fluence for the best purposes. Faithful in emergency, and ever prudent in council, he had often stood his master in valuable service when more designing counsellors would have betrayed him to his ruin; but the king had forgot what he owed to his minister, and become weary of the influence which he felt his minister exercised over his mind. The nobility in general marked the change in the king's affections with delight, and exerted themselves to foment his growing dislike to his minister. De Burgh was charged with having secretly dissuaded the duke of Austria from giving his daughter in marriage to Henry; with having poisoned the earls of Salisbury and Pembroke; with having put to death a freeman of London without the form of a trial; and with some other offences of a most frivolous kind, such as of gaining the king's affection by enchantment, and of purloining from the royal treasury a gem which had the virtue to render its wearer invulnerable. Hubert took sanctuary in the monastery at Merton; but was finally suffered to retire into private life.

Peter, bishop of Winchester, a Poictevin by birth, succeeded Hubert in the place of minister. The partiality which he evinced for his own countrymen, with whom he filled every place of honour or emolument in his gift, excited the dislike of the native nobility, who formed a combination against the minister, but his fall was accomplished at last by the influence of the church, not by that of the nobles. The archbishop of Canterbury represented to the king the dangerous consequences of his minister's partialities, and demanded his dismissal on pain of excommunication. Henry trembled before the threat, and adopted the alternative proposed: and the primate henceforward bore the chief sway in the government. But no remonstrances, even though carried to the length of threats, could ever prevail on the king to abandon his system of patronising foreigners; his court was filled with aliens; the chief benefices in the kingdom were conferred on Italian priests; and papal influence pervaded every department of the government. Henry's encouragement of foreigners, however, was not an unmixed evil. His reign connected England with Armenia, whose ecclesiastics fled thither from the invading Tartars; with Germany, whose emperor married Henry's sister; with Provence and Savoy, from which countries he and his brother had their wives; with Spain, where his son was knighted and wedded; with France, which he visited with much pomp; with the southern regions of France, Guienne, and Poitou, which he retained; with the countries upon the Rhine, where his brother went to obtain the empire; with the north of Italy, whither he sent knights to assist the emperor against Milan; with the south of it, by his intercourse with the court of Rome; with Savoy, whose count he pensioned; with Constantinople, whose exiled emperor sought his support; with Jerusalem, whither English crusaders still journeyed; and even with the Saracens, who solicited his aid against the Tartars.3 This varied and extensive intercourse with foreign nations proved highly advantageous to English arts and sciences as well as to the external commerce of the nation.

In 1253, Henry applied to parliament for a new subsidy. His de mands were for a time rejected, and the clergy embraced the opportu

uity to send a deputation of four prelates in order to remonstrate with the king on his frequent violation of their privileges, and the oppres sions with which he loaded them and all his subjects. "It is true," replied the king, "I have been somewhat faulty in this particular: I obtruded you, my lord Canterbury, upon your see. I was obliged to employ both entreaties and menaces, my lord Winchester, to have you elected. My proceedings, I confess, were very irregular, my lords of Salisbury and Carlisle, when I raised you from the lowest stations to your present dignities. I am determined, henceforth, to correct these abuses; and it will also become you, in order to make a thorough reformation, to resign your present benefices, and try to enter again on a more regular and economical manner." The bishops felt the sarcasm, but pressed their demands, justly observing that the question was not how to correct past errors, but how to avoid them for the future. Henry knew the necessity of the case, and yielded with the best possible grace to the demands of his barons, lay and clerical, and the parliament in return agreed to grant him a supply, but not until he had ratified the great charter in the most solemn manner which the spirit of the times could suggest. All the prelates and abbots assembled with the peers in Westminster hall; the great charter was read aloud; sentence of excommunication was then denounced against all who should henceforth infringe upon its provisions; the prelates then, according to usage, threw their tapers on the ground, saying, So let all be extinguished and sink into the pit of hell who incur this sentence;" and the king answered: "So help me God, I will keep all these articles inviolate, as I am a man, as I am a Christian, as I am a knight, and as I am a king crowned and anointed."*

