Hubert de Burgh

English justiciar

• Born: Twelfth century
• Birthplace: Burgh, Norfolk, England
• Died: May 12, 1243
• Place of death: Banstead, Surrey, England

De Burgh served as justiciar throughout the reign of Henry III and strengthened the power and prestige of the monarchy in the face of baronial faction and opposition.

Early Life

Virtually nothing is known of the early life of Hubert de Burgh (HYEW-burt duh BURG). It is probable that he joined the king's service as a knight of the household during the last years of the reign of King Henry II, thereafter serving both King Richard I and King John. In 1200, de Burgh was a member of an embassy sent to Portugal, and in 1201, he became one of the royal chamberlains. After Arthur of Brittany (King John's nephew) was taken captive by the king in August, 1202, de Burgh, according to one chronicler, was his jailer in the castle of Falaise, a source for some of the most dramatic scenes in William Shakespeare's King John (pr. c. 1596-1597). From this time onward, John seems to have regarded de Burgh as one of his most trustworthy servants. During the campaigns that saw the loss of most of John's continental possessions to the French king Philip II, de Burgh was castellan of the great fortress of Chinon on the Loire. From the spring of 1203 until early in 1205, he vigorously resisted the besieging French forces, abandoning his charge only after a final, tremendous onslaught. Even then he continued to fight outside the walls, suffering wounds and then taken prisoner.

During the following decade, de Burgh served John well, and he was well rewarded for his services, receiving grants of several sheriffdoms. By 1214, he had risen to be seneschal (king's steward) of Poitou. During the last stages of the revolt that led to the granting of the Magna Carta in June, 1215, he was constantly with the king. He appears in the preamble to the Great Charter as seneschal of Poitou, and he is said to have been one of the twenty-five barons elected to uphold it. In that same month of June, 1215, de Burgh was appointed justiciar, making him the king's deputy. This office was the highest in the kingdom. The justiciar held court in the king's name, and he issued administrative writs in his own name and on his own initiative, confirming them with his own seal. In his person were combined the supreme administrative, judicial, and financial functions of government beneath the throne.

De Burgh assumed the justiciarship at a time of extreme crisis. Many barons continued in revolt even after the signing of the Great Charter, and in May, 1216, the heir to the French throne, the future Louis VIII, landed in England with an army to support the rebels. John ordered his justiciar to hold Dover Castle, regarded as the gateway to England. There, de Burgh withstood a determined siege from July 22 to October 14, 1216, by which time the tide had begun to turn against the French. John, who was hated by many of his subjects, died on October 18, and on October 28, his nine-year-old son, Henry III, was crowned in Gloucester Abbey. Although lengthy royal minorities usually boded ill for the welfare of a kingdom, the transition of authority in the autumn of 1216 was remarkably smooth. A regency council was established, with William Marshal, earl of Pembroke, at its head, supported by the papal legate, Cardinal Guala, and the archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton . De Burgh was retained as justiciar.

Yet Louis and his French troops were still in the field, and when it was learned that a French fleet was about to bring reinforcements and supplies to the invaders, de Burgh sailed out of Dover to intercept it as it headed north for the mouth of the Thames. Although contemporary accounts of the engagement differ in detail, it appears that de Burgh won a decisive victory and disembarked to a hero's welcome. The defeat of the French fleet left Louis in an impossible situation, and shortly thereafter, the Treaty of Lambeth (September 11, 1217) enabled him to withdraw without loss of face. Two years later, in 1219, William Marshal died, and while the regency council was now dominated by a triumvirate consisting of the justiciar, the new papal legate, Cardinal Pandulf, and the bishop of Winchester, Peter des Roches, for all practical purposes, de Burgh was in control.

Life's Work

At the outset of Henry's reign, the English system of government was perhaps the most elaborate and efficient to be found north of the Alps. Yet the rebellion during the last years of John's reign, the French invasion, and the disorders that inevitably surfaced during a minority together threatened to bring about a collapse in effective control by the center. It was de Burgh's task to restore the authority of the Crown, repair the financial damage, enforce the king's peace, and ensure that when Henry eventually came of age, he would find his patrimony intact. His immediate problem was the prevailing insubordination of the baronage and their retainers, an inherent characteristic of a rapacious, undisciplined feudal aristocracy no longer subject to the watchful scrutiny of the late king. The problem was exacerbated by long-standing familial and regional rivalries. For the justiciar, a particular bugbear was the presence of John's erstwhile foreign favorites, who had acquired a substantial share of the estates. Those foreigners were bitterly disliked, and de Burgh seems to have deliberately represented himself as the spokesperson for “English” interests. Among the targets of popular resentment, none was more hated than John's old companion at arms, Fawkes de Breauté, although among the aliens, de Burgh's personal enemy was Peter des Roches, a Poitevin, the holder of one of the richest bishoprics in the country, the former confidant of John and now the young king's mentor.

