The Magnificent Century (33 page)

Realizing that the King had made it impossible for him to carry on his duties with any hope of success, Simon returned to the South of France with the greatest reluctance. Henry bade him farewell with the words, “Go back to Gascony, thou lover and maker of strife, and reap its reward like thy father before thee.”

When the seneschal reached Gascony he found that his opponents had already broken the truce. Gaston of Béarn had marched a strong force against Le Réole and was besieging the castle. Collecting such forces as he could, Simon succeeded in defeating the arch-troublemaker. He won another battle at Montauban, with more difficulty this time, as the disaffected barons had brought a large
army into the field against him. As soon as this battle had been won two royal commissioners appeared and handed him a communication from Henry in which he was sternly commanded to abide by the terms of the truce.

“I cannot observe a truce,” declared the seneschal, “which the other party refuses to recognize.”

On receiving this reply, the commissioners handed him a second note containing notification that he had been removed from office. This procedure, most clearly, had been carefully planned in advance. The ingenuity of the trap laid for the seneschal’s feet suggests that the idea had not originated in the mind of the King. Henry was distinctly lacking in originality. John Mansel seems the most likely concocter of the scheme. He was now deep in Henry’s confidence. In the years immediately following, the King’s policy would show a cunning and a degree of resourcefulness never displayed before.

Simon de Montfort kicked aside the steel jaws of the trap. He had been confirmed in his office by Royal Council, he declared, and would not retire until his seven-year term had expired. When word of his obduracy reached England a meeting of Parliament was called in an effort to get constitutional sanction for his dismissal. Parliament refused to take action. Henry was thus brought to the need of offering terms. Grudgingly and unhappily he agreed to pay all the debts Simon had contracted in Gascony and to give him seven thousand marks by way of compensation if he would resign his office.

Simon de Montfort accepted these conditions. It was with reluctance that he laid down his baston and departed. The robber barons still “rode about at night like thieves in companies.” The common people still suffered the terrors of civil war. Had he been too harsh in his methods and thus responsible for the continuing strife? Or, on the other hand, should he have gone to greater lengths and rooted out the quarreling barons once and for all? The man who crossed the Garonne and rode through Guienne into France was not happy over his first experience as a ruler.

He arrived in Paris at a crucial moment. Worn out with anxiety for her son at the Crusades and by the exacting nature of her official duties, Blanche of Castile had been taken ill and had died, leaving the state without any head. Fearing that the old dissensions would break out again, the council of peers began hastily to throw a government
together. The post of seneschal was offered to Simon de Montfort, special commissioners being sent to him twice to urge his acceptance. The proffer of this important position was evidence that his conduct in Gascony had been watched closely in France and, moreover, with approbation. He refused the offer, stating that he was an English subject and intended to remain one.

Henry had the utmost confidence in his capacity to settle matters in Gascony, but he seemed in no hurry to get away, letting almost a year elapse before making any move. Perhaps he was held back by the emptiness of the royal coffers. Empty they were, at any rate, and the King was finding it a difficult matter to replenish them. Knowing that the barons would refuse a subsidy, he fell back on an old order of the Pope’s to the English clergy which stipulated a grant to the Crown of ten per cent of all the revenue of the Church to be applied to crusading expenses. The clergy had refused up to this point to obey the papal mandate. The King decided to lay his suggestion that this was the time for the grant to be paid before the Bishop of Ely, that dignitary having been rather more lenient in his attitude than his brother bishops. My lord of Ely, however, displayed no leniency on this occasion. He not only refused to entertain the kingly suggestion but proceeded to lecture Henry for his extravagance. Henry flew into a passion and ordered his officers “to turn out this ill-bred fellow.”

By means fair or otherwise he raised funds for the venture finally and was ready to leave by the middle of the following year, 1253. He issued instructions that during his absence Queen Eleanor and Richard of Cornwall were to act as regents jointly. There seems to have been an understanding, however, between the royal couple, at any rate, that Eleanor would exercise the functions of ruler and that the King’s brother would act in a consultant capacity. Henry made out a will to confirm this, a brief document which was the only testament he ever drew. The confidence he thus demonstrated in his strong-minded spouse would yield bitter fruit later.

He sailed from Portsmouth on August 6 with a large retinue of knights and administrative assistants, John Mansel being one of the latter. Prince Edward was brought from Eltham to bid his father
farewell. He was now in his fourteenth year and had grown tall, his head being almost on a level with the King’s. He was brisk and workmanlike in the use of weapons and was going to make a great soldier, this long-legged heir to the throne; but on this occasion he was no more than a boy who did not like being left behind. Tears streamed down his cheeks as he watched the departure of the royal flotilla.

On reaching Bordeaux, Henry found conditions to be worse than ever. While he had fiddled at home, the fires of Gascon dissension had burned briskly. Gaston of Béarn had supplied yeast to the bread of discontent by making an open alliance with Alfonso the Wise of Castile. The latter was to push his claims to the province with the active aid of the troublesome Gaston and, in the event of success, Gaston was to be made seneschal. Henry was disturbed at the turmoil which existed and found himself at a loss as to what to do. He did what might have been expected of him, therefore; he sent for Simon de Montfort. “We beg you to come,” he wrote, “and discuss affairs with us, and show us what you wish to be done.”

Simon was still in France and in poor health. Remembering the scenes at Westminster, the hatred Henry had displayed, the accusing forefinger which had been leveled at him, the King’s bitter speech of farewell, he must have indulged in a wry smile on reading the communication. His first impulse was to refuse. It was some time, at any rate, before he stirred himself to obey and set out for the southern province with a small following of knights. Henry received him with outward cordiality, and they proceeded to take counsel as to the best method of pacifying the country.

