them never dreamed, all the more because the two new orders worked harmoniously towards a common end. The Dominicans quickened the brain whilst the Franciscans touched the heart, and the whole nation was the better in consequence. 9. The King's Marriage. 1236. In 1236 Henry married Eleanor, the daughter of the Count of Provence. The immediate consequence was the arrival of her four uncles with a stream of Provençals in their train. Amongst these uncles William, Bishopelect of Valence, took the lead. Henry submitted his weak mind entirely to him, and distributed rank and wealth to the Provençals Longthorpe Manor House, Northampton; with as much profusion as he had distributed them to the Poitevins in the days of Peter des Roches. The barons, led now by the king's brother, Richard of Cornwall, remonstrated when they met in the Great Council, which was gradually acquiring the right of granting fresh taxes, though all reference to that right was dropped out of all editions of the Great Charter issued in the reign of Henry. For some time they granted the money which Henry continually asked for, coupling, however, with their grant the demand that Henry should confirm the Charter. The king never refused to confirm it. He had no difficulty in making promises, but he never troubled himself to keep those which he had made. 1231-1242 SIMON DE MontfoRT 193 10. The Early Career of Simon de Montfort. 1231-1243. Strangely enough, Simon de Montfort, the man who was to be the chief opponent of Henry and his foreign favourites, was himself a foreigner. He was sprung from a family established in Normandy, and his father, the elder Simon de Montfort, had been the leader of a body of Crusaders from the north of France, who had poured over the south to crush a vast body of heretics, known by the name of Albigeois, from Albi, a town in which they swarmed. The elder Simon had been strict in his orthodoxy and unsparing in his cruelty to all who were unorthodox. From him the younger Simon inherited his unswerving religious zeal and his constancy of purpose. There was the same stern resolution in both, but in the younger man these qualities were coupled with a statesmanlike instinct, which was want A ship in the reign of Henry III. ing to the father. Norman as he was, he had a claim to the earldom of Leicester through his grandmother, and in 1231 this claim was acknowledged by Henry. For some time Simon continued to live abroad, but in 1236 he returned to England to be present at the king's marriage. He was at once taken into favour, and in 1238 married the king's sister, Eleanor. His marriage was received by the barons and the people with a burst of indignation. It was one more instance, it was said, of Henry's preference for foreigners over his own countrymen. In 1239 Henry turned upon his brotherin-law, brought heavy charges against him, and drove him from his court. In 1240 Simon was outwardly reconciled. to Henry, but he was never again able to repose confidence in one so fickle. In 1242 Henry resolved to undertake an expedition to France to recover Poitou, which had been gradually slipping out of his hands. At a Great Council held before he sailed, the barons, who had no sympathy with any attempt to recover lost possessions in France, not only rated him soundly for his folly, but, for the first time, absolutely refused to make him a grant of money. Simon told him to his face that the Frenchman was no lamb to be easily subdued. Simon's words proved true. Henry sailed for France, but in 1243 he surrendered all claims to Poitou, and returned discomfited. If he did not bring home victory he brought with him a new crowd of Poitevins, who were connected with his mother's second husband. All of them expected to receive advancement in England, and they seldom expected it in vain. II. Papal Exactions. 1237-1243.-Disgusted as were the English landowners by the preference shown by the king to foreigners, the English clergy were no less disgusted by the exactions of the Pope. The claim of Innocent III. to regulate the proceedings of kings had been handed down to his successors and made them jealous of any ruler too powerful to be controlled. The Emperor Frederick II. had not only succeeded to the government of Germany, and to some influence over the north of Italy, but had inherited Naples and Sicily from his mother. The Pope thus found himself, as it were, between two fires. There was constant bickering between Frederick and Gregory IX., a fiery old man who became Pope in 1227, and in 1238 Gregory excommunicated Frederick, and called on all Europe to assist him against the man whom he stigmatised as the enemy of God and the Church. As the king of England was his vassal in consequence of John's surrender, he looked to him for aid more than to others, especially as England, enjoying internal peace more than other nations, was regarded as especially wealthy. In 1237, the year before Frederick's excommunication, Gregory sent Cardinal Otho as his legate to demand money from the English clergy. The clergy found a leader in Robert Grossetête, Bishop of Lincoln, a wise and practical reformer of clerical disorders; but though they grumbled, they could get no protection from the king, and were forced to pay. Otho left England in 1241, carrying immense sums of money with him, and the promise of the king to present three hundred Italian priests to English benefices before he presented a single Englishman. In 1243 Gregory IX. was succeeded by Innocent IV., who was even more grasping than his predecessor. 