King John had appointed thirteen ministers to reclaim the kingdom on behalf of his young son Henry. Many had expected Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester and Lincoln, to be regent but he rejected the post so the king’s council appointed William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, to be the kingdom’s regent and the king’s protector.
Prince Louis returned from France with extra troops only to find that Cardinal Guala had declared that the war against the rebels was a crusade. Ranulf de Blondeville, 6th Earl of Chester, was ordered to stop the northern barons marching south to meet Louis. But first he seized Mountsorrel Castle in Leicestershire, because the Quincy family had taken it from his grandfather. Roger de Quincy asked for help to secure the north, so Louis sent half his troops to Lincoln while the rest went to Dover.
Marshal and Blondeville were joined by William de Forz, 3rd Earl of Albemarle, and William de Ferrers, 4th Earl of Derby, and they were let into Lincoln through a side gate. They surprised Louis’ supporters and took many prisoners, including the Earls of Lincoln, Winchester and Hereford. Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford and Gloucester, was also captured and he had to hand over his daughter. William Marshal was around 75 years old when he married Isabel on her seventeenth birthday.
Marshal was preparing to besiege London when Hubert de Burgh attacked and scattered the fleet carrying reinforcements for Louis off the coast at Sandwich on 24 August 1217. He captured the flagship, the Great Ship of Bayonne, and executed the captain, Eustace the Monk. Hubert was later rewarded with the Earldom of Kent and named the king’s chief minister for life. Louis was forced to negotiate a truce and Marshal was criticised for the generosity of the terms afforded to the rebels, but the Magna Carta could be reissued and England was at peace once more.
William Marshal, Earl of Pembroke, did not trust the other barons to be regent, so he offered the post to the papal legate Pandulf Masca as he lay dying in 1219. Pandulf, Peter des Roches and Hubert de Burgh were appointed to run the regency council. William de Forz, 3rd Earl of Albemarle, was eager to revive the barons’ independence so Burgh had him excommunicated and declared a rebel. He then confiscated some of his castles after he attended a forbidden tournament. Burgh tried to retaliate by accusing Roches of treason in 1221 but no one believed him so he was sacked from the regency council. Pandulf was recalled by Rome soon afterwards, leaving Hubert running the government.
Forz was excommunicated a second time when he rebelled again. He was pardoned after promising to go on a crusade but he just rebelled a third time in 1224. He died at sea when he finally headed to the Holy Land.
Hubert de Burgh, 1st Earl of Kent, invaded Wales in 1223 to suppress Llywelyn the Great. William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, and Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford and Gloucester, would defeat the Welsh but Burgh forced them to surrender Cardigan and Carmarthen castles rather than being allowed to keep them, as was the custom. Burgh then made himself more unpopular by trying to resurrect sheriffdoms on behalf of the crown. Peter des Roches led the opposition when he returned from the crusades and Burgh was imprisoned in the Tower in 1232, accused of squandering royal money and lands.
Roches took control of the king’s government and the Poitevin barons took the opportunity to seize lands from Burgh’s followers. Burgh was moved to Devizes Castle but he soon escaped and rebelled with Richard Marshal, 3rd Earl of Pembroke. Roches would invade Marshal’s lands in South Wales but Marshal and Llywelyn drove him back.
Hugh de Lacy started raiding royal estates in Ireland in 1224. William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, was appointed Ireland’s chief minister only to be sacked after two years of campaigning because of his unacceptable treatment of Aodh O’Connor’s supporters in Connacht. The Bishop of Ferns cursed Marshal, prophesying his sons would have no children and his estates would be scattered. The prediction came true when Marshal died in 1231. His five sons died in quick succession and the family estates were divided between his sons-in-law. William de Valence, husband of one of Marshal’s granddaughters, inherited the earldom.
The king’s supporters retaliated by attacking Marshal’s Irish manors so William’s brother, Richard, allied with Llywelyn the Great and sailed across to Ireland. They would defeat Ireland’s new justiciar, Maurice FitzGerald, at the battle of the Curragh in 1234.
