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The History of England from the Accession of Henry III. to the Death of Edward III. (1216-1377)
The Alien Invasion
by Tout, T.F. (M.A.)
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With the dismissal of Hubert on July 29,
1232, Peter des Roches resumed his authority over Henry III.
Mindful of past failures, the bishop's aim was to rule through
dependants, so that he could pull the wires without making himself
too prominent. His chief agents in pursuing this policy were Peter
of Rivaux, Stephen Segrave, and Robert Passelewe. Of these, Peter
of Rivaux was a Poitevin clerk, officially described as the
bishop's nephew, but generally supposed to have been his son.
Stephen Segrave, the son of a small Leicestershire landholder, was
a lawyer who had held many judicial and administrative posts,
including the regency during the king's absence abroad in 1230. He
abandoned his original clerical profession, received knighthood,
married nobly, and was the founder of a baronial house in the
midlands. His only political principle was obedience to the powers
that were in the ascendant. Passelewe, a clerk who had acted as the
agent of Randolph of Chester and Falkes of Bréauté at
the Roman court, was, like Segrave, a mere tool.
The Bishop of Winchester began to show his hand. Between June 26
and July 11, nineteen of the thirty-five sheriffdoms were bestowed
on Peter of Rivaux for life. As Segrave was sheriff of five shires,
and the bishop himself had acquired the shrievalty of Hampshire,
this involved the transference of the administration of over
two-thirds of the counties to the bishop's dependants. On the
downfall of Hubert, Segrave became justiciar. He was not the equal
of his predecessors either in personal weight or in social
position, and did not aspire to act as chief minister. The
appointment of a mere lawyer to the great Norman office of state
marks the first stage in the decline, which before
long degraded the justiciarship into a simple position of headship
over the judges, the chief justiceship of the next generation.
Hubert's offices and lands were divided among his supplanters.
Peter of Rivaux became keeper of wards and escheats, castellan of
many castles on the Welsh march, and the recipient of even more
offices and wardships in Ireland than in England. The custody of
the Gloucester earldom went to the Bishop of Winchester. The last
steps of the ministerial revolution were completed at the king's
Christmas court at Worcester. There Rivaux, who had yielded up
before Michaelmas most of his shrievalties, was made treasurer,
with Passelewe as his deputy. Of the old ministers only the
chancellor, Ralph Neville, Bishop of Chichester, was suffered to
remain in office. Finally the king's new advisers imported a large
company of Poitevin and Breton mercenaries, hoping with their help
to maintain their newly won position. The worst days of John seemed
renewed.
The Poitevin gang called upon Hubert to render complete accounts
for the whole period of his justiciarship. When he pleaded that
King John had given him a charter of quittance, he was told that
its force had ended with the death of the grantor. He was further
required to answer for the wrongs which Twenge's bands had
inflicted on the servants of the pope. He was accused of poisoning
William Earl of Salisbury, William Marshal, Falkes de
Bréauté, and Archbishop Richard. He had prevented the
king from contracting a marriage with a daughter of the Duke of
Austria; he had dissuaded the king from attempting to recover
Normandy; he had first seduced and then married the daughter of the
King of Scots; he had stolen from the treasury a talisman which
made its possessor invincible in war and had traitorously given it
to Llewelyn of Wales; he had induced Llewelyn to slay William de
Braose; he had won the royal favour by magic and witchcraft, and
finally he had murdered Constantine FitzAthulf.
Many of these accusations were so monstrous that they carried
with them their own refutation. It was too often the custom in the
middle ages to overwhelm an enemy with incredible charges for it to
be fair to accuse the enemies of Hubert of any excessive malignity.
The substantial innocence of Hubert is clear, for the only charges
brought against him were either errors of judgment and policy, or
incredible crimes. Nevertheless he was in such imminent danger that
he took sanctuary with the canons of Merton in Surrey. Thereupon
the king called upon the Londoners to march to Merton and bring
their ancient foe, dead or alive, to the city. Randolph of Chester
interposed between his fallen enemy and the royal vengeance. He
persuaded Henry to countermand the march to Merton and to suffer
the fallen justiciar to leave his refuge with some sort of safe
conduct. But the king was irritated to hear that Hubert had
journeyed into Essex. Again he was pursued, and once more he was
forced to take sanctuary, this time in a chapel near Brentwood.
From this he was dragged by some of the king's household and
brought to London, where he was imprisoned in the Tower. The Bishop
of London complained to the king of this violation of the rights of
the Church, and Hubert was allowed to return to his chapel.
However, the levies of Essex surrounded the precincts, and he was
soon forced by hunger to surrender. He offered to submit himself to
the king's will, and was for a second time confined in the Tower.
On November 10, he was brought before a not unfriendly tribunal, in
which the malice of the new justiciar was tempered by the baronial
instincts of the Earls of Cornwall, Warenne, Pembroke, and Lincoln.
He made no effort to defend himself, and submitted absolutely to
the judgment of the king. It was finally agreed that he should be
allowed to retain the lands which he had inherited from his father,
and that all his chattels and the lands that he had acquired
himself should be forfeited to the crown. Further, he was to be
kept in prison in the castle of Devizes under the charge of the
four earls who had tried him.
Peter des Roches was soon in difficulties. The earls who had
saved Hubert began to oppose the whole administration. Their leader
was Richard, Earl of Pembroke, the second son of the great regent,
and since his brother's death head of the house of Marshal. Richard
was bitterly prejudiced against the king and his courtiers by an
attempt to refuse him his brother's earldom. A gallant warrior,
handsome and eloquent, pious, upright, and well educated, Richard,
the best of the marshal's sons, stood for the rest of his short
life at the head of the opposition. He incited his friends to
refuse to attend a council summoned to meet at Oxford, on June
24, 1233. The king would have sought to compel their presence, had
not a Dominican friar, Robert Bacon, when preaching before the
court, warned him that there would be no peace in England until
Bishop Peter and his son were removed from his counsels. The
friar's boldness convinced him that disaffection was widespread,
and he promised the magnates at a later council at London that he
would, with their advice, correct whatever he found there was need
to reform. Meanwhile the Poitevins brought into England fresh
swarms of hirelings from their own land, and Peter des Roches urged
Henry to crush rebellion in the bud. As a warning to greater
offenders, Gilbert Basset was deprived of a manor which he had held
since the reign of King John, and an attempt was made to lay
violent hands upon his brother-in-law, Richard Siward. The two
barons resisted, whereupon all their estates were transferred to
Peter of Rivaux. Yet Richard Marshal still continued to hope for
peace, and, after the failure of earlier councils, set off to
attend another assembly fixed for August 1, at Westminster. On his
way he learnt from his sister Isabella, the wife of Richard of
Cornwall, that Peter des Roches was laying a trap for him. In high
indignation he took horse for his Welsh estates, and prepared for
rebellion.