De Burgh's position was an unenviable one. To govern firmly meant repossessing illegally seized Crown lands and disturbing newly acquired interests. In consequence, the justiciar made many enemies. He was sustained by the affection of Henry and the backing of Archbishop Langton, a positive force in the kingdom. On the other hand, de Burgh himself conducted the government harshly and high-handedly and was seen to be greedy and self-serving.

In 1221, de Burgh determined to take over in the king's name those castles and estates that had been illegally acquired by John's former favorites and others during the years of civil war and anarchy. Few were prepared to surrender without a fight. In the council itself, he faced a vociferous and ongoing opposition on behalf of kinsmen and clients, and it was probably to deflect this opposition that he sought and obtained from Pope Honorius III in 1223 permission to proclaim the king, who was a papal ward, competent to govern. Thus the king was able to set the seal of royal authority on the government's resumptions.

Reinforced by Henry's support, de Burgh ruled the country for the next three years as firmly as ever. Despite a display of arrogance that provoked further resentment, he well knew how to ride out the feuds and factional fighting around him and was skilled in demonstrating his ability to assist friends and punish foes. What he failed to apprehend was that the greatest danger to his position lay in the personality of his royal master, capricious and unpredictable by nature yet increasingly eager to exercise authority.

In January, 1227, Henry, now turned twenty, declared himself to be of age. This move was bound to affect the justiciar. It would prove difficult for someone who had been virtual dictator of England for the past decade to relinquish gracefully the substance of power, while the young king was straining at the leash to prove himself. As the king came into his own, the justiciar's enemies found themselves better placed to drive a wedge between the two.

De Burgh had long been not only the most powerful man in England but also one of the richest, arousing envy and bitterness. He had profited enormously from his service to the Crown and had also contrived to benefit from a series of advantageous marriages to conveniently short-lived heiresses. His first wife had been the daughter of the earl of Devon; his second, Beatrice de Warenne, the daughter of William de Warenne; and his third, Isabella, daughter and heiress of the earl of Gloucester, repudiated first wife of King John and widow of the fifth earl of Essex. In 1221, he married his fourth wife, Margaret of Scotland, daughter of William the Lion and sister of Alexander II. He also vigorously pursued the aggrandizement of his kinsmen. His brother, Geoffrey, became bishop of Ely. A nephew became bishop of Norwich. For another nephew, he procured the widow of the sixth earl of Essex, while for another, he sought to win the widow of the earl of Salisbury, supposedly lost at sea, only to be later denounced to the king by the returning earl, who proved to be very much alive. When the latter died in 1226, as with the death of the justiciar's old enemy, Fawkes de Breauté, rumors of poisoning circulated.

In 1228, de Burgh was made earl of Kent. Otherwise, it was a difficult year. His longtime ally Langton died, and de Burgh became embroiled in a dispute between the king and his brother, Richard, earl of Cornwall, the future king of the Romans, thereby earning the latter's enmity. Also, he led an expedition into Wales, which proved a dismal failure. Meanwhile, Henry's French vassals were urging the king to mount an expedition on the Continent to ward off the encroachments of Louis IX's officials. De Burgh cautioned against it, for the treasury was virtually empty, but the king was enthusiastic and resented the justiciar's negative attitude. Eventually, an expeditionary force was assembled at Portsmouth in the autumn of 1229, but the arrangements proved unsatisfactory, and only half the anticipated number of ships were available. The king exploded with rage, blamed de Burgh for the fiasco, and publicly abused him. After a while, the famous Plantagenet rage abated, de Burgh was restored to the king's favor, and in 1230, both went off to Gascony and Poitou, a wasteful and ineffective excursion, as was the raid into Wales that the justiciar led on his return from France.