Hubert de Burgh, 1st Earl of Kent, was guardian (known as a ward) to the orphaned Richard de Clare, the heir to the Earldoms of Hereford and Gloucester. He married his daughter to Clare without a royal license in 1232 and then protested he had nothing to do with the union. The king then found out the newly-weds were only 12 years old at the time, so Burgh was fined. Margaret died three years later and John de Lacy, 1st Earl of Lincoln, bought the marriage rights to the soon-to-be-wealthy Clare on behalf of his daughter Maud.
Henry III’s brother, Richard of Cornwall, was one of the wealthiest men in Europe. Pope Innocent IV offered to sell the kingdom of Sicily to him in 1236 as he returned from the Holy Land. Richard replied, ‘You might as well say, I make you a present of the moon; step up to the sky and take it down.’ But Henry III was interested and he promised to pay a huge sum and drive Manfred from the kingdom. The king’s 10-year-old son Edmund was invested as the ruler and Pope Alexander IV confirmed the grant of Sicily. But England’s barons refused to contribute to what they scornfully called the ‘Sicilian business’, leaving Henry unable to pay. Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, eventually had to step in to negotiate a retraction on behalf of the king.
Margaret de Quincy inherited the Earldom of Lincoln from her mother Hawise of Chester, and her husband John de Lacy was created the 2nd Earl of Lincoln in 1232. They also paid Henry III for permission to marry their daughter Maud to Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, in 1238. Margaret retained the vast estates when John died and their young son was raised at court. Edmund succeeded the earldom but he died before his mother, leaving her controlling a large part of the Earldom of Pembroke. Margaret made her grandson Henry de Lacy her heir after quarrelling with her daughter.
Simon de Montfort’s father and brother had been killed in the Albigensian Crusade in southern France so he had gone to England to claim his inheritance in exchange for his France estates. He convinced his cousin Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester, to hand over the Earldom of Leicester but it was nine years before he was formally invested by Henry III.
Henry III’s young sister, 16-year-old Eleanor, had sworn a vow of chastity when her husband William Marshal, 2nd Earl of Pembroke, died in 1231, but Simon de Montfort pursued her. They were married in 1238 and the senior barons complained she had been married to a French man of modest rank without their knowledge. Eleanor’s brother, Richard the Earl of Cornwall, was particularly against the marriage, so Henry had to bribe him with gifts. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edmund Rich, condemned the marriage so Montfort went to Rome and was given Pope Gregory IX’s approval, so he could return home and finally receive the long sought-after Earldom of Leicester.
But Montfort took his family connection too far when he named the king as security for a debt he owed to Queen Eleanor’s uncle Thomas of Savoy. A furious Henry threatened to imprison Montfort in the Tower when he found out in August 1239. Henry also revealed how Montfort had secured such a lucrative marriage with the words ‘you seduced my sister and I gave her to you, against my will, to avoid a scandal.’ So Eleanor went into exile in France and Simon went on crusade until the rumours died down.
De Montfort returned from crusade in 1241 and joined Henry’s invasion of Poitou. But he courted trouble again by stating that the king deserved to be thrown in prison when the campaign failed. His next appointment was viceroy of the Duchy of Gascony but there was criticism over his maltreatment of the rebel prisoners so he remained in France for the next twenty years to avoid a controversy.
William de Forz, 4th Earl of Albemarle, claimed the Palatine of Chester could not be divided when he married Christina, co-heiress to the Earldom of Chester. But the royal court disagreed and he had to renounce the earldom in exchange for other lands when Christina died in 1239. Forz secured a second lucrative marriage to 11-year-old Isabella de Redvers, heiress to the Earldom of Devonshire, in 1241. He died in 1260 having seen all of his six children die before him, so Isabella inherited his lands and called herself the Countess of Devon and Albemarle.
Tournaments were exciting sporting events where the nobility could show off their jousting skills and settle arguments. But they were also dangerous events and Henry III had banned them because he did not want his subjects killing one another for sport. But the barons kept jousting in secret and Gilbert Marshal, 4th Earl of Pembroke, was mortally injured at a forbidden tournament in 1241. The king stopped his son Walter claiming his inheritance for some time because he had also attended the tournament.
