The Penguin History of Britain: The Struggle for Mastery: Britain 1066-1284 by Carpenter Prof David

Author:Carpenter, Prof David [Carpenter, Prof David]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2004-08-25T23:00:00+00:00

11

Britain During the Personal Rule of King Henry III, 1234–58

Until 1234 Henry III had been overshadowed by two great ministers inherited from his father, first Hubert de Burgh and then Peter des Roches. Much of the political agenda had been set by quarrels over power and property that had originated during the early minority. Now Henry could determine his own course. In some ways he did so with success. During the near quarter-century of his personal rule he gave England peace and at least for a while increased his revenues. Money and stability enabled him to play a far stronger hand than before in both Wales and Scotland. Overseas he eventually reached a statesmanlike settlement of the old quarrel with the Capetian kings of France. There was, however, another, less satisfactory side to Henry’s rule. The settlement with the Capetians meant accepting the final loss of the Angevin empire. The attempt to offset this defeat by establishing the dynasty as a Mediterranean power was a fiasco. At home, Henry’s policies created factional struggles at court, and widened rather than reduced the political chasm between monarch and nation which had opened under the Angevins. As a result, the most fundamental developments during his rule, the emergence of parliament, the widening of the political community and the growing sense of xenophobic national identity were shaped by opposition to royal policies. Ultimately in 1258 Henry’s personal rule was ended by a political revolution far more radical than Magna Carta in 1215.

Henry’s ideology and ability were central to both his successes and failures. ‘A simplex and God-fearing man,’ remarked the Osney abbey chronicler, picking up two of Henry’s key characteristics. Henry’s piety was intensely personal and also highly political. He strove to recover what the Angevins (Richard for a while aside) had seemed to lose: the image and the reality of a kingship protected and inspired by God. Henry multiplied the days on which his choirs chanted the ceremonial hymns invoking the aid of Christ for himself and his realm (the Laudes Regiae), attended Mass assiduously and fed 500 paupers daily; on special occasions the halls at Westminster were filled with thousands of them. There were no beggars in the Strand in Henry’s day. At every place on his itinerary he made gifts to the local monasteries, friaries, hospitals and leper houses. Above all, from 1245 Henry rebuilt Westminster Abbey in honour of the saint who lay there, his patron saint Edward the Confessor, canonized in 1161. Entering by the great north door, the eyes of the worshipper were swept up to the statue of the Confessor high up in the south transept giving his ring to a pilgrim. The sequel was as well known, and so was the moral, for the pilgrim was St John the Evangelist, who would soon conduct the Confessor to heaven. The latter was a saint ‘of mighty power’ supporting the dynasty in this life and ready to lead Henry to the next.

Henry’s status as a rex piissimus had

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