The Plantagenets: The Kings That Made Britain (8 page)

By using flying buttresses – external half-arches braced against the walls to provide extra strength – the builders were able to devote more wall space to windows. Narrow lancet windows pierced the walls, carrying stained glass, which glowed with multi-coloured light when the sun shone through. The ‘rose window’ also made its appearance at this time. This was a large, circular window, divided internally by stone tracery into panels that were filled with coloured glass. The total effect was one of awe-inspiring spaciousness, which could not but have a psychological effect on worshippers.
The concepts of power and strength that many earlier churches had conveyed was replaced by those of gracefulness, radiance and intricacy. Glaziers could use the windows to illustrate stories from the Bible and the lives of the saints.

Stonemasons were given more space to perfect their art. They provided columns with elaborate capitals and introduced carved roof bosses representing animals, heraldic devices and biblical figures. Church buildings came to have an educative value – it was said that stained glass windows, carved images and wall paintings were sermons in themselves.

Henry III’s most impressive architectural project was the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. The king visited France in 1243 and was immensely impressed by the building projects of Louis IX, who was creating churches and cathedrals in the new style in Paris and Rheims. Determined to outdo his rival monarch, Henry immediately set in hand a transformation of the abbey church at Westminster. This had been built 200 years earlier by the English king and saint, Edward the Confessor. St Edward was Henry’s favourite saint, and the king wanted to create a more impressive building to house his remains. Part of the Confessor’s church was pulled down so that building could commence in 1245. At a time when he was taxing his subjects heavily Henry lavished £45,000 on his pet project. The church was unfinished at the time of Henry’s death and later benefactors made their contributions in currently prevailing styles, but the famous church as it stands today is largely as Henry III’s architects conceived it.

The transition from massive monumentality to ethereal refinement reflected something of Henry III’s own personality.

1227–34

In fact, the young king continued to be dependent on his justiciar, Hubert de Burgh, who, by now accustomed to wielding virtually absolute authority, continued to frame policy, sometimes acting in secrecy. This created tension between king and justiciar and encouraged the opposition of a baronial faction jealous of de Burgh’s power. In 1230, after a long and difficult period of preparation, Henry crossed the Channel at the head of an army for the recovery of his Angevin inheritance. But this campaign, the last real attempt to recover Normandy for the English crown, was carried out in a half-hearted fashion and came to nothing.

When, in 1231, Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, returned from crusade to great acclaim he became the leader of the court faction opposed to the justiciar. Henry havered in his support for first one, then the other of his advisers, but in July 1232 he had a fierce argument with de Burgh, dismissed him as justiciar and gave the job to des Roches. But the bishop was no more capable of uniting the baronage behind the throne than his predecessor had been. The new Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Rich, accused the regime of corruption and maladministration and threatened the king with excommunication if he did not get rid of des Roches. In May 1234 Henry weakly gave in and ordered the
bishop to retire to his diocese. The office of justiciar lapsed. Only now did Henry III’s personal rule truly begin.

1235–41

England now entered on a period of peace and relative stability. Henry could not afford a foreign war, and the old faction leaders were either soon dead or had made their peace with each other and the king. Henry concentrated on diplomacy in his foreign affairs. He married his sister, Isabella, to the Emperor Frederick II in 1235 and began in earnest to seek a wife for himself. He eventually chose Eleanor, the 11-year-old daughter of the Count of Provence. Eleanor’s sister was married to Louis IX, which made the English and French kings brothers-in-law. Henry was now connected by marriage to the leading figures in European affairs. In 1236 he and Louis agreed a four-year truce. Moreover, Eleanor was connected on her mother’s side to the influential counts of Savoy, whose lands were strategically placed to control the Alpine passes into Italy. The wedding took place in January 1236, and Henry made sure that the lavish ceremonial would set new standards of royal magnificence.

The marriage was a success. Despite the difference in their ages, Henry and Eleanor not only developed a great affection for each other, but the young queen exercised considerable influence. She was intelligent and soon developed a keen sense of political realities. She brought with her several of her Savoyard relatives, which proved to be both an advantage
and a disadvantage to Henry. The establishment of more foreigners at court led, in time, to a build-up of resentment, but some of Eleanor’s relatives were men of real ability who gave good advice.

