Page 7 of 163

* Rymer, vol. i. p. 323. M. Paris, p. 255, 257.

At last, when Innocent IV., in 1245, called a general council at Lyons, in order to excommunicate the emperor Frederic, the king and nobility sent over agents to complain, before the council, of the rapacity of the Romish church. They represented, among many other grievances, that the benefices of the Italian clergy in England had been estimated, and were found to amount to sixty thousand marks[*] a year, a sum which exceeded the annual revenue of the crown itself.[**] They obtained only an evasive answer from the pope; but as mention had been made, before the council, of the feudal subjection of England to the see of Rome, the English agents, at whose head was Roger Bigod, earl of Norfolk, exclaimed against the pretension, and insisted that King John had no right, without the consent of his barons, to subject the kingdom to so ignominious a servitude.[***] The popes, indeed, afraid of carrying matters too far against England, seem thenceforth to have little insisted on that pretension.

This check, received at the council of Lyons, was not able to stop the court of Rome in its rapacity: Innocent exacted the revenues of all vacant benefices, the twentieth of all ecclesiastical revenues without exception; the third of such as were exceeded a hundred marks a year; the half of such as were possessed by non-residents.[****] He claimed the goods of all intestate clergymen;[*****] he pretended a title to inherit all money gotten by usury: he levied benevolences upon the people; and when the king, contrary to his usual practice, prohibited these exactions, he threatened to pronounce against him the same censures which he had emitted against the emperor Frederic.[******]

     * Innocent’s bull in Rymer, vol. i. p. 471, says only fifty
     thousand marks a year.

     ** M. Paris, p. 451. The customs were part of Henry’s
     revenue, and amounted to six thousand pounds a year: they
     were at first email sums paid by the merchants for the use
     of the king’s ware-houses, measures, weights, etc. See
     Gilbert’s History of the Exch p. 214.

     *** M. Paris, p. 460.

     **** M. Paris, p. 480. Ann. Burt. p. 305, 573.

     ****** M. Paris, p. 476.

1255.

But the most oppressive expedient employed by the pope, was the embarking of Henry in a project for the conquest of Naples, or Sicily on this side the Fare, as it was called; an enterprise which threw much dishonor on the king, and involved him, during some years, in great trouble and expense. The Romish church, taking advantage of favorable incidents, had reduced the kingdom of Sicily to the same state of feudal vassalage which she pretended to extend over England; and which, by reason of the distance, as well as high spirit of this latter kingdom, she was not able to maintain. After the death of the emperor Frederic II., the succession of Sicily devolved to Conradine, grandson of that monarch; and Mainfroy, his natural son, under pretence of governing the kingdom during the minority of the prince, had formed a scheme of establishing his own authority. Pope Innocent, who had carried on violent war against the emperor Frederic, and had endeavored to dispossess him of his Italian dominions, still continued hostilities against his grandson; but being disappointed in all his schemes by the activity and artifices of Mainfroy, he found that his own force alone was not sufficient to bring to a happy issue so great an enterprise. He pretended to dispose of the Sicilian crown, both as superior lord of that particular kingdom, and as vicar of Christ, to whom all kingdoms of the earth were subjected; and he made a tender of it to Richard, earl of Cornwall, whose immense riches, he flattered himself, would be able to support the military operations against Mainfroy. As Richard had the prudence to refuse the present,[*] he applied to the king, whose levity and thoughtless disposition gave Innocent more hopes of success; and he offered him the crown of Sicily for his second son, Edmond.[**] Henry, allured by so magnificent a present, without reflecting on the consequences, without consulting either with his brother or the parliament, accepted of the insidious proposal, and gave the pope unlimited credit to expend whatever sums he thought necessary for completing the conquest of Sicily. Innocent, who was engaged by his own interests to wage war with Mainfroy, was glad to carry on his enterprises at the expense of his ally: Alexander IV., who succeeded him in the papal throne, continued the same policy, and Henry was surprised to find himself on a sudden involved in an immense debt, which he had never been consulted in contracting. The sum already amounted to a hundred and thirty-five thousand five hundred and forty-one marks, beside interest;[***] and he had the prospect, if he answered this demand, of being soon loaded with more exorbitant expenses if he refused it, of both incurring the pope’s displeasure, and losing the crown of Sicily, which he hoped soon to have the glory of fixing on the head of his son.

     * M. Paris, p.650.

     ** Rymer, vol. i. p. 502, 512, 530. M. Paris, p. 599, 613

     *** Rymer, vol i. p. 587. Chron. Dunst vol. i. p. 319.

He applied to the parliament for supplies; and that he might be sure not to meet with opposition, he sent no writs to the more refractory barons: but even those who were summoned, sensible of the ridiculous cheat imposed by the pope, determined not to lavish their money on such chimerical projects; and making a pretext of the absence of their brethren, they refused to take the king’s demands into consideration.[*] In this extremity the clergy were his only resource; and as both their temporal and spiritual sovereign concurred in loading them, they were ill able to defend themselves against this united authority.

The pope published a crusade for the conquest of Sicily; and required every one who had taken the cross against the infidels, or had vowed to advance money for that service, to support the war against Mainfroy, a more terrible enemy, as he pretended, to the Christian faith than any Saracen.[**] He levied a tenth on all ecclesiastical benefices in England for three years; and gave orders to excommunicate all bishops who made not punctual payment. He granted to the king the goods of intestate clergymen; the revenues of vacant benefices, the revenues of all non-residents.[***] But these taxations, being levied by some rule, were deemed less grievous than another imposition, which arose from the suggestion of the bishop of Hereford, and which might have opened the door to endless and intolerable abuses.

This prelate, who resided at the court of Rome by a deputation from the English church, drew bills of different values but amounting on the whole to a hundred and fifty thousand five hundred and forty marks on all the bishops and abbots of the kingdom; and granted these bills to Italian merchants, who, it was pretended, had advanced money for the service of the war against Mainfroy.[****] As there was no likelihood of the English prelates’ submitting, without compulsion, to such an extraordinary demand, Rustand the legate was charged with the commission of employing authority to that purpose, and he summoned an assembly of the bishops and abbots whom he acquainted with the pleasure of the pope and of the king.