History of England 1-6

Roger Bigod, the earl of Norfolk, replied for them all. ‘No, my lord, no! But let the wretched and intolerable Poitevins and all aliens flee from your face and ours as from the face of a lion, and there will be glory to God in the heavens and in your land peace to men of good will.’

This affords a glimpse of the colourful and spirited speech of the thirteenth century. Bigod then asked the king to accept ‘our counsels’. Henry, naturally enough, asked what they might entail. The barons had already agreed among themselves on their demands. The king was to be guided and advised by a group of twenty-four councillors, twelve to be chosen by the king and twelve chosen by the barons. If the king had refused these terms, he faced a real prospect of civil war. He knew as much himself, and so after deliberation he accepted the terms offered to him. He must also have been swayed by the fact that the barons agreed to grant him ‘aid’ in his financial embarrassments.

A committee of twenty-four was chosen and, in the summer of 1258, published what amounts to a manifesto on domestic and international affairs. The major proposal was a simple one. The king was to be directed by the advice of a council of fifteen men nominated by the barons, and parliament itself would choose the justiciar, chancellor and treasurer. The king’s acceptance of what became known as the Provisions of Oxford was issued in English as well as in Latin and French, testimony to the manifest identity of the realm. In practice the council was soon ruling the country. It took possession of the great seal. It settled all the matters of state without the king’s presence. If he remonstrated with them, they replied that ‘this is how we wish it’. Henry had become a minor again. This was no longer the government of a king.

That was the reason it did not, and could not, work. How could the power of the country, exercised by one man for thirty-one years, now be dispersed between fifteen people? Quarrels broke out between the barons over the nature and purpose of their control of the king, and they found it difficult to deal with international affairs without the direct intervention of the king with his fellow monarchs. The barons themselves had their own local interests – they were, after all, primarily regional magnates – which were not necessarily compatible with national administration. It was said that they were concerned only with self-aggrandizement.

The baronial government collapsed within two years. A papal bull was published, releasing Henry from any promises made under duress to his lords; the bull stated that when a king was distrained by his subjects it was as if a woodman was assaulted by his own axe. Henry also declared that the barons had stripped the king of ‘his power and dignity’. He moved into the Tower, both as a defence against his enemies and as a potent symbol of that power.

Not greatly chastened by events, he resumed the exercise of sovereignty. It lasted for only two years. The ‘aliens’, the Savoyards in particular, were once more blamed for being ‘over-mighty’. Henry had also introduced a body of foreign mercenaries, provoking rumours that the country was about to suffer an invasion. So in 1263 a group of dissident barons found themselves a new leader to press their claims, and in particular their demand that they should be governed only ‘per indigenas’ or by native-born men.

Simon de Montfort, summoned by the barons, sailed to England. It has been said that he was the first ever leader of an English political party. He was perhaps an odd representative of the English cause. He was born in France and was part of a noble French family. Yet he had native connections. He had inherited the earldom of Leicester, by virtue of the fact that his grandfather had married the sister of the previous earl; it was a circuitous route, but it was a proper one. He had also married the king’s sister Eleanor. So, as one chronicler put it, he became ‘the shield and defender of the English, the enemy and expeller of aliens, although he himself was one of them by nation’. The barons summoned the representatives of the shires to an assembly at St Albans, while the king called them to Windsor.