Foremost among them was the Bishop of Valence, William of Savoy, and when Henry reorganized his council he put William in charge. The new body carried out important economic and administrative reforms that placed the royal finances on a more secure footing. It also instituted a survey of English law, which culminated in the Statute of Merton (1236). The council meeting in Merton Abbey was augmented by the leading judges, among whom was the brilliant legist William Ralegh. The document that emerged sought to apply in detail the general principles enunciated in Magna Carta: it defined the rights of vulnerable members of society such as widows and minors; it protected from exploitation children who had inherited property on the death of their parents; it tidied up the law relating to the enclosure of common land by powerful magnates; and it brought Irish law into line with English law.

In January 1238 Henry’s sister, Eleanor, was married in clandestine circumstances. She had previously been the wife of William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke (son of the regent), and on his death in 1231 she had taken a vow of permanent chastity. But she had been only 16 at the time, and her resolve weakened when she met a young Frenchman who had arrived in England to claim his inheritance as Earl of Leicester. This was Simon de Montfort, a vigorous young knight who had proved himself in military service to the French king. The
couple formed a liaison (Henry would later claim that Eleanor had been seduced) and, to avoid scandal, Henry had them secretly married. This caused a furore. The king’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, felt personally affronted, the leading barons insisted that they should have been consulted, and the Archbishop of Canterbury complained that Eleanor had broken her sacred vow. Richard and his supporters flew to arms, and Henry retreated to the Tower of London. Thanks to the intervention of William of Savoy peace was achieved by a payment of 16,000 marks to Richard to enable him to go on crusade. The next year Simon was invested with the Earldom of Leicester. He and Eleanor went to live in France but were reconciled to the king in 1240, shortly before Simon went on crusade.

In June 1239 Henry and his subjects were able to rejoice in the birth of an heir – the baby was named Edward, in honour of Henry’s favourite saint – but at the end of the year the news was brought to Henry that William of Savoy had died in Italy, and the king was distraught. Matthew Paris recorded that he had torn off his clothes and thrown them into the fire. Despite this, 1239 and the following few years were the happiest of the king’s reign. In 1240 his wife gave birth to a daughter, and Henry engaged in a successful campaign against Gruffydd-ap-Llewelyn of Wales. Meanwhile, more and more of the queen’s Savoyard relatives were arriving in England and receiving lands and offices from the king. In 1241 Boniface of Savoy, another of Eleanor’s uncles, was appointed to the important position of Archbishop of
Canterbury (though he was not confirmed in office by the pope until 1243).

1242–52

Still determined to recover his family’s possessions on the continent, Henry led an expedition to Poitou in the spring of 1242. His army was too small for the task, and he was seriously short of money to equip his soldiers or to buy mercenaries. The result of this rash enterprise was a humiliating and costly failure, and the king also lost the respect of seasoned campaigners, such as Richard of Cornwall and Simon de Montfort. Simon was heard to blurt out that Henry was so incompetent that his subjects ought to lock him away. It was October 1243 before the king was able to renew his truce with Louis and return to England. As for his brother Richard, Henry bought him off with large gifts, the weak response he frequently made to win the support of potential opponents.

In 1244 Henry, needing more taxes, summoned a parliament. The magnates refused to give him any money unless he appointed a justiciar and a chancellor to exercise some control over royal policy and finances, but Henry refused this restriction of the royal power. The birth of a second son, Edmund, softened the attitude of the barons, and a compromise was worked out and a modest financial grant agreed. To augment this grant Henry imposed a tax on the Jews (always an easy target). What particularly galled him was that, while he found it difficult to extract money from his
own subjects, the pope made frequent financial demands on the clergy, which they met. Henry was not the only one who resented money being drained out of the country in this way. The papal nuncio (representative) went in fear of his life and appealed to the king: ‘For the love of God and the reverence of my lord the pope, grant me a safe conduct.’ Henry retorted: ‘May the devil give you a safe conduct to hell and all through it.’ At a great council in 1246 king and magnates drafted a protest to Rome about these exactions and refused to allow the English church to pay, but the papacy held all the European churches in a stranglehold and, as Bishop Grosseteste of Lincoln pointed out, Henry’s clergy had no choice but to pay.