The king summoned the military tenants to appear with horses and
arms at Gloucester on the 14th. There Richard Marshal was declared
a traitor and an invasion of his estates was ordered. But the king
had not sufficient resources to carry out his threats, and October
saw the barons once more wrangling with Henry at Westminster, and
claiming that the marshal should be tried by his peers. Peter of
Winchester declared that there were no peers in England as there
were in France, and that in consequence the king had power to
condemn any disloyal subject through his justices. This daringly
unconstitutional doctrine provoked a renewed outcry. The bishops
joined the secular magnates, and threatened their colleague with
excommunication. A formidable civil war broke out. Siward and
Basset harried the lands of the Poitevins, while the marshal made a
close alliance with Llewelyn of Wales. The king still had
formidable forces on his side. Richard of Cornwall was persuaded by
Bishop Peter to take up arms for his brother, and the two new
earls, John the Scot of Chester, and John de Lacy of Lincoln,
joined the royal forces. Hubert de Burgh took advantage of the
increasing confusion to escape from Devizes castle to a church in
the town. Dragged back with violence to his prison, he was again,
as at Brentwood, restored to sanctuary through the exertions of the
bishop of the diocese. There he remained, closely watched by his
foes, until October 30, when Siward and Basset drove away the
guard, and took him off with them to the marshal's castle of
Chepstow.
The tide of war flowed to the southern march of Wales. Llewelyn
and Richard Marshal devastated Glamorgan, which, as a part of the
Gloucester inheritance, was under the custody of the Bishop of
Winchester. They took nearly all its castles, including that of
Cardiff. Thence they subdued Usk, Abergavenny, and other
neighbouring strongholds, while an independent army, including the
marshal's Pembrokeshire vassals and the men of the princes of South
Wales, wasted months in a vain attack on Carmarthen. The king's
vassals were again summoned to Gloucester, whence Henry led them
early in November towards Chepstow, the centre of the marshal's
estates in Gwent. Earl Richard devastated his lands so effectively
that the king could not support his army on them, and was compelled
to move up the Wye valley towards the castles of Monmouth,
Skenfrith, Whitecastle, and Grosmont, the strong quadrilateral of
Upper Gwent which still remained in the hands of the king's
friends. Marching to the most remote of these, Grosmont, on the
upper Monnow, Henry spent several days in the castle, while his
army lay around under canvas. On the night of November 11, the
sleeping soldiers were suddenly set upon by the barons and their
Welsh allies; they fled unarmed to the castle, or scattered in
confusion. The assailants seized their horses, harness, arms and
provisions, but refrained from slaying or capturing them. The royal
forces never rallied. Many gladly went home, giving as their excuse
that they were unable to fight since they had lost their equipment.
Henry and his ministers withdrew to Gloucester. More convinced than
ever of the treachery of Englishmen, the king entrusted the defence
of the border castles to mercenaries from Poitou.
The fighting centred round Monmouth, which Richard approached on
the 25th with a small company. A sudden sortie almost overwhelmed the
little band. The marshal held his own heroically against twelve,
until at last Baldwin of Guînes, the warden of the castle,
took him prisoner. Thereupon Baldwin fell to the ground, his armour
pierced by a lucky bolt from a crossbow. His followers, smitten
with panic, abandoned the marshal, and bore their leader home. By
that time, however, the bulk of the marshal's forces had come upon
the scene. A general engagement followed, in which the Anglo-Welsh
army drove the enemy back into Monmouth and took possession of the
castle. This set the marshal free to march northwards and join
Llewelyn in a vigorous attack upon Shrewsbury. In January, 1234,
they burnt that town and retired to their own lands loaded with
booty. Meanwhile Siward devastated the estates of the Poitevins and
of Richard of Cornwall. Afraid to be cut off from his retreat to
England the king abandoned Gloucester, where he had kept his
melancholy Christmas court, and found a surer refuge in Bishop
Peter's cathedral city. Thereupon Gloucestershire suffered the fate
of Shropshire. "It was a wretched sight for travellers in that
region to see on the highways innumerable dead bodies lying naked
and unburied, to be devoured by birds of prey, and so polluting the
air that they infected healthy men with mortal sickness."1
1 Wendover, iv., 291.
The king swore that he would never make peace with the marshal,
unless he threw himself on the royal mercy as a confessed traitor
with a rope round his neck. Having, however, exhausted all his
military resources, he cunningly strove to entice Richard from
Wales to Ireland. The two Peters wrote to Maurice Fitzgerald, then
justiciar of Ireland, and to the chief foes of the marshal, urging
them to fall upon his Irish estates and capture the traitor, dead
or alive. Many of the most powerful nobles of Ireland lent
themselves to the conspiracy. The Lacys of Meath, his old enemies,
joined with Fitzgerald, Geoffrey Marsh, and Richard de Burgh, the
greatest of the Norman lords of Connaught, and the nephew of
Hubert, in carrying out the plot. The confederates fell suddenly
upon the marshal's estates and devastated them with fire and sword.
On hearing of this attack Richard immediately left Wales, and,
accompanied by only fifteen knights, took ship for Ireland. On his
arrival Geoffrey Marsh, the meanest of the conspirators, received
him with every profession of cordiality, and urged him to attack
his enemies without delay. Geoffrey was an old man; he had long
held the great post of justiciar of Ireland; and he was himself the
liegeman of the marshal. Richard therefore implicitly trusted him,
and forthwith took the field.
The first warlike operations of Earl Richard were successful.
After a short siege he obtained possession of Limerick, and his
enemies were fain to demand a truce. Richard proposed a conference
to be held on April 1, 1234, on the Curragh of Kildare. The
conference proved abortive, for Geoffrey Marsh cunningly persuaded
the marshal to refuse any offer of terms which the magnates would
accept, and Richard found that he had been duped into taking up a
position that he was not strong enough to maintain. Marsh withdrew
from his side, on the ground that he could not fight against Lacy,
whose sister he had married. The marshal foresaw the worst. "I
know," he declared, "that this day I am delivered over to death,
but it is better to die honourably for the cause of justice than to
flee from the field and become a reproach to knighthood."
The forsworn Irish knights slunk away to neighbouring places of
sanctuary or went over to the enemy. When the final struggle came,
later on the same April 1, Richard had few followers save the
faithful fifteen knights who had crossed over with him from Wales.
