The Magnificent Century (38 page)

But if personal ambition had been the predominating impulse, he would have followed a different course after the baronial victory at Oxford. The reins of power were within his reach had he cared to gather them in. Henry was in a thoroughly penitent mood and, for the time being at least, incapable of facing the aroused magnates. His quavering, “Am I your prisoner?” spoken at London in April, was an indication of the craven mood into which he had lapsed at the first shaking of the baronial fist. The King must have realized, moreover, that he was alone in this crisis. His favorites had been seized and bundled unceremoniously out of the country. Richard of Cornwall was in Germany, attending to his complicated affairs and seeing his slowly accumulated wealth vanish like the snows of April. Edward was too young to count. The men who had been running the country under the King, even the clever Mansel, were lacking in stature. It was cold and lonely for the weathercock King, high up on his monarchial ridgepole, with such strange and bitter winds causing him to gyrate madly on his gilded pedestal. He must have been in a mood to welcome able assistance, even that of his detested brother-in-law; particularly if he could, by detaching him from the baronial party, deal a blow to the solidarity of his enemies.

In arriving at any understanding of the inner motives of this militant champion, Simon de Montfort, it must be borne in mind that the men of this day, steeped in feudal traditions, had no conception of government save that of the monarchial state. The barons were striving for nothing more drastic than a sounder basis for the exercise of the King’s powers. It was not in any of their minds that Henry should be removed as head of the state. Simon de Montfort had no such thought, as became clear after the battle of Lewes. The Provisions of Oxford contained the germs of constitutional government, but there was a clear understanding that they were temporary in character and designed to provide a workable system against the day when a permanent solution could be found.

Had Simon de Montfort been actuated by ambition he would have seen a much better role for himself than that of leader of the opposition. A strong man acting under Henry in accord with the Provisions
would have been the solution most acceptable to the mind of the age instead of a continuation of the struggle to its inevitable end—the extinction of royal power or the final defeat of the barons. It would not have been a difficult matter for Simon to slip into the spot once occupied by Hubert de Burgh. His wife would have favored a reconciliation and might have served as the go-between. Henry was in a sufficiently desperate frame of mind to respond, provided he himself retained all the semblance of kingship and could be assured of relief from the mortifying difficulties in which he wallowed. He had done so once before. When he had arrived in Gascony and found himself facing conditions he did not understand, he had sent for the man he had vilified with such blasts of hatred in the hearing at Westminster.

Such a partnership would not have lasted long, of course. A spirited war horse could not travel for any length of time in double harness with one which had never learned discipline. This, nevertheless, was the solution a purely ambitious man would have sought, power and wealth under the King. Leadership of opposition is a cold and thankless task at best.

It was leadership of opposition which Simon de Montfort selected. Perhaps he knew that to accept power under the King would be a temporary matter, an arrangement doomed to an explosive termination. Perhaps he was wise enough, and unselfish enough, to realize that the success of the government under the Provisions would depend on vigilant opposition and that he himself was the best qualified for the role of watchdog.

It is certain that he had become by this time almost fanatical in his devotion to the cause of better government. This he demonstrated in his first serious altercation with the Earl of Gloucester. During the meeting of Parliament in February of the following year the two earls clashed over the terms of ordinance. Gloucester wanted the advantages gained at Oxford to apply only to the nobility. Leicester stood out for an engagement whereby the peers would extend to their dependents the same rights they were exacting from the Crown for themselves. Gloucester was so insistently opposed that Simon flared into anger.

“I care not to live and act with men so fickle and so false!” he cried.

He not only withdrew from the deliberations but from England as well, crossing the Channel into France, where he moodily concerned himself with personal matters.

This outburst was not the chagrin of a leader balked by the opposition of his supporters. Simon was the heart and soul of the cause, but Gloucester’s name had appeared first in the Provisions; they still shared the command. It was an impulsive and irrational act and it endangered the success of the cause. Why did Simon behave in this way? It was not in keeping with his usual statesmanlike attitude. Perhaps he saw in the quarrel an opportunity to bring things to an issue and to oust Gloucester from the equality they were sharing. Perhaps—and this is the more reasonable assumption—it was caused by the passionate resentment of an overworked and overwrought man who saw something very close to his heart being weakened and debased.

The most telling evidence as to the sentiments which actuated this able and darkly passionate man is supplied by none other than the King’s son, Lord Edward, who would from this moment forward play an important part on the great stage. In late summer of 1259, while the King was in France in connection with the French treaty, word reached London that the prince was paying the city a visit in advance of the October meeting of Parliament. This caused speculation of a decidedly apprehensive character. Edward had not been behaving himself well. He had been keeping about him a company of young knights, mostly recruited from abroad, who caroused wildly and pillaged wherever they went. Having no concern over matters of detail, he was leaving the management of his castles and lands to stewards who were enriching themselves at the expense of the tenants. It was even reported that he had killed a youth of common parentage without any provocation. His very young wife being still in France, the prince had been displaying an interest elsewhere, in the dark-eyed Alice of Angoulême who had married the Earl of Gloucester’s son. Alice had inherited some of the beauty of her grandmother, the late Queen Isabella, and as she was very flirtatious and provocative, she had caught the eye of her stepcousin Edward. The people of England who had been ready to love and follow the tall prince were beginning to dread the day when he would rule in Henry’s stead. They feared to find in him another John.

