The Magnificent Century (40 page)

Henry followed him to the Continent, and the French King made an effort to reconcile the embattled brothers-in-law. Henry made peace impossible, however, by raking up all the old charges against Simon. They seem to have become an obsession with him. At every opportunity he reached a hand into the packet of the past and brought out the now familiar indictments, reciting each old charge with unction and enjoyment. King Louis, who had heard it all before, abandoned the effort to restore the two men to a friendly basis.

Henry and his party were caught in Paris by an epidemic. The King became so ill that it was a long time before he could attempt the journey home, and he was so weak when he landed that he could ride no farther than Canterbury. Here the royal party spent
Christmas. An outbreak of hostilities occurred in Wales in the midst of the festivities, and in a despondent frame of mind the King wrote to Edward, who was still breaking lances in France. “This is no time for laziness or boyish wantonness,” he said. “It is a disgrace to you that Llewelyn spurns the truce which he promised to maintain with us.” At the same time he wrote to the justiciar that, in view of the disturbed conditions, no sessions of Parliament would be held.

Edward answered his father’s appeal by returning and taking charge of operations along the Welsh frontier. He found things in a badly disorganized state. The old Marcher barons had been dying off. Richard of Gloucester, who had been the commanding figure in the West because of his immense landholdings in Gloucester and Glamorganshire, had died in July of the previous year. His son, Gilbert the Red, was in his twentieth year and had become an ardent supporter of Simon de Montfort. Other young men who had succeeded to positions of power distrusted the King with, it must be said, the best of reasons. They saw no reason yet to place any faith in Edward.

The result was that the prince found it impossible to accomplish much in spite of the fact that he demonstrated energy and a fine military instinct. The young Marchers held back from him, unwilling to help consolidate the royal power.

Simon de Montfort returned to England around the end of April of the following year, 1263. This time he came in a new role. There could no longer be any doubt of his status and his purpose in coming back. He was the acknowledged leader of the barons, the unchanging champion of the Provisions of Oxford, His purpose was to organize and command the forces of dissent in the armed struggle which had become inevitable.

S
IMON
DE
MONTFORT
had come back to make war, and all men knew it. All men knew that no peaceful agreement into which Henry might enter would be carried out. At the first opportunity he would run to the Pope for absolution of his vows, and thus the familiar performance of repudiation would be repeated. It was impossible to get the better of the King in this kind of contest because his very weaknesses made him a formidable opponent. It was like buffeting a straw man suspended at the end of a loose rope.

Late in May, Simon was at Oxford for a council of war with his chief supporters. He had selected the university city because it was strategically situated, having the Marcher country back of it. Perhaps he had it in mind also that the meeting place of the Mad Parliament would be a logical starting point for the armed struggle.

Many of the men who assembled at the Earl of Leicester’s call were, strangely enough, new to the cause. Some of the original members were present, but many of them had died and many had been won over to the royalist side by one inducement or another. There was a predominance of youth in the baronial ranks at Oxford, and the explanation of this can be found in the personality of Simon de Montfort. Young men found him irresistible. He was a magnetic figure, this Anglo-Norman peer who had won for himself the reputation of being the best soldier in Europe. He appealed to their sense of idealism because they knew him to be fervent in his faith and
unswerving in his devotion to the cause. When the choice lay between this knight in shining armor and the weak King, the crabbed, complaining old incumbent of the throne who had been an almost comic figure for so long, they did not find it a hard decision to make. If Edward had been older and had behaved himself better during the years of his adolescence, he would have split their allegiance. As it was, they flocked to Oxford and clanked in full armor about St. Martin’s, clamoring for armed action.

The most sensational addition to the baronial ranks was Henry of Almaine, the oldest son of Richard of Cornwall. Henry was a thoroughly likable youth, brave, amiable, personable; but, as it developed, inclined to be fickle and certainly without any great force of character. He had accompanied his father to the crowning at Aachen and had shortly after been sent back because the Dutch and German subjects of the new King had objected to so many Englishmen in the imperial train. Young Henry was just old enough now to come into some properties of his own and to take an interest in politics. At first he was an ardent advocate of the cause of his uncle, the King, and refused positively to take the oath of obedience to the Provisions of Oxford. He even took sides with the Lusignans although he did not go to the length of following them to Winchester in their final gesture of defiance. Shortly afterward he became the close friend of Gilbert the Red and, perhaps because of this, he was drawn into the youthful circle which saw in Simon de Montfort the hope of England. He arrived in Oxford with shining-eyed enthusiasm, the most eager neophyte there. And no doubt a spark passed through the ranks when they saw him come riding in with the baronial cross on his shoulder.

The next recruit in point of rank was John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey, who had married Alice de Lusignan and was therefore the King’s brother-in-law. He was in his early thirties and had been a member of the inner royal circle, even being chosen for the great honor of knighthood at the hands of Alfonso at Las Huelgas. An ardent royalist in the early stages of the struggle, he also had come under the influence of the baronial leader, and now he was at Oxford with a long train of knights and men-at-arms.

Gilbert the Red had come back into the ranks. It was clear, perhaps, to the leader that this twenty-year-old peer was already showing some of the defects of character which had made his father
such a difficult partner. He had a tendency to sudden enthusiasms and to equally sudden processes of cooling off. If Simon had studied him with prophetic eye he would have been slow to welcome this youth with his blazing pride and his tinderlike temper, seeing faintly in the future a field of battle where the sudden appearance on the other side of the three chevrons of the house of Clare would turn the tide. At the moment, however, the mercurial though brave young earl was a fiery adherent of the baronial leader and ready for any risk beside him.

