A Great and Terrible King Read online

  So too did his son. Edward is not identified specifically in the chroniclers' accounts of the confrontation in Westminster Hall, though he was almost certainly present. Frustrating^, at this crucial time, he has a tendency to shrink from view. What is not in doubt is the strength of his opposition to what was happening. We are specifically told that he swore his oath unwillingly, and his unwillingness must be one of the main reasons that the earls' plan faltered at its first step. Another was the inherent contradiction between the forceful opening remarks of Roger Bigod and the moderate scheme he and his allies went on to propose. Their plan, it transpired, was to create a committee of twenty-four men that would undertake the reform of the realm, and it was generously conceded that Henry should select half of its members. But in response, the king included the Lusignans among his nominees, thereby making an instant mockery of Bigod’s demand for the brothers' banishment. 'The nobles,' said Matthew Paris, 'had not yet learned what knot to bind their Proteus with (for it was an arduous and difficult matter).'Within days talks had broken down entirely, with nothing agreed except that they should reassemble in Oxford in one month's time.

  The revolution looked to have been botched. Henry went to his birthplace at Winchester, the magnates to their own parts, and each side attempted to muster their strength. All parties were able to maintain the fiction that that they were raising troops for a campaign in Wales, but everyone realised that what was really looming was a civil war. The mood across the whole country was tense. The earls sought to close all the seaports, fearing that the king would try to bring in foreign mercenaries; in London, the city gates were fastened at night with better bars; a week before the Oxford parliament was due to meet, Bigod drew up a new will, naming Clare and Montfort as his executors.

  In the event, however, swords remained sheathed. When the Oxford parliament assembled, around 11 June, it was huge. Local knights had ridden there from all over England, partly in response to the summons to fight in Wales, but also because the word was out — reform of Henry's unjust and oppressive regime was finally under way. The knights were all in favour; parliament buzzed with petitions for far-reaching change. The king's party were hopelessly outnumbered, and their opponents buoyed by popular support. Riding the crest of this wave, the earls acted decisively to complete the take-over of royal government that had stalled the previous month. A new, far more radical scheme was proposed, which became known as the Provisions of Oxford. On 22 June a new royal council was created, and almost all of its fifteen members were strong supporters of the original coup. On the same day all royal castles, which were naturally in the hands of the king's supporters, were transferred to the keeping of what one eyewitness called 'reliable Englishmen' — that is, supporters of the earls. Next the new council set out to recover all the lands and castles that Henry had lately granted away as gifts. Ostensibly this was a measure to improve royal finances, but its real aim was to break the power of the Lusignans, who in recent years had been the principal beneficiaries of the king's bounty. The brothers understood the threat to their position only too well, and swore 'by the death and wounds of Christ' that they would not comply, leaving Simon de Montfort to spell out the alternative in stark terms. 'Make no mistake about it,' the earl told William de Valence,'either you lose your castles, or you lose your head.'

  The only awkward and embarrassing detail in all of this was that the Lusignans still had the backing of the heir to the throne. Far from driving them apart, adversity had pulled Edward and his half-uncles closer together, and together they were determined to resist the revolution that was taking place. As the council moved to strip the brothers of their power, Edward, in what can only be read as a deliberately provocative act, began to appoint them to positions of authority in his own lands. Guy de Lusignan he made keeper of Oleron, an island off the coast of Gascony, while Geoffrey de Lusignan he placed in charge of the duchy as a whole. This was discovered by the council, who took steps to reverse it, but probably not before a fresh twist which further underlined the strength of the bond between the king's half-brothers and his eldest son. Towards the end of June Edward and the Lusignans stole out of Oxford and fled south. The earls raced after them, fearing that if the brothers reached the coast they might succeed in landing foreign troops. As it was, the fugitives shut themselves up in Wolvesey Castle, Aymer's episcopal residence in Winchester, and there, in the first week of July, a final stand-off took place. Now offered only imprisonment or banishment, the Lusignans opted for the latter. On the day of their surrender Edward swore an oath to abide by the new scheme of government prescribed by the Provisions of Oxford. Four days later, having been escorted to Dover, his half-uncles sailed across the channel and into exile. The April plot had finally succeeded. The Lusignans were gone, and the king and his son were shackled.

  What had happened at Oxford in June 1258 had been truly revolutionary. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before, and nothing similar would be tried again for another four centuries. The new council imposed on Henry III had assumed almost all of the king's executive power. From now on the earls and their allies would rule on such crucial matters as the distribution of royal lands and the custody of royal castles. Royal policy would not be concocted by the king and a narrow clique of advisers; it would be decided by the council, in consultation with the rest of the realm in parliament: one of the most important of the Provisions of Oxford laid down that parliament had to meet three times a year for this purpose. Nothing was left to Henry's initiative except the most routine aspects of government. The king of England had effectively been reduced to a rubber stamp.