The little band, outnumbered by more than nine to one, struggled
desperately to the end. At last the marshal, unhorsed and severely
wounded, fell into the hands of his enemies. They bore him, more
dead than alive, to his own castle of Kilkenny, which had just been
seized by the justiciar. After a few days Richard's tough
constitution began to get the better of his wounds. Then his
enemies, showing him the royal warranty for their acts, induced him
to admit them into his castles. An ignorant or treacherous surgeon,
called in by the justiciar, cauterised his wounds so severely that
his sufferings became intense. He died of fever on the 16th, and
was buried, as he himself had willed, in the Franciscan church at
Kilkenny. No one rejoiced at the death of the hero save the
traitors who had lured him to his doom and the Poitevins who had
suborned them. Their victim, the weak king, mourned for his friend
as David had lamented Saul and Jonathan.1 The treachery of his
enemies brought them little profit. While Richard Marshal lay on
his deathbed, a new Archbishop of Canterbury drove the Poitevins
from office.
1 Dunstable Ann., p. 137.
In the heyday of the Poitevins' power the Church sounded a
feeble but clear note of alarm. The pope expostulated with Henry
for his treatment of Hubert de Burgh, and Agnellus of Pisa, the
first English provincial of the newly arrived Franciscan order,
strove to reconcile Richard Marshal with his sovereign in the
course of the South-Welsh campaign. More drastic action was
necessary if vague remonstrance was to be translated into fruitful
action. The three years' vacancy of the see of Canterbury, after
the death of Richard le Grand, paralysed the action of the Church.
After the pope's rejection of the first choice of the convent of
Christ Church, the chancellor, Ralph Neville, the monks elected
their own prior, and him also Gregory refused as too old and
incompetent. Their third election fell upon John Blunt, a
theologian high in the favour of Peter des Roches, who sent him to
Rome, well provided with ready money, to secure his confirmation.
Simon Langton, again restored to England, and archdeacon of
Canterbury, persuaded the pope to veto Blunt's appointment on the
ground of his having held two benefices without a dispensation. His
rejection was the first check received by the Poitevin faction. It
was promptly followed by a more crushing blow. Weary of the long
delay, Gregory persuaded the Christ Church monks then present at
Rome to elect Edmund Rich, treasurer of Salisbury. Edmund, a
scholar who had taught theology and arts with great distinction at
Paris and Oxford, was still more famous for his mystical devotion,
for his asceticism and holiness of life. He was however an old man,
inexperienced in affairs, and, with all his gracious gifts,
somewhat wanting in the tenacity and vigour which leadership
involved. Yet in sending so eminent a saint to Canterbury, Rome
conferred on England a service second only to that which she had
rendered when she secured the archbishopric for Stephen
Langton.
Before his consecration as archbishop on April 2, 1234, Edmund
had already joined with his suffragans on February 2 in upholding
the good fame of the marshal and in warning the king of the
disastrous results of preferring the counsels of the Poitevins to
those of his natural-born subjects. A week after his consecration
Edmund succeeded in carrying out a radical change in the
administration. On April 9 he declared that unless Henry drove away
the Poitevins, he would forthwith pronounce him excommunicate.
Yielding at once, Henry sent the Bishop of Winchester back to his
diocese, and deprived Peter of Rivaux of all his offices. The
followers of the two Peters shared their fate, and Henry,
despatching Edmund to Wales to make peace with Llewelyn and the
marshal, hurried to Gloucester in order to meet the archbishop on
his return. His good resolutions were further strengthened by the
news of Earl Richard's death. On arriving at Gloucester he held a
council in which the ruin of the Poitevins was completed. A truce,
negotiated by the archbishop with Llewelyn, was ratified. The
partisans of the marshal were pardoned, even Richard Siward being
forgiven his long career of plunder. Gilbert Marshal, the next
brother of the childless Earl Richard, was invested with his
earldom and office, and Henry himself dubbed him a knight. Hubert
de Burgh was included in the comprehensive pardon. Indignant that
his name and seal should have been used to cover his ex-ministers'
treachery to Earl Richard, Henry overwhelmed them with reproaches,
and strove by his violence against them to purge himself from
complicity in their acts. The Poitevins lurked in sanctuary,
fearing for the worst. Segrave forgot his knighthood, resumed the
tonsure, and took refuge in a church in Leicester. The king's worst
indignation was reserved for Peter of Rivaux. Peter protested that
his orders entitled him to immunity from arrest, but it was found
that he wore a mail shirt under his clerical garments, and, without
a word of reproach from the archbishop, he was immured in a lay
prison on the pretext that no true clerk wore armour. Of the old
ministers Ralph Neville alone remained in office.
With Bishop Peter's fall disappeared the last of the influences
that had prevailed during the minority. The king, who felt his
dignity impaired by the Poitevin domination, resolved that
henceforward he would submit to no master. He soon framed a plan of
government that thoroughly satisfied his jealous and exacting
nature. Henceforth no magnates, either of Church or State, should
stand between him and his subjects. He would be his own chief
minister, holding in his own hands all the strings of policy, and
acting through subordinates whose sole duly was to carry out their
master's orders. Under such a system the justiciarship practically
ceased to exist. The treasurership was held for short periods by
royal clerks of no personal distinction. Even the chancellorship
became overshadowed. Henry quarrelled with Ralph Neville in 1238,
and withdrew from him the custody of the great seal, though he
allowed him to retain the name and emoluments of chancellor. On
Neville's death the office fell into abeyance for nearly twenty
years, during which time the great seal was entrusted to seven
successive keepers. Like his grandfather, Henry wished to rule in
person with the help of faithful but unobtrusive subordinates. This
system, which was essentially that of the French monarchy,
presupposed for success the constant personal supervision of an
industrious and strong-willed king. Henry III was never a strenuous
worker, and his character failed in the robustness and
self-reliance necessary for personal rule. The magnates, who
regarded themselves as the king's natural-born counsellors, were
bitterly incensed, and hated the royal clerks as fiercely as they
had disliked the ministers of his minority. Opposed by the barons,
distrusted by the people, liable to be thrown over by their master
at each fresh change of his caprice, the royal subordinates showed
more eagerness in prosecuting their own private fortunes than in
consulting the interests of the State. Thus the nominal government
of Henry proved extremely ineffective. Huge taxes were raised, but
little good came from them. The magnates held sullenly aloof; the
people grumbled; the Church lamented the evil days. Yet for five
and twenty years the wretched system went on, not so much by reason
of its own strength as because there was no one vigorous enough to
overthrow it.
