The Magnificent Century (28 page)

For many centuries the Trial of the Pyx had been a method of approving new money before it was put into circulation. A group would be called together in the Tower of London, consisting of the King, his chief officers, twelve citizens of London, and the controller of the Mint. A selection of the new coins would then be tested and weighed by goldsmiths. When the time came to put Richard’s issue
to the official test it was found that the new pennies were well and truly made. The necessary approval was given.

The first division of the profits was made in 1253, when the King and his brother each received £5,513. The total profit that Richard of Cornwall collected was in the neighborhood of £11,000, but this did not take into account the money he made on his loans, which has been estimated at £20,000 in all. This was an enormous fortune and made it possible for the farseeing Richard to undertake the greatest deal of his career, which will be described in due course.

During the fourteen years that he conducted the minting operations about one million pounds’ worth of pennies were made and put into circulation. The task had been carried out with complete success.

When he left for Germany to engage in an adventure which would put a crown on his brow, his brother, the King, decided that he could now indulge himself in an experiment on which Richard had frowned. Henry had always wanted to have the finest money in the world, gold to wit, and as soon as Richard turned his back he began to lay his plans for the minting of gold pennies. One gold penny was to be worth twenty silver ones and they would be, decided Henry, the most beautiful coins ever issued from the stamps. The King lingered long and lovingly over the sketches, changing, adjusting, throwing them out, and starting over again. The design he finally evolved was much the finest that had ever been stamped on an English coin, and Henry had good reason to be proud of it.

He soon discovered, however, that he should not have rushed into his grand scheme without giving due heed to his financial and commercial advisers, all of whom had been against it. The beautiful gold pennies proved a drug on the market. Few people could afford to have them in their possession, and the matter of changing them was a continual source of trouble and annoyance. It reached a state where men refused to accept gold pennies. The handsome new coins, so lovingly designed and so accurately stamped, remained piled up in the shops of the moneyers. A most difficult situation developed because of the amount of capital thus tied up unproductively. The merchants of the country complained bitterly, and finally London sent a deputation to the Exchequer to tell Henry to his face that the issue was a failure and that in addition it was depreciating the value of gold. They demanded that the new pennies be withdrawn so that financial equilibrium could be restored.

“Never!” cried the King, his face red with anger.

It happened soon after that nature took a hand in complicating the situation still further. An unseasonable frost came, and the crops suffered, and the leaves of fruit trees drooped and turned brown and sere. The moon, usually benign but now prompted by some diabolical agency (or so men supposed), had a mischievous effect on the tides, and the catch of fish suffered. The run of jack barrel was small, and no longer did plaice and sole come riding in with each wave from the North Sea as though willing to be caught, salted, packed in casks, and sent around to fill the stomachs of hungry Englishmen. Money became as scarce as food, but still the stubborn King would not give in. The gold pennies continued to collect dust and to tarnish in the safe boxes of the mints. It was not until the year 1270, in fact, that Henry would acknowledge his mistake by permitting the coins to be melted. It bad been a costly fiasco.

While on the subject of Richard of Cornwall, it should be mentioned that he had the habit of marrying beautiful women. His first wife was Isabella, the handsomest of the rosy-complexioned, chestnut-haired Marshal daughters. Sanchia of Provence, the second, was acknowledged to have a softer and more winsome type of good looks than either Queen Marguerite of France or Queen Eleanor of England, although the fourth sister, Beatrice, was growing up now and threatening to excel them all. It is possible that the Earl of Cornwall would have cast his eyes in the direction of the radiant Beatrice if Sanchia had died somewhat sooner. Beatrice had married Charles of Anjou, however, before the gentile Sanchia fell into one of the declines which carried away so many, of the women of this day and age. To cast ahead of the story, Richard won as his third bride the greatest beauty in all Europe, a snow-white German, princess named Beatrice of Falkenstein. He loved all three wives, but it is reasonable to assume that he approached matrimony with a calculating eye and made sure that he was getting the best the market bad to offer.

It will be clear by this time that Richard of Cornwall had all the qualities the King should have possessed. He would have made a good king, much the kind that Henry VII proved to be nearly three hundred years later. Without a doubt he would have kept the country at peace and put the administration of the laws on a sound basis. He had none of the qualities which make bad kings, cruelty, pride, stubbornness, lust for power, power, and more power. Paradoxically
it was a good thing for England that Henry was the one to arrive first in the world and not Richard. It needed a ruler of the stamp of Henry, treacherous, vacillating, wrongheaded, to drive the baronage into a rebellious mood and so reap the democratic gains which came later.

S
IMON
DE
MONTFORT
was a Norman. The family name was derived from a small castle called Montfort l’Amauri in the lower corner of the duchy, but the importance of his ancestors was far greater than this might suggest. They traced descent back to Charles the Bald, and one of the warrior counts (all the Montforts were great fighting men) had married an heiress of Evreux with wide possessions as well as illustrious connections.