66

But all these solemn promises were soon forgotten on the king's part, who speedily resumed his arbitrary practices, and again roused the universal indignation of all classes of his subjects. It was now apparent that no guarantee would suffice to protect the rights of the nation short of placing the administration in other hands than those of the perjured monarch. A parliament was convened at Oxford, at which twentyfour barons were chosen, twelve by the king's council, and twelve by the parliament, with unlimited power to inquire into and redress griev ances, and to reform the state, subject, however, to the control of a parliament to be assembled thrice a-year, and who were to be informed of all breaches of law and justice throughout the country by four knights to be elected for that purpose in every county. A civil war was the result of these measures, in which Prince Edward gallantly supported his father's fortunes, and finally overcame Leicester at the head of the popular party. The remaining years of Henry's reign were undistinguished by any event of importance. He died in November, 1272, after a nominal reign of fifty-six years.

M. Paris, 580.

Richard, Earl of Cornwall.

BORN A. D. 1209.-DIFD A. D. 1272.

PRINCE RICHARD, the brother of Henry, received the earldom of Cornwall on its falling by escheat to the crown. His ruling passion was to amass money, in which he succeeded so well as soon to become the richest subject in Christendom. But he was not always over scrupulous as to the means by which he sought to gratify his darling passion, and his cupidity at a very early period of his brother's reign, led to a misunderstanding between them. Richard had seized a manor which had been granted to one Waleran de Ties, on the pretext that it belonged of right to his earldom of Cornwall. Waleran complained to the king, who ordered his brother to reinstate him in his possession ; but the earl refused to do so before the cause was heard by a jury of his peers, and judgment to that effect pronounced by them. Henry was peremptory in his demands, and the earl chose the alternative of going to war with his sovereign rather than yield to his orders. With the assistance of the earls of Pembroke, Chester, Warrenne, and others, he assembled an army which intimidated the king, who was obliged to compromise the quarrel by grants to his brother of much greater importance than the manor which had been the first ground of the dispute.'

The Romish church had found means to reduce the kingdom of Sicily to a state of feudal vassalage. After the death of Frederic II. the Sicilian succession devolved to Conradine, grandson of that emperor; but Mainfroy, a natural son of the emperor's, having got the government of the emperor's Italian dominion into his hands during the miaority of the young prince, rejected the claim of the papal see, and set at defiance the whole power of Pope Innocent. In this state of things, his holiness bethought himself of making a tender of the crown of Sicily to the earl of Cornwall, whose immense riches he flattered himself would be thus placed at the service of the holy see, and enable it to support military operations against Mainfroy. But Richard had the firmness and prudence to refuse so dangerous a present when first of fered, and had soon reason to value himself on his foresight. For, when Innocent made the same offer to Henry for his second son Edward, the thoughtless monarch grasped at the delusive proposal, and speedily found himself involved in an immense debt by his holy ally, while the crown of Sicily remained as remote as ever from his grasp.

2

But Richard's prudence was not always proof against his ambition, and he was at last persuaded to embark in an affair which proved as chimerical and expensive as that of the reduction of Sicily. The imperial throne being vacant, the German princes, attracted by the immense opulence of the earl of Cornwall, invited him to become a candidate for that dignity. Dazzled with the lustre of the imperial crown, Richard, in an evil moment, accepted of the invitation; and, in April 1257, took his departure from England with a train of 40 gentlemen, carrying with him a sum of 700,000 marks, or about £8,000,000 of our present currency. This immense sum was soon exhausted by the Rymer, i. 587.-M. Paris, 617.

'M. Paris, 233.

'M. Paris, 659.

cupidity of the German princes, and the only return which Richard received for his profuse liberality, was the empty title of king of the Romans. Richard's absence from England on this fruitless expedition greatly weakened his brother's hands, and enabled the barons to carry into effect their plan of the council of twenty-four already mentioned. Nor was the king of the Romans allowed to return to England until he had sworn to observe the regulations established at Oxford.

In 1264, Richard was taken prisoner at the battle of Lewes, in which he commanded the main body of the royalists. His subsequent history presents nothing remarkable.

Simon de Montfort.

DIED A. D. 1265.