The author of all this mischief was a man of some noble and many
attractive qualities. Save when an occasional outburst of temper
showed him a true son of John, Henry was the kindest, mildest, most
amiable of men. He was the first king since William the Conqueror
in whose private life the austerest critics could find nothing
blameworthy. His piety stands high, even when estimated by the
standards of the thirteenth century. He was well educated and had a
touch of the artist's temperament, loving fair churches, beautiful
sculpture, delicate goldsmith's work, and richly illuminated books.
He had a horror of violence, and never wept more bitter tears than
when he learned how treacherously his name had been used to lure
Richard Marshal to his doom. But he was extraordinarily deficient
in stability of purpose. For the moment it was easy to influence
him either for good or evil, but even the ablest of his counsellors
found it impossible to retain any hold over him for long. One day
he lavished all his affection on Hubert de Burgh; the next he
played into the hands of his enemies. In the same way he got rid of
Peter des Roches, the preceptor of his infancy, the guide of his
early manhood. Jealous, self-assertive, restless, and timid, he
failed in just those qualities that his subjects expected to find
in a king. Born and brought up in England, and never leaving it
save for short and infrequent visits to the continent, he was proud
of his English ancestors and devoted to English saints, more
especially to royal saints such as Edward the Confessor and Edmund
of East Anglia. Yet he showed less sympathy with English ways than
many of his foreign-born predecessors. Educated under alien
influences, delighting in the art, the refinement, the devotion,
and the absolutist principles of foreigners, he seldom trusted a
man of English birth. Too weak to act for himself, too suspicious
to trust his natural counsellors, he found the friendship and
advice for which he yearned in foreign favourites and kinsmen. Thus
it was that the hopes excited by the fall of the Poitevins were
disappointed. The alien invasion, checked for a few years, was
renewed in a more dangerous shape.
During the ten years after the collapse of Peter des Roches,
swarms of foreigners came to England, and spoiled the land with the
king's entire good-will. Henry's marriage brought many
Provençals and Savoyards to England. The renewed troubles
between pope and emperor led to a renewal of Roman interference in
a more exacting form. The continued intercourse with foreign states
resulted in fresh opportunities of alien influence. A new attempt
on Poitou brought as its only result the importation of the king's
Poitevin kinsmen. The continued close relationship between the
English and the French baronage involved the frequent claim of
English estates and titles by men of alien birth. Even such
beneficial movements as the establishment of the mendicant orders
in England, and the cosmopolitan outlook of the increasingly important
academic class contributed to the spread of outlandish ideas. As
wave after wave of foreigners swept over England, Englishmen
involved them in a common condemnation. And all saw in the weakness
of the king the very source of their power.
The first great influx of foreigners followed directly from
Henry's marriage. For several years active negotiations had been
going on to secure him a suitable bride. There had also at various
times been talk of his selecting a wife from Brittany, Austria,
Bohemia, or Scotland, and in the spring of 1235 a serious
negotiation for his marriage with Joan, daughter and heiress of the
Count of Ponthieu, only broke down through the opposition of the
French court. Henry then sought the hand of Eleanor, a girl twelve
years old, and the second of the four daughters of Raymond Berengar
IV., Count of Provence, and his wife Beatrice, sister of Amadeus
III., Count of Savoy. The marriage contract was signed in October.
Before that time Eleanor had left Provence under the escort of her
mother's brother, William, bishop-elect of Valence. On her way she
spent a long period with her elder sister Margaret, who had been
married to Louis IX. of France in 1234. On January 14, 1236, she
was married to Henry at Canterbury by Archbishop Edmund, and
crowned at Westminster on the following Sunday.
The new queen's kinsfolk quickly acquired an almost unbounded
ascendency over her weak husband. With the exception of the
reigning Count Amadeus of Savoy, her eight maternal uncles were
somewhat scantily provided for. The prudence of the French
government prevented them from obtaining any advantage for
themselves at the court of their niece the Queen of France, and
they gladly welcomed the opportunity of establishing themselves at
the expense of their English nephew. Self-seeking and not
over-scrupulous, able, energetic, and with the vigour and resource
of high-born soldiers of fortune, several of them play honourable
parts in the history of their own land, and are by no means
deserving of the complete condemnation meted out to them by the
English annalists.1 The bishop-elect of Valence was an able and
accomplished warrior. He stayed on in England after accomplishing
his mission, and with him remained his clerk, the younger son of a
house of Alpine barons, Peter of Aigueblanche, whose cunning and
dexterity were as attractive to Henry as the more martial qualities
of his master. Weary of standing alone, the king eagerly welcomed a
trustworthy adviser who was outside the entanglements of English
parties, and made Bishop William his chief counsellor. It was
believed that he was associated with eleven others in a secret
inner circle of royal advisers, whose advice Henry pledged himself
by oath to follow. Honours and estates soon began to fall thickly
on William and his friends. He made himself the mouthpiece of
Henry's foreign policy. When he temporarily left England, he led a
force sent by the king to help Frederick II. in his war against the
cities of northern Italy. His influence with Henry did much to
secure for his brother, Thomas of Savoy, the hand of the elderly
countess Joan of Flanders. With Thomas as the successor of
Ferdinand of Portugal, the rich Flemish county, bound to England by
so many political and economic ties, seemed in safe hands, and
preserved from French influence. In 1238 Thomas visited England,
and received a warm welcome and rich presents from the king.
1 For Eleanor's countrymen see Mugnier, Les
Savoyards en Angleterre au XIIIe siècle, et Pierre
d'Aigueblanche, évêque d'Héreford
(1890).
Despite the establishment of the Savoyards, the Poitevin
influence began to revive. Peter des Roches, who had occupied
himself after his fall by fighting for Gregory IX. against the
revolted Romans, returned to England in broken health in 1236, and
was reconciled to the king. Peter of Rivaux was restored to favour,
and made keeper of the royal wardrobe. Segrave and Passelewe again
became justices and ministers. England was now the hunting-ground
of any well-born Frenchmen anxious for a wider career than they
could obtain at home.1 Among the foreigners attracted to England
to prosecute legal claims or to seek the royal bounty came Simon of
Montfort, the second son of the famous conqueror of the Albigenses.
Amice, the mother of the elder Simon, was the sister and heiress of
Robert of Beaumont, the last of his line to hold the earldom of
Leicester. After Amice's death her son used
the title and claimed the estates of that earldom. But these
pretensions were but nominal, and since 1215 Randolph of Chester
had administered the Leicester lands as if his complete property.
