A Great and Glorious Adventure Read Online Free Page B

infant son, Henry III, inherited a kingdom divided by war, with rebellious barons in the north and the French dauphin – later Louis VIII of France, who had
landed in England in May 1216 and was touted by some as king rather than John – in the south. History has been harsh to Henry III too, but with rather less cause than to his father.
Fortunately, with the death of John, much of the impetus of the barons’ revolt was defused, and Louis was viewed as a foreign usurper rather than as an alternative king. There were sufficient
good men in the Midlands to back young Henry, and, after the Battle of Lincoln and a sea battle offSandwich in 1217, the French claimant withdrew, helped on his way by a
hefty bribe.
    Like his father, Henry tried to rule as an autocrat and, like his father, he fell out with his magnates as a result. He had, however, the sense to realize that he could not rule alone, and, by
accepting his father’s Magna Carta and, albeit under pressure, dismissing the large number of grasping relations of his French wife who had flocked to England to make their fortune now that
the Holy Land, reconquered by the Muslims, was no longer an option, he was able to avoid being deposed. He too was no soldier, and in the Treaty of Paris in 1259 he gave up his claim to Normandy,
Anjou and Maine and retained only Aquitaine, but as a vassal of the French king to whom he had to pay homage. Despite all this, he remained king for fifty-six years. Although the latter stages of
his reign were again marred by rebellion and civil war, he did greatly improve the administrative machinery of government as well as promote Gothic architecture – his greatest artistic
endeavour being the building of Westminster Abbey as a shrine to Edward the Confessor – and he did leave behind him a reasonably contented and more or less united kingdom, and an adult son
who would begin to establish the military basis for a recovery of England’s lost territories.
    Historical revisionism is not confined to the wars of the twentieth century, and Edward I has come in for a good deal of it from some modern writers. On the positive side, all agree that he was
tall, athletic and handsome, a good soldier and genuinely in love with his wife, Eleanor of Castile, which was unusual when royal marriages were contracted for political and dynastic reasons
regardless of the personal preferences of the individuals involved. To his detriment, he took up arms against his father during the civil wars with the barons, changed sides at least twice, and was
accused of breaking solemn promises and – even after having returned to his allegiance and when in command of the royalist forces at the Battle of Evesham in 1265 – of duplicity in the
cornering of the rebel army and the death of their leader, Simon de Montfort, eighth earl of Leicester. This latter charge refers to Edward’s flying the banners of captured nobles either to
give the impression that they had changed sides or to convince de Montfort that his rebel troops had the royalists surrounded. That would seem a perfectly legitimate
ruse de guerre
,
although the behaviour of another turncoat, Roger Mortimer, who is alleged to have killed de Montfort, cut off his head and genitals, and then sent thepackage to his own
wife as a souvenir, would have been regarded as bad form even then. 13 Mortimer also killed a senior rebel commander, Sir Hugh Despenser, at the same
battle, a matter that would resurface half a century later. Additionally, Edward had a vile temper, expelled the Jews from England in 1290 and profited thereby, and dealt with any opposition from
the pope by fining his representatives in England.
    Most of the criticism of Edward relates to his time as the heir, and contemporary chroniclers are less strident when writing about his reign as king – but then denigrating a prince is one
thing, opposing an anointed king quite another. The probable truth is that Edward was no more