HKNRY IIL (OP ENGLAND). 



HENRY III. (OF ENGLAND). 



on the Loire ; and there, after fr days more of suffering, ha died, 

 CUi of July 11>9, ia the fifty-*eventh year of hU age nd thirty-fifth 

 of hU reign. lie was buried in tbo oboir of the abbey of Fontevraud, 

 in the preMne* of hi* on Kiehard, who auoeeedeJ him ou the throne. 

 The nhrmtr of thU great king is a mixture of all the qualities, 

 good and bad, naturally arising ont of a ttrong intellect, a strong will, 

 and strong paesiooa, His faculties bad in early life received a learned 

 training, and to the end of hi* days he preferred an attachment to 

 literature and to the conversation of scholars. The age was distin- 

 guished throughout Western Europe, both from that which preceded 

 and from that which followed it, by a revival of elegant letters, which, 

 from it* speedy evanescence, appears to have been premature; and 

 Henry drew around him many of the chief light* of the time, both 

 native* of England and of other countries. Among these two of the 

 moet conspiooous names were John of Salisbury and Peter of Blois, 

 both of whom hare left as ample testimony, in their writings, how 

 greatly they were dazzled by hU b.'illiant and commanding genius. 

 And if on the one baud he was ambitious, unscrupulous, licentious, 

 and easily kindled to frantic excesses of rage, it must be admitted on 

 the other that he was neither a cruel nor a vindictive or unforgiving 

 enemy, and that he was far from incapable of generous and kindly 

 emotious. lie has that hold upon our sympathies which springs from 

 the fer ling that bis enemies were worse men than himself, and from 

 the pity excited by the tragic cloae as contrasted with the earlier 

 course of his history, which taken altogether is one of the saddest 

 and most affecting of 'those which preach to us the instability of fortune 

 and the vanity of human ambition. 



The government of England during this reign was still nearly as 

 despotic in principle as in the days of the Conqueror and his sous, 

 but the more advanced social condition of the couutry and the firmer 

 establishment of the new dynasty combined with the temper of the 

 king to render it considerably less oppressive in practice. The 

 augmented security and strength of the crown, and the measures 

 which Henry took to depress or curb the aristocracy, had the effect 

 of relieving the people to some extent of one, and that perhaps the 

 most severe, of the two tyrannies under which they suffered, without 

 adding to the weight of the other. While the power of the barona 

 was curtailed or restrained, that of the throne was certainly not 

 exercised with more, but rather with less insolence and rapacity than 

 formerly. The laws were also administered with greater regularity 

 during this reign than they bad been since the Conquest ; if the 

 original curia regit, or royal court, was not already separated iuto the 

 subdivisions out of which have sprung the preseut Courts of King's 

 Bench and Common 1'leas (which U doubtful), the important institu- 

 tion of justices itinerant, or justices in eyre, as they were styled, that 

 ia, judges making periodical circuits through the kingdom for the trial 

 of causes, was now made a permanent part of the judicial establish- 

 ment of the country. Another important legal improvement now 

 introduced was the substitution in the trial of the species of action 

 called a writ of ri^ht of the grand assize, for the old ordeal of battle. 

 The earliest of the English law-writers, Kanulf de Glanvillc, the sup- 

 posed author of the Latin treatise entitled ' Tractatus de Legibus et 

 Cun<uetudiuibus Angliic,' held the office of chief-justiciary in the time 

 of Henry II. To this reign also belong the ' Dialogua de Scaccario,' 

 and the two collections of charter.*, etc., known as the ' Liber Niger ' 

 and the ' Liber Kuber.' 



Henry's children by his queen Eleanor were: 1, William, torn 

 11.V2, died 1156; 2, Henry, born 28th of February 1155, died llth 

 of June 1183; 3, Maud, born 115G, married to Henry V., duke of 

 Baxony, died 118U, a few days after her father; 4, Richard, who suc- 

 ceeded him on the throne; 5, Geoffrey, born 28th of September 1158, 

 died 10th of August 1180; 6, Kluunor, born 13th of October 11 62, 

 married to Alphonso VIII., king of Castile, died 1214 ; 7, Joan, born 

 October 11C4, married to William II., king of Sicily, died 4th of 

 September 1195 ; and 8, John, who succeeded llicbard as king. Hid 

 illegitimate children were : 1, by the famous liosanmnd, daughter of 

 Walter, lord Clifford, William, suniamed De Longespee, who became 

 Karl of Salisbury in right of his wife Ela, daughter and heiress of 

 William Uevcrcux, died 1226 ; 2, by the same, Geoffrey, who became 

 Bishop of Lincoln, lord chancellor, and afterwards archbishop of York, 

 and died 18th of December 1212; and 3, by the wife of Kodolph 

 1 lie wit, Morgan, a churchman, who held the office of provost of 

 IJeverloy. 



I IKNKY III., surnamed of Winchester, from the place of his birth, 

 was the eldest son of King John by his queen, Isabella of Angoulome, 

 and was born on the 1st of October 120U. His father having died on 

 the 18th of October 1210, the boy was, chiefly through the, influence 

 of the Earl of Pembroke, lord marshal, acknowledged heir to the throne 

 by those of the barons who were opposed to the French party ; and 

 on the 28th be was solemnly crowned in the abbey-church of St. Peter, 

 at Gloucester, by the papal legate Gualo. His reign is reckoned from 

 that day. 