However, Amaury of Montfort, the Count of Toulouse's eldest son,
ceded to his portionless younger brother his claims to the Beaumont
inheritance, and in 1230 Simon went to England to push his
fortunes. Young, brilliant, ambitious and attractive, he not only
easily won the favour of the king, but commended himself so well to
Earl Randolph that in 1231 the aged earl was induced to relax his
grasp on the Leicester estates. In 1239 the last formalities of
investiture were accomplished. Amaury renounced his claims, and
after that Simon became Earl of Leicester and steward of England. A
year before that he had secured the great marriage that he had long
been seeking. In January, 1238, he was wedded to the king's own
sister, Eleanor, the childless widow of the younger William
Marshal. Simon was for the moment high in the affection of his
brother-in-law. To the English he was simply another of the foreign
favourites who turned the king's heart against his born
subjects.
1 This is well illustrated by Philip de
Beaumanoir's well-known romance, Jean de Dammartin et Blonde
d'Oxford (ed. by Suchier, Soc. des anciens Textes
français, and by Le Roux de Lincy, Camden Soc.).
In 1238 Peter des Roches died. With all his faults the Poitevin
was an excellent administrator at Winchester,1 and left his
estates in such a prosperous condition that Henry coveted the
succession for the bishop-elect of Valence, though William already
had the prospect of the prince-bishopric of liege. But the monks of
St. Swithun's refused to obey the royal order, and Henry sought to
obtain his object from the pope. Gregory gave William both Liege
and Winchester, but in 1239 death ended his restless plans.
William's death left more room for his kinsfolk and followers. His
clerk, Peter of Aigueblanche, returned to the land of promise, and
in 1240 secured his consecration as Bishop of Hereford. William's
brother, Peter of Savoy, lord of Romont and Faucigny, was invited
to England in the same year. In 1241 he was invested with the
earldom of Richmond, which a final breach with Peter of Brittany
had left in the king's hands. Peter, the ablest member of his
house, thus became its chief representative in England.2
1 See H. Hall, Pipe Roll of the Bishop of
Winchester, 1207-8.
2 For Peter see Wurstemberger, Peter II.,
Graf von Savoyen (1856).
With the Provençals and Savoyards came
a fresh swarm of Romans. In 1237 the first papal legates a
latere since the recall of Pandulf landed in England. The
deputy of Gregory IX. was the cardinal-deacon Otto, who in 1226 had
already discharged the humbler office of nuncio in England. It was
believed that the legate was sent at the special request of Henry
III., and despite the remonstrances of the Archbishop of
Canterbury. Those most unfriendly to the legate were won over by
his irreproachable conduct. He rejected nearly all gifts. He was
unwearied in preaching peace; travelled to the north to settle
outstanding differences between Henry and the King of Scots, and
thence hurried to the west to prolong the truce with Llewelyn. His
zeal for the reformation of abuses made the canons of the national
council, held under his presidency at St. Paul's on November 18,
1237, an epoch in the history of our ecclesiastical
jurisprudence.
Despite his efforts the legate remained unpopular. The
pluralists and nepotists, who feared his severity, joined with the
foes of all taxation and the enemies of all foreigners in
denouncing the legate. To avoid the danger of poison, he thought it
prudent to make his own brother his master cook. During the council
of London it was necessary to escort him from his lodgings and back
again with a military force. In the council itself the claim of
high-born clerks to receive benefices in plurality found a
spokesman in so respectable a prelate as Walter of Cantilupe, the
son of a marcher baron, whom Otto had just enthroned in his
cathedral at Worcester, and the legate, "fearing for his skin," was
suspected of mitigating the severity of his principles to win over
the less greedy of the friends of vested interests. His Roman
followers knew and cared little about English susceptibilities, and
feeling was so strong against them that any mischance might excite
an explosion. Such an accident occurred on St. George's day, April
23, 1238, when the legate was staying with the Austin Canons of
Oseney, near Oxford, while the king was six miles off at Abingdon.
Some of the masters of the university went to Oseney to pay their
respects to the cardinal, and were rudely repulsed by the Italian
porter. Irritated at this discourtesy, they returned with a host of
clerks, who forced their way into the abbey. Amongst them was a
poor Irish chaplain, who made his way to the kitchen to beg for
food. The chief cook, the legate's brother, threw a pot of scalding
broth into the Irishman's face. A clerk from the march of Wales
shot the cook dead with an arrow. A fierce struggle followed, in
the midst of which Otto, hastily donning the garb of his hosts,
took refuge in the tower of their church, where he was besieged by
the infuriated clerks, until the king sent soldiers from Abingdon
to release him. Otto thereupon laid Oxford under an interdict,
suspended all lectures, and put thirty masters into prison. English
opinion, voiced by the diocesan, Grosseteste, held that the
cardinal's servants had provoked the riot, and found little to
blame in the violence of the clerks.
In 1239 Gregory IX. began his final conflict with Frederick II.,
and demanded the support of all Europe. As before, from 1227 to
1230, the pressure of the papal necessity was at once felt in
England. The legate had to raise supplies at all costs. Crusaders
were allowed to renounce their vows for ready money. Every
visitation or conference became an excuse for procurations and
fees. Presents were no longer rejected, but rather greedily
solicited. On the pretence that it was necessary to reform the
Scottish Church, "which does not recognise the Roman Church as its
sole mother and metropolitan," Otto excited the indignation of
Alexander II. by attempts to extend his jurisdiction to Scotland,
hitherto unvisited by legates. In England his claims soon grew
beyond all bearing. At last he demanded a fifth of all clerical
goods to enable the pope to finance the anti-imperial crusade. Even
this was more endurable than the order received from Rome that 300
clerks of Roman families should be "provided" to benefices in
England in order that Gregory might obtain the support of their
relatives against Frederick. Both as feudal suzerain and as
spiritual despot, the pope lorded it over England as fully as his
uncle Innocent III.
Weakness, piety, and self-interest combined to make Henry III.
acquiesce in the legate's exactions. "I neither wish nor dare,"
said he, "to oppose the lord pope in anything." The union of king
and legate was irresistible. The lay opposition was slow and
feeble. Gilbert Marshal, though showing no lack of spirit, was not
the man to play the part which his brother Richard had filled so
effectively. Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who constituted himself the
spokesman of the magnates, made a special grievance of the
marriage of Simon of Montfort with his sister Eleanor. England, he
said, was like a vineyard with a broken hedge, so that all that
went by could steal the grapes. He took arms, and subscribed the
first of the long series of plans of constitutional reform that the
reign was to witness, according to which the king was to be guided
by a chosen body of counsellors. But at the crisis of the movement
he held back, having accomplished nothing.
