The Girl and the Sword by Gerald Weaver
Author:Gerald Weaver [Weaver, Gerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Whitefox Publishing Ltd
Published: 2023-03-01T23:00:00+00:00
TWENTY-ONE
Henry III could not be circumspect in any matter that pertained to pleasing his wife, whose Savoyard relatives remained in England after the wedding. Nor was he prudent or cautious when it came to his mother, who also installed a permanent contingent of her Poitevin in-laws, of the Lusignan family. To these noble relatives of Queen Eleanor and King Henry, the Kingdom of England was an opportunity. England was no longer governed by the large council that had acted as Henryâs regent. It was governed by Henry, who loved his Provençal queen. He had found the involvement of the English barons too nettlesome and he resented that he had been subject to them for so long into his adulthood. He disliked the Great Charter, which was designed to give the nobles a voice in his kingdom. He preferred the company of these French nobles who did not represent vested English interests, which were often competing, and which often had ambitions upon his power as monarch. And he had no aversion to their fawning. He liked these new French faces, for much the same reason that he had once liked Simon de Montfort, who had seemed to be a foreigner with no English interests. Henry could not discern that, unlike Simon, these French nobles had ambitions that had nothing to do with the interests of any of the English people, nor did he realize that by this point Simon was quite English.
These members of Henryâs court were not competent in any other respect than that they had no interest but to agree with him and to curry personal favor with him. They never spoke to him of the interests of the people of their lands because they did not hail from English counties, nor did they care much for them. They never pointed to the provisions of the Great Charter that Henryâs father had signed, and that Henry had reaffirmed at least once, and which had guaranteed certain rights to the English lords. They certainly were not qualified to speak on matters of English justice or the army of the kingdom or of the management of the kingâs lands. Their primary interests in matters of the treasury were only that they sought to tap into it for their own benefit. They expressed none of the concerns for the good government of the kingdom, nor even of the interests of the various fiefdoms within it. They treated their positions at the court of Henry III as personal estates. And they never failed to express their superficial loyalty to the kingâs person, above what may have been the kingâs duty to his kingdom and people.
The resultant resentment and antipathy they caused among the indigenous English barons is not difficult to imagine. This was particularly true, given that the English lords were responsible for the levies of funds and men for the army. And it was their interests and those of their subjects that were to be protected by the Great Charter and by the king.
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