De Burgh now became embroiled with the Church, allegedly giving support to a violent protest movement against local clerics by lay landowners who felt that advowson (the right to present a nominee to a vacant ecclesiastical benefice in their “possession”) was being eroded by the growing papal practice of providing candidates. Furthermore, in 1231, he became involved in a suit with the archbishop of Canterbury, Richard Grant, over the custody of Tonbridge Castle, which was eventually transferred to Rome, where the archbishop had much to say about de Burgh's high-handed administration. The king, always well-disposed toward the Papacy and with the vindictive bishop of Winchester now his favorite counselor, resolved to break with his justiciar. Characteristically, he moved deviously, presumably intending to remove any prior suspicions de Burgh might have, for in June, 1232, the latter was appointed justiciar of Ireland for life. Then, on July 29, 1232, the blow fell. De Burgh was stripped of all his offices, his property was seized, an audit was ordered with regard to all of his financial dealings, going back to his early years in the royal service, and a series of extreme and quite implausible charges were laid against him. Twice he took sanctuary, once at Merton Priory and once at Brentwood, but he was retaken and imprisoned in the Tower of London and, subsequently, in Devizes castle, perhaps escaping judicial murder only through his friends spiriting him away to Chepstow, beyond the Wye.

When the saintly Edmund Rich (canonized in 1248) became archbishop of Canterbury in 1234, he procured the dismissal of Henry's evil counselors on threat of excommunication and brought about a reconciliation with de Burgh, whose outlawry was now reversed, “one of the most impressive vindications of the rule of law in our history,” according to the historian T. F. T. Plucknett. De Burgh's properties were restored, and he again took his place in the king's council. In 1239, however, Henry revived many of the charges against his old servant, and although de Burgh was once more acquitted, he was compelled to surrender four of his castles as surety for his future good behavior. These were later restored, following yet another reconciliation with the king.

He died on May 12, 1243, and was buried in the London Church of the Black Friars, to whom he bequeathed his town house beside the Thames adjacent to Westminster. This property was eventually purchased by the archbishop of York and was to become the archiepiscopal residence known as York Place, which on the fall of Thomas Wolsey passed to Henry VIII and became the palace of Whitehall. It is a curious irony that this site should link the careers of de Burgh and Wolsey. Perhaps no two commoners in English history wielded greater power or profited more materially in the service of their respective masters, yet both were ignominiously disgraced and abandoned to the vengeance of their enemies.

Significance

Hubert de Burgh's remarkable career exemplified the way in which a man of middling rank and no great inherited wealth could, by applying himself in the king's service, acquire the remunerative appointments, the grants of land, and the marriage settlements that would enable him to rise into the highest ranks of feudal society. Yet de Burgh's intense ambition and personal acquisitiveness should not be allowed to obscure the fact that he dedicated his active professional life to upholding and enlarging royal authority, consciously implementing policies that, in retrospect, can be seen to have assisted the emergence of a genuinely national English monarchy. Surviving sources reveal a detailed picture of how that monarchy functioned under de Burgh's direction. The mainsprings of its political life in particular, the obsessive and seemingly incomprehensible victimization of the fallen statesman by his ungrateful master are more difficult to understand. Like many medieval figures, de Burgh himself remains unknowable.

Bibliography

Carpenter, David. The Minority of Henry III. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. An account of Henry’s early years as king. Includes bibliography and index.

Duby, Georges. William Marshal: The Flower of Chivalry. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986. A penetrating study of de Burgh’s older contemporary, providing valuable insights into the knightly ethos, both chivalrous and mercenary, of which de Burgh was a part.

Ellis, Clarence. Hubert de Burgh: A Study in Constancy. London: Phoenix House, 1952. A biography of the great justiciar.

Plucknett, T. F. T. Early English Legal Literature. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1958. English legal history by a distinguished historian of medieval legal history.

Powicke, F. M. King Henry III and the Lord Edward. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1966. A detailed study of the Plantagenet king and his son.

Powicke, F. M. The Thirteenth Century, 1216-1307. 2d ed. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1962. Provides an excellent scholarly account of the political setting in which de Burgh operated.

Tout, T. F. Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England. 6 vols. 1920. Reprint. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1967. Volume 1 provides a good account of the administrative system during the minority of Henry III, as supervised by de Burgh.

Wilkinson, B. The Constitutional History of Medieval England, 1216-1399. 3 vols. London: Longmans, 1963. Volume 1 contains an excellent summary of English constitutional history, supported by contemporary documentation.