There was more vigour in the ecclesiastical opposition. Robert
Grosseteste,1 a Suffolk man of humble birth, had already won for
himself a position of unique distinction at Oxford and Paris. A
teacher of rare force, a scholar of unexampled range, a thinker of
daring originality, and a writer who had touched upon almost every
known subject, he was at the height of his fame when, in 1235, his
appointment as Bishop of Lincoln gave the fullest opportunities for
the employment of his great gifts in the public service. He was
convinced that the preoccupation of the clergy in worldly
employment and the constant aggressions of the civil upon the
ecclesiastical courts lay at the root of the evils of the time. His
conviction brought him into conflict with the king rather than the
legate, though for the moment his absorption in the cares of his
diocese distracted his attention from general questions. The
bishops generally had become so hostile that Otto shrank from
meeting them in another council, and strove to get money by
negotiating individually with the leading churchmen. The old foe of
papal usurpations, Robert Twenge, renewed his agitation on behalf
of the rights of patrons, and the clergy of Berkshire drew up a
remonstrance against Otto's extortions.
1 For Grosseteste, see F.S. Stevenson, Robert
Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln (1899).
Archbishop Edmund saw the need of opposing both legate and king;
but he was hampered by his ecclesiastical and political principles,
and still more, perhaps, by the magnitude of the rude task thrown
upon him. He had set before himself the ideal of St. Thomas, not
only in the asceticism of his private life, but in his zeal for his
see and the Church. But few men were more unlike the strong-willed
and bellicose martyr of Canterbury than the gentle and yielding
saint of Abingdon. A plentiful crop of quarrels, however, soon showed
that Edmund had, in one respect, copied only too faithfully the
example of his predecessor. He was engaged in a controversy of some
acerbity with the Archbishop of York, and he was involved in a long
wrangle with the monks of his cathedral, which took him to Rome
soon after the legate's arrival. He got little satisfaction there,
and found a whole sea of troubles to overwhelm him on his return.
At last came the demand of the fifth from Otto. Edmund joined in
the opposition of his brethren to this exaction, but his attitude
was complicated by his other difficulties. Leaning in his weakness
on the pope, he found that Gregory was a taskmaster rather than a
director. At last he paid his fifth, but, broken in health and
spirits, he was of no mind to withstand the demands of the Roman
clerks for benefices. If he could not be another St. Thomas
defending the liberties of the Church, he could at least withdraw
like his prototype from the strife, and find a refuge in a foreign
house of religion. Seeking out St. Thomas's old haunt at Pontigny,
he threw himself with ardour into the austere Cistercian life. On
the advice of his physicians, he soon sought a healthier abode with
the canons of Soisy, in Brie, at whose house he died on November
16, 1240. His body was buried at Pontigny in the still abiding
minster which had witnessed the devotions of Becket and Langton,
and miracles were soon wrought at his tomb. Within eight years of
his death he was declared a saint; and Henry, who had thwarted him
in life, and even opposed his canonisation, was among the first of
the pilgrims who worshipped at his shrine. It needed a tougher
spirit and a stronger character than Edmund's to grapple with the
thorny problems of his age.
The retirement of the archbishop enabled Otto to carry through
his business, and withdraw from England on January 7, 1241. On
August 21 Gregory IX. died, with his arch-enemy at the gates of
Rome and all his plans for the time frustrated. High-minded, able
and devout, he wagered the whole fortunes of the papacy on the
result of his secular struggle with the emperor. In Italy as in
England, the spiritual hegemony of the Roman see and the spiritual
influence of the western Church were compromised by his exaltation
of ecclesiastical politics over religion.
The monks of Christ Church won court favour by electing as
archbishop, Boniface of Savoy, Bishop-elect of Belley, one of the
queen's uncles. There was no real resistance to the appointment,
though a prolonged vacancy in the papacy made it impossible for him
to receive formal confirmation until 1243, and it was not until
1244 that he condescended to visit his new province. Meanwhile his
kinsmen were carrying everything before them. Richard of Cornwall
lost his first wife, Isabella, daughter of William Marshal, in
1240, an event which broke almost the last link that bound him to
the baronial opposition. He withdrew himself from the troubles of
English politics by going on crusade, and with him went his former
enemy, Simon of Leicester. Richard was back in England early in
1242, and on November 23, 1243, his marriage with Sanchia of
Provence, the younger sister of the queens of France and England,
completed his conversion to the court party.
Henry III.'s cosmopolitan instincts led him to take as much part
in foreign politics as his resources allowed. In 1235 he married
his sister Isabella to Frederick II., and henceforth manifested a
strong interest in the affairs of his imperial brother-in-law. His
relations with France were still uneasy, and he hoped to find in
Frederick's support a counterpoise to the steady pressure of French
hostility. All England watched with interest the progress of the
emperor's arms. Peter of Savoy led an English contingent to fight
for Frederick against the Milanese, and Matthew Paris, the greatest
of the English chroniclers, narrates the campaign of Corte Nuova
with a detail exceeding that which he allows to the military
enterprises of his own king. Frederick constantly corresponded with
both the king and Richard of Cornwall, and it was nothing but
solicitude for the safely of the heir to the throne that led the
English magnates to reject the emperor's request that Richard
should receive a high command under him. Even Frederick's breach
with the pope in 1239 did not destroy his friendship with Henry.
The situation became extremely complicated, since Innocent IV.
derived large financial support for his crusade from the unwilling
English clergy, while Henry still professed to be Frederick's
friend. The king allowed Otto to proclaim Frederick's
excommunication in England, and then urged the legate to quit the
country because the emperor strongly protested against the presence
of an avowed enemy at his brother-in-law's court. Neither pope nor
emperor could rely upon the support of so half-hearted a
prince. Renewed trouble with France explains in some measure the
anxiety of Henry to remain in good relations with the emperor
despite Frederick's quarrel with the pope.