  All this affected Edward as well. Like his father, he too was obliged to accept the rule of an advisory committee: a separate body of four men, answerable to the main council, had been created to regulate his affairs. The real worry for Edward, though, was the envisaged duration of the new arrangements, which threatened to remain in place far into the future. The Provisions of Oxford stated that the council would appoint the keepers of royal castles for the next twelve years, a stipulation that would continue to apply even if Henry III died in the meantime. In such circumstances Edward would simply take over his father's role as the council's cipher.

  Nevertheless, there were limits to conciliar control. The earls and their allies sought to restrain and redirect the monarchy, not to replace it. Henry and Edward, for this reason, had considerable freedom in their personal movement and — the banishment of the Lusignans apart — freedom of association. For a man of Henry's non-martial nature, this offered little opportunity for self-help. The king chose to place his faith in God, and to this end embarked in the autumn of 1258 on a tour of East Anglian shrines. Edward, by contrast, saw in his freedom the opportunity to improve his circumstances. His overriding aim, revealed in a private agreement with the earl of Gloucester in March 1259, was 'that he may speedily have his castles and lands in his hand and in his power'.

  The situation in Wales gave him a good degree of cover, and justified his continued association with his tough, warlike friends from the March. In the summer of 1258 the new council had concluded a truce with Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, but by the autumn it had already been breached, and Edward was therefore able to maintain that he was 'going to Wales'. Where there was no war, moreover, it could be simulated. It is striking that in the spring and summer of 1259 Edward attended at least three tournaments, even crossing to France for one of them. This was a tried and tested way for a lord to recruit violent young men to his banner and to train them covertly in readiness for the real business of war. The suspicion has to be that this was Edward's ulterior motive. If 1258 had shown anything, it was that matters were ultimately decided by force.

  But the revolution had also shown that, in the long run, ideas could matter more. Edward, his father and the Lusignans had lost in 1258 because they were perceived, not without reason, to be the villains of the piece. By the same token, the earls had succeeded because their manifesto was popular. For years the cry in the country
had been for more responsible, less oppressive government, and that was what the Provisions of Oxford promised. Reform was in train, and not just of an irresponsible royal regime: lordship of every kind was coming under scrutiny, and offenders stood to be shamed and punished.

  Edward took all of this on board, perceiving how the charges applied in his own case. His behaviour of late, and that of his friends and officials, if not in the same league as that of the Lusignans, had nevertheless been far from exemplary. To regain his independence, he would have to do more than simply confront the new council; he would also have to rebuild his damaged public image and align himself with the forces calling for reform. His conversion was swift but verifiably sincere. In a private letter to his chief official in Chester, Edward decreed that it was essential for good government to be maintained at all times. 'If... common justice is denied to anyone of our subjects by us or our bailiffs,' he said, 'we lose the favour of God and man, and our lordship is belittled.'

  The letter was written on 21 August 1259, while Edward was at Warwick, participating in the last of his three known tournaments that year.23 As the summer drew to a close and the autumn approached, he was ready to resume the fight for real.

  ***

  By this point the revolutionary regime was running into grave difficulties. The earls and their allies had dealt with the king's oppressive government; it remained to correct the endemic abuses in private administrations across the country. But on this issue fundamental differences had arisen between leading members of the council. Roger Bigod, for example, was all for pushing ahead with the process. His younger brother, Hugh, had been sent at the start of the revolution on a countrywide judicial tour to correct all manner of wrongdoings. Together, the two of them represented the more idealistic aspects of reform. By contrast, Richard de Clare had set his teeth against further progress. He had joined the original conspiracy because he had favoured getting rid of the Lusignans, but, in terms of reputation, there was little to distinguish him from the exiled brothers. Clare was particularly resistant to the idea of opening up his own administration to public scrutiny, knowing that the findings were bound to be damning.

  Between the idealism of the Bigods and the self-interest of Clare stood Simon de Montfort, who managed to maintain an improbable mix of both positions. In his own mind at least, Montfort was not a man to compromise. Like the others, he had sworn a sacred oath to uphold the Provisions of Oxford, and being a religious fanatic he took it very seriously. At the same time, the earl had possessed reasons of his own for participating in the coup. His disputes with the king's half-brothers had been bitter, but they were nothing compared to his deep-seated grievances against Henry himself. Partly because of his unpaid expenses in Gascony, but mainly because of a long-standing dispute about the size of his wife's estate, Montfort maintained that his royal brother-in-law owed him massive amounts of land and money. Like the Bigod brothers, the earl wanted reform and was impatient to see it carried through. But more than this he wanted his private claims settled - so much so that, like Richard de Clare, he was ready to frustrate reform if it suited his own ends.25

  All these factors, evident from the first, came into sharper focus in the autumn parliament of 1259. Because of the disagreements among the major earls, the much talked about reforms of baronial administration had still not taken place. As a result, parliament opened with a protest by a mysterious group of men, described by one chronicler as 'the community of the bachelors of England'. The most interesting thing about their protest is that, as well as being directed at the council, it was directed at Edward — and it was Edward who swore immediately to support the bachelors 'to the death' in fighting for the community of England and the commonweal. The term 'bachelors' was often used to describe young men at tournaments, which raises the possibility that at least some of the protesters were the same men with whom Edward had been mixing throughout the spring and summer, and rouses the suspicion that his immediate pledge of support for their cause was not quite as spontaneous as it might first appear. This was his first opportunity to demonstrate his own power and new-found sense of social responsibility, and it was effective. The council, moved by the threat of force, finally proceeded to pass the long-promised reforms, which became known as the Provisions of Westminster.

