The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 (100 page)

Leicester, ignorant of his son’s fate, passed the Severne in boats during Edward’s absence, and lay at Evesham, in expectation of being every hour joined by his friends from London: When the prince, who availed himself of every favourable moment, appeared in the field before him. Edward made a body of his troops advance from the road which led to Kenilworth, and ordered them to carry the banners taken from Simon’s army; while he himself, making a Battle of Evesham,

circuit with the rest of his forces, purposed to attack the enemy and death of

on the other quarter. Leicester was long deceived by this

Leicester. 4th August.

stratagem, and took one division of Edward’s army for his

friends; but at last, perceiving his mistake, and observing the great superiority and excellent disposition of the royalists, he exclaimed, that they had learned from him the art of war; adding, “The Lord have mercy on our souls, for I see our bodies are the prince’s.” The battle immediately began, though on very unequal terms. Leicester’s army, by living in the mountains of Wales without bread, which was not then much used among the inhabitants, had been extremely weakened by sickness and desertion, and was soon broken by the victorious royalists; while his Welsh allies, accustomed only to a desultory kind of war, immediately took to flight, and were pursued with PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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great slaughter. Leicester himself, asking for quarter, was slain in the heat of the action, with his eldest son Henry, Hugh le Despenser, and about one hundred and sixty knights, and many other gentlemen of his party. The old king had been purposely placed by the rebels in the front of the battle; and being clad in armour, and thereby not known by his friends, he received a wound, and was in danger of his life: But crying out
I am Henry of Winchester, your king,
he was saved; and put in a place of safety by his son, who flew to his rescue.

The violence, ingratitude, tyranny, rapacity and treachery of the earl of Leicester, gave a very bad idea of his moral character, and make us regard his death as the most fortunate event, which, in this conjuncture, could have happened to the English nation: Yet must we allow the man to have possessed great abilities, and the appearance of great virtues, who, though a stranger, could, at a time when strangers were the most odious, and the most universally decried, have acquired so extensive an interest in the kingdom, and have so nearly paved his way to the throne itself. His military capacity, and his political craft, were equally eminent: He possessed the talents both of governing men and conducting business: And though his ambition was boundless, it seems neither to have exceeded his courage nor his genius; and he had the happiness of making the low populace, as well as the haughty barons, co-operate towards the success of his selfish and dangerous purposes. A prince of greater abilities and vigour than Henry might have directed the talents of this nobleman either to the exaltation of his throne, or to the good of his people: But the advantages given to Leicester, by the weak and variable administration of the king, brought on the ruin of royal authority, and produced great confusions in the kingdom, which however in the end preserved and extremely improved national liberty, and the constitution. His popularity, even after his death, continued so great, that, though he was excommunicated by Rome, the people believed him to be a saint; and many miracles were said to be wrought upon his tomb.
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The victory of Evesham, with the death of Leicester, proved Settlement of the

decisive in favour of the royalists, and made an equal, though an government.

opposite impression on friends and enemies, in every part of England. The king of the Romans recovered his liberty: The other prisoners of the royal party were not only freed, but courted, by their keepers: Fitz-Richard, the seditious mayor of London, who had marked out forty of the most wealthy citizens for slaughter, immediately stopped his hand on receiving intelligence of this great event: And almost all the castles, garrisoned by the barons, hastened to make their submissions, and to open their gates to the king. The isle of Axholme alone, and that of Ely, trusting to the strength of their situation, ventured to make resistance; but were at last reduced, as well as the castle of Dover, by the valour and activity of prince Edward.
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Adam de Gourdon, a courageous 1266.

baron, maintained himself during some time in the forests of Hampshire, committed depredations in the neighbourhood, and obliged the prince to lead a body of troops into that country against him. Edward attacked the camp of the rebels; and being transported by the ardour of battle, leaped over the trench with a few followers, and encountered Gourdon in single combat. The victory was long disputed between these valiant combatants; but ended at last in the prince’s favour, who wounded his antagonist, threw him from his horse, and took him prisoner. He not only PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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gave him his life; but introduced him that very night to the queen at Guilford, procured him his pardon, restored him to his estate, received him into favour, and was ever after faithfully served by him.
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A total victory of the sovereign over so extensive a rebellion commonly produces a revolution of government, and strengthens, as well as enlarges, for some time, the prerogatives of the crown: Yet no sacrifices of natonal liberty were made on this occasion; the Great Charter remained still inviolate; and the king, sensible that his own barons, by whose assistance alone he had prevailed, were no less jealous of their independance than the other party, seems thence forth to have more carefully abstained from all those exertions of power, which had afforded so plausible a pretence to the rebels. The clemency of this victory is also remarkable: No blood was shed on the scaffold: No attainders, except of the Mountfort family, were carried into execution: And though a parliament, assembled at Winchester, attainted all those, who had borne arms against the king, easy compositions were made with them for their lands;
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and the highest sum, levied on the most obnoxious offenders, exceeded not five years rent of their estate. Even the earl of Derby, who again rebelled, after having been pardoned and restored to his fortune, was obliged to pay only seven years’ rent, and was a second time restored. The mild disposition of the king, and the prudence of the prince, tempered the insolence of victory, and gradually restored order to the several members of the state, disjointed by so long a continuance of civil wars and commotions.