A solution was now in sight. The craftily smiling Alfonso of Castile had always been in the background of Gascon intrigue, and Gaston of Béarn had never been more than a gadfly responding to the fan of Castile. If Alfonso could be persuaded to withdraw his pretensions, the disobedient nobility would be left without any prospect of support and would cease to be defiant. The first step toward such an agreement had been taken before Henry left England, a proposal that the Lord Edward, heir of England, should marry Alfonso’s half sister, the infanta Doña Eleanora of Castile. It was decided now to pursue the proposal actively.

Two plenipotentiaries were dispatched from Bordeaux to open negotiations in Burgos, Peter d’Aigueblanche, Bishop of Hereford,
and the inevitable John Mansel. The Castilian ruler was found in a receptive mood. It is doubtful if he had ever entertained serious designs on Gascony. Rather he had been using his claim as a means to an end. The infanta, a lissome girl of ten years with charming manners and the promise of great beauty, pleased the English representatives. The bishop and the resourceful Mansel found one reservation in the mind of the Spanish monarch. English princes in the past had been notoriously fickle in matrimonial matters. The infanta’s mother was the Joanna of Ponthieu who had been so unceremoniously tossed aside by Henry himself in his desire to have Eleanor of Provence as his Queen. There must be no playing fast and loose in this case. The Lord Edward must appear in Burgos not later than five weeks before Michaelmas of the following year to claim his young bride. If he failed to arrive within that time, the marriage contract would be canceled.

The major stipulation of the contract was a solemn promise that Alfonso’s claims in Gascony would be relinquished. When word of this reached Gaston of Béarn he realized that he had been left to face the consequences of his treason alone. Dissension and civil war ended with dramatic suddenness.

Simon de Montfort was delegated to return to London and report the happy solution of Gascon troubles. He seemed to have regained royal favor, but the rapprochement was all on the surface. The hatred which had flared up at Westminster still smoldered between them. The King was almost certainly laughing up his sleeve at his own cleverness in sending the Earl of Leicester to England to carry the glad tidings that he, Henry of Winchester, had succeeded where Simon de Montfort had failed.

H
ENRY
took one precaution when he left the kingdom under the regency of his wife. He deposited the great seal of England in a casket, securely locked, and with instructions that it was to be used only in an emergency. Perhaps the members of the Council had insisted on it; certainly it was intended as a curb. The fair Eleanor, however, had other ideas. She was going to be Queen in fact as well as in name.

She assumed at once some of the dignities and duties of a sovereign, not only presiding at meetings of the Council but seating herself on the bench and hearing pleas. One of her first moves was to make the city of London feel the full weight of her hand now that it held the scepter; and this was a very great mistake indeed. The highhanded way in which she treated the Londoners contributed greatly to the causes of the armed clash of later years.

Eleanor, it is clear, hated the Londoners. Her first aggressive act was to demand back payments on a form of tribute called queen-gold. It had been a prerogative of the Queen to receive a tenth of all fines which came to the Crown. Now one of Henry’s favorite forms of exaction was to levy fines on the city on the thinnest and most ridiculous of pretexts. The Londoners, fuming bitterly but not daring to risk open refusal, had met these demands; but with the understanding that in doing so they did not concede the King’s right to penalize them in this way. Eleanor claimed that she had not received her percentage (the rule had always been for the King
to pay his wife out of the amount received) and that the city must make it up to her. London gasped, first in wonder at such sheer audacity, then in angry denial. The Queen’s temper was too sharp to brook any opposition, and she promptly seized the two sheriffs of the city, John de Northampton and Richard Picard, and lodged them in prison. The queen-gold was paid. Later, when the question of raising funds for the war in Gascony came up and the whole nation refused to pay, Eleanor vented her spleen on London. A group of prominent citizens, including the draper Lord Mayor, Richard Hardell, were put in prison.

The violent dissatisfaction she had stirred up in the city spread throughout the country when she summoned Parliament for the purpose of raising war funds. It was reported to the barons and bishops assembled that Alfonso of Castile was planning to invade Gascony with a huge army of Christians and Moors. This was a subterfuge, and a stupid one to boot, because the barons knew that negotiations for peace with Castile were proceeding satisfactorily, based on the proposed match between Prince Edward and the infanta. They had a shrewd notion that an agreement would be reached, and under the circumstances their reply was that they would grant supplies when proof of the invasion was forthcoming, and not before.

That the marriage contract was signed while Parliament debated became known later. Queen Eleanor was arranging to accompany Edward to the South at the very time she was demanding of the House the funds for a full-scale war. It was quite clear to his justly unsympathetic subjects that Henry was endeavoring to make capital out of a situation which did not exist. It was his hope that Parliament could be hoodwinked into granting a tax for the defense of the Gascon possessions which he could devote instead to his own personal uses.

Parliament knew him too well by this time to be cozened into any such generosity. They laughed in their sleeves and said firmly, no, All that Henry received was five hundred marks which the Queen sent him, the fruit, no doubt, of her misuse of royal power in London.

The time has come to deal more fully with Lord Edward, as the heir to the throne was generally called in the records of the day,
the prince who was to play such a magnificent role in English history. He is said to have grown into the tallest and strongest man in the kingdom. This is probably an exaggeration, but it is quite true that he never met his match in personal encounter or in any test of strength, and it is equally a fact that he towered over the men of his court. At the age of fifteen, when he married the infanta, he had not attained as yet his full stature, but he was a great gilded youth, very long in the leg and as blondly handsome as Richard Coeur de Lion. His expression, according to one witness, was “full of fire and sweetness.” Certainly he was a figure to revive belief in the godlike origin of kings.