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Kate Norgate. The Minority of Henry the Third
The Minority of Henry the Third
Table of Contents
THE MINORITY OF HENRY III. CHAPTER I. THE WAR WITH LOUIS. 1216–1217
FOOTNOTES: [Skip footnotes]
CHAPTER II. THE REGENCY OF WILLIAM THE MARSHAL. 1216–1219
FOOTNOTES: [Skip footnotes]
CHAPTER III. THE LEGATION OF PANDULF. 1219–1221
FOOTNOTES: [Skip footnotes]
CHAPTER IV. TUTORS AND GOVERNORS. 1221–1223
FOOTNOTES: [Skip footnotes]
CHAPTER V. THE YOUNG KING. 1223–1227
FOOTNOTES: [Skip footnotes]
Footnote
NOTE I. THE TRUCES OF 1216–1217
NOTE II. THE BLOCKED GATE AT LINCOLN
NOTE III. FALKES DE BRÉAUTÉ AT LINCOLN
NOTE IV. THE END OF THE BATTLE OF LINCOLN
NOTE V. THE TREATY OF KINGSTON
NOTE VI. THE TENURE OF CROWN OFFICES DURING THE MINORITY
NOTE VII. THE PAPAL LETTERS OF 1223
NOTE VIII. THE ROYAL CASTLES IN 1223–1224
NOTE IX. FALKES AND THE “THIRTY PAIRS OF LETTERS.”
NOTE X. BEDFORD CASTLE
NOTE XI. THE HANGING OF THE BEDFORD GARRISON
INDEX
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Kate Norgate
Published by Good Press, 2021
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Next day {12 Nov.} there was issued a provisional Charter, purporting to be granted by the boy-King “under the guidance of God, and for the salvation of our soul and of the souls of all our ancestors and successors, to the honour of God, and the exaltation of Holy Church, and the amendment of our realm, by the counsel of our venerable fathers” Gualo and the other prelates and magnates enumerated. Of course it began with the declaration which had already been, and was to be again, so often made, and so often proved but an empty form: “The English Church shall be free, and have her rights and liberties entire and undisturbed;” but the recital in the first article of the Great Charter of John’s grant, made to the Church before his quarrel with the barons, of one special liberty—that of free election—was omitted.[34] The clauses of John’s Charter regulating the reliefs due from tenants-in-chief,[35] the wardship of heirs under age,[36] the marriage of heirs and widows,[37] were reproduced with a few very slight alterations, of which the most significant was an addition to the clause relating to the custody of estates: that the obligations laid down as binding on the guardian of a lay fief were to be binding likewise on the custodian of a vacant ecclesiastical dignity, and that a wardship of this kind was not to be bought or sold.[38] The article protecting the King’s debtors and their sureties against arbitrary distraint;[39] that which protected free tenants against arbitrary requirement of service other than what was legally due from their lands;[40] that which ordered common pleas to be held in a fixed place instead of following the King;[41] the regulations for taking recognitions of novel disseisin, mort d’ancester, and darrein presentment;[42] the clause protecting men of all classes against the infliction of arbitrary fines for offences;[43] the clauses which forbade the exaction of contributions for bridge-building from persons or places not legally bound thereto,[44] and the holding of pleas of the Crown by sheriffs or other royal bailiffs,[45] the regulations concerning ward-penny and castle-guard;[46] the royal promises to seize no timber for building without the owner’s consent,[47] not to withhold the lands of a convicted felon from his lord beyond a year and a day,[48] to abolish all weirs except on the sea-coast,[49] to issue no more writs of praecipe in cases where a freeman might thereby be deprived of the means of obtaining justice,[50] to grant writs of inquisition concerning life or limb freely without payment,[51] to cease from unjust interference with other men’s rights of wardship in the case of heirs holding land of a mesne lord by military service and other land of the Crown by some other tenure;[52] the clause ordaining equal weights and measures to be used throughout the realm;[53] that which forbade any man to be sent to the ordeal on the sole accusation of an officer of the Crown;[54] the King’s undertaking not to punish or prosecute any man in any way except by the lawful judgement of his peers and according to the law of the land,[55] and neither to sell, deny, or delay, right and justice to any,[56] not to exact unfair reliefs from escheated baronies,[57] not to summon men to the Forest Courts from districts outside the Forest jurisdiction and on pleas unconnected with it;[58] the clause securing the custody of vacant abbeys to those who were entitled to it as founders,[59] and that which forbade arrest or imprisonment for manslaughter on the appeal of any woman other than the wife of the slain man[60]—were all renewed, as were also the promises given by John that the Forests made in his reign should be disafforested and the river enclosures made during the same period destroyed.[61] Henry pledged himself, as John had done, to give immediate redress to any Welshmen whom John had dispossessed of their lands without lawful judgement of their peers.[62] The article concerning the ancient liberties and customs of London and other towns was renewed, with the insertion of a special mention of the Cinque Ports.[63] That which forbade the King’s constables to seize any man’s corn or cattle without immediate payment, except by the owner’s leave, was modified; if the owner belonged to the township in which the castle stood, payment might be deferred for three weeks.[64] Another article of the Great Charter had forbidden all sheriffs and other officers of the Crown to use any freeman’s horses or carts without the owner’s consent; they were now permitted to do so on payment of a sum “anciently fixed”—tenpence a day for a cart with two horses, fourteenpence a day for a cart with three horses.[65] The general rule laid down in 1215 that “all merchants should come and go and dwell and trade in England, in time of peace, without the imposition of arbitrary customs” (“maltotes”), was limited by the insertion of a proviso, “unless they have been publicly forbidden.”