INTRODUCTORY. 3 



the people as serve to contrast, I think, so markedly the 

 times of the Second and the Third Henry. 



That during this long reign of Henry the Third the mass 

 of the English people passed from the condition of serfs, per- 

 haps even slaves, into that of freemen, subject in some cases 

 to a small money-rent for their holdings, and in others to 

 labour-rents, servile indeed in character, but fixed and inva- 

 riable, will be plain to those who compare the Court rolls of 

 the last half of the thirteenth century with the evidence which 

 Madox has collected as to the state of the poorer classes in 

 the days of John. The change, however, is insensible, and 

 the progress so gradual as not to be traceable, except by com- 

 paring states of society at different epochs. 



Whatever were the faults of the administration in the reign 

 of Henry the Third, his reign, fifty-six years in duration, was 

 far more pacific than that of any monarch from the Conquest 

 to the close of the fifteenth century. He had no Scotch war ; 

 the chronic hostility of the Welsh appears to have manifested 

 itself in little more than plundering incursions ; and the cam- 

 paigns in France were few and indecisive. The domestic ad- 

 ministration appears also to have been vigorous, if we judge 

 from results. The robber baron disappears with Fawkes de 

 Breaute; the great justiciary Hubert de Burgh seems to have 

 induced habits of order; and Henry, when he emerged from 

 nonage, succeeded to an authority which had been exercised 

 prudently by his guardian. His own easiness and incaution 

 certainly led him, at the conclusion of his reign, into collision 

 with his barons ; but faulty as was his judgment in attempting 

 to secure the crown of Naples for his son, and ruinous as the 

 venture became, this seems to have been the single error of 

 his foreign policy. He failed, and Charles of Anjou succeeded, 

 perhaps as the heir of his expenditure. Had Edmund gained 

 the crown of Naples, it is probable that the Sicilian Vespers 

 would never have been enacted. 



In Henry's reign the baron is no longer the enemy, but the 

 leader of the people. In earlier days, the feudal lord is ex.- 



B 2 