AMONGST other foreigners whom Henry's well-known partialities attracted to the English court, was Simon de Montfort, second son of the earl of Montfort of infamous memory, who headed the crusade against the Albigenses. A large inheritance in England fell by succession to this family; but as the elder brother Amauri, the constable of France, enjoyed still more opulent possessions in his own country, and could not perform fealty to two masters, he transferred his right to Simon, his younger brother, who came over to England. did homage for his lands, and, being raised to the dignity of earl of Leicester, thenceforward acted a distinguished part as an English peer. This young nobleman enjoyed so great a degree of Henry's confidence and favour, that he received in marriage his sister Eleanora, countess-dowager of Pembroke. The marriage of this princess with a subject and a foreigner, was loudly complained of by the earl of Cornwall and all the native barons, but the king's favour and authority alone proved sufficient to support Leices ter against all his enemies, until his own insinuation and address had won for him a party in the state sufficiently powerful to protect him from insult. He soon, however, experienced the fickleness of Henry's temper, who, for some reason of private offence, banished him the court, but almost immediately afterwards entrusted him with the command of Guienne, where he did good service to his royal master, but exercised such severity in his government that the inhabitants sent over commissioners to England for the purpose of impeaching him before the king. Henry, whose feelings had again taken an unfavourable turn towards Montfort, received the commissioners very favourably, and plainly discovered his solicitude that the charges preferred against him might be established. But Montfort had sufficient influence with his peers to obtain a full acquittal from them of the charges preferred against him by the commissioners, which so exasperated the king that, forgetting his own dignity, he began to load the earl with opprobrious language in the presence of the court which had just pronounced his acquittal. Montfort, naturally proud and passionate, gave the lie to his sovereign, and the affront was never forgotten by Henry, although Leicester was again admitted into some degree of favour and authority.'

M. Paris, 513. 560

We have in another place2 expressed our sentiments as to the motives which may have influenced Leicester in entering upon that course of bold and dangerous policy which resulted in extorting the provisions of Oxford from the unwilling but overawed monarch. It would lead us into a discussion greatly too long for our present purpose were we to attempt to settle the question how far ambition, animated by the prospect of a crown brought within his view by his royal alliance, actuated the conduct of Leicester in this matter. The administration of the twenty-four guardians was a scheme devised, cherished, and chiefly supported by the policy and address of Leicester. If ambition was the secret spring of his actions, he met with a formidable opponent in the earl of Gloucester who headed a party which, though ostensibly pursuing the same public ends, never failed to set itself in opposition to the personal interests of Leicester. The success of his rival at one time induced Leicester to retire to France, but upon the death of the former, Leicester again returned to England, and received a new and valuable auxiliary in Gilbert de Clare, the son and successor of Gloucester, who resigned himself entirely to the guidance of the man who had been his father's most powerful rival. Henry had, unexpectedly, resumed his authority in the state, and dismissed the council of twenty-four; but the return of Leicester rallied the confederates, and the arbitration of the king of France alone prevented an instant civil war.

Both parties had solemnly sworn to abide by the decision of the French monarch. And on the 30th of February, 1264, Louis pronounced his award enjoining the restoration of all castles, provinces, and royal rights enjoyed by the crown before the parliament of Oxford, on condition of universal amnesty, and of the full enjoyment of the charter. But the barons, who saw in this decision no provision against a return of grievances, instantly rejected it as contrary to truth and justice, and the flames of civil war burst forth in every part of the kingdom. In the north, and in Cornwall and Devon, the royalists possessed the superiority; the midland counties, and the marches of Wales were pretty equally divided; but in the Cinque Ports, the metropolis, and the neighbouring districts, Leicester governed without opposition. Henry was joined by Comyn, Bruce, and Baliol, the lords of the Scottish borders, and the first successes were gained by the royalists. But on the 14th of May, 1265, the strength of the two parties was fairly tried in battle at Lewes, where the royalists sustained a complete defeat; and the king and his son being subsequently made prisoners, were compelled to confer the administration of the kingdom on the earls of Leicester and Gloucester. In this battle about 5000 men are said to have fallen on each side. Prince Edward afterwards escaped, and put himself at the head of the royalists, whose principal strength lay among the lords of the Welsh and Scottish borders. Leicester on his part, called in the aid of Llewellyn, prince of Wales.

In our historical introduction to this period we have adverted to the question, what share the earl of Leicester probably had in the introduction of the principle of popular representation into the British constituWhether he is justly entitled to the praise of this great practical

tion.

P. 170.