourable to it. But both Edward and Simon became parties to the treaty, and solemnly renounced their share in the abandoned claims.

In the spring of 1260 things got worse. Henry and Eleanor were informed, as they were travelling back to England, that Edward had formed a conspiracy with the barons to depose his father, and that the king on his arrival home would be forthwith hurried into captivity. The story was an outrageous fiction, but it thoroughly frightened Henry, who lingered on the French shore of the Channel, fearing to cross the straits. At last the timely intervention of Richard of Cornwall, now King of the Romans, convinced Henry that his suspicions were exaggerated. Henry was much offended with Edward. On his arrival in London he sternly refused to see his son, who was lodging with Simon outside the city walls. But the weak head and good heart of the king could not long endure such unnatural estrangement. "Do not let my son appear before me," he exclaimed, "for if I see him, I shall not be able to refrain from kissing him." After a fortnight father and son were reconciled. Edward gradually dropped his connections with Simon, though he kept up his feud with Gloucester until the death of Earl Richard in 1262. Disgusted at the troubles that had resulted from his first active intervention in politics, Edward withdrew for a time from public affairs, and again sought distraction in his favourite amusement of the tiltyard. He now went to France for a great tournament, in which he came off badly. Again in 1262 he went abroad for the same purpose. He proved victor in several mock encounters, but in one he received a serious wound.

Henry III. had long wearied of his inglorious degradation at the hands of the Fifteen, and had for some time been engaged in secret intrigues against the constitution which he had sworn to observe. His last scruples were removed when two successive popes absolved both him and his son Edward from their oaths. On 2nd May 1262 Henry solemnly proclaimed to the sheriffs the tidings of his absolution from his obligations. But later in the year, on learning that the young Earl Gilbert, who had just succeeded his father in the Gloucester estates and title, had thrown himself warmly on the side of Leicester, Henry again confirmed the Provisions. A few months later he was again at work undermining the new constitution. By Whitsuntide 1263 open civil war had broken out.

Edward spent the early part of 1263 in Paris. But the tidings came that Llywelyn of Wales had again invaded his...