The city of London, which had carried farthest the rage and animosity against the king, and which seemed determined to stand upon its defence after almost all the kingdom had submitted, was, after some interval, restored to most of its liberties and privileges; and Fitz-Richard, the mayor, who had been guilty of so much illegal violence, was only punished by fine and imprisonment. The countess of Leicester, the king’s sister, who had been extremely forward in all attacks on the royal family, was dismissed the kingdom with her two sons, Simon and Guy, who proved very ungrateful for this lenity. Five years afterwards, they assassinated, at Viterbo in Italy, their cousin Henry d’Allmaine, who at that very time was endeavouring to make their peace with the king; and by taking sanctuary in the church of the Franciscans, they

escaped the punishment due to so great an enormity.m

The merits of the earl of Glocester, after he returned to his 1267.

allegiance, had been so great, in restoring the prince to his liberty, and assisting him in his victories against the rebellious barons, that it was almost impossible to content him in his demands; and his youth and temerity, as well as his great power, tempted him, on some new disgust, to raise again the flames of rebellion in the kingdom. The mutinous populace of London, at his instigation, took to arms; and the prince was obliged to levy an army of 30,000 men, in order to suppress them. Even this second rebellion did not provoke the king to any act of cruelty; and the earl of Glocester himself escaped with total impunity. He was only obliged to enter into a bond of 20,000 marks, that he should never again be guilty of rebellion: A strange method of enforcing the laws, and a proof of the dangerous independance of the barons in those ages! These potent nobles were, from the danger of the precedent, averse to the execution of the laws of forfeiture and felony against any of their PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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fellows; though they could not with a good grace refuse to concur in obliging them to fulfil any voluntary contract and engagement, into which they had entered.

The prince finding the state of the kingdom tolerably composed, 1270.

was seduced, by his avidity for glory, and by the prejudices of the age, as well as by the earnest solicitations of the king of France, to undertake an

expedition against the infidels in the Holy Land;n
and he endeavoured previously to settle the state in such a manner, as to dread no bad effects from his absence. As the formidable power and turbulent disposition of the earl of Glocester gave him apprehensions, he insisted on carrying him along with him, in consequence of a vow, which that nobleman had made to undertake the same voyage: In the mean time, he obliged him to resign some of his castles, and to enter into a new bond not to disturb

the peace of the kingdom.o
He sailed from England with an army; and arrived in Lewis’s camp before Tunis in Africa, where he found that monarch already dead, from the intemperance of the climate and the fatigues of his enterprize. The great, if not only weakness of this prince in his government was the imprudent passion for crusades; but it was this zeal chiefly that procured him from the clergy the title of St.

Lewis, by which he is known in the French history; and if that appellation had not been so extremely prostituted, as to become rather a term of reproach, he seems, by his uniform probity and goodness, as well as his piety, to have fully merited the title.

He was succeeded by his son, Philip, denominated the Hardy; a prince of some merit, though much inferior to that of his father.

Prince Edward, not discouraged by this event, continued his 1271.

voyage to the Holy Land, where he signalized himself by acts of valour: Revived the glory of the English name in those parts: And struck such terror into the Saracens, that they employed an assassin to murder him, who wounded him in the arm, but perished in the attempt.
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Meanwhile, his absence from England was attended with many of those pernicious consequences, which had been dreaded from it. The laws were not executed: The barons oppressed the common people with impunity:
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They gave shelter on their estates to bands of robbers, whom they employed in committing ravages on the estates of their enemies: The populace of London returned to their usual licentiousness: And the old king, unequal to the burthen of public affairs, called aloud for his gallant son to return,
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and to assist him in swaying that scepter, which was ready to drop from his feeble and irresolute hands.

At last, overcome by the cares of government, and the infirmities 1272. 16th Nov.

of age, he visibly declined, and he expired at St. Edmondsbury in Death and character the 64th year of his age, and 56th of his reign; the longest reign of the king.

that is to be met with in the English annals. His brother, the king of the Romans (for he never attained the title of emperor) died about seven months before him.

The most obvious circumstance of Henry’s character is his incapacity for government, which rendered him as much a prisoner in the hands of his own ministers and favourites, and as little at his own disposal, as when detained a captive in the hands of his enemies. From this source, rather than from insincerity or treachery, arose his negligence in observing his promises; and he was too easily induced, for the sake of present convenience, to sacrifice the lasting advantages arising from the trust and PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)

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confidence of his people. Hence too were derived his profusion to favourites, his attachment to strangers, the variableness of his conduct, his hasty resentments, and his sudden forgiveness and return of affection. Instead of reducing the dangerous power of his nobles, by obliging them to observe the laws towards their inferiors, and setting them the salutary example in his own government; he was seduced to imitate their conduct, and to make his arbitrary will, or rather that of his ministers, the rule of his actions. Instead of accommodating himself, by a strict frugality, to the embarrassed situation in which his revenue had been left, by the military expeditions of his uncle, the dissipations of his father, and the usurpations of the barons; he was tempted to levy money by irregular exactions, which, without enriching himself, impoverished, at least disgusted his people. Of all men, nature seemed least to have fitted him for being a tyrant; yet are there instances of oppression in his reign, which, though derived from the precedents, left him by his predecessors, had been carefully guarded against by the Great Charter, and are inconsistent with all rules of good government. And on the whole we may say, that greater abilities, with his good dispositions, would have prevented him from falling into his faults; or with worse dispositions, would have enabled him to maintain and defend them.

This prince was noted for his piety and devotion, and his regular attendance on public worship; and a saying of his on that head is much celebrated by ancient writers. He was engaged in a dispute with Lewis IX. of France, concerning the preference between sermons and masses: He maintained the superiority of the latter, and affirmed, that he would rather have one hour’s conversation with a friend, than hear twenty the most elaborate discourses, pronounced in his praise.
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