Henry III

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Henry III

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Henry III 1207-72, king of England (1216-72), son and successor of King John.

Reign

Early Years

Henry became king under a regency; William Marshal, 1st earl of Pembroke , and later Pandulf acted as chief of government, while Peter des Roches was the king's guardian. At the time of Henry's accession, England was torn by civil war and partially occupied by the French prince Louis (later King Louis VIII ). In 1217, however, the French were defeated and withdrew. Some of the English barons, Louis's former allies, continued to cause trouble; but Hubert de Burgh , chief justiciar and the greatest power in the government after 1221, gradually restored order.

Between the Barons and the Church

In 1227, Henry was granted full powers of kingship, and in 1230, with typical willfulness and against the advice of the justiciar, he led an unsuccessful expedition to Gascony and Brittany. In 1232 the king dismissed Hubert de Burgh, and for the next two years the government was controlled by Peter des Roches and his nephew (or son), Peter des Rivaux. This administration, which consisted of trained civil servants (many of them Poitevin), was hated by the barons, and a baronial revolt (1233-34) forced Henry to dismiss it.

Henry then assumed direct control of the government, but despite frequent protests from the barons and from his brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall , the king continued to surround himself with French favorites, including relatives of Eleanor of Provence (whom he married in 1236) and his own Poitevin half brothers. The latter involved him in a disastrous campaign (1242) to expel Louis IX of France from Poitou.

In 1238, Henry had weathered a storm of baronial protest caused by the secret marriage of his sister, Eleanor, to Simon de Montfort , earl of Leicester. The king subsequently (1248) sent Montfort to restore English authority in Gascony, but he totally alienated his former friend when he recalled him (1252) to answer charges of unjust administration.

In 1254, Henry accepted the papal offer of the kingdom of Sicily for his younger son, Edmund, earl of Lancaster (see Lancaster, house of ), agreeing in return to finance the conquest of the kingdom from the Hohenstaufen dynasty. However, the English barons, disturbed by the king's subservience to the papacy (which had already resulted in large papal exactions and an influx of foreign clergy into England) and angry that they had not been consulted, refused the necessary funds. Threatened by the pope with excommunication, Henry was forced to come to terms with the baronial opposition, now led by Simon de Montfort. The king accepted its plan for conciliar government set forth in the Provisions of Oxford (1258), supplemented by the Provisions of Westminster (1259).

Divisions in the baronial party enabled Henry to repudiate (1261) the provisions, with papal sanction, and in 1263 war broke out (see Barons' War ). An attempt to have Louis IX of France arbitrate the dispute led to the Mise of Amiens (1264), a declaration completely in the king's favor, and the war was renewed. Montfort won (1264) the battle of Lewes and summoned (1265) his famous representative Parliament . However, the heir to the throne, Prince Edward (later Edward I ), led the royal troops to decisive victory at Evesham (1265), where Simon de Montfort was killed, and by 1267 the barons had capitulated. From 1267 on, Prince Edward actually ruled the realm, and Henry was king in name only.

Legacy

Henry III has suffered at the hands of many historians, in part, because of the hostility of contemporary chroniclers. His long reign, however, showed progress in several respects. Learning flourished, particularly at Oxford, where Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon inspired others by their intense pursuit of knowledge and their championing of the natural sciences. Many magnificent buildings were erected, including Salisbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey. Commerce and industry thrived, even though interrupted by warfare.

Bibliography

See F. M. Powicke, King Henry III and the Lord Edward (1947, repr. 1966) and The Thirteenth Century (2d ed. 1962).

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Henry III

A Dictionary of World History | 2000 | © A Dictionary of World History 2000, originally published by Oxford University Press 2000. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Henry III (1207–72) King of England (1216–72). He succeeded his father JOHN at the age of nine. During his minority (until 1227) England was managed by William Marshal, the first Earl of Pembroke, Peter des Roches, Bishop of Winchester, and Hubert de Burgh. Henry's personal rule soon proved his general incompetence as king, his preoccupation with aesthetic pursuits, including the rebuilding of Westminster Abbey, and his preference for foreign advisers and favourites. He received an early warning of baronial frustration when a rebellion broke out (1233–34) led by Richard Marshal, the third Earl of Pembroke. In 1258, one of the king's French favourites, Simon de MONTFORT, led the English barons to draft a series of reforms (the Provisions of Oxford). While appearing to accept these, Henry sought to recover his independence. The ensuing civil war (1264–67) led to the temporary control of England by de Montfort following his victory at Lewes (1264). Although Henry recovered control after the Battle of Evesham (1265), where de Montfort was killed, he became increasingly dependent upon his son, the future EDWARD I.