The Montforts were one of the families which were squeezed when the French took Normandy away from England in John’s reign. They had fought at Hastings, and one of them, called Simon III in family annals, had become Earl of Leicester through marriage with Amicia de Beaumont. When Philip Augustus of France completed his seizure of Normandy it became necessary for men who held possessions on both sides of the Channel to choose which they intended to be, subjects of England or France. The fourth Simon in the Montfort line elected to serve the kings of France. John promptly declared a confiscation of all his lands and honors in England, although five years later he agreed to put the estates and earldom of Leicester in the hands of Ranulf of Chester “to be held for the said Simon.” In the meantime De Montfort had been entrusted with the terrible task of crushing the Albigenses, a powerful sect of Catharistic dissenters from the Church of Rome who were located in great strength around Toulouse. He was a remarkable man, tall and handsome in person, thorough and able as a soldier, and animated with a
fanatical zeal which enabled him to consider his mission a crusade. He had succeeded in crushing the schism with great cruelty by the time he fell in battle before the city of Toulouse in 1218. His eldest son, Amauri, continued the work with indifferent success but was made constable of France and showered with honors which his father had earned.

The only other surviving son of the Scourge of the Albigenses was named Simon, the fifth of the line. It is not known where he was born, and although 1208 is accepted as the likely date of his birth, this is a conjecture. He grew up to resemble his father in person—a tall and powerfully built youth with the dark good looks of the South. It was difficult in times such as these to form early judgments of the sons of great families. They were almost certain, because of the privileges of their class, to be pleasure-loving, arrogant, even cruel. How far the young Simon shared in these characteristics is not known, but it was apparent from the first that he took after his famous father in other respects than the nobility of his countenance and the magnetic darkness of his eyes. He had early the strong will and soldierly ability which were so marked in the sire. Other qualities which he inherited would develop later, as well as some magnificent characteristics, and some faults, which were all his own.

That he came to England at all was due to the selfishness of his older brother. In 1220 the Council ruling England during the minority had formally confirmed Chester in the possessions and earldom of Leicester. Amauri protested loudly and bitterly but, getting no satisfaction, proceeded to make a deal with young Simon. If the latter would yield all claims to share in the continental possessions of the family, he should have in exchange whatever he could salvage in England. The cadet accepted this one-sided arrangement, having in all probability no alternative.

Young Simon arrived in England, therefore, in 1229, as handsome and promising a soldier of fortune as ever set foot on English soil. He seems to have had some education but, naturally enough, he spoke no word of the native language. The Chester claims to Leicester had by this time the sanction of years, and the quest of the young claimant seemed hopeless. He had sold his birthright in France to his older brother for something less than a mess of pottage.

Henry, a few years his elder, took an immediate fancy to him, however, and would have been happy to make a settlement in his
favor. There could be no interference with the rights of such a powerful noble as Ranulf of Chester, and this the King realized, although he dropped a hint in the ear of the young stranger that the matter might be arranged to suit him at some later date. In the meantime a pension of four hundred marks a year would be given him if he cared to enter the royal service. The claimant was very much disappointed but had enough common sense to accept the King’s terms.

The following year Henry, in his shining armor, made his descent on the coast of Brittany which has already been described. Ranulf of Chester was one of the army leaders, and among the lesser members of the royal train was Simon de Montfort, ready and eager to display devotion to his new master. Because the expedition proved the most spectacularly unsuccessful of all Henry’s military fiascoes, the chance did not come, but the presence of the young knight led to a very happy development in his family claim. He met the old earl and made a plea for the return of the possessions of his immediate ancestors. Ranulf of Chester had on several earlier occasions displayed a rare degree of magnanimity, but his capacity for generosity now attained its highest peak. Perhaps he had been mellowing with the years or perhaps his possessions were so wide that he put small store in the honors of Leicester. Whatever the reason, he consented to step aside and allow the young stranger to secure his inheritance.

Simon de Montfort described this incident as follows: “He consented, and next autumn took me with him to England, and besought the King to receive my homage for my patrimony, to which, as he said, I had more right than he; and he quit-claimed to the King all that the King had given him therein; and the King received my homage and gave me back my lands.” Ranulf seems to have been very thorough in his generosity, initiating each legal step necessary to confirm the transfer. It is certain that he had taken a liking to the Norman cadet, an easy thing to do because the newcomer had ingratiating manners and a way of making friends; most of whom, as it developed, remained loyal to him through all his shifts of fortune and his political ups and downs.

As a result of the Earl of Chester’s compliance, Henry issued instructions on August 13, 1231, that Simon de Montfort was to have seizin on all the lands his fathers had held and which belonged to him by hereditary right. The gamble the younger son had taken had
paid him well after all. He was now a peer of England, in high favor at court, and presumably on his way to fortune.

Young Simon soon discovered, however, that there was a worm at the core of his apple of content. The Leicester estates, spreading over a dozen counties, had been divided several generations back between Amicia and a young sister. To make matters worse, the men who had been in charge during the years when his land had been in royal hands had not only done well for the Crown but had feathered their own nests. They had driven off the stock and cut the wood and depleted the game. The once proud demesne was now in a condition of impoverishment. Although not yet ranked a full earl, the new owner had to maintain a household of some size and dignity, and the revenue did not equal the cost. After two years spent in the most awkward poverty he considered making a second deal with his sharp older brother by which he would sell back the title and honors he had recovered. Most fortunately he took no more than a tentative step in that direction. Perhaps he was discouraged by the fear that he would be overreached again by that Norman of Normans, Amauri de Montfort.