The Edward who rode into London on this occasion was a grown man. Managing his horse with sure hand, his surcoat embroidered with the three leopards and laced to his metal skullcap, the chausses of steel which covered his thighs the longest in the kingdom, he was
an impressive figure. He made his entrance with fitting sobriety; no curvetting of horses in youthful display, no wild caracoling, no exuberance of any kind. The prince, in fact, showed a grave face to the Londoners who watched his arrival. There was an almost somber air about him, as though he realized the extremity which affairs had reached and was deeply concerned over the part he was to play.

Simon de Montfort was in London at the time, having returned at the insistence of the magnates, who needed his sure hand on the rudder. He was again at Durham House, which lay out beyond Cheringe Village, now Charing Cross. The champion of the people was prone to deep spells of unhappiness, and in his moods of melancholy he would stand in the stone turret at the water’s edge and watch the wool barges going by; and wonder, perhaps, what was in store for this realm of England, what the future held for these brisk and cheerful people. What part in the life of centuries to come would the wool merchant have, and the bargemen and the shevel-gabbit custodian of the river stairs shouting hoarse-voiced greetings to acquaintances on the river? The earl had no longer any concern with normal things. He brooded constantly over the situation in England. His eyes had turned to the future.

Edward rode straight to the Tower of London and took up his quarters there. All of walled London lay between the Tower and Durham House, but the two tall men, the fair-headed prince and the dark peer, were constantly in each other’s company nevertheless. They rode and walked and talked together with every evidence of accord. In the streets and the inns of London, in all the mean hovels as well as the palaces, speculation was rife. What did this mean? Edward had sworn to obey the Provisions with open reluctance. Why did he now consort on amicable terms with the man chiefly responsible for forcing the assent of the King to these ironclad regulations? It was to be expected under the circumstances that wild rumors would spread in London, the wildest of all being a story that the heir to the throne and his godfather were plotting to anticipate nature and put Edward in the King’s place.

It is purely a matter of speculation as to how far the relationship between the two men developed. There was no thought between them of supplanting Henry. Edward’s love for his father would have made him recoil from such a course. It is equally clear, however, that he had been won over temporarily to a belief in the popular
cause, and this was remarkable because he had been the most militant of his father’s supporters.

It is easier to conceive of the nature of their talks. The sage earl and the eager neophyte discussed the best ways of governing a country like England and, no doubt, the responsibilities of subject to King, and King to subject. More than anything else, they talked of the science of warfare, in which Edward took the most intense interest. He could not have found a better teacher than Simon de Montfort. The battles the latter had fought in Gascony had never been large enough to be called important, but he had always commanded his inadequate forces with the greatest skill. He had never lost a brush with the enemy and had never besieged a castle in vain. So brilliant had been his performance there, in fact, that he was now generally conceded to be the best soldier in Europe. Edward, willing to learn, listened to this master tactician with respect and admiration.

What had brought about the change in Edward’s attitude? A belief dearly in Simon de Montfort, a recognition of the deep sense of idealism which governed the baronial leader. The turn that affairs had taken in England had changed Lord Edward from the roistering leader of bachelor knights into a man with a serious concern for the inheritance into which he would come someday. He would never have given his friendship and trust, even for so short a time, to a man actuated solely by hostility to the King or personal ambition.

T
HERE
was simplicity and informality in everything that Louis of France did. He was prone to call in his ministers and peers to his chamber and have them sit on the side of his bed while they discussed affairs of state. Sometimes even the humblest of petitioners were summoned to the royal bedroom for a talk over their claims, for Louis delighted in honoring the old tradition that even a beggar from the city gates could approach the King. Often he would sit on a bench with his advisers about him or on the ground, “in his plain camel’s-hair coat with sleeveless surcoat of tiretaine,” with them grouped about him tailor-fashion.

It was in some such manner that he discussed with the members of the council of twelve the peace he had made with Henry of England. It had taken a long time to negotiate this treaty which was hopefully believed to have made everlasting peace possible between the two countries. The main reason for the protracted nature of the discussions had been an obstructive attitude on the part of Simon de Montfort and his wife. Eleanor, now a mature but still beautiful woman, was not content to have her claims to land in France brushed aside and lost for all time. Henry had never gone to the trouble of reclaiming her dowry in full from the Marshals after the death of her first husband, and this had been a bitter bone of contention between them. If Henry wanted to have the treaty signed and sealed, then let him remedy the neglect of so many years: thus, Eleanor, and it is impossible to blame her for it. In this stand she had the firm and emphatic
backing of her husband. Louis, for his part, refused to ratify a treaty which left any unsettled claims to rise up and vex him in the future. With glowering reluctance Henry had agreed finally to allow his sister the sum of fifteen thousand marks out of the funds that Louis would pay him, a small enough settlement. The treaty had then been drawn up and signed with great pomp and circumstance.

Henry renounced for all time his claims to Normandy, Poitou, and the Plantagenet possessions of Anjou and Maine. He was to retain Gascony and to receive by way of compensation lower Saintonge, the province of Angenais, the lands of Quercy, and the dioceses of Cahors, Périgueux, and Limoges, for all of which he would do homage to Louis. In addition Louis was to pay Henry the cost of maintaining five hundred knights in the crusading field for a period of two years.