331 



HENRY III. (OF ENGLAND). 



HENRY IV. (OF ENGLAND). 



382 



Euglish dominion had been excited by Alphonso, king of Castile. The 

 dispute was soon settled by the arrangement of a marriage between 

 Henry's eldest son, Prince Edward, and Eleanor, the sister of Alphonso. 

 [EDWARD I.] After this Henry engaged in a project which speedily 

 involved him in a complication of difficulties the acceptance of the 

 nominal crown of Sicily for his second son Edmund from Pope 

 Innocent IV., who pretended to have it at his disposal in consequence 

 of Frederick II., the late king, having died (1250) in a state of excom- 

 munication, and who had ever since been hawking about the empty 

 title among the princes of Europe, without finding any one simple 

 enough to close with his proposals till he applied to the King of 

 England. The exorbitant extent to which Henry was forced to carry 

 hia exactions in order to meet his engagements with the pontiff raised 

 a spirit of resistance, which grew stronger aud stronger, till it broke 

 out into an open revolt against the supremacy of the crown. What is 

 called by most of the old chroniclers ' the mad parliament, ' assembled 

 at Oxford on the llth of June 1258, by adjournment from West- 

 minster, where it had met on the 2nd of May previous ; and placed 

 the whole authority of the state in the hands of a committee of 

 government, consisting of twelve persons appointed by the barons and 

 as many by the king. The leader of the barons on this occasion was 

 the famous Simon do Montfort, who was a Frenchman by birth, being 

 the youngest sou of the Count de Moutfort, but who, in right of hia 

 mother, had succeeded to the English earldom of Leicester, and had 

 so long ago as tho year 1233 married Eleanor, countess-dowager of 

 Pembroke, a sister of King Heury. After the enjoyment however of 

 a long course of court favour he had quarrelled with and been insulted 

 by his royal brother-in-law in 1252, and, although they had been 

 apparently reconciled, it is probable that the feelings then excited had 

 never been extinguished in either. From the imperfect accounts and. 

 tho partial temper of the annalists of the time, it is difficult to obtain 

 a clear view of De Moutfoi t's character and objects ; but if his position 

 may be reasonably suspected to have acted upon him with its natural 

 temptations, and led him to form designs more ambitious than he 

 could venture openly to profess, it must be admitted that he stands 

 remarkably free from any well established or even probable imputation 

 affecting hia actual conduct, and that be was undoubtedly a person 

 both of eminent ability and of many excellent as well as popular moral 

 qualities. His cause was also undoubtedly in the main that of the 

 national liberties, and be appears to have had throughout the national 

 voice and heart with him. He and his friends soon contrived to 

 monopolise the whole power of the committee of government, and 

 compelled the principal nominees of the king not only to relinquish 

 their functions, but to fly from the kingdom. Dissensions now how- 

 ever broke out in the dominant party, and De Moutfort found a rival 

 aspirant to the supreme power in another of the great barons, Richard 

 de Clare, earl of Gloucester. 



The quarrels of the adverse factions enabled Henry, in the beginning 

 of the year 1261, altogether to throw off the authority of the com- 

 mittee of government; and although the parliamentary party was on 

 this occasion joined l>y Prince Edward, it was for the present effec- 

 tually put down, De Montfort himself being obliged to take refuge in 

 France. He returned however in April 1263, and being now supported 

 by Gilbert, earl of Gloucester, the son of his late rival, proceeded to 

 prosecute his quarrel with the crown by force of arms. Henry had 

 now his son Edward on bis side ; but the success of the insurgents 

 nevertheless waa such as to threaten the complete overthrow of the 

 royal power, when an accommodation was effected through the inter- 

 ference of the king's younger brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall, called 

 King of the Romans, to which dignity he bad been elected a few years 

 before. The result was to place De Montfort and his friends once 

 more at the head of affairs, the king being reduced to a cipher, or a 

 mere puppet in their hand*. In the course of a few months however 

 we find the war b-tween the two parties renewed. The contest of 

 arms was suspended for a short time in the beginning of the following 

 year (1264) by an appeal on the part of a number of the most influen- 

 tial barons and bishops to the arbitration of Louis IX. of France ; but 

 bis award, which was upon the whole favourable to Heury, was very 

 oon disregarded. On the 1 4th of May the forces of the barons, led 

 by De Montfort, and those of the royalists, commanded by tho king in 

 person, and by bis son Edward, met at Lewes, in Sussex, where the 

 former gained a complete victory, both Henry and his son being taken 

 prisoners. This success of course once more placed all the power of 

 the kingdom at the feet of the great baronial leader ; his arrogance 

 and assumption of superiority however, it is said, had already alienated 

 from him some of his most powerful adherents, and disposed them to 

 take measures for the restoration of tho royal authority, when, on the 

 Thursday of Whitsun-week 1265, Prince Edward contrived to make 

 his escape from Dover Castle, and to join the Earl of Gloucester, who 

 had now deserted the interest of De Montfort, and waited to receive 

 him with an army at Ludlow in Shropshire. This event immediately 

 led to the renewal of the war. On the 4th of August the two parties 

 again encountered at Evesham ; Edward hero gave brilliant proof of 

 the military talent which distinguished his future career; and the 

 result waa the defeat of the baronial forces with immense slaughter, 

 De Montfort himself and his son Henry being both in the number of 

 the slain. In this battle tho king is said to have had a narrow escape : 

 the earl, in whose camp be was, had compelled him to put on armour 



and mount a war-horse, from which he was thrown down in one of 

 the charges, and would probably have been put to the sword or 

 trampled to death had he not called out that he was ' Harry of Win- 

 chester,' when hia voice was heard by his son, who came up and 

 rescued him. 



