Henry III by Stephen Church

Author:Stephen Church
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141978000
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2016-12-26T05:00:00+00:00

THE TREATY OF PARIS

Like modern treaties, the hard work of negotiation for the Treaty of Paris had been undertaken beforehand and the two kings would not meet until all the details were agreed. Hence the Treaty of Paris is dated to October 1259, though its final form was not ratified until December. The key to the agreement was the renunciation of all claims to the continental lands lost by King John, Henry’s father. Once Henry, his brother, Richard, and Henry’s children (as well as Simon de Montfort’s wife, Eleanor, in return for a suitable financial settlement) had renounced their claims to Normandy, Anjou, Touraine, Maine and Poitou, Henry and Louis could meet to ratify the agreement. The personal presence of Henry in Paris was required for the second element of the treaty. Henry was to acknowledge that he held Aquitaine ‘from the kingdom of France’, which meant that he would have to perform in person homage for the duchy.63 Homage was the act of handing over oneself to one’s lord and receiving from him lands and rights in return for service. Henceforth, Henry would be a baron of the French court subject to the parlement of Paris and the men of Aquitaine could appeal to Louis against him should they see the need. Henry had given up a great deal, and contemporaries noticed and criticized him for it. But to Henry the Sicilian Business made the concessions worth it.

On 13 November 1259, Henry and Eleanor, along with key members of the Council of Fifteen, crossed from Dover to Wissant.64 It was a magnificent ensemble, deliberately designed to impress the French with both the size of the accompanying entourage as well as its opulence. If Henry was going to concede so much, he was going to do it in a style that belied both his financial difficulties and his current state of political impotence. Henry and Louis met first on 24 November; on 25 November, Henry was welcomed to the French royal mausoleum of Saint-Denis, and on 26 November he entered Paris. For the next week, Henry, Eleanor and the royal household were lodged at Louis’s palace on the Île de la Cité where Henry and his wife might take in the views of the recently completed Sainte-Chapelle displaying the latest French architectural and artistic innovations. He then moved to Saint-Germain-des-Prés outside the walls of Paris, where he could host his own banquets. It was on 30 November that the week-long celebrations for the treaty began. On 4 December, in an apple orchard belonging to the King of France, the Archbishop of Rouen read out the treaty to the assembled throng and then Henry performed homage to King Louis. With that act, Aquitaine and Henry were now subject to the French king, and the fact that it was overseen by the Archbishop of Rouen, whose diocese was coterminous with the bounds of Normandy, also had symbolic meaning at the moment that Duke Henry gave up his 350-year-old claim to the duchy.

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