The position of the French monarchy was far stronger than it had
been when Henry first intervened in continental politics. Blanche
of Castile had broken the back of the feudal coalition, and even
Peter Mauclerc had made his peace with the monarchy at the price of
his English earldom. Louis IX. attained his majority in 1235, and
his first care was to strengthen his power in his newly won
dominions. If Poitou were still in the hands of the Count of La
Marche and the Viscount of Thouars, the royal seneschals of
Beaucaire and Carcassonne after 1229 ruled over a large part of the
old dominions of Raymond of Toulouse. In 1237 the treaty of Meaux
was further carried out by the marriage of Raymond's daughter and
heiress, Joan, to Alfonse, the brother of the French king. In 1241
Alfonse came of age, and Louis at once invested him with Poitou and
Auvergne. The lords of Poitou saw that the same process which had
destroyed the feudal liberties of Normandy now endangered their
disorderly independence. Hugh of Lusignan and his wife had been
present at Alfonse's investiture, and the widow of King John had
gone away highly indignant at the slights put upon her dignity.1
She bitterly reproached her husband with the ignominy involved in
his submission. Easily moved to new treasons, Hugh became the soul
of a league of Poitevin barons formed at Parthenay, which received
the adhesion of Henry's seneschal of Gascony, Rostand de Sollers,
and even of Alfonse's father-in-law, the depressed Raymond of
Toulouse. At Christmas Hugh openly showed his hand. He renounced
his homage to Alfonse, declared his adhesion to his step-son,
Richard of Cornwall, the titular count of Poitou, and
ostentatiously withdrew from the court with his wife. The rest of
the winter was taken up with preparations for the forthcoming
struggle.
1 See the graphic letter of a citizen of La
Rochelle to Blanche, published by M. Delisle in
Bibliothèque de l'Ecole des Chartes, série
ii., iv., 513-55 (1856).
Untaught by experience, Henry III. listened to the appeals of
his mother and her husband. Richard of Cornwall, who came back from
his crusade in January, 1242, was persuaded that he had another
chance of realising his vain title of Count of Poitou. But
the king had neither men nor money and the parliament of February 2
refused to grant him sums adequate for his need, so that,
despairing of dealing with his barons in a body, Henry followed the
legate's example of winning men over individually. He made a strong
protest against the King of France's breach of the existing truce,
and his step-father assured him that Poitou and Gascony would
provide him with sufficient soldiers if he brought over enough
money to pay them. Thereupon, leaving the Archbishop of York as
regent, Henry took ship on May 9 at Portsmouth and landed on May 13
at Royan at the mouth of the Gironde. He was accompanied by Richard
of Cornwall, seven earls, and 300 knights.
Meanwhile Louis IX. marshalled a vast host at Chinon, which from
April to July overran the patrimony of the house of Lusignan, and
forced many of the confederate barons to submit. Peter of Savoy and
John Mansel, Henry's favourite clerk, then made seneschal of
Gascony, assembled the Aquitanian levies, while Peter of
Aigueblanche, the Savoyard Bishop of Hereford, went to Provence to
negotiate the union between Earl Richard and Sanchia, and, if
possible, to add Raymond Berengar to the coalition against the
husband of his eldest daughter. Henry hoped to win tactical
advantages by provoking Louis to break the truce, and mendaciously
protested his surprise at being forced into an unexpected conflict
with his brother-in-law. Towards the end of July, Louis, who had
conquered all Poitou, advanced to the Charente, and occupied
Taillebourg. If the Charente were once crossed, Saintonge would
assuredly follow the destinies of Poitou; and the Anglo-Gascon army
advanced from Saintes to dispute the passage of the river. On July
21 the two armies were in presence of each other, separated only by
the Charente. Besides the stone bridge at Taillebourg, the French
had erected a temporary wooden structure higher up the stream, and
had collected a large number of boats to facilitate their passage.
Seeing with dismay the oriflamme waving over the sea of tents
which, "like a great and populous city," covered the right bank,
the soldiers of Henry retreated precipitately to Saintes. There was
imminent danger of their retreat being cut off, but Richard of
Cornwall went to the French camp, and obtained an armistice of a
few hours, which gave his brother time to reach the town.
Next day Louis advanced at his ease to the
capital of Saintonge. The Anglo-Gascons went out to meet him, and,
despite their inferior numbers, fought bravely amidst the vineyards
and hollow lanes to the west of the city. But the English king was
the first to flee, and victory soon attended the arms of the
French. Immediately after the battle, the lords of Poitou abandoned
Richard for Alfonse. Henry fled from Saintes to Pons, from Pons to
Barbezieux, and thence sought a more secure refuge at Blaye,
leaving his tent, the ornaments of his chapel, and the beer
provided for his English soldiers as booty for the enemy. The
outbreak of an epidemic in the French army alone prevented a siege
of Bordeaux, by necessitating the return of St. Louis to the
healthier north. Henry lingered at Bordeaux until September, when
he returned to England.1 Meanwhile the French dictated peace to
the remaining allies of Henry. On the death of Raymond of Toulouse,
in 1249, Alfonse quietly succeeded to his dominions. The next
twenty years saw the gradual extension of the French administrative
system to Poitou, Auvergne, and the Toulousain. English Gascony was
reduced to little more than the districts round Bordeaux and
Bayonne. Even a show of hostility was no longer useful, and on
April 7, 1243, a five years' truce between Henry and Louis was
signed at Bordeaux. The marriage of Beatrice of Provence, the
youngest of the daughters of Raymond Berengar, to Charles of Anjou,
Louis' younger brother, removed Provence from the sphere of English
influence. On his father-in-law's death in 1245, Charles of Anjou
succeeded to his dominions to the prejudice of his two English
brothers-in-law, and became the founder of a Capetian line of
counts of Provence, which brought the great fief of the empire
under the same northern French influences which Alfonse of Poitiers
was diffusing over the lost inheritances of Eleanor of Aquitaine
and the house of Saint-Gilles.
1 The only good modern account of this
expedition is that by M. Charles Bémont, La campagne de
Poitou, 1242-3, in Annales du Midi, v., 389-314 (1893).
For the Lusignans see Boissonade, Quomodo comites Engolismenses
erga reges Angliæ et Franciæ se gesserint, 1152-1328
(1893).
A minor result of Louis' triumph was the well-deserved ruin of
Hugh of Lusignan and Isabella of Angoulême. The proud spirit
of Isabella did not long tolerate her humiliation. She retired to
Fontevraud and died there in 1246. Hugh X. followed her to the tomb
in 1248. Their eldest son, Hugh XI., succeeded him, but the rest of
their numerous family turned for support to the inexhaustible
charity of the King of England. Thus in 1247 a Poitevin invasion of
the king's half-brothers and sisters recalled to his much-tried
subjects the Savoyard invasion of ten years earlier. In that single
year three of the king's brothers and one of his sisters accepted
his invitation to make a home in England. Of these, Guy, lord of
Cognac, became proprietor of many estates. William, called from the
Cistercian abbey in which he was born William of Valence, secured,
with the hand of Joan of Munchensi, a claim to the great
inheritance that was soon to be scattered by the extinction of the
male line of the house of Marshal. Aymer of Valence, a very
unclerical churchman, obtained in 1250 his election as bishop of
Winchester, though his youth and the hostility of his chapter
delayed his consecration for ten years. Alice their sister found a
husband of high rank in the young John of Warenne, Earl of Warenne
or Surrey, while a daughter of Hugh XI. married Robert of Ferrars,
Earl of Ferrars or Derby. Others of their kindred flocked to the
land of promise. Any Poitevin was welcome, even if not a member of
the house of Lusignan. Thus the noble adventurer John du Plessis,
came over to England, married the heiress of the Neufbourg Earls of
Warwick, and in 1247 was created Earl of Warwick. The alien
invasion took a newer and more grievous shape.