Henry launched an expedition against Dafydd of Wales, but the Welsh refused direct engagement. For months Henry’s troops, underemployed and underpaid, carried out savage raids throughout north Wales, impoverishing the country and creating a famine in the land. Eventually the death of Dafydd without an heir enabled Henry to establish his overlordship. This was another costly and unnecessary military expedition.

Later in the year Henry staged a spectacular ceremony that was both a genuine expression of piety and a bid for popularity. He had acquired from the Holy Land a phial supposedly containing some of the blood of Christ. He went personally to St Paul’s Cathedral to receive the relic, having spent the previous night in a vigil and a bread-and-water fast. Determined to gain maximum publicity, he ordered
Matthew Paris to record the event in detail, which the chronicler duly did:

The king then gave orders that all the priests of London should assemble with due order and reverence at St Paul’s … dressed as for a festival, in their surplices and hoods, attended by their clerks, becomingly clad, and with their symbols, crosses and tapers lighted. Thither the king also went and, receiving the vessel containing the aforesaid treasure with the greatest honour, reverence and awe, he carried it above his head publicly, going on foot, and wearing an humble dress, consisting of a poor cloak without a hood, and … proceeded without stopping to the church of Westminster.
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If Henry hoped that such displays would incline the magnates to support his policies he was to be disappointed. Further parliaments in 1248 declined to provide money for more military adventures on the continent, although he did manage to scrape together enough funds to send Simon de Montfort to Gascony to enforce his rule over the people of that region. All this achieved was the expenditure of more royal treasure and the antipathy of the Gascons, who complained bitterly of the cruelty of de Montfort’s troops and officials. Henry recalled de Montfort and invited his accusers to come to court and present their complaints.

Henry’s rule and, specifically, his ways of raising money were alienating more and more of his subjects, for in order not to upset the barons he imposed more and more on his
less powerful subjects. Sheriffs, under pressure to raise taxes efficiently, used harsh measures to extract money from the people, and the practice known as ‘purveyance’ was particularly resented – this was the system whereby provisions and other goods were taken for the king’s household without payment. In addition, an increasing number of Henry’s agents were Savoyards, and his subjects, not unnaturally, associated their sufferings with the activities of the king’s foreign favourites.

In 1249 Archbishop Boniface alienated London and undid any good Henry might have done by his ‘holy blood’ ceremony two years earlier. The king granted to the archbishop the right of purveyance in the capital, and when the citizens resisted the archbishop’s demands he sent his own troops to enforce obedience. So unpopular was Boniface that he took to travelling everywhere wearing armour under his vestments. The priests of St Paul’s Cathedral shut him out and were promptly excommunicated, and an incident at St Bartholomew’s Priory permanently undermined his authority. He had ordered the canons to attend him in their chapter house, but, when he arrived, they were at worship in the church and refused to move. Boniface burst in on the service, grabbed the sub-prior and set about him with his fists, shouting, ‘This is the way to deal with English traitors!’ A scuffle ensued, and the disturbance soon spread outside the priory. Boniface was forced to flee by boat to his palace at Lambeth, and shortly afterwards he left for Rome.

In 1250 Henry announced his intention of going on crusade, but, like so many of his projects, this was abandoned for lack of funds. In 1251 in a grand ceremony at York the king’s eldest daughter, Margaret, was married to Alexander III of Scotland, who did homage to Henry. There was another confrontation between Henry and de Montfort in 1252. The king had sent envoys to Gascony to investigate the charges of misrule, and when they reported back Henry obliged de Montfort to answer the allegations against him in open parliament. He largely sided with the plaintiffs and reprimanded de Montfort. The intercession of Queen Eleanor prevented the king from imposing a severe punishment, but de Mont-fort felt humiliated, returned to Gascony and carried on much as before. Eventually, Henry dismissed him.