  One person, above all, took note of Edward's stand, and that was Simon de Montfort. The earl was one of Edward's godparents, though that hardly made him unique, and up to this point there is little to suggest that they were in any way close. From this moment on, however, mutual self-interest and a new-found reciprocal esteem drew them together. Each must have been impressed by the other's zeal for reform and preparedness to threaten force. With the support of Edward and his bachelor friends, Montfort could push for the settlement of his personal claims; with Montfort's backing on the council, Edward could perhaps regain control of his lands and castles. By the middle of October a deal had been struck, and the two men had sworn a secret agreement to aid and counsel each other. Its terms and its aims are not altogether clear, but one fact above all is striking. In pursuit of their objectives, godfather and godson were prepared to wage war.27

  This private pact between two of the principal players, hitherto in opposing camps, prompts an important general observation. For a long time, historians regarded the politics of the years immediately after 1258 in terms of a monolithic struggle — a clash between a group of idealistic barons on the one hand and a royalist party bent on resisting reform on the other. As we have already seen, however, it was not nearly that simple: profound divisions existed among both the royal family and the reforming magnates. There was a lot of idealism in the air in 1258, and intense debate about how England ought to be governed. But, at the same time, the people engaged in these debates had emotions every bit as complicated as our own, private grievances and ambitions, and competing, often conflicting calls on their loyalty: their love for their families and their friends, their hatred for their enemies. Indeed, what was arguably more important during these years than any clash of principle was the series of bitter feuds at the heart of the royal family: between the Savoyards and the Lusignans, between Montfort and Henry III, between Edward and his mother. To follow the shifts in these feuds can be a complicated business, but it is the surest guide to what was really happening in England as the revolution of 1258 started to unravel.

  Consider, for example, the historic peace that was being brokered between England and France in the autumn of 1259. With some regret and reluctance, Henry III was finally about to drop his ancestral claims to Normandy, Anjou, Poitou and Maine in exchange for French recognition of his right to hold Gascony. It was sound policy, and had almost universal political support, but not from Edward and Montfort (indeed, their opposition to the proposed treaty was another factor that had served to pull them together). Edward's disapproval, arguably misplaced, was at least sincere - he seems to have feared that too much was being conceded; Montfort's objections, by contrast, were almost entirely cynical. The terms of the draft treaty - terms that Montfort himself had helped to negotiate — required the renunciation of rights in France from an unusually large section of Henry Ill's family: not just the king and his sons, but his siblings too. This meant a quitclaim was required from Eleanor, Henry's sister, but could not be obtained, for she also happened to be Montfort's wife. To the fury of both the king and the council, the Montforts stubbornly refused to drop Eleanor's claim until they received satisfaction on all their personal grievances.

  For months the Montforts played this card, but by the end of the year they were forced to cede it. In November Henry III took part of his court across the Channel in order to finalise the peace. Under sustained pressure from both kings, the Montforts were forced to give up their veto in return for the promise of a later settlement with Henry. On 4 December the historic peace, known as the Treaty of Paris, was sealed, and Montfort's leverage evaporated. In the New Year he returned to England, disappointed, bitter, and in search of new ways to p
ut pressure on his brother-in-law.

  He did not have to look for long, for in his absence his godson had been busy. The finalisation of the French peace had heralded the end of Montfort's strategy of obstruction, but it had presented Edward with his greatest opportunity since i258.The departure of his father to France had also meant the departure of his mother, still the principal check on his independence, as well as her main supporters, Richard de Clare and Peter of Savoy. England had been left in the hands of a diminished group of councillors, headed by the Bigod brothers, both moderate men. Edward saw his chance and seized it with both hands. As soon as the royal party sailed he made his move, ousting the men appointed to keep his castles and replacing them with custodians of his own choosing. (His marcher friend Roger Clifford, for example, was handed control of three castles in south Wales.) In early December Edward installed himself in Bristol Castle, the centre of his administration, where he and his supporters spent a defiant Christmas. But by the end of

  January they were loitering on the Sussex coast, probably in order to meet Montfort, and in early February the earl and his nephew arrived in London, ready to push their own agenda.

  Ostensibly, they came to uphold reform. It was a central requirement of the Provisions of Oxford that three parliaments should be held every year, and it was now time for the February session. But with Henry still abroad, the other councillors in Westminster balked: could a parliament assemble in the absence of the king? Henry had already written from France telling the council in no uncertain terms that the answer was no. So which mattered more: obeying the king or obeying the Provisions? Montfort, Edward and their partisans could argue for the integrity of reform, but there was clearly much more at stake besides. Edward's self-proclaimed independence, Montfort's ability to obtain personal redress — these too would be decided by the outcome of this new clash of wills.