Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/287

1225.] force; Waleran complained. The king ordered his brother to do justice to the man, and restore him to his rights; the earl said that he would not submit to these orders till the cause should be decided against him by the judgment of his pewrs. Henry replied that it was first necessary to reinstate Waleran in possession before the cause could be tried, and rwiterated his orders to the earl. We may judge of the state of the government, when this affair had nearly produced a civil war. The Earl of Cornwall, finding Henry peremptory in his commands, associated himself with the young Earl of Pembroke, who had married his sister, and who was displeased on account of the king's requiring him to deliver up some royal castles which were in his custody. These two malcontents took into the confederacy the Earls of Chester, Warrenue, Gloucester, Hereford, Warwick, and Ferrers, who were all disgusted on a like account. They assembled an army, which the king had not the power or courage to resist; and he was obliged to give his brother satisfaction by grants of much greater importance than the manor, which had been the first ground of the quarrel.

The character of the king, as he grew to man's estate, became every day better known, and he was found in every respect unqualified for maintaining a proper sway among those turbulent barons whom the feudal constitution subjected to his authority. Gentle, humane, and merciful even to a fault, he seems to have been steady in no other circumstance of his character, but to have received every impression from those who surrounded him and whom he loved, for the time, with the most imprudent and most unreserved affection. Without activity or vigour, he was unfit to conduct war; without policy or art, he was ill fitted to maintain peace; his resentments, though hasty and violent, were not dreaded, while he was found to drop them with such facility; his friendships were little valued, because they were neither derived from choice nor maintained with constancy. A proper pageant of state in a regular monarchy, where his ministers could have conducted all affairs in his name and by his authority; but too feeble in those disorderly times to sway a sceptre, whose weight depended entirely on the firmness of the hand which held it. The ablest and most virtuous monitor that ever Henry possessed was Hubert de Burgh, a man who had been faithful to the crown in the most difficult and dangerous times, and yet showed no desire, even when at the height of power, to enslave or oppress the people.

The only exceptionable part of his conduct is that mentioned by Matthew Paris—of the credibility of which, however, grave doubts may be urged—namely, that it was by his advice the forest charter was annulled a concession so wise in itself, and so passionately desired both by the nobility and people.

Hubert's share in this unpopular act is most unlikely, both from his character and the circumstances of the times; and there is every reason to doubt its reality, especially as it is asserted by no other historian. This great man, while he enjoyed his authority, had an entire ascendancy over Henry, and was loaded with honours and favours beyond any other subject. Besides acquiring the property of many castles and mayors, he married the eldest sister of the King of Scots, was created Earl of Kent, and, by an unusual concession, was made chief justiciary of England for life; yet Henry, in a sudden caprice, threw off this faithful minister, and exposed him to the violent persecutions of his enemies. Among other frivolous crimes objected to him, he was accused of gaining the king's affections by enchantment, and of purloining from the royal treasury a gem, which had the virtue to render the wearer invulnerable, and of sending this valuable curiosity to the Prince of Wales. The nobility, who hated Hubert on account of his zeal in resuming the rights and possessions of the crown, no sooner saw the opportunity favourable, than they inflamed the king's animosity against him, and pushed him to seek the total ruin of his minister. Hubert took sanctuary in a church; the king ordered him to be dragged from thence. He recalled those orders; he afterwards renewed them. He was obliged by the clergy to restore him to the sanctuary. He constrained him soon after to surrender himself prisoner, and he confined him in the castle of Devizes. Hubert made his escape, was expelled the kingdom, was again received into favour, recovered a great share of the king's confidence, but never showed any inclination to reinstate himself in power and authority.

The man who succeeded him in the government of the kingdom and the favour of the king was Peter, Bishop of Winchester, a Poitevin by birth—a prelate who had been greatly favoured by John, and was no less distinguished by his arbitrary principles than by his great courage and abilities. He had been nominated justiciary and regent of England by King John, during an expedition which that monarch made into France; and there is little doubt that his illegal and oppressive administration was one of the causes of that combination amongst the barons which finally extorted from the crown the Magna Charta, and laid the foundation of the English constitution.

Henry, though incapable, from the weakness of his character, of pursuing the same violent course as his father had done, inherited all his arbitrary principles, and, by the advice of his new minister, invited over to England a great number of Poitevins and other foreigners, upon whom he conferred offices of considerable trust, as a means of counter-balancing the power of his nobility. Every post was confided to these strangers, who exhausted the revenues of the crown and invaded the rights of the people, till their insolence, which was even more offensive than their power, drew on them the hatred and envy of all classes of men throughout the kingdom.

In this crisis, the barons acted in a manner worthy of the descendants of those who had wrung the charter of English freedom from the hand of the tyrant John. Their first act of open opposition to this odious ministry was to withdraw in a body from parliament, under pretence that they were exposed to danger from the machinations of these foreigners.

When again summoned to attend, they demanded that the king should dismiss them, otherwise, they boldly declared, they would drive both him and them out of the kingdom, and place the crown upon the head of one more worthy to wear it. And when at last they did make their appearance in parliament, it was so well attended, that they seemed in a condition to prescribe laws both to the king and minister.

Peter des Roches had, however, in the meantime found means of sowing dissension amongst them, and found means of bringing over to his party the Earls of Cornwall, Lincoln, and Chester. The patriot barons were disconcerted in their measures. Doubt crept in amongst them; they no longer acted in unity.