There had not been a boy king since the reign of Ethelred the Unready. So in this difficult situation Henry’s most prominent supporters established a regency council. Henry came under the tutelage of three men – the bishop of Winchester, the papal legate and the earl of Pembroke known as the earl marshal. As regents they effectively controlled the administration of the country. They acted quickly and effectively; within a matter of months the exchequer was open for business and the judges had been despatched on their legal peregrinations.
But the consequences of the civil war were plain. Would the barons loyal to John be allowed to retain the castles or lands they had captured from the rebels? Would the various factions within the baronage once more oppose each other? The death of the earl marshal, in 1219, proved the instability of the realm under the boy king. Certain mighty lords declined to hand over royal castles. They were also refusing to pay the taxes levied on them. Small-scale wars sprang up over disputed territory.
A new regency council had been established under the leadership of the papal legate, Pandulf. The head of the judicial system, the judiciar, was Hubert de Burgh. The king’s tutor and guardian, the bishop of Winchester, was Peter des Roches. These three men would play a major role in the vicissitudes of the early reign. They fought among themselves for primacy, and of course provoked hostility in all quarters. It cannot be said that they had any real conception of national well-being; with the possible exception of Pandulf, they were concerned to promote the interests of themselves and their families. That was what rule was all about. De Burgh and des Roches, for example, were engaged in a violent feud. At one meeting the two men broke out in argument against one another; de Burgh accused des Roches of being the instigator of all the troubles in the realm, whereupon des Roches said that he would bring his opponent ‘to his knees’. Then he stormed out of the meeting. These were the men who were supposed to tutor the king in good government.
It is evident enough that, in the period of the king’s minority, the rule was given to the strongest party or parties; by threat or violence, for example, Hubert de Burgh eventually gained control of the administration and began to deal with recalcitrant barons as well as over-mighty subjects. An approximation to order was maintained, but on de Burgh’s terms. Henry does not seem to have been particularly restive or uneasy during de Burgh’s ascendancy, but the time came when he was obliged to assert himself. At the beginning of 1227, at the age of nineteen, he declared himself to be of the age when he should assume all the duties of sovereignty.
This is the occasion, perhaps, to take a closer look at the young king. He was of modest height, and seems to have had no remarkable physical characteristic – except perhaps for his left eyelid, which was inclined to droop. He was amiable, but not perhaps docile. He tried to evict his younger brother, known as Richard of Cornwall, from some lands; the combined fury of the other barons prevented him from doing so. It was an early lesson in the limitations of power.
His personality has been variously described, no doubt because it was compounded of various parts. Some people considered him to be a simpleton, while others believed him to be a fool. He was described as vir simplex, an adjective that might mean without guile or without sense. He was criticized as weak and credulous, submissive and impulsive. He was very impressionable, and tended to favour the opinions of the last person to whom he had spoken. His resentments, and his affections, did not last for very long. It can safely be argued then, that he was not a strong and ruthless king in the manner of his father and grandfather. Unlike them, he had never been schooled in adversity. He had a temper and he could be sharp-tongued, but was not wantonly cruel.
He was pious, perhaps excessively so for a king who must sometimes assert his own rights over the Church. Every day he used to hear three masses. When he journeyed to Paris he could not pass a church where Mass was being said, without participating in the sacred ceremony. When the priest raised the eucharist at the solemn moment of elevation, Henry would hold the priest’s hand and kiss it. King Louis of France once told him that he preferred to hear sermons than to attend Mass. Henry replied that he would rather see his friend than hear one speak of him.
God was his immediate lord. No one on earth was closer to Him than the king. Henry revived the cult of Edward the Confessor, and considered the old king to be his spiritual protector. He rebuilt Westminster Abbey in veneration of his memory, and he now lies buried close to the shrine of the saint. In one sense he was English. He was born in England, at least, and his nickname was ‘Henry of Winchester’; he gave his sons the names of Anglo-Saxon saints.
When a relic of the holy blood of Jesus was sent to him by the patriarch of Jerusalem and the master of the Templars, it was kept in closely guarded secrecy at the church of the Holy Sepulchre in London. The young king carried the phial in solemn procession from St Paul’s Cathedral to Westminster Abbey, his gaze fixed upon the relic at all times. He wore a simple robe of humility, but this ceremony was in part designed to re-emphasize the theory of sacred kingship. When after the service in Westminster Abbey he put on his crown and cloth of gold, he became an icon with his finger pointing upward to the heavens. Henry’s concept of kingship was one of ritual and spectacle. He crossed himself in the manner of ecclesiastics, and ensured that the words of ‘Christus Vincit’ were chanted before him on holy days. His father had spent his days on the road but Henry, less driven by his furies, preferred to settle down in comfort and splendour.
Above all he desired, and wished to be remembered for, a reign of peace. He did not like wars. He was no soldier, in any case. In one declaration he commended his reign for the absence of ‘hostility and general war’ and stated that he had never ceased to labour ‘for the peace and tranquillity of one and all’. He might even be considered a ‘good’ man, but good men rarely make good kings. No quality of greatness could be found in him. Two other shafts of light may help to illuminate him. He liked fresh air and insisted that the windows opposite his bed should be made to open. And he liked images of smiling faces. He ordered a row of smiling angels to be sculpted on either side of a rood screen for the church of St Martin le Grand.
He was in fact the most lavish patron of religious art in the history of England. He built chapels and churches; he was the patron of monkish historians and monkish illuminators; the great development of Gothic art occurred in the course of his long reign when the stones themselves cried out ‘Holy! Holy! Holy!’ Under the gaze of the king the High Gothic of Westminster Abbey emerged, to be seen at its grandest in the octagonal chapter house. Irresolute as he may sometimes have been, he was responsible for the creation of many of the architectural glories of England. In his reign 157 abbeys, priories and other religious houses were established; there was an efflorescence of Lady chapels.
It so happened that, at the beginning of his reign, the first friars came to England; the Dominicans arrived in 1221, and the Franciscans three years later. Their significance has long since been eroded, but at the time of their first presence in the country they materially affected the cultural and spiritual life of the people. They established themselves in the major towns, where they found favour with the leading merchants who had long fallen out of love with the parochial clergy; they preached, literally, in the marketplace.
They did not live in the cloister in the manner of Benedictine monks; they were in the world. They were mendicants, beggars, who roamed the streets seeking clothes and food. They were not, at least in the beginning, supposed to ask for money. Some of the first Franciscans in London lodged in a street known as Stinking Lane. They preached as poor men, therefore, and as a result helped to change the sentiments and perceptions of the townspeople. They told stories and jokes; they described miracles and marvels. They turned English preaching into a folk art. Before their arrival, there had been few sermons in England. It was a new experience for most of their auditors. The first pulpits were in fact not erected until the middle of the fourteenth century.