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Henry III

The Oxford Companion to British History | 2002 | | © The Oxford Companion to British History 2002, originally published by Oxford University Press 2002. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Henry III (1207–72), king of England (1216–72). Henry was one of the most cultured monarchs ever to sit on the English throne. He seems to have been inspired by artistic beauty for its own sake, judging by his recorded payments for a wide range of objects—silver, gold, and enamel work, hangings and embroideries, and frescos for the royal palaces. Equally, it is plain that he chose to sink large sums into works of art to give visual expression to his heightened conception of monarchy and dynasty. Nowhere is this more apparent than Westminster abbey, which he established as the royal necropolis. Huge sums were spent on its rebuilding after 1245, despite an ever-worsening overall financial position. Henry also brought a new mystique and theatricality to English monarchy. He loved display and liturgical ceremony, as when he processed to Westminster abbey in 1247 personally bearing his newly acquired relic of the Holy Blood. He increased the number of occasions when the Laudes regiae, the liturgy in praise of the ruler, were to be chanted; and he deliberately promoted the cult of Edward the Confessor, his beloved patron saint, having his own tomb in Westminster abbey placed within the aura of sanctity of Edward's tomb.

Henry's conception of monarchy looked back to the period before Magna Carta when kingship was untrammelled and unlimited, in theory if not in practice, and he may well have sought to counter the dramatic growth in constitutional ideas by deliberately emphasizing the aura of kingship. The traumatic experiences of his early years—the bringing down of his father, king John, French invasion and civil war, tutelage by baronial regency council—probably propelled him in this direction as well. He certainly had consistently a definite set of views which held as axiomatic that a king is free in his sovereignty to do as he will, be it appointment or removal of ministers and officials, or conduct of foreign policy. In so doing, Henry was ignoring the new realities following Magna Carta and this contributed to that series of crises which characterize his reign after his personal rule began in 1232. It culminated in the demand for radical reform in 1258 and the imposition of the provisions of Oxford, the prelude to the so-called Barons' War that tore the country apart until the defeat of Simon de Montfort at the battle of Evesham (1265). But it was by no means only, even chiefly, constitutional issues that were at stake, in 1258 or before. Recent research has shown how much friction was generated by very real political issues, of patronage, for example, and Henry's protection of his kinsmen and favourites from justice. Protest against his hated half-brothers, the Lusignans, who came to England after 1247, lay at the heart of the sworn baronial confederacy of 1258.

Henry was particularly vulnerable in 1258 because he faced imminent excommunication if he did not meet the gigantic debt he owed to the papacy, incurred when he accepted the grant of the kingdom of Sicily to his son Edmund in 1254. This was the culmination of a foreign policy that became ever more grandiose. At first, Henry's chief goal was the recovery of those parts of the Angevin empire lost under John. This was entirely reasonable. It was not inevitable that they would never be recovered, and as an Angevin Henry was dynastically impelled to seek to regain his inheritance and restore the honour of his lineage. But for a variety of reasons none of the expeditions dispatched to France succeeded, and the odds stacked against Henry steadily rose as the power of Louis IX of France and his brothers, installed in the former Angevin territories, increased. His failure led him into a wider European strategy that involved a network of foreign allies, including Emperor Frederick II, who married Henry's sister Isabella in 1236, and the Savoyards, the powerful kinsmen of Eleanor of Provence, whom Henry himself married in 1236. When Frederick was deposed by Pope Innocent IV in 1245, Henry was drawn into an attempt to secure the different parts of the imperial inheritance. He accepted the crown of Sicily for Edmund, he encouraged his brother Richard of Cornwall to accept the kingdom of Germany in 1257, and there are signs that he briefly toyed with the idea of extending his influence to the east Mediterranean through a marriage alliance involving Edmund and the Lusignan rulers of Cyprus, who also had claims to Jerusalem.

None of these schemes came to anything, and the huge costs incurred in the pursuit of Sicily, by stimulating the events of 1258, forced him to abandon them. In 1259, too, he finally accepted reality and agreed to the treaty of Paris, whereby he renounced his French claims as well. Henry's capacity to play for very high stakes, and yet lose, is truly remarkable.

S. D. Lloyd

Bibliography

Carpenter, D. A. , The Reign of Henry III (1996);
Clanchy, M. T. , England and its Rulers 1066–1272 (Glasgow, 1983);
Powicke, F. M. , King Henry III and the Lord Edward (2 vols., Oxford, 1947).

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JOHN CANNON. "Henry III." The Oxford Companion to British History. Oxford University Press. 2002. Encyclopedia.com. 14 Nov. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

JOHN CANNON. "Henry III." The Oxford Companion to British History. Oxford University Press. 2002. Encyclopedia.com. (November 14, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O110-HenryIII.html

JOHN CANNON. "Henry III." The Oxford Companion to British History. Oxford University Press. 2002. Retrieved November 14, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O110-HenryIII.html

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