Henry III of England

King of England (r. 1216-1272)

• Born: October 1, 1207
• Birthplace: Winchester, Hampshire, England
• Died: November 16, 1272
• Place of death: London, England

Henry's reign witnessed the growing role of the community of the realm in the rule of England. By the end of Henry's reign, the rule of England could no longer be exercised by the king alone.

Early Life

Henry III was the eldest son of the luckless King John (who died in 1216) and his queen, Isabella of Angoulěme. Little is known of Henry's childhood before he became king, but he was crowned at Gloucester in October of 1216, at nine years of age. He inherited a turbulent kingdom. The last years of his father's reign had been roiled by baronial rebellion and by war with France over the possessions on the Continent claimed by the king of England. At Henry's coronation, England was subject to sporadic civil war, caused in large part by the ephemeral ambitions of Prince Louis of France to seize the throne of England. Henry, however, had the support of the principal magnates of England, and, unlike King John, had no enemies. The king's supporters, led by his regent William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, combined military victory (in 1217) with twice reissuing the Magna Carta (in 1216 and 1217) to ensure the crown and the kingdom to the boy king. The period of the marshal's regency, which terminated with his death in 1219, is chiefly notable for enlarging the share of the nobility in the governance of the realm.

Henry's minority continued until 1227, a period characterized, after the death of the regent, by conflict between royalist ministers and loyalist barons for control of the young king and of the kingdom. The most important constitutional act of the mid-1220's was the royal reissue of the Magna Carta in 1225; the first clear instance of a grant of taxation in return for a royal boon, this version of the Great Charter was that which was confirmed by future kings in times of apparent constitutional crisis.

Henry had the appearance and manner of a monarch. He was of medium height and athletic in build. The young king was generous, intelligent, a man interested in scholarship, and a patron of architecture a chiefly royal form of secular patronage in the Middle Ages because of its expense. He was very religious, although the traditional view that he was under the control of the Papacy needs minor qualification. Henry had negative qualities as well: He was profligate with money, he could be bullheaded, was often deficient as a judge of character, and, in the earlier years of his reign, was too subservient to the ambitions and to the policies of Poitevin advisers, such as Peter des Roches and Peter des Rivaux.

Life's Work

From the end of Henry's minority in 1227 until the great rebellion of 1258, Henry struggled to rule as well as to reign. His program was characterized by a growing disillusionment with papal authority as expressed in England and by firm, if at times thwarted, attempts to defend his prerogative powers against encroachment by lords both great and small in political status. The 1230's were testing years. Henry's political problems were exacerbated, and their principles often obscured, because of the opposition between his natural counselors, the baronage of England, and the influence of Provençal and Savoyard nobles who had flocked to the English court in the wake of his queen, Eleanor of Provençe, who became his wife in 1236. The traditional counselors of the king bitterly resented the intrusion of men unfamiliar with English ways into the intimate circle of the king's advisers. Yet the magnates were unable to produce a program that would exclude the Frenchmen from positions of political influence over the king until the Paper Constitution of 1244, a document that, although it came to nothing in practical terms, asserted the right of the community of the realm to participate in all policies of the government that affected the kingdom as well as the king.

Henry's problems were complicated by foreign affairs. The confusion of Henry's failed policy in Wales, and the worsening of Anglo-Scottish relations, eventuated in a victory for Wales, under Henry's son Edward I, and in a bleeding sore in the case of Scotland (a problem that lasted until the early eighteenth century). Moreover, Henry's attempts to recover lands in France north of the Loire, which had been lost under King John, were unsuccessful. Although the English made several concerted attempts to regain the territories, attempts that were to continue through the ultimately unsuccessful Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453), the lands had been irrevocably lost under King John's rule. The period of conflict in the reign of Henry III ended with the Treaty of Paris in 1259, through which Henry recognized the loss of the Angevin lands north of the Loire, while Louis IX acknowledged Henry's dominion over Gascony and some of Aquitaine. Furthermore, Henry's feckless attempts to make his brother Richard of Cornwall the ruler of Sicily, in response to papal invitation, did not enhance his reputation with his barons.

Foreign failures, then, aggravated internal relations between the king and his barons. The seminal problem of contention in internal politics from the mid-1240's to the end of the reign was this: Could the barons control the power of the king? This effort failing, how could they assume the powers of kingship themselves? By what means could the barons force the king to take their counsel, because the king must be free to choose his own counselors? Not for the first time in English history, the fundamental issues had been raised: What is the role of the king and what that of his chosen counselors in the rule of England? What is the role of the community of the realm? How were these roles to be defined, and by whom, and how were the defined relationships to be enforced? Before 1258, the problem was explored primarily in a political context; in and after 1258, relatively peaceful means of addressing the problem of governance having failed, England was plunged into civil war. The feudal regime was becoming archaic; hence, its modes of operation were no longer relevant to the changing conditions of the mid-thirteenth century. Yet, no one in a position of power really understood this fact, nor did the polity have a clearly grasped idea of discovering new institutions and new political tools to replace old ways that no longer reflected reality. Thus, in 1258, England fell into civil war.