[66] Nineteen articles were entirely omitted. There was no renewal of the articles forbidding the exaction of interest, during the minority of a debtor’s heir, on money borrowed from the Jews or others; nor of the royal promises to institute an inquiry into the abuses of the Forest law and of the Crown’s rights over escheated baronies, to remove from all offices in England certain of John’s foreign adherents, to make restitution to persons illegally disseised under John, to remit fines made illegally with him, to reinstate Welshmen illegally disseised under Henry II. and Richard, and to appoint no justiciars, constables, sheriffs, or bailiffs, save those who knew the law of the realm and were minded to observe it well.[67] The articles declaring that the ferms of the shires, wapentakes, and hundreds should be reduced to their old figures, without increment (except on royal manors); sanctioning the distribution of the chattels of an intestate freeman by his next-of-kin under the direction of the Church, after his debts were paid; and giving leave to all men to go in and out of England freely, except in time of war,[68] were also omitted. Above all, there was no renewal of two provisions of the highest importance: that no scutage or aid should be imposed except by the common consent of the realm, unless it were for the King’s ransom, the knighting of his eldest son, or the marriage of his eldest daughter, and of “reasonable” amount, and that for the assessment of an aid or scutage on occasions other than those named, the common council should be summoned in a certain manner and for a fixed day, and the matter should proceed according to the counsel of those who answered the summons.[69] As a natural consequence of this omission, the article providing that no mesne lord should henceforth receive permission to take an aid from his freemen except of reasonable amount and for the before-named purposes[70] was omitted likewise. The weighty sixtieth article of the Great Charter, however—“All these aforesaid customs and liberties which we have granted in our realm, so far as in us lies, to be kept towards our own men, all the people of our realm, both clerks and laymen shall observe, so far as in them lies, towards their men,”—was retained.[71] The provisions for the return of hostages and charters, and for a settlement of terms with King Alexander of Scotland,[72] were of course omitted, being no longer applicable under the altered political circumstances. The grounds on which the other omissions and modifications were made are thus set forth in the clause with which the Charter concludes, and which replaces the sixty-first clause of the Great Charter (the clause containing the arrangement about the twenty-five “over-kings”): “Forasmuch as in the former charter there were certain chapters which seemed weighty and doubtful, to wit, concerning the assessment of scutages and aids, the debts of Jews and others, the liberty to go in and out of our realm, the forests and foresters, warrens and warreners, and the customs of the shires, and the river-enclosures and their keepers: it has pleased the prelates and magnates that these should be deferred till we shall have taken counsel more fully; and then we will do to the full, concerning these and other matters which may require amendment, whatever things may appertain to the common good of all and the peace and stability of our self and our realm.”[73]
The seals with which, in place of the non-existent royal seal, this Charter was confirmed in the King’s name were those of Gualo the Cardinal Legate and William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, “governor of ourself and our realm.” The form of the document must have been determined by Gualo and William conjointly; and it reflects the utmost credit upon the wisdom, tact, and moderation of both. Their explanation, given in the clause just quoted, as to the omissions in the new Charter was reasonable and true. The matters omitted were such as a provisional government, especially under the existing circumstances, could not safely deal with. They were all, more or less, matters of controversy; they were also matters affecting the relations of the Crown not with the nation as a whole, but with certain members or sections of the nation; matters, in a word, as to which it would have been neither politic nor just to tie the hands of a King who was not yet capable of acting for himself—above all at a moment when any surrender of the powers and claims of the Crown might have deprived him and his counsellors of the already sufficiently small means which they possessed of carrying on the war against the invader. Most “grave and doubtful” of all was the question which had furnished the immediate pretext, though it was certainly not the sole incentive, for the rising of the barons against John: the question of scutage. If the limitations imposed by the twelfth and fourteenth articles of the Great Charter upon the King’s rights of scutage were not actually new, they had been obsolete so long as to be practically an innovation on the established custom of the realm. This fact was the coign of vantage on which John had taken his stand when appealing to the Pope against the barons; and it was on this ground that Innocent had condemned the Charter. The accession of a child-King was not the moment for gratuitously surrendering on his part a claim whose illegality was, to say the least, not proven, and which the Pope, as overlord of the kingdom, had upheld; and the postponement of this question enabled Gualo at once to give the papal sanction to the new Charter. The publication of the Charter, with that sanction, left no valid excuse for the continuance of a refusal to recognize the native sovereign. Henry was now as definitely pledged as Louis to the redress of all grievances which were really national, and the security for the fulfilment of the pledge was at least as strong on Henry’s side as on the side of the stranger.
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