The history of England, from the accession of Henry III. to the death of Edward…

THE RULE OF MONTFORT AND THE ROYALIST RESTORATION. On the day after the battle, Henry III. accepted the terms imposed upon him by Montfort in a treaty called the "Mise of Lewes," by which he promised to uphold the Great Charter, the Charter of the Forests, and the Provisions of Oxford. A body of arbitrators was constituted, in which the Bishop of London was the only Englishman, but which included Montfort's friend, Archbishop Eudes Rigaud of Rouen; the new papal legate, Guy Foulquois, cardinal-bishop of Sabina; and Peter the chamberlain, Louis IX.'s most trusted counsellor, with the Duke of Burgundy or Charles of Anjou, to act as umpire. These arbitrators were, however, to be sworn to choose none save English councillors, and Henry took oath to follow the advice of his native-born council in all matters of state. An amnesty was secured to Leicester and Gloucester; and Edward and Henry of Almaine surrendered as hostages for the good behaviour of the marchers, who still remained under arms. By the establishment of baronial partisans as governors of the castles, ministers, sheriffs, and conservators of the peace, the administration passed at once into the hands of the victorious party. Three weeks later writs were issued for a parliament which included four knights from every shire. In this assembly the final conditions of peace were drawn up, and arrangements made for keeping Henry under control for the rest of his life, and Edward after him, for a term of years to be determined in due course. Leicester and Gloucester were associated with Stephen Berkstead, the Bishop of Chichester, to form a body of three electors. By these three a Council of Nine was appointed, three of whom were to be in constant attendance at court; and without their advice the king was to do nothing. Hugh Despenser was continued as justiciar, while the chancery went to the Bishop of Worcester's nephew, Thomas of Cantilupe, a Paris doctor of canon law, and chancellor of the University of Oxford. Once more a baronial committee put the royal authority into commission, and ruled England through ministers of its own choice. While agreeing in this essential feature, the settlement of 1264 did not merely reproduce the constitution of 1258. It was simpler than its forerunner, since there was no longer any need of the cumbrous temporary machinery for the revision of the whole system of government, nor for the numerous committees and commissions to which previously so many functions had been assigned. The main tasks before the new rulers were not constitution-making but administration and defence. Moreover, the later constitution shows some recognition of the place due to the knights of the shire and their constituents. It is less closely oligarchical than the previous scheme. This may partly be due to the continued divisions of the greater barons, but it is probably also in large measure owing to the preponderance of Simon of Montfort. The young Earl of Gloucester and the simple and saintly Bishop of Chichester were but puppets in his hands. He was the real elector who nominated the council, and thus controlled the government. Every act of the new administration reflects the boldness and largeness of his spirit. The pacification after Lewes was more apparent than real, and there were many restless spirits that scorned to accept the settlement which Henry had so meekly adopted. The marchers were in arms in the west, and were specially formidable because they detained in their custody the numerous prisoners captured at the sack of Northampton. The fugitives from Lewes were holding their own behind the walls of Pevensey, though Earl Warenne and other leaders had made their escape to France, where they joined the army which Queen Eleanor had collected on the north coast for the purpose of invading England and restoring her husband to power. The papacy and the whole official forces of the Church were in bitter hostility to the new system. The collapse of Henry's rule had ruined the papal plans in Sicily, where Manfred easily maintained his ground against so strong a successor of the unlucky Edmund as Charles of Anjou. The papal legate, Guy Foulquois, was waiting at Boulogne for admission into England, and, far from being conciliated by his appointment as an arbitrator, was dexterously striving to make the arbitration ineffective, by summoning the bishops adhering to Montfort to appear before him, and sending them back with orders to excommunicate Earl Simon and all his supporters. The only gleam of hope was to be found in the unwillingness of the King of France to interfere actively in the domestic disputes of England. The death of Urban IV. for the moment brought relief, but, after a long vacancy, the new pope proved to be none other than the legate Guy, who in February, 1265, mounted the papal throne as Clement IV. It was to no purpose that Walter of Cantilupe assembled the patriotic bishops and appealed to a general council, or that radical friars like the author of the _Song of Lewes_ formulated the popular policy in spirited verse. The greatest forces of the time were steadily opposed to the revolutionary government, and rare strength and boldness were necessary to make head against them. Before the end of 1264 the vigour of Earl Simon triumphed over some of his immediate difficulties. In August he summoned the military forces of the realm to meet the threatened invasion. Adverse storms, however, dispersed Queen Eleanor's fleet, and her mercenaries, weary of the long delays that had exhausted her resources, went home in disgust. This left Simon free to betake himself