12. A Weak Parliamentary Opposition. 1244. Against these evils the Great Council strove in vain to make head. It was now 1244-1254 THE RISE OF PARLIAMENT 195 beginning to be known as Parliament, though no alteration was yet made in its composition. In 1244 clergy and barons joined in remonstrating with the king, and some of them even talked about restraining his power by the establishment of a Justiciar and Chancellor, together with four councillors, all six to be elected by the whole of the baronage. Without the consent of the Chancellor thus chosen no administrative act could be done. The scheme was a distinct advance upon that of the barons who, in 1215, forced the Great Charter upon John. The barons had then proposed to leave the appointment of executive officials to the king, and to appoint a committee of twenty-five, who were to have nothing to do with the government of the country, but were to compel the king by force to keep the promises which he had made. In 1244 they proposed to appoint the executive officials themselves. It was the beginning of a series of changes which ultimately led to that with which we are now familiar, the appointment of ministers responsible to Parliament. It was too great an innovation to be accepted at once, especially as it was demanded by the barons alone. The clergy, who were still afraid of the disorders which might ensue if power were lodged in the hands of the barons, refused to support it, and for a time it fell to the ground. At the same time Richard of Cornwall abandoned the baronial party. He had lately married the queen's sister, which may have drawn him over to the king; but it is also probable that his own position as the king's brother made him unwilling to consent to a scheme which would practically transfer the government from the king to the barons. On the other hand Earl Simon was found on the side of the barons. He held his earldom by inheritance from his English grandmother, and the barons were willing to forgive his descent from a foreign grandfather when they found him prepared to share their policy. 13. Growing Discontent. 1244-1254. The clergy had to learn by bitter experience that it was only by a close alliance with the barons that they could preserve themselves from wrong. In 1244 a new envoy from the Pope, Master Martin, travelled over England wringing money from the clergy. Though he was driven out of the country in 1245, the Papal exactions did not cease. The Pope, moreover, continued to present his own nominees to English benefices, and in 1252 Grossetête complained that these nominees drew three times as much income from England as flowed into the royal exchequer. For a time even Henry made complaints, but in 1254 Innocent IV. won him over to his side. Frederick II. had died in 1250, and his illegitimate son, Manfred, a tried warrior and an able ruler, had succeeded him as king of Sicily and Naples. Innocent could not bear that that crown should be worn by the son of the man whom he had hated bitterly, and offered it to Edmund, the second son of Henry III. Henry lept at the offer, hoping that England would bear the expense of the undertaking. England was, however, in no mood to comply. Henry had been squandering money for years. He had recently employed Earl Simon in Gascony, where Simon had put down the resistance of the nobles with a heavy hand. The Gascons complained to Henry, and Henry quarrelled with Simon more bitterly than before. In 1254 Henry crossed the sea to restore order in person. To meet his expenses he borrowed a vast sum of money, and this loan, which he expected England to meet, was the only result of the expedition. A bed in the reign of Henry III. 14. The Knights of the Shire in Parliament. 1254.-During the king's absence the queen and Earl Richard, who were left as regents, and who had to collect money as best they might, gathered a Great Council, to which, for the first time, representative knights, four from each shire, were summoned. They were merely called on to report what amount of aid their constituents were willing to give, and the regents were doubtless little aware of the importance of the step which they were taking. It was only, to all appearances, an adaptation of the summons calling on the united jury to meet at St. Albans to assess the damages of the clergy in the reign of John. It might seem as if the regents had only summoned a united jury to give evidence of their constituents' readiness to grant certain sums of money. In reality the new scheme was sure to take root, because it held out a hope of getting rid of a constitutional difficulty which had hitherto proved insoluble -the difficulty, that is to say, of weakening the king's power to do evil without establishing baronial anarchy in its place. It was certain that the representatives of the free-holders in the counties would not use their influence for the destruction of order. 15. Fresh Exactions. 1254-1257.-At the end of 1254 Henry returned to England. In 1255 a new Pope, Alexander IV., confirmed |