A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain (9 page)

The March of Wales was a term applied to the numerous lordships spread along the south Welsh coast and the country’s eastern border with England. Carved out in the wake of the Norman Conquest, and aggressively expanded whenever subsequent opportunity allowed, these lordships were by their nature opposed to the polities of native Wales. At the same time, however, they formed no part of England. Having conquered their lands without royal assistance, the lords of the March had developed the theory that they were not answerable to the English Crown. ‘In the March of Wales,’ so their maxim went, ‘the king’s writ does not run.’ The March, as a consequence, was literally a law unto itself: its lordships were governed like little, self-contained kingdoms, and relations between them and their Welsh neighbours were regulated according to Marcher rules. Most often this meant that matters were decided by force, and Marcher lords therefore tended to be an anachronistic breed. Such men kept their castles in good repair at all times, and their swords within easy reach.
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Llywelyn, in his exuberance, had not only reversed the conquests of Henry III; he had also intruded himself into the March, and thereby provoked the Marchers’ wrath. This made them natural allies for Edward, and before Christmas 1257 several of their number had joined his inner circle. Roger Clifford, for example, was the latest in a long line of lords who took their name from Clifford Castle in Herefordshire, and who took their position as Marchers seriously (one of his relatives once famously forced the bearer of a royal writ to eat it – parchment, wax seal and all). In November 1257 Edward sent Clifford to Carmarthen in order to restock its castle, ready for the renewal of war.
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In these developments there was plenty to alarm the queen and her advisers, who had already been given cause to worry in recent years by the independent direction in which Edward’s activities had been leading him. Not until too late, however, did they perceive the logical outcome of his increasing fraternisation with the violent men of the March and his continuing need for ready cash. Only in the spring of 1258 did it become apparent, when Edward, in return for substantial loans, mortgaged several of his English manors to the Marcher lord of Pembroke and his brother, the bishop-elect of Winchester. Which is to say, when he struck a deal with William and Aymer de Valence, his notorious Lusignan half-uncles. The queen’s worst enemies had become her son’s principal allies.

This was a moment of crisis for Eleanor and her Savoyard circle. They had of late been losing the struggle against the Lusignans for Henry III’s affections. If they lost their long-established control of Edward to their rivals they stood to be permanently undone. The danger hardly required further emphasis, but this was provided anyway, when on 1 April Aymer de Valence sent an armed gang to attack the property of one of the queen’s closest advisers – an act of lawlessness reminiscent of his earlier assault against her uncle Boniface, but worse in that on this occasion one of the defenders died.
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By the time parliament met in Westminster a week later, the Savoyards had decided to take action against the Lusignans. To put their plan into effect they sought additional support among the other aristocrats in attendance and found no shortage of willing and powerful allies. Since their first arrival in England Henry III’s half-brothers had by their arrogant and lawless behaviour made many enemies among the great men of his court. Even while parliament was in session, William de Valence began to quarrel violently with other English lords, openly accusing them of failing to prosecute the war in Wales with sufficient vigour, and going so far as to accuse them of colluding treasonably with the Welsh. Ironically, the men he accused
were
in collusion by this point – but only with each other, and in a plot to remove their accuser and his brothers from England for good.

As the conspiracy around the queen closed ranks, however, she and her Savoyard supporters were evidently advised by their new aristocratic allies that assistance came at a price. Appalling as the Lusignans were, everyone accepted that the responsibility for correcting their behaviour had ultimately rested with the king. Yet for years Henry had failed to curb his half-brothers’ excesses, turning a blind eye to even the gravest of misdemeanours. At the start of the present parliament, when a complaint had been laid before him about Aymer de Valence’s most recent murderous attack, the king had simply brushed the matter aside and tried to make light of the offence.

Moreover, his indulgence of the Lusignans was just one aspect of Henry’s ineptitude. Parliament had been summoned, after all, to discuss how to address the disaster that was still unfolding in Wales, and also the ludicrous business involving Sicily. It was the latter, above all, that really marked Henry down as a
vir simplex
, a man severely lacking in sound judgement. Not only was the scheme inherently unfeasible; the king’s failure to obtain a tax to fund it had led him to demand unreasonably large sums from his local officials. Across the country, sheriffs, foresters and justices were extorting excessive sums; the whole kingdom was paying the price for Henry’s woeful lack of common sense. If, therefore, the king was to be compelled to sort out his half-brothers, he must also be compelled to attend to counsels beyond those of his wife and her uncles, the other architects of the Sicilian scheme. It was a deal that the Savoyards were ready to strike. To preserve their power over Henry and Edward, they were willing to see them both constrained.
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It was the last day of April, and the Easter parliament was drawing to a close. Two days before, the king, still focused on the Sicilian business, had asked for a new tax. Today he would receive his answer. At around nine in the morning Henry was seated in the Great Hall of the Palace of Westminster, when suddenly a multitude of knights and barons appeared before him. They were armed – that is, they were wearing their armour; their swords, as a mark of respect, they had left at the door. The threat of force, though, remained abundantly clear. ‘What is this, my lords?’ asked the trembling king. ‘Am I your captive?’

‘No, my lord, no,’ replied Roger Bigod, the earl of Norfolk, who stood at the front of the crowd. What they wanted, he explained, was the removal of the ‘wretched and intolerable’ Lusignans, and a promise from the king that in future he would attend to the counsels of the company now confronting him.