The Provisions of Oxford of that year, proposed by the baronial opposition to the king, attempted in essence to place kingship in a conjoint form of rule with the community of the realm. This movement in government included, for the first time, a stratum ranking in social status below the great landed lords, the class that in the Tudor period would be known as the gentry, those substantial people whose rise to political influence reflected their economic importance. The five years preceding the baronial rebellion, which was to be led by Simon de Montfort, earl of Leicester, were characterized by great uncertainty both in the baronial and in the royal advocates’ positions. Neither side had been able to formulate a definite position in the question of who ruled England, and how. Yet the weight of precedent fortified the royal view of monarchial powers. On the other hand, emerging political realities dictated the participation of the wider community in the governance of England. Political compromise failed; the result was therefore a civil war over the right to rule in and over England. The civil war continued until its putative end by the Mise of Amiens in 1264, an arbitration that was delivered by Louis IX of France. Louis judged Henry III in the right in the dispute. Not surprisingly, the rebel barons under Montfort's leadership refused the arbitration's result, and civil war again broke out, seemingly ending with the victory of the Montfort party at the Battle of Lewes (1264). Yet the immediately following Mise of Lewes, which again included gentry in a program to reform the realm, failed to provide a solution to the seemingly intractable political problems of the reign. War again erupted, and Montfort was killed at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. With the death of its leader, the reform movement collapsed.

The last seven years of Henry III's reign, in which the actual ruler of England was his son, the Lord Edward (to succeed as King Edward I in 1272), were characterized by political compromise. The Dictum of Kenilworth (1266) encompassed the reissue of the Magna Carta, the redress of some specific grievances of the opposition, and a strong statement of the monarch's right to exercise royal authority “without impediment or contradiction.” The cause of Henry's death is unknown.

Significance

When Henry III died, he could have regarded his reign with some satisfaction. Despite the internal and external problems of his reign, he had brought his stewardship of the realm to a conclusion that would have appeared unlikely when he acceded to the throne in 1216: The monarchy's powers were undiminished, although now exercised in cooperation with the magnates and with the middling knights, by now expressed in Parliament. The developments of this reign saw the king of England well on the way to being a constitutional monarch, a ruler whose willfulness was restrained by institutionalized opposition. “Loyal opposition” in any other nation of the thirteenth century would have appeared to be an oxymoron. In addition, Henry was the first English king to be a significant patron of architecture; Westminster Abbey is his greatest monument.

Plantagenet Kings of England, 1154-1399

Reign

• Monarch

1154-1189

• Henry II (with Eleanor of Aquitaine, r. 1154-1189)

1189-1199

• Richard I the Lion-Hearted

1199-1216

• John I Lackland

1216-1272

• Henry III

1272-1307

• Edward I Longshanks

1307-1327

• Edward II (with Isabella of France, r. 1308-1330)

1327-1377

• Edward III (with Philippa of Hainaut, r. 1327-1369)

1377-1399

• Richard II

Bibliography

Carpenter, D. A. “King Henry’s ’Statute’ Against Aliens: July 1263.” English Historical Review 107, no. 425 (1992). Presents the text of the provisions, which includes a declaration for the exclusion from England of foreign-born persons and for the future governing of England by native-born men only.

Clanchy, Michael T. England and Its Rulers, 1066-1272: Foreign Lordship and National Identity. Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble Books, 1983. Covers the non-English rule of England.

Denholm-Young, Noël. Richard of Cornwall. New York: William Salloch, 1947. Argues that Henry III’s younger brother “influenced, and at times of crisis dominated, his brother’s policy.”

Powicke, F. M. The Battle of Lewes, 1264: Its Place in English History. Lewes, England: Friends of Lewes Society, 1964. Assesses the importance of this battle in broad historical context political, constitutional, and military and stresses the role of Montfort.

Powicke, F. M. King Henry III and the Lord Edward. 2 vols. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1947. A standard narrative study of the reign and of the importance of Lord Edward’s influence in its closing years.

Powicke, Maurice. The Thirteenth Century, 1216-1307. 2d ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1962. An excellent study of British history during the reign of Henry III.

Treharne, Reginald F. The Baronial Plan of Reform, 1258-1263. 1932. Reprint. Manchester, England: Manchester University Press, 1971. Traces in depth the history of the Barons’ War, emphasizing its political and constitutional aspects.

Treharne, Reginald F. Simon de Montfort and Baronial Reform: Thirteenth-Century Essays. Edited by E. B. Fryde. London: Hambleton Press, 1968. The principal concentration of these essays is on the period 1258-1264, the reign’s crisis years.

Treharne, Reginald F., and I. J. Sanders. Documents of the Baronial Movement of Reform and Rebellion, 1258-1267. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1973. Reprints documents in Latin and Anglo-Norman French, with English translations and commentaries.

Valente, Claire. The Theory and Practice of Revolt in Medieval England. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003. Addresses in its opening chapter the study of revolts and also discusses theories of resistance, the Magna Carta, and the concept of the community of the realm.

Weiler, Björn K. U., ed. England and Europe in the Reign of Henry III (1216-1272). Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2002. Looks at Henry’s reign as it affected England and the Continent.