to the west, and on December 15 he forced the marcher lords to accept a pacification called the Provisions of Worcester, by which they agreed to withdraw for a year and a day to Ireland, leaving their families and estates in the hands of the ruling faction. On the day after the signature of the treaty, Henry, who accompanied Simon to the west, issued from Worcester the writs for a parliament that sat in London from January to March in 1265. From the circumstances of the case this famous assembly could only be a meeting of the supporters of the existing government. So scanty was its following among the magnates that writs of summons were only issued to five earls and eighteen barons, though the strong muster of bishops, abbots, and priors showed that the papal anathema had done little to shake the fidelity of the clergy to Montfort's cause. The special feature of the gathering, however, was the summoning of two knights from every shire, side by side with the barons of the faithful Cinque Ports and two representatives from every city and borough, convened by writs sent, not to the sheriff, after later custom, but to the cities and boroughs directly. It was the presence of this strong popular element which long caused this parliament to be regarded as the first really representative assembly in our history, and gained for Earl Simon the fame of being the creator of the House of Commons. Modern research has shown that neither of these views can be substantiated. It was no novelty for the crown to strengthen the baronial parliaments by the representatives of the shire-moots, and there were earlier precedents for the holding meetings of the spokesmen of the cities and boroughs. What was new was the combination of these two types of representatives in a single assembly, which was convoked, not merely for a particular administrative purpose, but for a great political object. The real novelty and originality of Earl Simon's action lay in his giving a fresh proof of his disposition to fall back upon the support of the ordinary citizen against the hostility or indifference of the magnates, to whom the men of 1258 wished to limit all political deliberation. This is in itself a sufficient indication of policy to give Leicester an almost unique position among the statesmen to whom the development of our representative institutions are due. But just as his parliament was not in any sense our first representative assembly, so it did not include in any complete sense a House of Commons at all. We must still wait for a generation before the rival and disciple of Montfort, Edward, the king's son, established the popular element in our parliament on a permanent basis. Yet in the links which connect the early baronial councils with the assemblies of the three estates of the fourteenth century, not one is more important than Montfort's parliament of January, 1265. The chief business of parliament was to complete the settlement of the country. Simon won a new triumph in making terms with the king's son. Edward had witnessed the failure of his mother's attempts at invasion, the futility of the legatine anathema, and the collapse of the marchers at Worcester. He saw it was useless to hold out any longer, and unwillingly bought his freedom at the high price that Simon exacted. He transferred to his uncle the earldom of Chester, including all the lands in Wales that might still be regarded as appertaining to it. This measure put Simon in that strong position as regards Wales and the west which Edward had enjoyed since the days of his marriage. It involved a breach in the alliance between Edward and the marchers, and the subjection of the most dangerous district of the kingdom to Simon's personal authority. It was safe to set free the king's son, when his territorial position and his political alliances were thus weakened. At the moment of his apparent triumph, Montfort's authority began to decline. It was something to have the commons on his side: but the magnates were still the greatest power in England, and in pressing his own policy to the uttermost, Simon had fatally alienated the few great lords who still adhered to him. There was a fierce quarrel in parliament between Leicester and the shifty Robert Ferrars, Earl of Derby. For the moment Leicester prevailed, and Derby was stripped of his lands and was thrown into prison. But his fate was a warning to others, and the settlement between Montfort and Edward aroused the suspicions of the Earl of Gloucester. Gilbert of Clare was now old enough to think for himself, and his close personal devotion to Montfort could not blind him to the antagonism of interests between himself and his friend. He was gallant, strenuous, and high-minded, but quarrelsome, proud, and unruly, and his strong character was balanced by very ordinary ability. His outlook was limited, and his ideals were those of his class; such a man could neither understand nor sympathise with the broader vision and wider designs of Leicester. Moreover, with all Simon's greatness, there was in him a fierce masterfulness and an inordinate ambition which made co-operation with him excessively difficult for all such as were not disposed to stand to him in the relation of disciple to master. And behind the earl were his self-seeking and turbulent sons, set upon building up a family interest that stood directly in the way of the magnates' claim to control the state. Thus personal rivalries and political antagonisms combined to lead Earl Gilbert on in the same course that his father, Earl Richard, had traversed. The closest ally of Leicester became his bitterest rival. The victorious party split up in 1265, as it had split up in