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"will we

alluding to the colour of Alexander's hair, chase the red fox-cub from his earths," and he gave, it is said, the signal for the destruction of Berwick by firing with his own hands the house in which he had rested during the night. At last, in May, 1216, Louis came over with a French army, and was well supported. But when the Barons found the foreign prince granting lands and castles to his own countrymen, they grew suspicious of him, and some began to think of returning to their allegiance.

5. Death of John.-While John was crossing with his army the Wash of Lincolnshire, his baggage and treasures were swallowed by the rising tide. Vexation, coupled with a surfeit of peaches and cider -or, according to a later tradition, poison administered by a monk-threw him into a fever, of which he died at Newark, Oct. 19th, 1216, leaving an evil name behind him. He was the first Sovereign whose title appears on his Great Seal as King of England. By his second wife, Isabel of Angoulême, he had two sons— Henry, who succeeded him, and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, who, in 1257, was, by some of the German princes, elected King of the Romans (the title borne by the German King before his coronation as Emperor).

CHAPTER XVI.

HENRY III.

Henry of Winchester; departure of Louis (1)-Hubert of Burgh; marriage of Henry; the favourites; character of Henry; the Londoners (2)—the Provisions of Oxford (3)—the Barons' War (4)—Earl Simon's Parliament (5)-battle of Evesham and death of Simon; the Disinherited (6)—death of Henry (7)— Magna Carta (8)—the Universities (9)—Gothic architecture (10).

1. Henry III., of Winchester, 1216-1272.— On the tenth day after John's death, the Royalists crowned at Gloucester his eldest son Henry, then only nine years old. A plain circlet of gold was placed on the child's head, for the crown had been lost with the rest of the royal treasures. William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, a wise and good statesman, was made "Governor of the King and Kingdom." Many barons now left the French standard; and two battles put an end to the hopes of Louis. The first, fought in May 1217, in the streets of Lincoln, between the Earl of Pembroke and the French Count of Perche, was jestingly termed by the victorious Royalists "the Fair of Lincoln." The second was a sea-fight between the Justiciar Hubert of Burgh, and a noted pirate, Eustace the Monk, who was bringing a French fleet to the relief of Louis. Hubert, who held Dover Castle, could get together only forty sail, to oppose to more than eighty of the enemy, and his case seemed so desperate that several knights would not accompany him. But his courage was rewarded, for the English, fearlessly boarding the enemy's ships and cutting the rigging, gained a complete victory. After this Louis was glad to make peace and go home. King Alexander of Scotland and the North-Welsh prince Llywelyn, son of Jorwerth, acknowledged the young Sovereign, who now reigned undisputed.

2. Character of Henry.-The history of Henry's reign is for a long time that of a struggle against foreign influence. The adventurers who had been in John's service exercised great power, until they were got rid of by Hubert of Burgh, who, after the Earl of Pembroke's death, took a leading part in the government. When Hubert in 1232 lost the King's favour, the Bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, a native of Poitou, came into power, and with him a new set of foreigners, who were not removed until some of the Barons had taken up arms against the King. Then,

at the age of twenty-nine, Henry married Eleanor, daughter of Raymond, Count of Provence. She was beautiful and accomplished, but was disliked on account of the favours lavished on her kindred, who looked upon England as a mine of wealth, out of which they were to get as much as they could. After these, there came the King's foreign kinsfolk, the sons of his mother by her second marriage. Insolent and masterful in their prosperity, the favourites met every complaint of the English with the reply, "We have nothing to do with the law of the land." Though the King had no positive vices, he was weak, vain, and ostentatiously liberal, and consequently always poor and greedy for money. On the birth of his first son Edward, he sought after gifts with such eagerness that a Norman said, "Heaven gave us this child, but the King sells him to us." The rich London citizens complained of the heavy tallages laid upon them. "Those ill-bred Londoners," as Henry once called them, were no friends of the Court, and their mutual dislike often broke out. One day the young men of the City were playing at the quintain, a game which exercised the man-at-arms in managing his horse and lance, when some of the royal attendants and pages insulted the citizens, calling them "scurvy clowns and soap-makers," and entered the lists to oppose them. The young Londoners had the satisfaction of beating their courtly antagonists "black and blue," but the City paid for it in a heavy fine imposed by the King.

3. The Provisions of Oxford.-The Popes claimed the right to tax the clergy, upon whom they made almost yearly demands, which were complained of as much as the royal exactions. They were further answerable for leading Henry into his most signal act of folly, by offering to his second son Edmund the crown of Sicily, or rather the empty title, for the actual kingdom could only be gained by war, the expenses of

which Henry pledged England to repay. Aghast at finding how enormous was the sum to which they were committed, the Barons in 1258 compelled Henry to agree that twenty-four persons should be chosen, half by him, half by themselves, to reform the government. These twenty-four were appointed in a Parliament, as the national council of barons and bishops was now called, held at Oxford,-the "Mad Parliament," Henry's friends named it. By this committee were drawn up "the Provisions of Oxford," under which the royal authority was in fact placed in the hands of a council of fifteen. The King's foreign kinsmen and favourites had to surrender the royal castles they held; upon which they left the country, carrying with them only a small part of the treasure they had amassed. But the new government did not long work smoothly. The Barons quarrelled among themselves, and Henry took advantage of this to try to get back his authority.

4. The Barons' War.-This ended in a war between the King and the malcontent Barons, the latter being headed by the most able man of their party, Simon of Montfort, a Frenchman who had obtained the Earldom of Leicester, upon which his family had a claim, had married the King's sister Eleanor, and had become a thorough Englishman. He was a brave and devout man, somewhat hottempered and impatient of opposition, but bearing a high reputation for skill in war and statesmanship. The unstable King, who had been the making of him, soon fell out with him; and since 1258 Simon had stood forth as the leader of the party of reform. His strength lay not so much in the nobles, who did not thoroughly trust him, as in the clergy, the Universities, the people generally, and especially the Londoners, who showed their dislike of the royal family in a manner which did them no credit. On the first breaking out of war, the Queen attempted to

pass by water from the Tower to Windsor Castle; but as soon as her barge approached the bridge, the Londoners assailed her with abuse, threw down mud upon her, and by preparing to sink her boat forced her to return. The battle of Lewes, May 14, 1264, put an end for the time to the war. The action was begun by the King's son Edward, who charged the Londoners in the baronial army with such vigour as to send them flying in utter rout; but his eagerness to avenge his mother led him to chase them four miles, and while he was slaughtering fugitives, his own friends were defeated by Simon. King Henry, who had defended himself gallantly, had no choice but to surrender; while his brother the King of the Romans was captured in a windmill, to the great glee of his adversaries, whose mocking song, how "the King of Alemaigne""made him a castle of a mill," has come down to us. The next day a treaty, the "Mise of Lewes," was concluded, under which Edward was given as a hostage to the conquerors. Though orders and writs continued to run in the royal name, and the King was treated with respect, he became no better than a prisoner to Earl Simon. In vain the Papal legate, Guy Foulquois, threatened the baronial party with excommunication: as soon as the Bulls (writings sealed with the Pope's bulla or seal) containing the sentence arrived, the Dover men threw them into the sea.

5. Earl Simon's Parliament.-The most famous act of Earl Simon during his rule was the summoning, in Henry's name, of the first Parliament to which representatives of the borough towns were called. The Great Council of the realm, the assembly of the King's tenants, was already known by the French or Italian name of Parliament; but Simon was the first to show how it might be made what we understand by that name, an assembly representing every class of freernen. Its materials he found ready to his hand.

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