And the company was formidable. Besides Bigod, two other earls had joined the Savoyard conspiracy. Richard de Clare, earl of Gloucester, was one; Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, was the other. Their status was significant: earls were the only noblemen of rank in thirteenth-century England (there were no dukes or marquises above them), and in total they numbered only about a dozen. But what really mattered in this instance was the raw power on display. Bigod, Clare and Montfort all had extensive estates and, as a consequence, massive incomes, which in turn gave them the wherewithal to recruit and reward others. In addition, Bigod and Montfort had reputations as fearsome warriors. Together, the three earls and their followers formed an irresistible force. Henry saw that he had no choice but to comply with their demands, and swore on the gospels that he would accept their counsels.
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So too did his son. Edward is not identified specifically in the chroniclers’ accounts of the confrontation in Westminster Hall, though he was almost certainly present. Frustratingly, at this crucial time, he has a tendency to shrink from view. What is not in doubt is the strength of his opposition to what was happening. We are specifically told that he swore his oath unwillingly, and his unwillingness must be one of the main reasons that the earls’ plan faltered at its first step. Another was the inherent contradiction between the forceful opening remarks of Roger Bigod and the moderate scheme he and his allies went on to propose. Their plan, it transpired, was to create a committee of twenty-four men that would undertake the reform of the realm, and it was generously conceded that Henry should select half of its members. But in response, the king included the Lusignans among his nominees, thereby making an instant mockery of Bigod’s demand for the brothers’ banishment. ‘The nobles,’ said Matthew Paris, ‘had not yet learned what knot to bind their Proteus with (for it was an arduous and difficult matter).’ Within days talks had broken down entirely, with nothing agreed except that they should reassemble in Oxford in one month’s time.
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The revolution looked to have been botched. Henry went to his birthplace at Winchester, the magnates to their own parts, and each side attempted to muster their strength. All parties were able to maintain the fiction that that they were raising troops for a campaign in Wales, but everyone realised that what was really looming was a civil war. The mood across the whole country was tense. The earls sought to close all the seaports, fearing that the king would try to bring in foreign mercenaries; in London, the city gates were fastened at night with better bars; a week before the Oxford parliament was due to meet, Bigod drew up a new will, naming Clare and Montfort as his executors.
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In the event, however, swords remained sheathed. When the Oxford parliament assembled, around 11 June, it was huge. Local knights had ridden there from all over England, partly in response to the summons to fight in Wales, but also because the word was out – reform of Henry’s unjust and oppressive regime was finally under way. The knights were all in favour; parliament buzzed with petitions for far-reaching change. The king’s party were hopelessly outnumbered, and their opponents buoyed by popular support. Riding the crest of this wave, the earls acted decisively to complete the take-over of royal government that had stalled the previous month. A new, far more radical scheme was proposed, which became known as the Provisions of Oxford. On 22 June a new royal council was created, and almost all of its fifteen members were strong supporters of the original coup. On the same day all royal castles, which were naturally in the hands of the king’s supporters, were transferred to the keeping of what one eyewitness called ‘reliable Englishmen’ – that is, supporters of the earls. Next the new council set out to recover all the lands and castles that Henry had lately granted away as gifts. Ostensibly this was a measure to improve royal finances, but its real aim was to break the power of the Lusignans, who in recent years had been the principal beneficiaries of the king’s bounty. The brothers understood the threat to their position only too well, and swore ‘by the death and wounds of Christ’ that they would not comply, leaving Simon de Montfort to spell out the alternative in stark terms. ‘Make no mistake about it,’ the earl told William de Valence, ‘either you lose your castles, or you lose your head.’
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The only awkward and embarrassing detail in all of this was that the Lusignans still had the backing of the heir to the throne. Far from driving them apart, adversity had pulled Edward and his half-uncles closer together, and together they were determined to resist the revolution that was taking place. As the council moved to strip the brothers of their power, Edward, in what can only be read as a deliberately provocative act, began to appoint them to positions of authority in his own lands. Guy de Lusignan he made keeper of Oléron, an island off the coast of Gascony, while Geoffrey de Lusignan he placed in charge of the duchy as a whole. This was discovered by the council, who took steps to reverse it, but probably not before a fresh twist which further underlined the strength of the bond between the king’s half-brothers and his eldest son. Towards the end of June Edward and the Lusignans stole out of Oxford and fled south. The earls raced after them, fearing that if the brothers reached the coast they might succeed in landing foreign troops. As it was, the fugitives shut themselves up in Wolvesey Castle, Aymer’s episcopal residence in Winchester, and there, in the first week of July, a final stand-off took place. Now offered only imprisonment or banishment, the Lusignans opted for the latter. On the day of their surrender Edward swore an oath to abide by the new scheme of government prescribed by the Provisions of Oxford. Four days later, having been escorted to Dover, his half-uncles sailed across the channel and into exile. The April plot had finally succeeded. The Lusignans were gone, and the king and his son were shackled.
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What had happened at Oxford in June 1258 had been truly revolutionary. Nothing like it had ever been attempted before, and nothing similar would be tried again for another four centuries. The new council imposed on Henry III had assumed almost all of the king’s executive power. From now on the earls and their allies would rule on such crucial matters as the distribution of royal lands and the custody of royal castles. Royal policy would not be concocted by the king and a narrow clique of advisers; it would be decided by the council, in consultation with the rest of the realm in parliament: one of the most important of the Provisions of Oxford laid down that parliament had to meet three times a year for this purpose. Nothing was left to Henry’s initiative except the most routine aspects of government. The king of England had effectively been reduced to a rubber stamp.
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All this affected Edward as well. Like his father, he too was obliged to accept the rule of an advisory committee: a separate body of four men, answerable to the main council, had been created to regulate his affairs. The real worry for Edward, though, was the envisaged duration of the new arrangements, which threatened to remain in place far into the future. The Provisions of Oxford stated that the council would appoint the keepers of royal castles for the next twelve years, a stipulation that would continue to apply even if Henry III died in the meantime. In such circumstances Edward would simply take over his father’s role as the council’s cipher.
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