The Magnificent Century (46 page)

Nothing much is known of this momentous gathering. Not a name,
not a scrap of description, not the faint echo over the centuries of one spoken word: nothing but the bare outline of the one decision reached. This is unfortunate, for living history was made in Westminster Hall.

It is not even known how they were seated, the baron, the bishop, the plain knight, and “the bran-dealers, the soap-boilers and clowns,” as someone has phrased it. That they were arranged sectionally is hardly likely. More probably the barons and bishops had the front rows and “the good and loyal men” were far in the rear. The citizens, it may safely be assumed, took pains to present as good a front as their means allowed. Their cloaks and tunics would be of good cloth and warm colors, and no doubt some of them would have a show of miniver or vair at neck and wrist; but at best they would seem sober and as common as twist against the ruffling splendor of the barons and the costly vestments of the high churchmen. What a pity it is that no poet Gray has turned his imagination and his pen to picturing them, the rude forefathers of the modern House of Commons, the mute, inglorious Pyms and Hampdens who had answered the summons to sit with their betters!

There were no rules of procedure in these early days, no set parliamentary ritual. They met, they listened to the King or the minister delegated to expound his views, they debated, and they voted. Some sessions were noisy and voices were raised high in anger and wounded pride. This particular Parliament, however, provided no dramatic moments. A program was presented. The voice was the voice of Henry, but the will back of it was the will of Simon. It had all been decided upon in advance, and it was carried with a good will, without delay or senseless babble.

The provisional government set up in the Peace of Canterbury was to continue. Edward was to have his liberty, but he must continue under restrictions for three years. During that period he must not leave the kingdom and he must not bring in aliens or seek the return of adherents abroad: this on pain of disinheritance. Both Henry and Edward must swear again to abide by the Great Charter and the Provisions of Oxford and must bind themselves not to seek absolution of their oaths.

Three days later there was a solemn ceremony in the chapter house at Westminster to announce publicly that Prince Edward had been released and delivered into the keeping of his father. Henry, wearing
crown and royal robes, was present when the declarations to which he and the prince had sworn were read to the gathering. At the finish nine bishops stepped forward in full pontifical robes and, with the customary dashing out of candles at their feet, declared the excommunication of anyone who broke or transgressed the agreements which had been reached.

This ceremony marked the peak of Simon de Montfort’s power. His will had prevailed. The King and the heir to the throne had made their peace and sworn to all the terms, stern though they were, which he had deemed necessary for continued peace and the future good government of the realm. He played no part in the ceremony, but as he stood in his place with the rest and watched he must have found it hard to keep a light of triumph from showing in his eyes. This was the culmination of his years of steadfast adherence to an idea, long years through part of which he had stood alone. For this he had risked life and fortune; for this he had gambled on war and had dared the climb at Lewes.

Perhaps other and more exalted thoughts had their place in his mind as well; that he looked at the good and loyal men from the towns and boroughs and saw a vision of the gradual shifting of power which in time would vest in the hands of their successors all legislative control.

It is called the Great Parliament, not because of what it accomplished but on account of the momentous precedent it set.

Did Simon de Montfort include the commoners because he realized he must depend on the cities and towns for his main support in the struggles ahead? Was it a purely selfish expedient to bolster his power and insure a more generous response to the calls he must make for financial aid? This viewpoint, which is widely held, must be given full consideration because it is not an unreasonable assumption. The leader of a great cause must have something of the opportunist in him. He must be alive, at any rate, to obstacles and ready to make use of the best weapons which are available. Simon, without a doubt, was aware of the advantages he might derive from his epoch-making invitation to the men who soiled their hands, not in the killing of other men, but in useful occupations.

But he could not have taken the step without being aware of other considerations. He was fully conscious of the tension in the ranks of the barons. He knew how suspicious they had become of him, how easy it might be to offend them still further. How would they react to this daring innovation which made the vote of a vintner or a fishmonger as good as that of a belted earl? Would they see in this another excuse for deserting the ranks? He must have remembered a line from
The Song of Lewes
: “See! Now is a knight subjected to the sayings of clerks. Knighthood put under clerks has become of little esteem.”

Summoning the commons was a questionable expedient from the standpoint of political advantage alone, one which might harm the cause more than it helped. There is reasonable ground to doubt if as farseeing and able a leader as Simon would have risked this step if he had thought of it as a temporary expedient and nothing else.

There is at least as good reason to believe that he was thinking of the future as much as the present; that he was ready to throw feudal conceptions to the winds and admit that the common man must have a part in shaping his own destiny for all time thereafter. Simon de Montfort was more than the leader of a political faction. For years he had been the symbol of a cause, the stern exponent of new principles. There had been indications of the way his mind was tending. There was the reference in the one letter which remains in his handwriting,
because I uphold against them your rights and those of the common people.
He alone had been in favor at first of calling a meeting of Parliament without the King. This revolutionary stand, a retreat from all feudal beliefs, might be expected to lead to still more radical acceptances on his part.

There is no way of determining what was in the mind of this daring and passionate leader when he took his long step in the direction of democratic government. This much, however, may not be gainsaid: it was in his mind that the conception first grew of a house of governmental control in which all classes of men would have a voice and vote, and he it was who had the sublime courage to make the experiment. Edward in later years, when he had succeeded his father on the throne, would give the principle permanent acceptance by summoning commoners to all meetings of Parliament. Could this
have been one of the things they talked about during the brief interlude when Edward, in youthful enthusiasm, ranged himself by the side of the popular leader?