On the 1 1 th of November following, at a great council held at Bristol, 

 Pembroke was appointed protector or governor of the king and king- 

 dom (Hector Kegia ct Kegni) ; nud this ablo and excellent nobleman 

 continued at the head of affairs till his death in May 1210; long before 

 hi'h cvtnt the dauphin Louis and the French had been compelled 

 to quit the country, their evacuation having been filially arranged in 



a conference held at Kingston on the llth of September 1217. After 

 the death of Pembroke the administration of the government foil into 

 the hand* of Hubert de Burgh, who hod greatly distinguished himself 

 in the expulsion of the foreigners, and Peter del Roches, biahop of 

 Winchester. De Burgh however and the bishop, who was not an 

 Englishman, but a native of Poitou, from coadjutors soon became 

 rivals, and their attempt* to throw each other down at length led in 

 1224 to the resignation of Des Uoohea and his retirement from the 

 kingdom. Meanwhile, on the 17th of May 1220, Henry, in consequence 

 of some doubt* being entertained about the efficacy of the former 

 ceremony, had been crowned a second time at Westminster by Langton, 

 archbishop of Canterbury. In 1221 the relations of peace and alliance 

 with .Scotland, which had subsisted ever since the departure of the 

 French, were made closer and firmer by tho marriages of Alexander II., 

 the king of that couutry, with Jane, Henry's eldest sister, and of De 

 Burgh with the Princess Margaret, the eldest sister of Alexander. 

 About the same timu Pondulf, who hod succeeded Gualo as papal 

 legate, left the country, which was thus practically freed from the 

 domination of Rome, although that power still persisted in asserting 

 theoretically tbo vassalage of the crown which bad been originally 

 conceded by John, and which bad also been acknowledged at his 

 accession by tho present king. 



In 1222 Henry had been declared of age to exercise at least certain 

 of the functions of government ; but liis feeble character was already 

 become sufficiently apparent, and this formality gave him no real 

 power. It only served to enable De Burgh the more easily to get rid 

 of his colleague. That minister, now left alone at the head of affairs, 

 conducted the government with ability and success on the whole, 

 though in a spirit of severity, which, whether necessary or not, could 

 not fail to make him many enemies. A war broke out with France 

 in 1225, which however was carried on with little spirit on either biclo, 

 and produced no events of note, although Henry in May 1230 conducted 

 in person an expedition to the Continent, from which great things were 

 expected by himself and his subjects ; but he returned home in the 

 following October, without having done anything. At this time France 

 was suffering under the usual weakness and distraction of a regal 

 minority, Louis IX., afterwards designated St. Louis, having while yet 

 only in his twelfth year succeeded his father in 1226. A growing 

 opposition to De Burgh was at length headed by Kichard, earl of 

 Cornwall, the king's brother, who possessed very great influence', not 

 only from his nearness to the throne, but from his immense wealth ; 

 and the consequence was the sudden expulsion of that minister from 

 all his offices, and his consignment to prison, with the loss of all his 

 honours and estates, in the latter part of the year 1132. Dea Roches, 

 the biahop of Winchester, who had returned to the country some time 

 before this crisis, was now placed at the head of affairs; but his 

 administration, a course of insulting preference for his countrymen 

 and other foreigners, and of open hostility to the great charter and the 

 whole body of the national liberties, speedily proved unbearably dis- 

 tasteful to both barons and commons ; and a confederacy of the laity 

 aud the clergy, with Edmund, archbishop of Canterbury, at its head, 

 compelled his dismissal within little more than a year after his 

 restoration to power. The archbishop now became chief minister. In 

 1236 Henry, being now in his thirtieth year, married Eleanor, tho 

 daughter of Raymond, count of Provence ; and this connection soon 

 gave new and great umbrage to the nation, in consequence of the 

 numbers of her relations and countrymen who came over with or 

 followed the queen, and with whom she surrounded her weak husband, 

 besides inducing him to gratify their rapacity with pensions, > 

 honours, and the most lucrative offices in the kingdom. In the midst 

 of the contests thus occasioned between the crown and the nobility, 

 whose meetings for deliberation ou national affairs were now com- 

 monly called parliaments, a renewal of active hostilities with France 

 was brought about through a private resentment of Henry's mother 

 Isabella, who after the death of John had returned aud been re-married 

 to Hugh, count of La Marcho, to whom she bod been espoused before 

 she gave her band to John : she had instigated La Marche to insult 

 and defy Alphonse, count of Poitou, the brother of the French king, 

 after doing homage to him, and had then prevailed upon her sou, the 

 Kiug of England, to take her part in the war with Franco that ensued. 

 Henry again sailed for the Continent, but this expedition was still 

 more unfortunate and disgraceful than tho former : after being beaten 

 by Louis in a succession of actions, he was glad to get home again, with 

 the loss of army, money, baggage, aud everything. A new truce for 

 five years was then agreed to betweeu tho two countries. 



These events of course did not tend to put tho nation in better 

 humour with the king, or to dispose the parliament to greater liberality. 

 The contest with the crown however ended for the present in on 

 attempt on the part of Henry to govem by the prerogative, which was 

 so far successful that no effective resistance was made to it for many 

 years. In the pressure of bis embarrassment* he several time* 

 re-assembled the legislative body, but no accommodation was effected 

 by these advances ; tho parliament was found as impracticable as ever 

 and tho king resumed his arbitrary course*. In 1253 he succeeded 

 in obtaining a grant of money by consenting to a solemn ratification 

 of tho great charters a ceremony which had already been repeatedly 

 performed in the course of the reign ; and this enabled him to proceed 

 at, thu head of a military force to Guiouue, whore a revolt against tha 



