Chapter V · THE YOUNG KING 1223–1227 (continued 2)

1225

In England itself the only problem which seems to have given serious trouble to the government during these years was the everlasting problem of finance. Gascony had to be supplied, and to supply Gascony the English treasury had to be drained till there was nothing left for the needs of the English State and of the Crown itself. Five days after the re-issue of the Charters in 1225—on 16th February—orders were given for their publication throughout the realm;[1201] the writs concerning the fifteenth had been issued on the previous day. Half of the tax was to be paid into the treasury at Trinity, the other half at Michaelmas. Detailed instructions were given as to the mode of assessment, the incidence of the tax, the manner of collection;[1202] nevertheless, before the end of March the commissioners employed about the matter in one county at least found themselves involved in unexpected difficulties. From the wording of the royal order it appeared (at any rate to them) that the free tenants of bishops and abbots were to be assessed like those of lay lords; but in Kent the Archbishop forbade the assessment of any such tenants except those holding by military service. On 29th March the King sanctioned this limitation. Complaints had also reached him that the commissioners were “compelling poor women who had only a small quantity of thread, or a brooch worth two or three pence, to give a fifteenth”; this practice they were bidden to stop at once, lest the curses of the poor should fall upon the head of the King. On the other hand, he bade them “diligently and efficaciously induce all crusaders” (who as such were legally exempt) “to contribute to this fifteenth, which is appointed for the peace and safety of our land and the common weal and defence of all; and tell them plainly and openly they are to know that as many of them as shall hold back from giving us this fifteenth, they and their heirs will never have any part in the liberties which we have granted to our loyal subjects by our Charters.”[1203] This method of persuasion, however tyrannical it may sound, was perfectly logical. The Charters had avowedly been renewed for a consideration; those who withheld their share of that consideration, although able to pay it, were not entitled to a share in the benefit of the Charters. The irretrievable blunder which the Great Council had committed at Christmas, 1224, in making a bargain with the Crown for a renewal of the Charters, was already bringing forth its fruit.

Archbishop Stephen’s prohibition to the commissioners in Kent was probably dictated by caution; certainly not by unwillingness to help in supplying the needs of the Crown. The Pope, on 3rd February, wrote to the English prelates and clergy exhorting them to make collections in their several dioceses for the King, but to take care that the proceeds went “for useful and necessary purposes,” not in “superfluous and vain expenses,” and that this collection should not be made a precedent.[1204] When this letter reached England Stephen bade his suffragans urge their clergy to obey it by contributing an aid out of such of their property as was exempt from the fifteenth, and also to pay up their share of that tax, but to take care that whatever money they gave was kept safe till further orders.[1205] Their compliance with these exhortations was made none the easier by the arrival, just before Christmas, of a papal messenger, Master Otto, and his presence in England during the next four months. The expenses which fell upon persons who went on business to the Roman Court were a subject of general complaint; Honorius proposed that this should be remedied by the reservation of a prebend in every cathedral and collegiate church, and a certain proportion of the revenue of every bishop and every religious house in all the realms of Latin Christendom, for the Apostolic See, so that the Pope and the officers of his court might have sufficient means to dispense with the need of charging such heavy fees.[1206] A council assembled at Bourges on S. Andrew’s day[1207] opposed this project so strongly that Cardinal Romanus decided to urge it no further in France till it should be accepted in the Empire, England, and Spain.[1208] In England, whither the Pope’s demand was carried by Otto, the need of consulting all the estates of the realm, and the King’s illness in January, 12261226, served as reasons or excuses for deferring a decision till the middle of April. Then, according to one account, the King and the prelates followed the cautious example of their French brethren, saying they would wait to see how other countries would deal with the question; or, according to another authority, they answered that in any case England ought to be free from such an exaction, by reason of her annual tribute to the Pope.[1209] But that tribute was heavily in arrear, and obviously it was not to be expected that either Otto or Honorius would be satisfied till the arrears were paid up. This, therefore, had to be done, and a sum of over fifteen hundred marks went with Otto back to Rome.[1210] All this while Otto’s long stay had been adding to the financial burdens of the English clergy, for a papal envoy was entitled to claim from every cathedral and collegiate church procurations to the amount of forty shillings; although Otto seems to have contented himself with a smaller sum.[1211] In October {13 Oct.} the clergy made their grant to the Crown; it consisted of a sixteenth of the annual income of their benefices.[1212] Meanwhile Henry was chafing under the Papal command to refrain from war in France while Louis was on crusade. Again he sought to form alliances among the neighbours and the disaffected feudatories of the French King; in April he was negotiating with the Duke of Lorraine,[1213] in October he was making plans—which however came to nothing—to marry the daughter of the Duke of Britanny.[1214] Suddenly the political situation in France changed. On 8th November Master William Pierepunt’s forecast came true; Louis of France died at Montpensier in Auvergne.[1215] His successor was a boy ten years old. Neither the late King nor his father, Philip Augustus, had been liked by the barons, and many of these seized the occasion to assail the Queen-mother, Blanche of Castille, with demands for the restitution of sundry liberties of which, they said, Louis VIII and Philip had deprived them.[1216] The coronation, on 30th November, was almost if not quite as scantily attended as the first crowning of Henry had been.[1217] Henry at once despatched the Archbishop of York, Philip d’Aubigné, and some other envoys, to the chief nobles of Normandy, Anjou, and Poitou, and to the Duke of Britanny—all lands which, from his point of view, ought rightfully to be subject to himself—announcing his intention of going over sea, and calling upon them to receive him loyally.[1218] On 18th December elaborate schemes of concessions to Hugh and Isabel, and also to Hugh of Thouars[1219] and William Larchevêque, were drawn up, witnessed, and sealed ready for despatch, but they were never sent.[1220] Perhaps they were deemed needless owing to a piece of news which may have arrived from Aquitaine: Savaric de Mauléon had on the death of Louis VIII reverted to his old allegiance, and opened the gates of La Rochelle to Richard.[1221] Henry, however, was not ready for immediate action on a great scale; and at Mid-Lent (18th March), 12271227, a truce was made between Richard of Poitou on the one part, and Louis IX, Blanche, Hugh of Lusignan, and their adherents on the other, to last till a fortnight after Midsummer.[1222]