Henry III had made his brother Richard, Earl of Cornwall, Count of Poitou in 1225, but it was a token appointment because he did not own the area. Ranulf de Blondeville, Earl of Chester and Lincoln, led a failed attempt to secure Poitou (in what is now western France) in 1230 which ended with a three-year truce with the French king.
The teenage Louis IX gave Poitou to his brother Alphonse in 1241 but Henry was determined to recover it. The excuse came when his mother Isabella claimed she had been insulted by Louis’ queen Margaret. Isabella’s husband, Hugh of Lusignan, encouraged his stepsons to attack Poitou and then betrayed Richard’s plans to the French. The invasion was a disaster and Richard had to give up his claim to Poitou in 1243.
Peace was achieved with the Treaty of Paris and Richard’s marriage to Margaret’s sister Sanchia (whom the English called Cynthia); a third sister, Beatrice, married Charles I of Naples. A strong union between England and France had been formed by the marriages of the two kings and their two brothers to the four sisters from Provence. The closeness of the marriages was bound to end in trouble.
John the Scot, Earl of Huntingdon and Chester, died childless in 1237 and his title was given to his brother-in-law Christian. But the estates were divided between his four sisters, leaving Henry III unhappy that ‘so fair a dominion should be divided among women’.
Llywelyn the Great died in 1240 and his son Dafydd died in 1246. Llywelyn’s grandsons, Owain and Llywelyn, agreed to give Henry some of their Welsh lands under the Treaty of Woodstock in 1246. The same year, Henry bought the Marcher estates and gave them to his loyal supporters. The Welsh border was then quiet until Llywelyn ap Gruffudd rebelled in 1256.
Ten-year-old King Alexander III of Scotland married Henry III’s daughter Margaret in 1251. There were rumours the children were being mistreated by their guardians, Robert de Roos and John Balliol, so Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford and Gloucester, was sent to Edinburgh in 1255 to investigate. He dressed in Roos’ colours, tricked his way into the castle, and discovered that the young king and queen were being held separately under house arrest conditions. So he sneaked his men into the castle and seized it. The Scottish barons were furious that their sovereigns had been taken hostage but they were powerless to attack the castle, because their king and queen were inside. Clare later escorted Alexander across the border so he could meet Henry III at Newminster in Northumberland.
Henry III’s brother, Richard, Earl of Cornwall, had great ambitions for himself. He stood against Alfonso X of Castile for the throne of Germany in 1256 and he was crowned ‘King of the Romans’ after bribing Pope Alexander IV and the French King, Louis IX. But after all the trouble Richard went to get the crown, he only made four brief visits to Germany before he died in 1272.
The king had given the French baron William de Valence the important Earldom of Pembroke, and rich estates, making other barons jealous. Rivalry in Wales also led to a quarrel between Valence and Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, who had just returned from self-imposed exile in France.
Montfort and Richard de Clare, Earl of Hertford and Gloucester, led the revolt against Henry III’s government during the Mad Parliament in 1258. They drew up the Oxford Provisions, a series of proposals designed to reform Henry III’s administration. Some, like John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey, initially opposed the reform plan but they eventually took the oath. Others, like William de Valence, refused to comply so he was imprisoned and forced into exile. But Henry successfully divided the barons over the Oxford Provisions and Montfort left the country in disgust when the king revoked his agreement.
Someone was angry about Richard de Clare’s involvement because he and his brother William were poisoned soon after the Provisions were declared. But they survived and their steward Walter de Scotenay was hanged for the crime. A second poisoning attempt at the table of Peter of Savoy, Earl of Richmond, succeeded in killing Clare in 1262.
The barons invited Simon de Montfort back to England in 1263 but they objected to him taking control of the Council of Fifteen. He disrupted parliament so they held him prisoner until Prince Louis of France agreed to arbitrate. Montfort was unable to meet Louis because of a broken leg but he was as surprised as everyone else when the Prince declared the Oxford Provisions to be unlawful and invalid at the beginning of 1264. It gave Henry III control of his kingdom back.