The expenses of the war were still to be paid; and in 1244 Henry
assembled a council, declaring that, as he had gone to Gascony on
the advice of his barons, they were bound to make him a liberal
grant towards freeing him from the debts which he had incurred
beyond sea. Prelates, earls, and barons each deliberated apart, and
a joint committee, composed of four members of each order, drew up
an uncompromising reply. The king had not observed the charters;
previous grants had been misapplied, and the abeyance of the great
offices of state made justice difficult and good administration
impossible. The committee insisted that a justiciar, a chancellor,
and a treasurer should forthwith be appointed. This was the last
thing that the jealous king desired. Helpless against a united
council, he strove to break up the solidarity between its lay and
clerical elements by laying a papal order before the
prelates to furnish him an adequate subsidy. The leader of the
bishops was now Grosseteste, who from this time until his death in
1253 was the pillar of the opposition. "We must not," he declared,
"be divided from the common counsel, for it is written that if we
be divided we shall all die forthwith." At last a committee of
twelve magnates was appointed to draw up a plan of reform. The
unanimity of all orders was shown by the co-operation on this body
of prelates such as Boniface of Savoy with patriots of the stamp of
Grosseteste and Walter of Cantilupe, while among the secular lords,
Richard of Cornwall and 'Simon of Leicester worked together with
baronial leaders like Norfolk and Richard of Montfichet, a survivor
of the twenty-five executors of Magna Carta. The obstinacy of the
king may well have driven the estates into drawing up the
remarkable paper constitution preserved for us by Matthew Paris.1
By it the execution of the charters and the supervision of the
administration were to be entrusted to four councillors, chosen
from among the magnates, and irremovable except with their consent.
It is unlikely that the scheme was ever carried out; but its
conception shows an advance in the claims of the opposition, and
anticipates the policy of restraining an incompetent ruler by a
committee responsible to the estates, which, for the next two
centuries, was the popular specific for royal maladministration.
For the moment neither side gained a decided victory. Though the
barons persisted in their refusal of an extraordinary grant, they
agreed to pay an aid to marry the king's eldest daughter to the son
of Frederick II.
1 Chron. Maj., iv., 366-68.
Further demands arose from the quarrel between Innocent IV.' and
the emperor. A new papal envoy, Master Martin, came to England to
extort from the clergy money to enable Innocent to carry on his war
against Frederick. The lords told Martin that if he did not quit
the realm forthwith he would be torn in pieces. In terror he prayed
for a safe conduct. "May the devil give you a safe conduct to
hell," was the only reply that the angry Henry vouchsafed. Even his
complaisance was exhausted by Master Martin.
On July 26, 1245, a few weeks before Martin's expulsion, Innocent
IV. opened a general council at Lyons, in which Frederick was
deposed from the imperial dignity. Grosseteste, the chief English
prelate to attend the gathering, was drawn in conflicting
directions by his zeal for pope against emperor and by his dislike
of curialist exactions. This attitude of the bishop is reflected in
the remonstrance, in the name of the English people, laid before
Innocent, declaring the faithfulness of England to the Holy See and
the wrongs with which her fidelity had been requited. The
increasing demands for money, the intrusion of aliens into English
cures, and Martin's exactions were set forth at length. Innocent
refused to entertain the petition, forced all the bishops at Lyons
to join in the deprivation of the emperor, and required every
English bishop to seal with his own seal the document by which John
had pledged the nation to a yearly tribute. No one could venture to
stand up against the successor of St. Peter, and so, despite futile
remonstrance, Innocent still had it all his own way. In 1250
Grosseteste again met Innocent face to face at Lyons, and urged him
to "put to flight the evils and purge the abominations" which the
Roman see had done so much to foster. But this outspoken
declaration was equally without result. Bold as were Grosseteste's
words, he fully accepted the curialist theory which regarded the
pope as the universal bishop, the divinely appointed source of all
ecclesiastical jurisdiction. He could therefore do no more than
protest. If the pope chose to disregard him, there was nothing to
be done but wait patiently for better times. The plague of foreign
ecclesiastics was still to torment the English Church for many a
year.
The king's difficulties were increased by fresh troubles in
Scotland and Wales. The friendship between Henry and his
brother-in-law, Alexander II., was weakened by the death of the
Queen of Scots and by Alexander's marriage to a French lady in
1239. At last, in 1244, relations were so threatening that the
English levies were mustered for a campaign at Newcastle. However,
on the mediation of Richard of Cornwall, Alexander bound himself
not to make alliances with England's enemies, and the trouble
passed away. In Wales the difficulties were more complicated.
Llewelyn ap Iorwerth died in 1240, full of years and honour. In the
last years of his reign broken health and the revolts of his eldest
son Griffith made the old chieftain anxious for peace with England,
as the best way of securing the succession to all his dominions of
David, his son by Joan of Anjou. Henry III., anxious that David as
his nephew should inherit the principality, granted a temporary
cessation of hostilities. After Llewelyn's death David was accepted
as Prince of Snowdon, and made his way to Gloucester, where he
performed homage, and was dubbed knight by his uncle. Next year,
however, hostilities broke out, and Henry, disgusted with his
nephew, made a treaty with the wife of Griffith, Griffith himself
being David's prisoner. In 1241 Henry led an expedition from
Chester into North Wales, and forced David to submit. He
surrendered Griffith to his uncle's safe keeping and promised to
yield his principality to Henry if he died without a son. Three
years later Griffith broke his neck in an attempt to escape from
the Tower. The death of his rival emboldened David to take up a
stronger line against his uncle. A fresh Welsh expedition was
necessary for the summer of 1245, in which the English advanced to
the Conway, but were speedily forced to retire. David held his own
until his death, without issue, in March, 1246, threw open the
question of the Welsh succession.
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