One of the recruits was Roger de Leyburn, a Kent man of the second rank. This passionate knight was always in trouble but possessed such a capacity for making friends that the consequences of his folly passed him by. Ten years before he had killed one Arnold de Montigny in a tilting, and it had been discovered later that he had neglected to cover the point of his lance with the customary socket, a fact which sat ill on men’s stomachs when it was recalled that he had suffered a broken leg in an earlier jousting with the unfortunate Arnold. To cover up this unsavory episode he took the cross but did not go to the East, being given the appointment of steward to Prince Edward. There must have been unusual qualities in him which made other men like him, a devil-may-care gaiety, perhaps a hint of diablerie in his bold eye. He became at once a great favorite of Edward’s, the leader of his train of bachelor knights. Nothing he did, not even the summary hanging of some servants of the house of Gloucester over a dispute, seriously disturbed his place in the prince’s regard. He had, however, a predilection for the baronial side of the long struggle, and it was said that he had been instrumental in bringing his royal master and Simon de Montfort together. The King seems to have liked him in spite of this, but Queen Eleanor took a different view, regarding Leyburn with the cold eye of suspicion. She feared his influence over her son and may in addition have disliked the rakish side of the man. It was due to the Queen’s insistence that in 1260 a demand was made for an accounting of his stewardship, as a result of which he was stated to be short in his accounts to the extent of one thousand pounds.

Leyburn violently denied the justice of the verdict and removed all his goods from his various manors to prevent seizure. His properties were declared confiscated and, with characteristic boldness, he announced himself a rebel. When the return of Simon de Montfort
brought the national issue to a head Leyburn was still at outs with the law and the leader of a group of youthful malcontents in the Marcher country. It was natural enough for him to throw his allegiance to Simon and to bring his companions with him. They were in force in Oxford and the most strident of all in support of the policy of armed action. Simon was to have little good of them, however. Their adherence hurt the cause in the eyes of many sober men who regarded them as outlaws. The Leyburn enthusiasm, moreover, which was real enough at the beginning, was not equal to the pressure which would be exerted later to make him change his coat.

The most loyal of the younger men was John de Vescy from Alnwick Castle in Northumberland, a grandson of Eustace de Vescy, who had played such a prominent part at Runnymede. It was not surprising to find him a zealous believer in the baronial cause and devoted fanatically to Simon de Montfort. John de Vescy remained true to his vows and fought through to the end of the struggle.

The decision of the council of war was to send a final demand to Henry. The Provisions were to be observed both in letter and spirit, and all who refused to abide by them were to be considered enemies of the realm and treated as such, the only exceptions being the King and the members of his immediate family.

Henry was not convinced that the barons meant to fight or that they could win if they did. He rejected the proposals.

The baronial forces were not large, but their commander had gained his reputation for generalship as much by the speed as the fury of his strokes. The suddenness with which he now went into action caught the royalists off guard.

Simon moved his forces out of Oxford and struck westward, his purpose being to secure command of the Severn River and his communications with the Marches. He met with no opposition, sentiment in the West being at this time against the King. Gloucester and Bristol opened their gates to him. While thus engaged he permitted his followers to exact tribute from the landowners who were known to be royalist in sentiment. The estates of Peter d’Aigueblanche, Bishop of Hereford, were plundered, and Peter himself was captured and imprisoned at Eardisely. The ill repute in which the
bishop stood as a result of his part in the Sicilian transactions accounted, perhaps, for the severity with which he was treated. Others had their fields burned and their livestock seized to support the army on its eastern drive. This may have been a necessary war measure, but it was to prove a serious mistake in policy. The plundered landowners never forgave Simon de Montfort and remained his implacable enemies to the end.

Simon now proceeded to demonstrate the vigor of his generalship. He did not sit himself down to the siege of castles while waiting for more of the dissenting barons to rally around the banner of revolt as any other leader of the day would have done. He knew that in order to win he must win quickly. London must be made his permanent base; the Cinque Ports must be secured because they meant command of the sea. Satisfied with his lines of communication, he turned and marched for London with a speed which threw dismay into the advisers of the King. The approach of the baronial army convinced them that it would be wise to seek a peaceful settlement. The task of opening negotiations was delegated to the King of the Romans, who had returned to England. Richard took to horse and rode furiously to Wallingford, hoping to intercept Simon as he led his steel-clad knights past Oxford. He was too late. The barons had not paused at Oxford but were already streaming down the Thames Valley. Richard turned and rode to Reading, but again he was too late. The roads between Reading and London were already thick with the dust raised by the marching feet of the barons.

By another surprise move Simon did not continue on to London but swung south between Windsor and that city and drove straight for the heart of Kent. This seemed the height of rashness. Kent was strongly held by the enemy. But when the weary and dusty army reached Romney on July 9 it became clear that the Earl of Leicester had been right in his calculations. The men of Kent came out to welcome him, and the barons of the Cinque Forts rallied to his side. Simon’s main purpose had been accomplished. He had control of the Channel and the approaches to the kingdom in his pocket.

The royalist party realized their peril. Henry hastened in a panic to the shelter of the strong walls of the Tower of London and lent an assenting ear to the pacific counsels of the King of the Romans, who had arrived after the tumult of the passing of the barons died down. Those of the King’s party who had favored a bolder course
now scented danger for themselves and hastened to get away. Boniface of Canterbury, who had faced the fury of London mobs once before and desired no more of that medicine, took ship on the Thames and got away to the Continent. John Mansel, not relishing the role of scapegoat which he knew would be his, followed the example of the archbishop and fled to France. London rose up in defiance of the King.