1227

The English court had spent the Christmas of 1226 at Reading[1223] and thence moved on by way of Wallingford to Oxford.[1224] What took place there, before the festal gathering usual at the season broke up, is related by the King himself in a circular letter issued on the 21st January, 1227, to all the sheriffs of England: “Be it known to you that by the common counsel of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the bishops, abbots, earls, barons, and other our magnates and faithful men, we recently at Oxford provided that henceforth we will cause charters and confirmations to be made under our seal. And we therefore bid you without delay publicly proclaim and make known to all persons in your bailiwick who have, or claim to have, lands or tenements or liberties by grant or concession and confirmation of our ancestors the Kings of England, or by our precept, that they come to us without fail before the beginning of this approaching Lent of the eleventh year of our reign, to shew us by what warrant they have, or claim to have, those lands or tenements or liberties, as they desire to keep or to recover them. You are also to make known to all persons in your bailiwick, and cause to be publicly proclaimed, that whosoever shall desire to obtain at any time our charter or confirmation of lands, tenements, markets, liberties, or anything whatsoever, let them come to us before the same term, to ask for our charter or confirmation thereof.”[1225] Thus in the second week of January, 1227 {8–10 Jan.}, three months after the completion of Henry’s nineteenth year, the Great Council of the realm sanctioned his release from the one restriction which in 1223 the same authority had decided should still remain imposed for a while upon his exercise of regal power. In what manner and on whose initiative this step was taken we do not know. The only chronicler who even professes to give any account of the matter asserts that Henry “declared before all” the Council “that he was of legal age, and henceforth, being set free from wardship, would order the affairs of the Crown as a prince”; and that the announcement about charters caused a great commotion, for which the Justiciar was universally held responsible, as the instigator of the King’s action.[1226] But this writer’s account of that action, and of its accompanying circumstances, is too full of demonstrable confusions and inaccuracies to be worthy of confidence in any particular.[1227] The suggestion may very likely have come from Hubert; but we need not accept for truth the insinuation which Hubert’s enemies seem to have induced Henry to believe at a later time, that Hubert was actuated mainly by a desire to secure for himself a grant in perpetuity from the Crown.[1228] Nor was there in the King’s proposed action any thing from which the other members of the Council could fairly withhold their consent. At the close of a long minority following on a period of confusion and civil war, it was not unreasonable—at any rate according to the ideas of that age—that there should be a general scrutiny of title-deeds which emanated or purported to emanate from the Crown, with a view to ascertaining their genuineness and validity, and thus safeguarding the rights both of the grantees and of the King. Whatever had been granted since Henry’s accession had been granted by a royal “precept,” not by charter; if such a grant was to be made permanent a charter would be necessary to make it so; and the letter of 21st January, fairly construed, implies no design of invalidating any earlier grants except such as should on examination prove to be inherently void. But the practice of seeking from the reigning sovereign confirmation of grants made by his predecessors was, and had been for centuries, so common that the King’s comprehensive invitation to “all who desired his confirmation of anything whatsoever” was certain to meet with an almost equally comprehensive response. On the other hand, every one knew that such grants always had to be paid for. In this latter circumstance may be seen the reason why Henry and his ministers were now so anxious to ante-date his full majority. The young King’s heart was set upon a great expedition over sea; the war-chest was empty;[1229] the payments for confirmations of royal grants would substantially—perhaps more substantially than any other scheme that could have been devised—help to fill it.

It is doubtful whether the far-off guardian who for ten years had watched over the interests of John Lackland’s heir and of his realm ever knew of his ward’s self-emancipation; for Honorius III died on 18th March, 1227. Some years later a transcript of one of the letters by which he had sanctioned Henry’s coming of age in 1223 appears to have been prepared by Bishops Peter of Winchester and Hugh of Ely for transmission to his successor Gregory IX;[1230] whether in consequence of some inquiry addressed to them by Gregory on the subject, we cannot tell. The authorizations given by Honorius were wide enough to cover the proceedings of January, 1227, without any need of further ratification from Rome. If those proceedings did reach the ears of the dying Pontiff, he may well have rejoiced to know that he would not have to leave his task of guardianship unfinished, and that this part of his burden of responsibility and care would not pass to the next Pope. Henceforth Henry of England must indeed be accounted as of full age, and answerable for himself and his realm.