Prince Louis’ plan to cause unrest in England had worked because the royalists and reformists went to war. Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby, attacked Worcester and then joined Simon de Montfort at Gloucester, but Prince Edward escaped after making a truce with de Montfort’s son Henry. Edward got his revenge in March 1264 when he captured Ferrers’ brother William and attacked Ferrers at Chartley Castle. Simon de Montfort then massacred the Jewish community in Leicester while Gilbert de Clare, Earl of Hertford and Gloucester, did the same in Canterbury; both men were denounced as traitors on 12 May.
Simon immediately marched out of London and confronted the royal army at Lewes on 14 May. Prince Edward was winning the battle when the king was driven back and was forced to take refuge in St Pancras Priory. Henry III and Prince Edward were captured and Richard, Earl of Cornwall, was found hiding in a nearby windmill.
Simon de Montfort was now able to rule England and he established a government based on the Oxford Provisions. While Henry retained the title and authority of King, Montfort’s council discussed how to run the country; their decisions were to be approved by parliament. Pope Clement IV was not impressed; he excommunicated the rebels and placed England under an interdict.
The Great Parliament of 1265 formally introduced the Oxford Provisions and they allowed each county and select boroughs to put forward two representatives. They also granted a vote to everyone who owned the freehold of land to an annual rent of forty shillings. It was an early form of democracy but some barons felt the Provisions had gone too far and support for them soon declined.
De Montfort’s plans to release Prince Edward included confiscating Ferrers’ estates and then imprisoning him in the Tower for trespassing on them. But Montfort’s support was waning until even Clare defected to the king’s side. The barons were so enraged by Montfort’s behaviour that Clare even helped Edward escape from Kenilworth Castle in May 1265. The Welsh Marcher Lords rallied around the freed prince and Edward and de Clare captured more of Montfort’s allies at Kenilworth.
At the beginning of August Simon de Montfort thought he saw his son’s army approaching as he marched towards Evesham, but it was Edward’s army carrying captured de Montfort banners. The two armies clashed in the ‘murder of Evesham, for battle it was none’ on 4 August 1265. When Simon heard his son Henry had been killed, he lamented ‘then it is time to die’ and he was slain alongside Peter de Montfort and Hugh Despenser. Simon’s corpse was decapitated, his testicles were cut off and hung across his nose. They were then sent to his wife while his hands and feet were sent to his enemies. The Dictum of Kenilworth ended the Second Baron’s War.
The rebels had been defeated but Henry III needed extra support in the Midlands, so he pardoned Robert de Ferrers, 6th Earl of Derby, and allowed him to return home. The treacherous Ferrers immediately rebelled and Henry III’s nephew Henry had to defeat him at Chesterfield in May 1266. Ferrers then lived as an outlaw for two years before he was captured and imprisoned in Windsor Castle.
The Derby estates were given to Henry’s second son Edmund, and while the Kenilworth Dictum nominally returned them to their owner in 1269, the king had a cunning plan to keep them. Ferrers was kept in Wallingford Castle, leaving him insufficient time to pay his fines, so the administrators transferred them to Edmund of Almain, 2nd Earl of Cornwall. Ferrers would later present his case to Edward I, arguing that the agreement was made under duress, but the transfer was declared legal because it had been signed by the chancellor. The rebellious Robert de Ferrers eventually died in 1279, ending the power of one of England’s most powerful families.
Isabella de Fortibus became one of the richest heiresses in England when she inherited the Earldom of Devonshire from her brother Baldwin de Redvers, and the Earldom of Albemarle from her husband William de Forz. Simon de Montfort, 6th Earl of Leicester, wanted to marry her after defeating the king’s army at the battle of Lewes but she went into hiding. The king then gave his son Edmund Crouchback, 1st Earl of Lancaster, permission to marry 31-year-old Isabella in 1268 but again she refused. Instead she offered her 11-year-old daughter to Edmund instead; young Aveline would die four years later.
The Holy Land was in its final death throes when Henry III’s sons Edward and Edmund left for the Ninth Crusade. Edmund gained a reputation for being a ruthless warrior and was called ‘Crouchback’, meaning the crossed back, because he was a crusader. The brothers headed home when they heard their father had died in 1272 but they did not return until 1274.