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* M. Paris, p. 671. Knyghton, p. 2451.
** Rymer, vol. i. p. 790, 791, etc.
*** Rymer, vol. i. p. 795. Brady’s Appeals, No. 211, 212.
Chron. T. Wykes, p. 63.
All the officers of the crown and of the household were named by him, and the whole authority, as well as arms of the state, was lodged in his hands: he instituted in the counties a new kind of magistracy, endowed with new and arbitrary powers, that of conservators of the peace;[*] his avarice appeared bare-faced, and might induce us to question the greatness of his ambition, at least the largeness of his mind, if we had not reason to think that he intended to employ his acquisitions as the instruments for attaining further power and grandeur. He seized the estates of no less than eighteen barons as his share of the spoil gained in the battle of Lewes: he engrossed to himself the ransom of all the prisoners; and told his barons, with a wanton insolence, that it was sufficient for them that he had saved them by that victory from the forfeitures and attainders which hung over them:[**] he even treated the earl of Glocester in the same injurious manner, and applied to his own use the ransom of the king of the Romans, who in the field of battle had yielded himself prisoner to that nobleman. Henry, his eldest son, made a monopoly of all the wool in the kingdom, the only valuable commodity for foreign markets which it at that time produced.[***] The inhabitants of the cinque ports, during the present dissolution of government, betook themselves to the most licentious piracy, preyed on the ships of all nations, threw the mariners into the sea, and by these practices, soon banished all merchants from the English coasts and harbors. Every foreign commodity rose to an exorbitant price, and woollen cloth, which the English had not then the art of dyeing, was worn by them white, and without receiving the last hand of the manufacturer. In answer to the complaints which arose on this occasion, Leicester replied that the kingdom could well enough subsist within itself, and needed no intercourse with foreigners. And it was found that he even combined with the pirates of the cinque ports, and received as his share the third of their prizes.[****]
* Rymer, vol. i. p. 792.
** Knyghton, p. 2451.
*** Chron. T. Wykes, p. 65.
**** Chron. T. Wykes, p. 6.
No further mention was made of the reference to the king of France, so essential an article in the agreement of Lewes; and Leicester summoned a parliament, composed altogether of his own partisans, in order to rivet, by their authority, that power which he had acquired by so much violence, and which he used with so much tyranny and injustice. An ordinance was there passed, to which the king’s consent had been previously extorted, that every act of royal power should be exercised by a council of nine persons, who were to be chosen and removed by the majority of three, Leicester himself, the earl of Glocester, and the bishop of Chichester.[*] By this intricate plan of government, the sceptre was really put into Leicester’s hands; as he had the entire direction of the bishop of Chichester, and thereby commanded all the resolutions of the council of three, who could appoint or discard at pleasure every member of the supreme council.
But it was impossible that things could long remain in this strange situation. It behoved Leicester either to descend with some peril into the rank of a subject, or to mount up with no less into that of a sovereign; and his ambition, unrestrained either by fear or by principle, gave too much reason to suspect him of the latter intention. Meanwhile he was exposed to anxiety from every quarter; and felt that the smallest incident was capable of overturning that immense and ill-cemented fabric which he had reared. The queen, whom her husband had left abroad, had collected in foreign parts an army of desperate adventurers, and had assembled a great number of ships, with a view of invading the kingdom, and of bringing relief to her unfortunate family. Lewis, detesting Leicester’s usurpations and perjuries, and disgusted at the English barons, who had refused to submit to his award, secretly favored all her enterprises, and was generally believed to be making preparations for the same purpose. An English army, by the pretended authority of the captive king, was assembled on the sea-coast, to oppose this projected invasion;[**] but Leicester owed his safety more to cross winds, which long detained and at last dispersed and ruined the queen’s fleet, than to any resistance which, in their present situation, could have been expected from the English.
* Rymer, vol. i. p. 793. Brady’s Appeals, No. 213.
** Brady’s Appeals, No. 216, 217. Chron. Dunst. vol. i. p
373 M. West, p. 385.
Leicester found himself better able to resist the spiritual thunders which were levelled against him. The pope, still adhering to the king’s cause against the barons, despatched Cardinal Guido as his legate into England, with orders to excommunicate by name the three earls, Leicester, Glocester, and Norfolk, and all others in general, who concurred in the oppression and captivity of their sovereign.[*] Leicester menaced the legate with death if he set foot within the kingdom; but Guido, meeting in France the bishops of Winchester, London, and Worcester, who had been sent thither on a negotiation, commanded them, under the penalty of ecclesiastical censures, to carry his bull into England, and to publish it against the barons. When the prelates arrived off the coast, they were boarded by the piratical mariners of the cinque ports, to whom probably they gave a hint of the cargo which they brought along with them: the bull was torn and thrown into the sea; which furnished the artful prelates with a plausible excuse for not obeying the orders of the legate. Leicester appealed from Guido to the pope in person; but before the ambassadors appointed to defend his cause could reach Rome, the pope was dead; and they found the legate himself, from whom they had appealed, seated on the papal throne, by the name of Urban IV. That daring leader was nowise dismayed with this incident; and as he found that a great part of his popularity in England was founded on his opposition to the court of Rome, which was now become odious, he persisted with the more obstinacy in the prosecution of his measures.
1265.
That he might both increase and turn to advantage his popularity, Leicester summoned a new parliament in London, where he knew his power was uncontrollable; and he fixed this assembly on a more democratical basis than any which had ever been summoned since the foundation of the monarchy. Besides the barons of his own party, and several ecclesiastics, who were not immediate tenants of the crown, he ordered returns to be made of two knights from each shire, and, what is more remarkable, of deputies from the boroughs, an order of men which, in former ages, had always been regarded as too mean to enjoy a place in the national councils.[**] This period is commonly esteemed the epoch of the house of commons in England; and it is certainly the first time that historians speak of any representatives sent to parliament by the boroughs and even in the most particular narratives delivered of parliamentary transactions, as in the trial of Thomas Becket, where the events of each day, and almost of each hour, are carefully recorded by contemporary authors,[***] there is not, throughout the whole, the least appearance of a house of commons.