They share the credit and the glory of it between them, Simon de Montfort and the young Edward. There is plenty for both.

A
NUMBER
OF
WOMEN
, all of them fair by repute, were to play parts in the drama which now unfolded. First there was Queen Eleanor, who was still in France and moving heaven and earth to find support for the royal cause and to get her husband out of captivity. She had pawned all her jewels and personal possessions and had contracted debts of such size that their redemption later swallowed up all of the fine of twenty thousand marks paid by the city of London. Nothing could discourage the firm-minded Queen, not even the letters of warning which Henry (under pressure, without a doubt) addressed to her.

Then there was Eleanor de Montfort. The sister of the King was to demonstrate in these violent and eventful months that although she took her looks from her beautiful mother she was all Plantagenet in character. She had the decision and resolution which Henry so conspicuously lacked, and these qualities she was now to have an opportunity of displaying. The princess wife of the popular leader appears to rare advantage in the climactic stages.

Alice of Angoulême was also to have a part, a not particularly creditable one, it must be confessed. In the few glimpses of her which the records supply she appears in the role of troublemaker, flirting with Prince Edward while he waited for his young wife in France to grow up, even casting an eye on the aging Henry, who responded in kind for perhaps the first time in his long married life. In support of the latter assertion there is only one bit of evidence, a letter from
Queen Marguerite of France warning her sister that Henry was too fond of the company of his capricious niece. Marguerite seems to have developed into a prim and proper woman, the result, perhaps, of being married so long to a perfect man. The part Alice played in the drama indicates that she placed royal allegiance ahead of wifely obligations. She does not appear, however, until after the main issue had been decided.

Of less exalted rank was the fourth fair lady to take a prominent part in events. She was the wife of Roger de Mortimer, the quarrelsome, avaricious, and generally disagreeable lord of Wigmore who had been the most active enemy of Simon de Montfort in the West. Born Maud de Braose, she had been a great catch, for the Braose holdings to which she succeeded comprised a large part of Breconshire and a share as well in the immense Marshal inheritance. Her father was the gallant but unfortunate William de Braose who had been detected in an illicit relationship with Joanna, the wife of Llewelyn (and illegitimate daughter of John of England) and had been publicly hanged by the Welsh leader. This would make her a granddaughter of the unhappy Maud de Braose who was starved to death by John in a cell at Corfe Castle.

She was beautiful and nimble-witted, and the one glimpse that history gives of her is an advantageous one.

Finally there was Margot the Spy. She could not have been of noble birth or the fact would have been recorded, but she was as courageous as the others and, from the nature of the part she played, as pleasing to the eye, undoubtedly, as any of them.

With the calling of the Great Parliament the sun had seemed to reach its zenith for Simon de Montfort, but immediately after the ceremony with which the meetings concluded things began to go wrong.

First there was the death of Urban IV. Eighteen of the twenty-one cardinals being available, they were shut up in conclave at Perugia to elect a successor. For months they disputed and balloted, in perfect good humor, it was reported, but without result. To break the deadlock it was decided to make a compromise selection, and the choice fell on one of the three absentees, Guy Fulcodi, the legate
to England. Unaware of the great honor which had been done him, Guy did not reach Perugia until two more months had passed. He accepted the election doubtfully and took the name of Clement IV.

Although Clement was to prove himself an able pontiff, the choice was not a fortunate one for England. He had not changed his mind with reference to the struggle between the King and his subjects. One of his first acts, in fact, was to appoint Ottobuoni Fiesco as legate in his place and in the course of his instructions to write bitterly of “that pestilent man and all his offspring.” Simon realized, of course, that now he could expect nothing but the most aggressive hostility from the Vatican.

The barons, moreover, were in a disgruntled mood. They were angry because the pledge made at Lewes for the restoration of prisoners on both sides was being carried out. They were hungry for ransom money from the band of wealthy nobles who had fallen into the baronial net in that battle. The situation came to a head when John Giffard of Brimpsfield claimed two prisoners who had been taken in the priory and was angrily insistent on making them pay through the nose for their liberty. When Simon refused to give in, Giffard retired to his estates in a towering rage.

Disturbing information came to Simon’s ears almost immediately thereafter. The Earl of Gloucester was in the Forest of Dean and had collected about him a considerable force of armed men. John Giffard had joined him there. It was rumored, moreover, that the pair had opened communications with Mortimer and Leyburn, the ringleaders of the Seven Knights. Determined to bring matters to a head, Simon went to Gloucester, taking the King with him.

The Earl of Gloucester attended the meeting but in his own manner. He came with a band of armed horsemen and camped on a wooded hillside just outside the walls of the town. The first night his campfires lighted up the sky, convincing evidence of the strength in which he had arrived. Counting the fires from his window in the royal castle, Simon realized that Gilbert the Red had come in war and not in peace.

A temporary arrangement was made between them, nevertheless, through negotiations conducted by the Bishop of Worcester. It was not very satisfactory to either side. Gilbert was still incensed over the preponderance of power which Simon held and what he believed
was an unfair division of the spoils of victory, despite the fact that his own share had been quite enormous.