The victory of Eveshatn however, although it liberated Henry aud 

 re-established the royal government, did not completely put down the 

 defeated party. The adherents of De Montfort maintained themselves, 

 notwithstanding all the efforts of Prince Edward, in various parts of 

 the kingdom, for more than two years longer. Even after the parlia- 

 ment, iu October 1267, had passed an Act of Concord, known by the 

 name of the ' Dictum de Kenilworth,' by which easy terms of pardon 

 were offered to all who would submit themselves, the insurrection was 

 renewed by the people of London, with the Earl of Gloucester at 

 their head ; but that rash and fickle personage almost immediately 

 threw himself upou the king's mercy without drawing the sword, and 

 was glad to obtain pardon through the mediatiou of the King of the 

 Romans, leaving his followers to their fate. A final arrangement was 

 at last effected in a parliament which met at Marlborough on the 18th 

 of November. The short remainder of the reign of Henry after this 

 date passed without disturbance or any remarkable events. His son 

 Edwanl, leaving everything tranquil, set out for the Holy Land in 

 July 1270, from which he had not returned when Henry died at 

 Westminster on the Feast of St Edmund, being the 16th of Novem- 

 ber 1272, in the sixty-seventh year of his age and the fifty-seventh of 

 his reign. 



The children of Henry III., by his wifo Eleanor of Provence, were 

 1, Edward, who succeeded him; 2, Margaret, born in October 1240, 

 married to Alexander III. of Scotland, at York, on the 26th of Decem- 

 ber 1251, died on the 26th of February 1275; 3, Beatrice, born at 

 Bordeaux on the 25th of June 1242, married to John de Dreux, duke 

 of Brittany and earl of Richmond, at London iu 1260, died in 1273 ; 



4, Edmund, surnamed Crouchback (probably from the crouch or crosa 

 which he wore upon his back, as having made the voyage to Jerusa- 

 lem), born on the 16th of January 1245, created earl of Chester in 

 1253, earl of Leicester in 1264, earl of Lancaster in 1267, died in 1295; 



5, Catherine, born on the 25th of November 1253, died in 1258 ; and 

 four sons, Richard, John, William, and Henry, who died in infancy. 



The reign of Henry III. is especially memorable in the history of 

 the constitution as affording us the first distinct example of a parlia- 

 ment constituted as at present, of representatives from the counties, 

 cities, and boroughs, as well as of the barons and higher clergy, or 

 great tenants of the crown, lay aud ecclesiastical. The assembly iu 

 question met at London, on the 22nd of January 1265, having been 

 summoned in the name of King Henry, while he was in the bauds of 

 De Montfort, a few weeks before : hence this great leader of the barons 

 has been regarded as the introducer of the principle of popular repre- 

 sentation into the English constitution, and the founder of the House 

 of Commons. The fact simply is however that the writs for his 

 parliament of 1265 are the earliest extant directing the return of 

 kuights of the shire and representatives of cities and boroughs. There 

 is nothing either in the writs themselves, or, what is more important, 

 in the notices of any of the contemporary historians, from which it 

 could be gathered that what took place was an innovation. Moreover, 

 county representation, as at least au occasional usage, may certainly be 

 distinctly traced to a date half a century earlier than, this. 



Our statute law also begins with this reign, the earliest enactment 

 on the statute-book being that entitled the ' Provisions of Merton,' 

 passed in the 20th year of Heury III., 1235-36. Only two of the 

 statutes passed in this reign however are extant on the rolls in the 

 Tower, namely, ' Magna Charta ' and the ' Charta de Foresta,' and 

 even these are only found in charters of iuspeximus, or confirmation, 

 of the next reign. The ' Charta de Foresta ' was first made a distinct 

 charter in the 2nd of Heury III. (1217). For an enumeration of the 

 repeated confirmations, both of that and of the great charter which 

 were obtained in this reign, and which form the principal legislation 

 of the period, the reader is referred to the 'Introduction to the Statutes 

 at Large ' in the edition of the Record Commissioners. Bracton's law 

 treatise entitled ' De Cousuetudinibus et Lcgibus Anglicauia ' is 

 assigned to the reign of Henry III. 



HENRY IV., surnamed Bolingbroke, was the eldest sou of John 

 of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster, the fourth son of king Edward III. 

 Hia mother was the Lady Blanch, youuger daughter aud eventually 

 heiress of Henry Plautagenet, Duke of Lancaster, who was grandson 

 of Edmund, second son of King Henry III. He was born at Boling- 

 broke in Lincolnshire in 1366, aud as early as 1380 is styled Earl of 

 Derby, which was one of hia father's titles. In 1397 he was created 

 Duke of Hereford, having married Mary, daughter and coheir of 

 Humphrey de Bohun, the last earl of Hereford. He became Duko 

 of Lancaster on the death of his father, February 3, 1399. 



The first occasion on which the earl of Derby appears in English 

 history is as one of the lords associated with Thomas, duke of 

 Gloucester, tho uncle of Richard II., in the insurrection of 1387. 

 It appears however that whatever may have been the designs of 

 the duke, the earl contemplated nothing more than the temporary 

 control of the royal authority. Accordingly, iu May 1389, wheii the 

 kiug recovered his authority, his cousin Derby waa oue of the persons 

 whom he immediately took into his, confidence. Some of the years 



